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A solar-powered iPad?

Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Donna SalmonsToday’s guest post is from Donna Salmons, a freelance writer and social media consultant. Donna lives in Tennessee and strives to reduce her carbon footprint and teach her son how to be environmentally aware and respectful of his environment: They use only CFL bulbs in their home, buy locally produced goods and services, and use reusable bags for grocery shopping, among other things. Donna is also a bit of a geek; she enjoys writing about technology and gadgets at TestFreaks, a global website that provides product information and reviews of hundreds of products (computers, cameras, home appliances, TVs) to consumers.

Chances are, if you haven’t been living in a cave during 2010, you know something about the  iPad. A finger-friendly tablet from t Apple that runs iOS, the iPad builds upon the smaller mobile devices, like the iPod and iPhone, that have made Apple such a phenomenal  success in recent years.

Two key differences set the iPad apart. The first is its size. The iPhone and iPod Touch, with which it shares operating system and a library of applications, have only a 3.5 inch screen. The iPad has a 9.7 inch screen, which means that full-page documents, as well as entire books, are easily readable.

Suddenly a thin tablet with a touch screen, coupled with an impressive run time, becomes a real alternative to the pad and paper. Mass tablets of the past were simply not up to that task.

The second difference is this: I buy an iPad today. Being a big fan of tablets, I have followed their development, and I am even a long time user of the venerable TC1100 tablet. But the actual designs before the iPad were best used with a stylus, and definitely not designed for fingertip operation. Badly wanting a simple tablet designed for human hands, I have watched and anticipated so many, only to see them disappear into the vaporware ethers. The iPad is real.

Competition Is Good

Any other tablet that comes on the scene is going to be play catchup. That’s good, of course. Competition will force Apple, and others, to add features,  improve design, deliver greater capability or lower prices–or all of the above. This is where solar power could come into play.

Consider, as an example, another great technology upstart that once sent ripples through our lives. That  life-changing product? The lowly calculator.

When the calculator first came out, it was large, heavy, and required a lot of juice. You know, like laptops used to be. And over time, technology and innovation morphed the calculator from an expensive indispensable tool of the highest caliber to one that is cheap but gets the job done. In fact, a lot of checkbooks and notepads ship with a calculator mounted right to it–for free! And what is powering these inexpensive calculators? Solar energy.

Solar power has turned the calculator into a  tool that is always handy, and with power to spare.

Empowering the iPad

If solar power made the calculator as handy as a notepad, what could we expect to replace the notepad itself? The iPad and other soon-to-be-real tablets should be able to do the job rather well, so long as they are easy to use and always powered to go.

All we need to do is add a source of renewable energy that could keep the iPad always-on. Is it just a pipe dream to think that an iPad could sustain abd power itself, without the need for a charge? Maybe not.

Apple is always busy developing its next product; patents are part of that process. Patent Application number 20100079387, published April 2010 (which encompasses Fig. 10, left),  may reveal what the company has in mind. The application, entitled “Integrated Touch Sensor and Solar Assembly”, details the mechanics of just such a device. And does Apple have a device that would work well with a nice big screen to act as combination human interface / solar collector? Why yes they do, and it’s called an iPad.

The signs indicate that notoriously-secretive Apple is working on solar powered devices. For all we know they already have prototypes. While I sincerely doubt that we will see such a product in 2010 (or 2011), I would not be surprised to see it on the market soon after that. Just in time to leapfrog the competition once again.

By the time the solar power system is ready for market, chances are that the rest of the device will have been made cheap enough to make it practical for millions more users.

After all, the mechanical hard drive has already been replaced, and the circuit board in an iPad is small, saving room for the battery. Everything seems to be lining up for the product to be possible. The world needs a real alternative to the tree consuming notepads. We can’t have a solar-powered iPad soon enough.

Note from Marc: For more technical detail on the patent, see this post at Patently Apple.

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Posted in Consumption, Energy, Environment, Sustainability | No Comments »

Running with a conscience: racing, training and tech

Monday, August 30th, 2010

Melissa Schweisguth photo credit: TIME/Bob Pennell

This is second of three guest posts on eco-friendly running from Melissa Schweisguth. (Here’s the first, on clothing and shoes. Tomorrow she’ll write about food and drink.) I’m featuring Melissa’s post because running and the environment are two of my passions, and she’s done a beautiful job of marrying the two.

Melissa is a 36-year-old fellow sustainability professional and writer who also enjoys running. She puts me to shame, and not just because she clocked an impressive 3:11:07 in the Eugene (Oregon) Marathon this year. Melissa hasn’t thrown anything into a landfill since 2006, which earned her notice in Time magazine (due to non-consumerism and creative reuse.). She thrives on an organic, whole foods, locally-based and almost exclusively vegan diet, (as does famed ultra runner Scott Jurek). She’s been working on improving her running footprint to avoid trampling people or planet and has written three blogposts on running “au naturel” for her blog, Living Acoustically, which she’s kindly agreed to let me share here.  I don’t expect most runners to be as “green” as Melissa, but my hope is that she’ll inspire you, whether you run or not, as she has inspired me to make a change or two in your lives. When she isn’t running, Melissa works a freelance writer and consultant on socially responsible business and media relations, and as director of membership and development for the Food Trade Sustainability Leadership Association.

This is the second post about my efforts to maximize and improve running performance while honoring a guiding principle that defines sustainability to me: “live simply so that others may simply live.” As noted…This is being shared for informational purposes only and not intended to be preachy or judgmental, as neither is my style. We all have different backgrounds and resource demands in our lives, and I’m the first to admit there are many things I can improve!

Racing

When choosing races, my inclination is to stay as local (for simplicity and cost rather than environmental reasons), where I can bike or jog to the starting line. (I also start runs from home or bike to a park 1 mile away.) When travel is involved, carpooling is a good solution, and of course public transit, where available. I volunteer to help set up and handle recycling at local race, and have started to share tips for making races greener, from the Runners World/Nature’s Path Green Team.

Races usually involve freebies, t-shirts, race numbers and medals. I generally decline the bag and swag, being stuff I wouldn’t use anyway and small sample sizes with a lot of packaging waste.

If shirts are optional, I decline to get one. Otherwise, I give it to my dad to wear in the garden or volunteering for Meals on Wheels to share new stories with his clients. Old shirts can easily be made into reusable tote bags. Cut off the sleeves and sew up the bottom and sides. Sew the sleeves together on the diagonals, sew across the bottom and attach inside the neckline to make a pocket (and no waste). Make handles with two old shoelaces, strung inside the neckline on alternating sides (for a drawstring closure). You can also just zig zag the cut arm holes instead of sewing them fully closed to make handles, but the bag will have less capacity.

Race numbers can be recycled through some mail-back programs, but you can also make a cool bag and other things out of them. Awards can be donated to organizations that reuse them give for awards and encouragement. Check out Medals4Mettle, ask local trophy shops if they know of programs in your area or give them to someone who’s inspired you. I used to give mine to my Grandma, a champion and inspiration for me.

Training + Tech

Enhanced watches, garmins, iPod +, iPhones with GPS, heart rate monitors and other tech items are favorite runner toys. Call me a Luddite but I just use the stopwatch on my geriatric sports watch for timing and take 10 seconds to measure my heart rate if so inclined.

For regular runs, I just settle into a pace that feels challenging yet maintainable for the conditions. For intervals, tempo runs, etc., I run on a bike path with quarter-mile markers to gauge speed (The McMillan Pace Calculator is a good tool to pick a pace). My parents were math teachers and I listened to Multiplication Rock a lot as kid, so mentally calculating my pace and progress against goal time is second nature, and it helps pass time.

My body is pretty good at hitting a steady, challenging training speed and finding a good race pace, which I attribute to years of piano, speed training and a bit of great coaching from runner friends Ralph & Lois (Brommer, “PA Hall of Famer“) Duquette (who got me into speed training initially, another natural performance enhancer).

I used to depend more on my watch for pacing but after my battery died at the beginning of a marathon with no one calling time at the mile markers, I found myself challenged to maintain a goal pace I knew I was capable of based on training and realized the need to focus on being able to ‘feel’ my pace better. Greg McMillan has a great article on calibrating ‘inner GPS.’

iPod…don’t have one but wouldn’t run with one for safety reasons. Best to be able to hear the rejuvenating and wise symphony trails offer, as well as bigger wildlife, mountain bikers, cars, etc. sharing various terrain.

Till next time…Happy trails, and may we tread lightly!

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Posted in Consumption, Energy, Environment, Sustainability | 1 Comment »

Clean batteries, dirty coal: your tax dollars at work

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

How would you like to invest in a start-up that makes advance renewable energy storage systems?  Before investing, you should know that this particular company has:

  • -Never made a profit.
  • -Piled up  losses of $44 million since going public in 2007.
  • -Replaced its CEO because he was paid both as an employee and independent contractor.
  • -Seen its stock tumble from $6 to 70 cents a share since going public in 2007

President Obama at ZBB EnergyActually, you’ve already invested. The company is called ZBB Energy, and it’s seeking to commercial zinc-bromide technology developed in Australia back in the 1980s. This week,  President Obama visited its U.S. headquarters in Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin. According to the White House:

ZBB Energy Corporation is using $1.3 million in Recovery Act State Energy Program loans to fund a $4.5 million factory renovation to triple their capacity to manufacture flow batteries and power systems.  As a result, the company has already retained a dozen workers and will hire about 80 new workers over time.

“Companies like this,” the president said, “are showing us how manufacturing can come back right here in the United States of America, right back here to Wisconsin.”

Well, maybe–but the company will have to find some customers and generate some profits for its  comeback to be meaningful. The $1.3 million may sound like pocket change, and it is, but ZBB also has secured a $14.68 million Recovery Act 48c Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit to build a new factory. It’s one of 183 projects in 43 states to get $2.3 billion in Recovery Act tax credits for clean energy manufacturing projects. The Wall Street Journal editorialized about ZBB today under the headline Uncle Sam, Venture Capitalist.

Meanwhile, another energy-related business in Wisconsin is enjoying an Obama administration subsidy–and this time, the controversy is being generated by the left. Bucyrus, which is based in South Milwaukee, manufactures mining equipment. Unlike ZBB, it doesn’t need government help to survive; the company’s equipment helped excavate the Panama Canal and it generated $2.6 billion in revenue and $312 million in net income last year.

The controversery has arisen because the Export-Import Bank of the United States is moving forward with a $600-million loan guarantee to support the sale and export of Bucyrus mining equipment to a company called Sasan Power Ltd., for a 3,960 megawatt (meaning very big) coal-fired power plant in Madhya Pradesh, India. You read that right–while it’s becoming increasing difficult, thank goodness, to build new, polluting coal plants in the U.S., your government is supporting the construction of a coal plant in India. It agreed to go forward when the project’s backer, Reliance Power, agreed to develop a 250 megawatt renewable energy facility as well.  The Ex-Im Bank, as it’s known, is also considering backing a 4,800 megawatt coal-fired plant in South Africa.

The rationale for the government loan guarantee is, of course, jobs. In a news release, Bucyrus CEO Tim Sullivan praised Wisconsin’s governor, senators and congresspeople for helping to persuade the Ex-Im bank–which initially turned down the loan for environmental reasons–to reverse itself. “The nearly 1,000 U.S. jobs supported by the project include over 300 family-supporting jobs in the Milwaukee region and approximately 650 additional U.S. jobs in Bucyrus’ supply chain,” the company said.

But jobs at what price? Friends of the Earth, the Sierra Club and a group called Pacific Environment all oppose the loan because of the new plant will be one of the largest sources of global warming pollutants on earth. Doug Norlen of Pacific Environment said:

The Ex-Im Bank’s ongoing fossil fuel binge indicates a clear unwillingness of the agency to adhere to Congressional climate change directives and systemic bias towards financing fossil fuel projects.

Writing at Huffington Post, Michelle Chan of Friends of the Earth says:

What’s particularly worrying is the precedent that this investment will create. The Sasan deal was the first major test of Exim’s new carbon policy (which resulted from a 2002 lawsuit that Friends of the Earth filed in response to the agency’s failure to consider the greenhouse gas implications of its financing activities). Although the policy is not nearly as robust as Friends of the Earth would have hoped, it does empower the Exim Board to reject applications at an early stage because of their carbon emissions. The fact that congressional and White House pressure caused Exim to reverse course on a decision made under this new policy does not bode well for the other four big coal deals in the Exim pipeline, including the 4,800 megawatt Kusile coal power project in South Africa, which would emit 30.5 million tons of carbon dioxide annually.

Needless to say, ZBB Energy will have to make a whole lot of clean energy storage devices to offset the emissions of big coal plants in India and South Africa, which, to be fair, will probably deliver electricity to lots of people who need it.

What’s most worrisome here is the big picture: The Obama administration, which already owns big chunks of GM, Chrysler and Wall Street, is during a time of record budget deficits intervening in ever-more specific ways in the economy. This is industrial policy at its worst, picking winners and losers, usually in the name of jobs, whether green or in the case of Bucyrus, coal-black. Funny thing, but these loans and grants also have a way of flowing towards politically-connected projects in swing states.

This isn’t to say that the government should keep its hands off the energy business. That’s a pipe dream, pun intended. But if the administration invested lots more in basic energy research and higher education, enacted a stiff  revenue-neutral carbon tax and used the proceeds to reduce payroll taxes, its chances of creating sustainable jobs would be a lot greater. There’d be fewer ribbon-cuttings, for sure, but more prosperity and less waste.

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Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Politics, Sustainability | 3 Comments »

Social funds: BP, the 1960s, and greed

Sunday, August 15th, 2010

Recently, after posting a column about BP and socially responsible mutual funds (See Social Funds and BP: How embarrassing!)  I heard from Adam Kanzer, who is managing director and general counsel at Domini Social Investments. While Domini has never owned shares of BP, Adam and I began a conversation about the role  of socially-responsible mutual funds. Adam, who has been in the fund business for twelve years, is a smart and committed executive, but we don’t always agree, so we decided to engage in a dialog about social funds.

Adam Kanzer

Adam Kanzer

Marc: Adam, let’s start with BP. Why did Domini exclude the company? Do you hold any other oil or coal companies?

Adam: Domini has consistently excluded BP from our portfolios because of our concerns about their safety record. Our initial review followed the Texas City explosion in 2005, but our decision was quickly reinforced by the Prudhoe Bay spill the following year.  We met with BP to discuss these and related issues with them. And each time we revisited BP, we found more violations.

We’re looking to identify the key sustainability challenges each company faces. For the oil and gas industries, worker safety and environmental compliance are among a handful of core issues we consider.  I should also note that we have consistently excluded Transocean and Halliburton, both of whom played a role in the Deepwater Horizon project. In addition we have also consistently excluded Massey Energy, the other current poster-child for disaster, as well as Toyota for substantial safety, employee relations and human rights concerns.  We discuss these decisions on our website. And yes, we do hold other oil and gas companies, although we set a high bar for entry. We do not invest in companies whose core business is coal mining.

Marc: Any thoughts on why BP was so widely held by other socially-responsible funds?

Adam: As CEO of BP, Lord Browne made very important statements about the reality of climate change at a time when others in his industry were denying its existence. That was important. In addition, BP has been committed to transparency on its social and environmental performance. I can’t speak for other firms, but I can see how those factors may have led some to hold BP. We felt that the safety and environmental issues outweighed these positives.

If a fund’s benchmark is heavily weighted towards oil, then an SRI manager will need to consider that. This tyranny of the benchmark certainly led many to hold BP and other oil companies that in a perfect world they would have preferred to avoid.

Which brings me to the important question that I have not heard – why did all of the so-called ‘mainstream’ investors buy BP? Why did investors allow this company to become one of the largest in the world by market capitalization? At least social investors weighed these issues and came to a decision. The rest of the market acted as if there was no problem.

Marc: That’s an excellent point, and it makes me wonder why people pay mutual fund managers such high fees. They missed the housing and Wall Street bubbles, and didn’t see or care about the safety issues at BP. Clearly most  funds aren’t very good at managing risk.

Turning to another topic, many SRI funds have their roots in the anti-war movement of the 1960s and 1970s as well as in faith-based investing. So funds like Domini exclude companies that make weapons, alcohol, tobacco and nuclear power. My question is, why? Let’s start with weapons. Don’t we need companies that make weapons in the post 9/11 era?

Adam:   First, it is important to understand that we divide those industries into two general categories – companies that provide addictive products and services, and companies whose products contribute to geopolitical instability. We place military weapons manufacturers and nuclear power in the latter category. We do not consider investments in addiction and global instability to be productive uses of capital.

National defense is too important to be placed in the hands of the same system that brought us the financial crisis. When Eisenhower issued his warnings about the growth of the military-industrial complex, he wasn’t questioning our need for a strong national defense. Yes, we need weapons, but do we need publicly traded companies manufacturing weapons? Are the capital markets an appropriate mechanism for providing these goods, or have the markets distorted our national priorities? That’s a critical debate our nation needs to have.

There are also categories of weapons that violate international humanitarian law because they cannot distinguish between military and civilian targets. These include landmines, clusterbombs and nuclear weapons. These ‘products’ make the world more dangerous, and landmines have caused incalculable misery to innocent civilians – including children – around the world. As investors, we have a responsibility to choose wisely. Our Funds’ shareholders choose not to profit from these violations, so we exclude these manufacturers and companies that manufacture nuclear weapons delivery systems.

Marc: What about nuclear power? Some environmentalists, notably Stewart Brand, say we need to seriously consider nukes in light of the climate crisis? (more…)

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Posted in CSR, Economics, Energy, SRI, Socially Responsible Investing, Sustainability | 4 Comments »

Will rooftop solar go mainstream?

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

It’s been a remarkable summer for SunRun, the San Francisco-based startup that’s trying to get solar power onto millions of residential rooftops. SunRun raised $100 million in project financing from utility PG&E. Venture capitalists invested another $55 million in the company. Home Depot agreed to distribute its rooftop solar panels, and Toll Brothers, the big home builder, is using SunRun’s solar leasing program to install PV panels on new homes in a luxury golf-course community in Yorba Linda, CA.

Today, SunRun enters Pennsylvania, its sixth state. You wouldn’t think of Pennsylvania as a solar-friendly state but, as it happens, the Keystone State has all the right ingredients–high and rising electricity prices, generous state subsidies for renewable energy, and a regulatory framework that permits homeowners to sell surplus power back to the electricity grid.

Says Lynn Jurich, the president and co-founder of SunRun: “We want to go to markets where we can save customers money, and where we can make money.”

I’ve written about SunRun before (See SunRun: A New Deal for Solar and Solar’s Strange Bedfellows) but the company is growing so fast, albeit off a small base, that it makes a lot of news. The PG&E, Home Depot and Toll Brothers agreements, along with its geographic expansion, all seem to  further validate the company’s business model. (more…)

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Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Small Business, Sustainability | 2 Comments »

Gouda cheese, wienerschnitzel and the Amazon

Monday, July 26th, 2010

Consider this thought experiment: Given the importance of the Amazon rainforest to the effort to curb climate change, and the potential value of the thousands of species that live only in the Amazon, and the vastness of the place (See Just how big is the Amazon?), what benefit, if any, can justify destroying a few trees, or a few thousand trees, or even a few thousand square miles of trees? Feeding a hungry family? Providing energy, at a lower cost to a nearby city? Making meat or cheese cheaper in the U.S. or Europe?

These are obviously not theoretical questions. They’re the kinds of questions facing the Brazilian government, and they are relevant to the rest of us because decision we make—about the government leaders we elect or about what to eat for dinner—can have an impact on the Amazon. These are also the kinds of questions that arose frequently during my six-day tour of Brazil last week. The government-organized trip for international reporters focused on the Amazon.

The good news is that the rate of deforestation of the Amazon is decreasing, and dramatically. Six years ago, 27.7 square kilometers of trees were cut down—that’s about 10,700 square miles, an area bigger than the state of Massachusetts. Last year, about 7,000 sq. km. were cut down, and this year the pace is slowing further, satellite photos show.

Americo Ribeiro Tunes, who’s in charge of protecting the forest for IBAMA, Brazil’s equivalent of the EPA, told us: “Brazil is on the verge of a major victory over deforestation.”

Well, maybe, but, along with stepped-up law enforcement, a big reason for the decline in deforestation is the global recession, which drove prices down timber, soy and beef, easing pressures on the Amazon. A strong global economy recovery will likely renew the pressure to destroy forest land to raise cattle or harvest timber, no matter what the laws say.

Besides, there’s plenty of opportunity for legal deforestation of the Amazon. Today, landowners are permitted to cut down up to 20% of their land under Brazil’s Forest Code;  proposed revisions would raise that to 50%. Government-approved plans for industrial development include the controversial Belo Monte Dam, which would be the world’s third largest dame, and the potential expansion of the Urucu Oil Province, which we visited (See Deep in the Amazon, learning to like fossil fuels) also pose a threat. Revenues from Amazon development can be used to promote social and education programs in Brazil, the government says.

This may—may—justify drilling for more oil and gas at Urucu. The Petrobras project has done minimal damage to the rainforest, while providing tax benefits to the region, as well as cleaner energy and cheaper electricity to Manaus, where 2 million people live.

Similar arguments can be made for hydroelectric projects like the Belo Monte Dam, which has been in the works for years. The environmental costs are significant, Reuters reports:

The 6 kilometre-long (3.75 miles) dam will displace 30,000 river dwellers, partially dry up a 100-kilometer (62.5 mile) stretch of the Xingu, and flood a 190-square-mile (500-sq-km) area three times the size of Washington D.C.

And the benefits? According to Amazon Watch, which opposes the project,

The electricity may be exported in large part to eight industrial mining and construction companies: Alcoa, ArcelorMittal, Camargo Corrêa, CSN, Gerdau, Samarco, Vale, and Votorantim.

Without knowing more about what these companies do, how much they pay in taxes and how many people they employ, it’s hard to whether the dam will be worth building. In an interview last week, Brazil’s energy minister, Marcio Zimmerman, said the dam is valuable because it’s a source of carbon-free electricity.

As an outsider, and someone just starting to learn about Brazil, I’m not prepared to offer an opinion about these big infrastructure projects. It turns out, though, that while they attract a lot of controversy–movie director James Cameron of Avatar fame last spring joined a protest against Belo Monte–they aren’t the major cause of deforestation. Cattle ranching is, by far, No. 1:

Which brings us to gouda cheese and weinerschnitzel. The oil and gas from Urucu are necessities, so long as we drive cars and fly in airplanes. Likewise electricity–energy is a driver of economic growth, jobs and wealth. But the soy plantations and cattle ranches? They occupy a great deal of land, employ relatively few people and produce animal feed and meat, much of which is shipped to Europe at the U.S.  Ocean-going ships filled with soy, for example, travel from the Amazon port of Santerem to Amsterdam, to feed Dutch and German cows. Meat’s a luxury–millions of people can, and do, live without it.

Destroying rainforests to make cheese, veal and burgers seems like a bad trade-off. At the very least, it’s another reason to eat less meat–not that we really need one. (Among them: Meat is an inefficient and expensive way of getting calories, it contributes to heart disease and obesity, causes of animal suffering, pollutes waterways, etc.) Now that I’ve seen the Amazon, and come to understand the connection between deforestation, cattle and soy, I’m going to curb my own consumption of meat. It’s easy, and it seems like the very least we can do.

Disclosure: My week-long trip to Brazil, with a focus on the environment in the Amazon, was organized by Apex-Brasil, a government-backed agency that promotes trade and investment. It’s sponsored by Electrobras, Petrobras and Banco do Brasil.

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Posted in Climate Change, Consumption, Energy, Environment, Food, Global Poverty, Sustainability | No Comments »

Deep in the Amazon, learning to like fossil fuels

Monday, July 19th, 2010

Deep in the Amazon rainforest, many miles from anywhere, the Brazilian energy giant Petrobras is producing oil and natural gas from an industrial development carved out of the landscape that includes 70 working oil wells, five drilling rigs, an airport, two river ports and lodging for 1,800 workers.

This remote outpost is known as the Urucu Oil Province, and, believe it or not, state-controlled Petrobras says it’s an example of  “sustainable development.”

Flaring gas: Is this sustainable development?

Flaring gas at Urucu: Is this sustainable development?

This is sustainable only if you believe that the oil and gas will last forever, that climate change isn’t a worry, and that drilling for fossil fuels in one of the world’s most unspoiled and biodiverse regions makes sense.

Here’s the surprise, though: Petrobras’s Urucu project may not be sustainable in the strictest sense,  but it is about as environmentally benign as an oil-drilling project in a rainforest can be. That may be damning with faint praise, but I have to confess that I came to like Urucu after visiting today with a group of reporters on an six-day tour of Brazil.

Urucu has issues, to be sure, but it is generating thousands of jobs, contributing considerable wealth to a developing nation in the form of taxes and royalties, and generating electricity in ways that are cleaner and cheaper than the current alternative. (more…)

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Posted in Economics, Energy, Environment, Global Poverty, Sustainability | 1 Comment »

Can Brazil save the Amazon?

Sunday, July 18th, 2010

This morning I woke up in a hotel in Manaus, Brazil, had breakfast overlooking the Negro River, then went for a run along the river’s beaches. It was an enjoyable way to begin my first visit to Brazil, a six-day, government-backed, jam-packed tour with a focus on the environmental issues facing the Amazon.

Environmentalists have labored for decades to protect the impossibly vast rainforests of the Amazon, which make up more than half of the world’s tropical forests. But until recently they had little to show for their efforts. (Ben & Jerry’s Rainforest Crunch doesn’t count.) Since the 1970s,  about 230,000 square miles of the Amazon have been lost to development, mostly cattle ranches, soy plantations and illegal logging.

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Only lately has the rate of deforestation began to slow, thanks to more progressive government policies and corporate campaigns by NGOS, notably Greenpeace.  Just last week, there was encouraging news from a British think tank called Chatham House, which published a major report on illegal logging around the world. Fiona Harvey wrote in the Financial Times:

Illegal logging has fallen by 22 per cent worldwide in the past decade according to a report published on Thursday …

The assessment found that that in certain key countries the decline was even more dramatic, showing a fall of between 50 and 75 per cent in the Brazilian Amazon, 75 per cent in Indonesia and by about half in Cameroon.

The New York Times said:

In Brazil in particular, an overhaul of logging laws and a new zeal in enforcement have led to a significant drop not only in illegal logging but also in overall deforestation rates in the Amazon, according to satellite data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research.

Why should you care?

The big reason is that deforestation is a major cause of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for as much as 20 percent of global emissions, scientists say. Preventing deforestation of the Amazon is incredibly complicated: It requires good government policy, effective local law enforcement, satellite monitoring and global cooperation because soy, beef and logs are shipped from Brazil to the U.S., Japan and Europe. Rich countries, NGOs and even some corporations  have been trying for years to find way to create market mechanisms or outright grants that would get money to places like the Amazon, so that trees  are worth more standing than cut down. (See Your parents were wrong and Marriott waves the REDD flag.)

Even oil and coal companies like this idea because preserving trees is low-cost way to generate carbon offsets and one of the very cheapest ways to fight climate change–much less expensive, say, than building solar or wind power.

Tropical forests are also storehouses of biodiversity that are the source of medicines, food and chemicals used worldwide.

Manaus has been the gateway to the Amazon since the 19th century. You can get here by plane or boat but no roads connect the city, which is home to about  2 million people, to the rest of Brazil. (In that regard, it’s a little like Juneau, Alaska, but hotter.) A half dozen or so reporters are taking this trip; this afternoon we (more…)

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Posted in Climate Change, Energy, Environment, Sustainability | 4 Comments »

Social funds and BP: How embarrassing!

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

bp_logo_color.180105622If you are a shareholder in a so-called socially responsible or sustainable mutual fund, you may also be an owner of  BP, the company responsible for the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico.

When BP’s oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico exploded on April 20, the company was a major holding of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index–which calls itself an index of “the leading sustainability-driven companies worldwide.”

BP was also held by Pax World Funds (“sustainable investing is a better smarter, way to invest”), by the MMA International Fund, which is part of a fund group that is “guided by Christian values,” and by the Legg Mason Social Awareness Fund, which, as of March 31, had BP as its single biggest holding.

These are not anomalies. When Cary Krosinsky, an editor of a book called Sustainable Investing: The Art of Long Term Performance, tallied up the holdings of about 350 socially responsible investment (SRI) funds from around the world, he found that at the end of 2008, BP was the second biggest holding, in terms of how much money the funds had collectively invested. The five biggest holdings were Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Nokia, Vodafone and HSBC Holdings.

Does this look "sustainable" to you?

Does this look "sustainable" to you?

What’s more, BP and Shell aren’t the only oil companies held by the social funds. The biggest holding of a mutual fund called the Sentinel Sustainable Core Opportunities Fund–which says it “screens for fundamentally strong, well-managed companies with sustainable business models and a commitment to corporate responsibility”– was, as of March 31, believe it or not….Transocean, the world’s largest offshore drilling contractor, which operated the Deepwater Horizon rig for BP.

While no mutual fund manager could have foreseen the oil rig explosion, you’ve got to wonder how a fund with the word sustainable in its name could have as its biggest holding an offshore oil drilling company. I emailed Sentinel to try to probe their reasoning a bit. You won’t be surprised to hear that they declined to be interviewed.

So what does the BP-SRI connection tell you? At the very minimum, it suggest that any investor in a mutual fund that calls itself socially responsible, sustainable, green, blue or any other color would do well to dig deep beneath the magazine ads and website fluff to understand what the fund is really all about. (Disclosure: I’m a small investor in Calvert and Domini Funds, and a believer in the SRI idea.) Some SRI funds still focus on feel-good, negative screens that shield investors from weapons, tobacco and alcohol, and don’t get much more analytical than that. (See Socially Responsible Investing’s Silly Screens) (more…)

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Posted in Business Ethics, Energy, Environment, Investing, SRI, Socially Responsible Investing, Sustainability | 5 Comments »

Solar’s long and winding road

Thursday, July 8th, 2010
fredmorse_headshot

Fred Morse

In 1969, the Nixon White House asked a young assistant professor of engineering at the University of Maryland whether solar energy made sense for America. Absolutely, he replied.

Four decades later, Fred Morse is still trying to persuade the government to put its muscle behind solar. Last week, he scored a big victory.

In his weekly radio address on July 3, President Obama announced that the Department of Energy had awarded a $1.45 billion loan guarantee to Abengoa Solar — a Spanish company where Morse is senior advisor for U.S. operations — to build one of the largest solar power plants in the world near Gila Bend, Arizona. Obama said:

Once completed, this plant will be the first large-scale solar plant in the U.S. to actually store the energy it generates for later use – even at night.  And it will generate enough clean, renewable energy to power 70,000 homes.

What he didn’t say is that the plant, called Solana, has been in the works since 2007, when Abengoa bought an old alfalfa farm on which to site the plant. If all goes well, it will begin to make electricity in 2013. That’s right–six years, at least, to build a power plant with mostly proven technology. (more…)

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Posted in Climate Change, Economics, Energy, Environment, Sustainability | 2 Comments »

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