Worldchanging: Bright Green

Breaking News: Husk Power Systems Wins $250K Venture Competition

Robert Katz — 2009-07-03T14:16:32-08:00

Husk Power Systems, a company we profiled here on NextBillion back in October, was announced today as the winner of the Global Business Plan competition sponsored by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Cisco Systems. As the winning entrant, Husk Power walks away with $250,000 in seed funding, which they will use to build and operate more power plants in rural areas of Bihar, India's poorest state.

Congratulations to Chip Ransler, Manoj Sinha and the rest of the Husk Power Systems team on this big win. They have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Fast Company and FOX Business. More PR will inevitably follow.

I am personally extremely excited about this development, not only because I know and like Chip and Manoj. Part of my excitement stems from the fact that Husk Power is working in some of the poorest, worst-served parts of India - Bihar - that are hardest-hit by the poverty penalty. Many BoP-focused companies work in relatively better-off urban areas or peri-urban villages, where average incomes are higher and consequently, so is ability to pay.

But the single biggest factor that has me so excited about this is that the Global Business Plan venture competition was not limited to socially-focused businesses. Rather, Draper Richards and Cisco collected thousands of entries from companies around the world, most of them focused on a single bottom line. That the winner is a legitimate triple bottom line company - generating financial, social AND environmental benefits - shows how much the social sector is mainstreaming in the eyes of "non-social" investors.

Much remains to be seen - Husk Power remains a start up, and will for the foreseeable future - but, at least for today, there is reason to celebrate in Bihar.

This article originally appeared on NextBillion.net.

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(Posted by Robert Katz in Transforming Business at 2:16 PM)

Alex Steffen on The Visionary Activist Show

WorldChanging Team — 2009-07-03T13:37:21-08:00

Unique visionary activist and astrologer Caroline Casey recently interviewed Alex Steffen on The Visionary Activist radio show, a live weekly radio program broadcast by KPFA in Berkeley, California. Also featured is Carolyn Raffensperger of the Science and Environmental Health Network.

The show originally aired July 2, and will be available in the audio archive until Thursday, July 16. Visit the site to download or play.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in About Worldchanging at 1:37 PM)

Carbon Tax Shift Gaining Favor Across Canada?

WorldChanging Team — 2009-07-03T12:56:05-08:00

Posted by Anna Fahey

As British Columbia acknowledges the one year anniversary of the landmark carbon tax shift policy, the revenue-neutral tax recently bumped prices at the pump from 2.4 cents to 3.6 cents a litre. But the price change at the pump hasn't drastically altered public opinion one way or another. In fact, as reported in Sightline Daily today, carbon tax shifting appears to be gaining favor across Canada.

A quick refresher on carbon tax shifts: The plan literally shifts taxes, it doesn't add taxes. All revenue generated by the carbon tax in BC are returned to individuals and businesses through reductions in other taxes. But that's not always abundantly evident to consumers when they're standing at the filling station and opening their wallets. That's probably why public support has been moderate at the very least.

Here are highlights from recent Canadian polling by Environics on carbon tax shifting:

Almost half of B.C. residents support the tax (last July, 40 percent expressed support and 56 percent opposed it). Current support for the tax is close to, but not quite fully back to the level achieved in February 2008 soon after the measure was first announced by the BC government (but not yet implemented).
When asked how they would feel about the introduction of a B.C.-style carbon tax in their own province, opinions remain divided in every province.
Nonetheless, support has increased since last July in every province, most noticeably in Alberta (up 17 points) and Saskatchewan (up 13 points).
Across the country, support approaches 50 per cent from the Atlantic provinces to Manitoba, and remains somewhat lower in Saskatchewan (41percent) and Alberta (44 percent).

It should be noted that revenue-neutrality is not a concept that's readily accepted by the public--even in BC where it's already happening. One 2008 poll conducted before the provincial elections found that 71 percent of respondents and 64 percent of low income respondents disagreed with BC's Climate Action Dividend--likely due in large part to the fact that three quarters of respondents did not believe that the tax was really revenue neutral. Tax shift advocates will need to deal with this common misperception before the public embraces this smart energy policy.

The survey was conducted by Environics, by telephone from May 21 to 26 with a representative sample of 2,003 Canadians, including 250 in British Columbia.

This article originally appeared on Sightline.org.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Politics at 12:56 PM)

Pioneer City 2030: What the Energy System of the Future Looks Like

Patrick Mazza — 2009-07-03T08:00:43-08:00

The energy system of the future is being founded now.

New energy systems and technologies are growing on an accelerating curve:
• Buildings that are green, super-efficient and fully managed by digital technologies have become economically competitive.
• Hybrid vehicles partly propelled by electricity have emerged in the market, with plug-in vehicles coming over the next several years.
• Smart electric grids that employ digital technology to manage power supply and demand are spreading through long distance transmission and local power distribution.
• Renewable energy in the form of wind is increasingly cost competitive, and solar is projected to reach grid parity in many parts of the U.S. and world in the next decade.
• Energy efficiency and demand management are now part of the business model for power and building sectors.
• Energy storage technology has advanced to the point where it is poised for stationary applications in the grid and buildings.

These trends are converging to create a new energy system that meshes buildings, vehicles and grids in unprecedented ways that make possible the transition from fossil fuels to emerging energy resources – renewables, demand management and energy storage. This new energy system is the absolute requisite for the reductions in fossil fuel use needed to stabilize the climate and ensure global security.

New energy technologies and systems are synergistic. To realize their promise they must grow in unison. Smart grids and energy storage are needed to accommodate mass amounts of renewable energy, with its varying generation. A grid that charges large numbers of plug-in vehicle will also require a new level of smart management. Buildings must become more efficient to use renewable energy most wisely, as well as to make space in the grid to accommodate plug-in vehicles. Smart grids and smart buildings will work together to optimize power demand and efficiency.

The stimulus passed by Congress in early 2009 includes $77 billion directed to new energy areas, including major new funding for energy efficiency, green buildings, smart grids, plug-in vehicles and renewable installations. Though the money is coming through different pools, if invested wisely with a vision for the emergence of the new energy system, it can turbocharge its growth. By putting together long-term strategies for pioneering the new energy system, communities can coherently assemble stimulus funds from the different pools and offer more compelling funding proposals.

The following is offered to inspire such vision and strategies. It tells the story of Pioneer City 2030, a major city that decided two decades earlier to become carbon neutral through a community initiative to deploy new energy technologies and systems. The scenario depicts how the city’s energy picture appears in 2030, based on its leadership actions.

PIONEER CITY 2009-10: A COMMUNITY NEW ENERGY INITIATIVE

An American community has gained a vision. It will transform itself into a new energy community, a place where pieces of the energy puzzle are assembled in one place to demonstrate how a coordinated deployment of key energy innovations adds value to each and creates a whole greater than the sum of the parts.

The community, Pioneer City, has come together in a civic engagement involving city elected and agency officials, public utility representatives, civic groups and business leaders from key sectors including building, energy and vehicles. The civic process was spurred by a common sense that Pioneer City is facing both intensifying challenges and burgeoning opportunities in the energy and economic arena:

The community, as all others, has been whipsawed by price volatility over recent years in all fossil fuels – oil, natural gas and coal – and power rates are on the way up. There is a general desire to move to renewable alternatives that stabilize energy costs and place a firmer footing under the local economy.

The community is feeling the winds of the global economic downturn. After a boom time its building sector is suffering high unemployment rates. The area’s information technology and building materials industries are also suffering layoffs.

The community has recognized that emerging climate change threatens the city economy and environment in a number of ways, including water shortages during the summer and more severe storms during the winter accompanied by increased run-off and flooding.

The community draws part of its power from a coal-fired power plant and recognizes that a community commitment to reduce global warming emissions will require replacing the power from other sources.

Pioneer City civic leadership responds to these challenges by coming together to identify the greatest opportunities to transform the ways energy is generated, delivered and used in the community. In their work they keep their focus firmly fixed on energy transformation as a job creation opportunity – a way to provide new markets for existing firms while generating new companies and business models. Not only will the community revolutionize its own energy networks – It will use the process to provide experience for local companies that they can employ as launching pads to sell new energy goods and services in national and global markets.

The Pioneer City civic process develops two simple hallmarks of a new energy community:
1. Build everything on the firm foundation of making the most productive use of energy.
2. Replace fossil fuels with renewable energy to the greatest extent possible.

Based on those two hallmarks, civic leaders create strategies based on leading examples emerging around the U.S. and world. The strategies are designed to support and build on each other, meshing to an overall new energy community strategy.

BUILDINGS 2030

Pioneer City in 2009-10 created a comprehensive effort aimed at making the entire community’s building sector carbon neutral by 2030. It included advanced building codes to ratchet up efficiency to levels around 70 percent greater than new buildings in the mid-2000s, and development of a new institutional infrastructure for marketing and financing building efficiency retrofits. This included a “patient” capital pool with low interest rates, making it feasible to finance efficiency improvements with up to a 20-year payback. The marketing effort took efficiency door to door in homes and businesses, offering a full package from efficiency audits to finance and installation.

So for the past 20 years, Pioneer City has been systematically retrofitting old buildings and constructing new buildings that are increasingly efficient. A combination of natural design that makes best use of on-site resources including sunlight and rainfall, and smart building systems that manage energy and water use for greatest efficiency, has given Pioneer City a fleet of living buildings that meet top sustainability standards.

The smart buildings of 2030 partner with smart power grids to optimize operations for greatest efficiency. Intelligent building systems communicate with the grid to manage demand in response to grid needs. This has significantly reduced peak demands, thus eliminating the need for costly power infrastructure used only limited hours of the year. Smart building controls also continually adjust and tune building systems based on real-time operating information. With far more detailed power use data available than in the past, energy management has become a very valuable resource.

Many buildings now generate their own energy. Solar photovoltaic has become the cheapest source of new energy, and ground geoheat pumps increasingly supply hot water and building heating using the steady heat of the Earth a few feet below the surface. Small, building-mounted wind turbines are also now practical in many locations. Energy storage has also become ubiquitous, in the form of battery banks as well as hot water in heaters and ice in basement storage banks. Storage absorbs energy from both local and distant renewables, improving the usability and economics for their variable generation.

POWER NETWORKS 2030

In many cases, it has been found more economically practical to generate renewable energy on a district scale, for example in neighborhoods heavy with high rise buildings. Pioneer City has now created a number of local microgrids that share power across neighborhoods. They are powered by large solar photovoltaic installations on large commercial and industrial roofs, several utility-scale wind turbine clusters on the edge of the city, and combined heat and power plants fueled with biogas and biomass from urban waste streams. Those plants supply not only electricity, but hot water and building temperature conditioning through pipe networks that serve the central business district and other densely occupied areas. District heating and cooling substantially increases efficiency over each building having its own power plant.

Pioneer City also draws substantial renewable power from distant, central installations including wind farms, solar photovoltaic and thermal plants, and wave and tidal installations. These are delivered to the city on a smart transmission grid that has been upgraded to handle the complex power flows from varying and sometimes unpredictable renewable sources. Substantial automation and intelligence in the grid enables it to manage what is becoming an increasingly renewables-driven grid.

The smart grid, which in 2010 mostly existed at the long-distance transmission level, and even there in a piecemeal manner, is now ubiquitous in local distribution grids down to the power user level. Digital technologies now infused throughout the grid provide two-way communications capabilities. This translates into unprecedented abilities to measure and manage power flow.

With two-way communications and control, the smart grid can handle large amounts of varying renewable energies. Smart buildings, appliances and equipment are now programmed to adjust demand up and down in response to grid signals. So varying output from wind and solar farms can be automatically matched to power loads. A Pioneer City food processing plant uses surplus wind power at night to freeze its products, while refrigerators and hot water heaters throughout the city cycle down or up in response to renewable energy availability.

Digital automation also integrates the many building- and district-sited renewable installations in Pioneer City. Interconnection is now a standard procedure, reducing costs and complications. The power grid of 2030 is virtually plug-and-play.

MOBILITY 2030

Over the past 20 years Pioneer City has been at the forefront in the reinvention of personal mobility. Today, vehicles are different, as well as the ways people use and access them.

Cars and trucks today are highly efficient. Many cars run on pure electricity. Almost all vehicles that still employ internal combustion are hybridized and have plug-in features. The bulk of ground transportation is propelled by electricity, and Pioneer City is rich in charging stations and battery-exchange locations. The remainder is driven by advanced biofuels from waste steams and energy crops that do not compete with food.

Electrified vehicles charge in coordination with the grid. Smart systems in vehicles communicate with the grid to direct charging to off peak generation and low carbon energy resources. This reduces grid stress and improves the climate performance of vehicle fleets. By 2030, the use of plug-in vehicle batteries as energy storage for buildings and the grid has also become practical.

Today personal vehicles are only part of a larger context of clean mobility, and of declining importance. Fewer and fewer people actually own cars, and more pay a mobility services company instead that provides a range of options. People who want a personal vehicle through their service can have one, though typically it is a smaller urban car. Access to larger vehicles such as vans and trucks, even fun vehicles like sports cars and SUVs, is part of the service.

Mobility service firms work in conjunction with public transportation, so include transit passes as well as help in planning transit use. Pioneer City has worked hard to upgrade transit, and implemented smart growth strategies to create more compact and walkable communities rich in stores, services and amenities. With less need for driving, many customers are content to use car share services.

PIONEER CITY 2030: A PROSPEROUS CARBON NEUTRAL COMMUNITY

By 2030 Pioneer City has achieved a goal it set in 2010 for carbon neutrality in its energy sector. It has replaced petroleum in transportation, with cars and trucks that now run on renewable electricity and fuels. It has eliminated electricity generated by fossil fuels including coal and natural gas. By replacing fossil fuels with local and regional renewable resources, it has substantially improved circulation of dollars in the local economy. Of course, the brown cloud that once hung over the city on smoggy days is gone and public health statistics reflect this.

Because Pioneer City was an early adopter, it has also generated new businesses and jobs in new energy technologies. It is home to leading edge firms in building design and energy efficiency services delivery, as well as microgrid development and electric vehicle charging management.

By 2030 communities all over the nation and the world are looking more and more like Pioneer City, building new energy systems that mesh super-efficient buildings, plug-in vehicles and smart grids with new energy resources including renewables, demand management and storage. They are moving toward the carbon neutrality that Pioneer City has already achieved.

Successful models created by Pioneer City and leading communities like it have shown the way. They have demonstrated the new energy system in action, proven its benefits, and in doing so have made a vital contribution to energy security, economic prosperity and climate stability. It started with a vision, and manifested with concerted civic action that has made Pioneer City one of the energy leaders of the 21st century.

Patrick Mazza is Research Director at Climate Solutions in Seattle, Wa. You can read more of his blogging at New Energy Nexus.

Image credits (all Creative Commons licensed):

Front Page image: xotoko

Inside photos (from top): dalelane, Photo2217, Rob Harrison, Jespis, Alan Trotter, M.V. Jantzen, Thomas Ormston.

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(Posted by Patrick Mazza in Features at 8:00 AM)

Insider Voices: Human Dimensions of Low Carbon Technology

Alex Steffen — 2009-07-03T07:16:45-08:00

This is a really smart project discussing how cutting-edge climate-friendly business ventures have begun and succeeded or failed. Though it's not casual reading, it'll be fascinating to those wrestling with these questions, because it focuses on the element most often left out of innovative plans: people. "When people talk about reducing carbon emissions," the report's authors say, "they usually talk about technologies or economics. But the five year Lowcarbonworks research project reveals that’s not enough. Unless we understand the wider systemic context of low carbon initiatives and the human relationships required to drive innovation forward, we will not achieve a low carbon future."

To illustrate how the human factor is critical to success, they explore a range of examples -- including an anaerobic digester company, a compressed air utility; an integrated heating and cooling system; a low-carbon factory producing lingerie for Marks and Spencer; a district energy plan using a geothermal combined heat and power system -- showing where each met resistance, how each found allies and adoption, where each ran afoul of the current system, and how each dealt with the problems of entrenched interests, silo-ed knowlege and hostile experts:

"One of the features of the realms of technology, climate change, carbon reduction, innovation and so on, is that they are dominated by a particular configuration of expert knowledge, which is highly professionalised. Members of these communities have spent their whole professional lives acquiring, refining and developing their knowledge, usually with great dedication. This militates against translation from one community to another, and against conversation between ‘experts’ and ‘non-experts’. It is deeply disempowering to ‘non experts’ who wish to engage in debate and/or action. It reduces those who are not experts to the relatively passive roles of ‘consumers’ and ‘users’. "

You won't be taking this to the beach, but if you're looking for some real case studies in the difficulties of bright green business and how they can be overcome, this report's for you.

Click here to visit the site where you can download a free copy.

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(Posted by Alex Steffen in Features at 7:16 AM)

Self-Portrait Machine

Regine Debatty — 2009-07-02T16:27:07-08:00

More nuggets from the RCA show. This time from Design Products' edgy and inspiring Platform 13, headed by the very talented Onkar Kular and Sebastien Noel.

Images courtesy Jen Hui Liao

Jen Hui Liao's Self-Portrait Machine is a device that takes a picture of the sitter and draws it but with the model's help. The wrists of the individual are tied to the machine and it is his or her hands that are guided to draw the lines that will eventually form the portrait.

The project started with the observation that nearly everything that surrounds us has been created by machines. Our personal identities are represented by the products of the man-machine relationship. The Self-Portrait Machine encapsulates this man-machine relationship. By co-operating with the machine, a self-portrait is generated. It is self-drawn but from an external viewpoint through controlled movement and limited possibility. Our choice of how we are represented is limited to what the machine will allow.

Images courtesy Jen Hui Liao

The project aims to explore the cooperation process of human & machine. The designer explains: I found some the relationship between human and machine are amazing and could be horrible (like this one that shows how we human invent machines then put human inside to it to manufacture goods), The final object - A machine is a miniature of what I understand through the process of research, and the aim of the machine is to let people have a chance to feel the condensed process of how we generate our self identity from external point of view as from the society, which is a big machine we all in.

P.S. the website of Self-Portrait Machine will be on line soon, it will show more about the background research and the building process of it. I'll update this post as soon as the website is up.

Videos of the machine in action.

Exhibition view. The designer had aligned portraits made by the machines along with portraits made by painters

The Royal College of Art Show is open every day from 11amd to 8pm until July 5, 2009.

This piece originally appeared in We Make Money Not Art.

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(Posted by Regine Debatty in Arts at 4:27 PM)

British Gas To Create 2,600 Green Jobs

WorldChanging Team — 2009-07-02T15:51:08-08:00

By Terry Macalister

Recruits will be needed to help introduce 'smart meters' to help people see exactly how much energy they are using in their homes.

British Gas today promised to create 2,600 green jobs over the next three years by rolling out "smart meters" and installing wind turbines on peoples' homes.

The move should help ministers meet targets of cutting carbon emissions through lower use of power, especially that generated by gas or other fossil fuels.

About 1,700 of the recruits will be new to the industry, while 900 are expected to be brought in from rival metering organisations in time for a government-backed roll-out programme due to start in 2012. Earlier this year the company unveiled plans to take on an additional 1,500 staff to work in the clean technology sector.

"Today's announcement of 2,600 new jobs by 2012 shows we are creating skilled green jobs in Britain and training the experts who will help customers become more energy efficient in the future," said Phil Bentley, managing director of British Gas.

The new workers, to be trained at the company's growing network of energy academies, will install smart meters and help homeowners understand how the devices could reduce energy use, save money and end the practice of estimated monthly bills. Anecdotal evidence suggests savings of up to 25% can be made.

In May energy secretary Ed Miliband launched a consultation process on smart meters that is planned to run to September. The government would like energy suppliers to be responsible for meters with a new third-party body handling the data, but the companies want to do it all themselves.

Britain plans to replace all existing electricity and gas meters – often clunky objects hidden away in cupboards – with easily viewed devices that show consumers exactly how much energy they are using, and even see the energy demands of individual appliances.

It is hoped that people will change their behaviour to save money. The meters will also help homeowners sell electricity from green technologies such as solar panels or rooftop wind turbines back to the grid, while improving energy demand forecasts and network management.

Smart meters are seen as a first step toward creating "smart grids" where consumers can adjust electricity use to benefit from cheaper energy at times of low demand, including charging electric cars, and reduce consumption at peak times.

The British government estimates that smart meters could deliver net benefits of between £2.5bn and £3.6bn over the next 20 years.

In April, the government set a 2020 target to cut Britain's greenhouse gas emissions by 34% compared with 1990 levels but the necessary renewable energy growth and efficiency improvements have so far been small.

• This article was amended on 2 July 2009. The original projected net benefits from smart meters of between £2.5m and £3.6m. This has been corrected.

This piece originally appeared in The Guardian.

Photo credit: Flickr/Dominics Pics, Creative Commons License.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Bright Green Economy at 3:51 PM)

250,000 Jobs And £70bn Revenue - The Forecast For A Thriving UK Renewables Sector

WorldChanging Team — 2009-07-02T15:34:20-08:00

By Alok Jha

Study from the Carbon Trust warns that potential of renewables sector will only be realised if government invests in research and removes regulatory barriers.

The UK could benefit from 250,000 jobs and up to £70bn in revenue from offshore wind and wave technologies by 2050, according to a study by the Carbon Trust. This potential will only be realised, however, if the government gives clear signals to industry, so that investors know where to put their money, rather than leaving new technologies to face the market alone.

The Carbon Trust, a government-backed agency that studies ways to promote low-carbon technologies, carried out economic analyses in six areas of low-carbon industry including offshore wind, wave, solid-state lighting and micro combined heat and power.

The studies, published today, looked at the current status and costs of the technology, how these would develop and what research and development costs there might be in the coming decades.

The studies for offshore wind and wave power showed these technologies could provide at least 15% of the total carbon savings required to meet the UK's 2050 CO₂ reduction targets. "The UK's greenhouse gas targets mean that by 2050 We must reduce our emissions to just one-10th of today's levels, per unit of output," said John Beddington, the government's chief scientific adviser.

"This is a formidable challenge, requiring step changes in the rate at which we improve our energy efficiency and in low-carbon innovation.The Carbon Trust's proposals recognise the need for us to be smarter in focusing our investments, including to help businesses seize the economic opportunities of the transition."

According to the new analysis, published just a few weeks ahead of the forthcoming government white paper on energy, the UK could attract 45% of the global offshore wind market by 2020, delivering £65bn of net economic value and 225,000 total jobs by 2050.

This would only happen with an investment of up to £600m into research, the removal of regulatory barriers and incentives to increase the deployment of the turbines. In the UK this means installing around 29GW of wind by 2020 and upwards of 40GW by 2050. A large part of the economic benefit would come from exporting technology developed here.

For wave, the outlook is more modest. Around a quarter of the world's wave technologies are being developed in the UK and the Carbon Trust said Britain should be the "natural owner" of the global market in this area. It could generate revenues worth £2bn per year by 2050 and up to 16,000 direct jobs.

"These technologies are not green 'nice to haves' but are critical to the economic recovery of the UK," said Tom Delay, the chief executive of the Carbon Trust. "To reap the significant rewards from their successful development we must prioritise and comprehensively back the technologies that offer the best chance of securing long-term carbon savings, jobs and revenue for Britain. Rather than following in the footsteps of others, this new analysis shows it is an economic no-brainer to be leading from the front."

In addition to the direct jobs in these in industries, there would be further benefits to the economy. "The UK's also very good at the secondary service industries - things like the financing of wind farms, the legal documents, environmental assessments," said Paul Arwas, a consultant who wrote the new Carbon Trust report. "Those jobs would be in addition - for offshore wind, it would be another 70,000 by 2050."

None of this will happen, though, without government support. Arwas said that when encouraging new industries, authorities tended to swing between two poles - either direct state funding or allowing markets to decide. "Either the governments didn't intervene at all or, if they did they did it by market mechanisms which are totally undifferentiated by technology. There you end up with a situation where, to take a footballing analogy, you've got the under 21s playing the under 12s."

Instead the Carbon Trust has proposed a new, semi-interventionist, model where the government chooses a family of technologies to invest in, for example wave power, and tells developers there will be subsidies or long-term help available to develop the sector as a whole but without backing individual technologies.

John Sauven, Greenpeace's executive director, welcomed the Carbon Trust's proposed approach. "Every country now needs a decarbonisation plan to help solve three of our greatest challenges - climate stability, energy security and economic prosperity. The UK has an enormous untapped supply of clean, green renewable energy and a world class engineering industry well placed to develop it."

Martin Rees, the president of the Royal Society, said the UK had little choice but to develop these new technologies, given the dwindling supplies of fossil fuels: "In the past we have let opportunities to capitalise on our scientific leadership slip through our fingers. The US and others are investing heavily in low carbon technologies; we must not fall behind and waste the scientific expertise that we have in the UK."

This piece originally appeared in The Guardian.

Photo credit: Flickr/phault, Creative Commons License.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Bright Green Economy at 3:34 PM)

Hydrogen City Car Hits 300mpg and 30g/km CO2

Green Futures — 2009-07-02T14:10:22-08:00

by April Streeter

Open source’, locally manufactured fuel cell car designed for sharing.

With politicians and carmakers waxing lyrical about electric vehicles, the squat hydrogen fuel cell car with a top speed of 50mph introduced by start-up Riversimple in June is definitely bucking prevailing trends.

But what the Urban lacks in pzazz, it makes up in green credentials. Thanks to its super-light carbon composite body (just 350kg), fuel efficiency reaches an impressive 300mpg. It gives off no exhaust pipe emissions, and, says Riversimple, it’s also a ‘lower carbon’ car than the all-electric G-Wiz. The carbon emissions resulting from generating the electricity used to produce its hydrogen fuel work out, per kilometre, as half as much as those emitted in producing the power for the G-Wiz (30g/km as opposed to over 60g/km).

Riversimple’s lead engineer, former racing car driver Hugo Spowers, describes it as a first attempt at a “sustainable car” in the widest sense. That’s why Urban’s whole design and manufacturing process looks very different to your average car.

Firstly, it’s ‘open source’, which means design blueprints will be freely available for others to improve on. Secondly, the Urban won’t be sold outright, but leased to car sharing companies, local councils and individuals. ‘Sharing’ features, such as card-key door locks, are central to the design. And Spowers hopes to add a swappable dashboard so that different drivers can customise the same car with their own settings and driving stats. He reckons each car will have a 16-year life span, four times the average ‘leasing expectancy’.

Manufacturing will also be local and fairly small-scale. If Spowers is successful in finding the next $32 million in investment, he hopes to establish a site producing around 5,000 cars a year – possibly in Oxford.

Why hydrogen, you might ask. The fuel is not yet produced on a large scale without electricity from fossil fuels, nor is there existing infrastructure. “Hydrogen, in my opinion, is a massively better option [than electric batteries] for a city car,” responds Spowers. He explains that the Urban is not a fuel cell car in the same way as Honda’s Clarity FCX, which replaces a powerful internal combustion engine with a large (and expensive) fuel cell. Instead, it uses a small, 6kW fuel cell – perfectly adequate for the modest flow of power to the four wheelbased electric motors – and a bank of ultracapacitors, charged by a combination of the fuel cell and regenerative braking, to deliver brief bursts of high power for acceleration.

Spowers said Urban’s efficiency and range (200 miles compared with G-Wiz’s 75) mean drivers need refuel only once a week – so one hydrogen station could service scores of cars.

But will drivers be interested in sharing cars? Spowers thinks the idea of individually owned vehicles may be on its way out, especially if fun-to-drive cars like Urban can provide better city mobility. “We’re definitely taking the long view on this one,” he says.

This piece originally appeared in Green Futures. Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future, one of the leading magazines on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. Its aim is to demonstrate that a sustainable future is both practical and desirable – and can be profitable, too.

Photo credit: Flickr/freeparking, Creative Commons License.

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(Posted by Green Futures in Transportation at 2:10 PM)

Obama Drives Up Fuel Efficiency on Cars

Green Futures — 2009-07-02T14:01:07-08:00

by Polly Ghazi

Robust new mileage standards for US auto industry

Flanked by two unlikely allies – California’s Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and General Motors CEO Fritz Henderson – President Obama has announced groundbreaking vehicle standards that will further cement the greening of the US car industry.

By regulating both miles per gallon and exhaust pollution, the new uniform federal standard links curbs on greenhouse gas emissions with fuel economy standards for the first time in US history.

Covering vehicle model years 2012 to 2016, the legislation will require car makers to achieve an average fuel economy for their fleets of 35.5mpg in 2016 (with 39mpg specified for cars and 30mpg for light trucks). It will replace the current CAFE – Corporate Average Fuel Economy – standard of 27.5mpg for cars and 24mpg for light trucks. According to White House calculations, the four-year programme should result in a saving of about 1.8 billion barrels in oil consumption, and a total reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of approximately 900 million tonnes – the equivalent to taking 3.7 million cars off the road.

The new single standard will replace existing federal and state laws governing both fuel standards and greenhouse gas emissions. Initiating a national vehicle emissions standard also brings to a close the increasingly bitter battle between California and the US vehicle industry over the state’s efforts to impose its own legally binding greenhouse-gas emissions standard. Seventeen other states had said they would follow California’s lead if the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted its request for a waiver enabling the state government to act unilaterally. While the EPA has not yet ruled on the waiver request, Obama’s national approach supersedes their decision.

The new standard may be modest in comparison with Europe, but it represents a huge step forward in the US, where motor manufacturers and their lobbyists have successfully squashed previous efforts at improving mileage requirements.

At the White House announcement, industry leaders were enthusiastic. “It launches a new beginning,” said David McCurdy, President of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. “The President has succeeded in bringing three regulatory bodies, 15 states, a dozen automakers and many environmental groups to the table.”

This piece originally appeared in Green Futures. Green Futures is published by Forum for the Future, one of the leading magazines on environmental solutions and sustainable futures. Its aim is to demonstrate that a sustainable future is both practical and desirable – and can be profitable, too.

Photo credit: Flickr/Burning Image, Creative Commons License.

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(Posted by Green Futures in Transportation at 2:01 PM)

Easing Off the Gas

WorldChanging Team — 2009-07-02T13:49:17-08:00

by Roger Valdez

Northwesterners are using less gasoline.

For our latest research report, we looked at gasoline consumption data in the Northwest for 2008 and found some significant drops. In fact, total gasoline consumption saw the biggest drop since 1980. It would be easy to attribute this to high gas prices and the economic downturn we experienced last year, but the fact is that this drop actually marks an acceleration of a trend that's been going on in the Northwest for nearly a decade.

That's right. Per capita gasoline consumption has dropped in 8 of the last 9 years. Northwesterners are leading the way as the nation takes steps to get off the volatile fossil fuel roller coaster. So, while price and economic factors play a role, we can also track a decade of smart trends that reduce consumption: several decades of smart growth policies, increased transit use, and improved fuel efficiency are just a few.

And even now that gas prices are a bit lower, early 2009 data indicates that our healthier new habits are sticking. In early 2009, Vehicle Miles Traveled have dropped as well adding some depth to our picture of how folks in the Northwest are taking steps to get off the volatile fossil fuel roller coaster.

What does it mean for local decision-makers? For one, investments in freeway capacity no longer make as much sense as investments in transit, walkable communities, and efficiency.

The full report is available here. Here are some of the key findings:

We’re using less gas. Gasoline consumption is falling in the Northwest states of Idaho, Oregon and Washington. In 2008, per-person consumption dropped to the lowest level since 1965, and total gasoline consumption had its biggest drop since 1980.

Our travel habits are changing. While gasoline prices have been volatile, declines in gasoline consumption per capita have continued through the fluctuations of the last decade. Last year’s dramatic price swings resulted in record-high transit ridership—and for some northwesterners, these changes are sticking

Unemployment is up. Recession has hit the Northwest hard, and many are out of jobs. Last year’s combination of high fuel prices and tight family budgets trimmed fuel consumption dramatically.

Smart policies lead to long term progress. Policy changes—like better transportation alternatives and more-compact urban growth—can sustain momentum toward lower gas consumption.

Smart investments give us more choices. Declining gas consumption and driving have implications for transportation spending. They suggest prioritizing road maintenance and transit investments over highway building.

This piece originally appeared in Sightline Institute's blog, The Daily Score.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Climate Change at 1:49 PM)

Worldchanging Interview: Shawn Frayne

Adele Peters — 2009-07-02T08:50:03-08:00

Shawn Frayne, president of Honolulu- and Hong Kong-based Humdinger Wind Energy, is a prolific inventor and innovator whose work has been inspired by the need for resourceful problem-solving in the world's most vulnerable regions.

While working in Haiti, Frayne noted that providing wind power on a global scale would require hardware that's simpler and much cheaper than what we've got. In response, he teamed with aeronautical engineer Jordan McRae and mechanical engineer Dr. Kurt Kornbluth to develop the Windbelt (pictured below), a radically different power generator that uses a fluttering membrane, magnets and a metal coil to turn wind into power (watch a video here). With no turbine, the Windbelt can produce energy at a cost-per-watt that's significantly lower than conventional devices. In 2007, Frayne received a Breakthrough Award from Popular Mechanics for the device. He and his collaborators have since improved the Windbelt to a point where they can produce wind power for $1 per watt.

Frayne's philosophy of simple ingenuity and accessible solutions is reflected in other projects he's involved in as well: among them, for example, is a solar water purification bag that can be easily locally manufactured and cheaply distributed. Frayne believes that we need more than just incremental innovation in water and energy technology, and thinks that the constraints of the developing world can provide the necessary inspiration to make significant technological leaps that can benefit the Global South and Global North simultaneously. His grand plan: to establish a global network of invention incubators to foster just that change.

I spoke with Frayne after watching his presentation at Sustainable Brands 2009.

Adele Peters: You often use the phrase “confluent technology.” Can you explain what you mean by that?

Shawn Frayne: There’s a confluence of the problems and talents in developing countries with the problems and talents in wealthy countries. Problems — particularly in the fields of energy and water — that are being faced now by developing countries are soon to be faced by the entire world. Thirty years ago, when technology created a new low-cost solar panel for Africa, or a low-cost wind tower to be used in Haiti, that might have been isolated to those places. Now those types of technologies can transcend the boundaries between developing countries and wealthy nations, and, at least the theory goes, go on to create new industries in wealthy countries as well.

AP: What’s the difference between now and 30 years ago?

SF: The problems are more acute now. I suppose what allows this to be possible now, what allows designers and inventors around the world to collaborate on creating new products is the high speed of FedEx, Skype, online whiteboard tools, all those things that I think basically over the last five years allowed this idea of the global invention factory to become a reality.

AP: I know you have a new project under development that arranges the Windbelts into a panel-form to generate electricity from the wind. Can you describe how that works?

SF: This new development is called a 'Windcell Panel,' and its functionally a lot like a solar panel that catches the wind instead of the sun. The Panels consist of 20 individual Windbelts in a single frame, adding up to a rating of 100W of power per panel, with an off-the-line cost of around US$100. This translates to uninstalled electricity of around 4 cents per kWh with 6 m/s average winds -- four or five times cheaper than solar PV. We're engineering these systems to be simple, very low cost, modular, and able to catch low speed winds.

The Humdinger team believes this new version of the Windbelt technology will allow cities to finally capture urban air flows over buildings and under bridges on a large scale of 10 kilowatts on up to 100 megawatts of grid-tied per installation (say, under the 30 km bridge recently installed in Shanghai, as shown in the illustration). We're also going after coastal installations and rural power -- basically, anywhere other energy technologies can't go cost-effectively. Or quickly -- we believe we will ramp up to several hundred installations relatively fast (relative to wind turbine farms or solar farms), since the Panels will be as easy to transport and install as a fence.

AP: Why do you think the big clean tech of the future will be born in the developing world?

SF: An engineer sitting in Silicon Valley may look at the solar panels easily available in his or her vicinity and think, “I can redesign these panels to get an additional 1% efficiency.” That’s good, and that incremental innovation is necessary, but in different environments, where there’s a different set of constraints (such as in developing countries) designers and inventors can sometimes be pushed to create more than incremental changes. Silicon-based solar is decreasing in cost, partially due to supply and demand, but it’s also due to incremental efficiency that’s grown over time with that technology. But you can never push that below, say, $2/watt, even over the next ten years of development. A more disruptive technology, that isn’t based on silicon, could push it to a quarter a watt.

Those sorts of technologies typically only get invented when the constraints demand that sort of serious change. Most of the innovations that the modern world rests on today were formed over 100 years ago, and those key foundational inventions were formed to pull the world out of poverty. Now we’re in a weird situation where grand changes — grand inventions and new starting points -- are needed, but most of the designers and inventors that can get funding are in wealthy countries where the pressures and constraints don’t push them to design the fundamental shifts.

The opinion I have, and the opinion of the others that I work with, is that there’s a huge untapped brain resource in developing countries. When designers or inventors have a different set of constraints, and they’re clever, there’s going to be great inventions and innovations that come out of those people. We’re just looking to link the risk that is required to do sort of revolutionary invention and design with some sort of reward. Some people do invent altruistically, but they're not free to do that if their family’s starving. You need some way to link that risk with reward. That’s part of what we’re trying to prove through Humdinger; we’re trying to create a billion-dollar business that will give this whole idea some chops, and then go from there.

AP: So you are interested in investing in other inventors in the developing world in the future?

SF: Yes, that’s the dream. The dream is a global network of small invention incubators. One in Hong Kong, one in New York, one in Haiti, one in Zambia, one in Guatemala. Spread all around, to have different constraints and different brainpower and leverage that to solve clean energy and clean water, that’s the initial focus. That’s the dream that all of us have formed collectively and that we’re working towards. That dream requires money, and we’re trying to make some of that money through the Windbelt, and more. The goal isn’t to build one invention; the goal is to build smart investments to fund invention.

AP: What are some new examples of "reverse leapfrogging" – that is to say, technologies that were created for the developing world, but are now being adapted for the developed world?

SF: There are several countries in Africa where you can text people money on your cell phone. I know that I can’t do that in the U.S. very easily. A lot of financial trading technologies are being developed in developing countries. I’ve mentioned the Tata Nano car before, and the plethora of innovations that had to be developed to enable the development of a $2500 personal vehicle, and a lot of those will likely be incorporated down the road in the next generation of electric and non-electric vehicles because now they’ve been proven in at least one scenario. Another example is the One Laptop Per Child screen, a revolutionary design which has two separate types of pixels, which allows you to read in the dark and read in full sunlight with extremely little power consumption. That’s something that we’ll see incorporated in more laptops soon. There are a whole lot of small things like that that are starting to bubble up. I expect that we’ll see more and more of this over the coming years.

AP: What progress will be critical for a renewable energy future?

SF: I think the biggest step would be that renewable energy technologies dip below the threshold of about $1/watt for solar and wind. That would have a huge influence. We’ve talked to people in the solar industry, and obviously the wind industry, and if there was anything that was truly disruptive, that dropped significantly below that threshold which nothing right now can breach, that would make a huge change on the production side.

Another key thing that has to happen to enable sustainability is the development of fortifiable energy storage systems, but not only for the obvious reason of storing vast amounts of power and being able to ship that around. Also, for enabling things like wireless sensor networks that gather information about energy use — right now those wireless sensors have to be powered by batteries that only last a year or two years. The batteries have to be replaced, creating millions of batteries in waste, and even more significantly, perhaps, it limits the amount of information that can be gathered, because it makes each of those sensors thousands of dollars because of maintenance costs. If there was a battery that lasted 20 years to power those devices, that would be a leap that could happen.

There are things that companies like Better Place are doing — Better Place has a new business model for electric cars, using battery switchout — systems like that which pull transportation off of oil and put it in the territory of electricity, then create a scenario where a huge chunk of the energy usage in the world gets pulled into the terrain where it can be powered directly by renewable energies such as wind and solar. Right now that is not possible to do. With petrol-based vehicles and transportation being the de facto system in the world, we can talk about a lot about electricity generation, like what the Windbelt can do and what solar can do, but ultimately that’s only one piece of the pie. We need to pull another piece of the pie into electricity so it can be addressed by these renewable technologies. I think business models like Better Place are key to that as well.

All images courtesy of Shawn Frayne and Humdinger Wind Energy.

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(Posted by Adele Peters in Features at 8:50 AM)

Abu Dhabi Chosen to Host IRENA

Ben Block — 2009-07-01T14:26:47-08:00

International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) have chosen Abu Dhabi as the agency's first headquarters and French diplomat Hélène Pelosse as its first director-general.

A coalition of African and Arab nations celebrated locating the agency in the United Arab Emirates, praising the selection as a success for the developing world. Despite widespread political support, the chosen location and director-general faced criticism from within the renewable energy community due to concerns that nominating countries were attracting votes in exchange for nuclear energy deals.

Representatives from 136 countries [PDF] participated in a summit this week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, to decide the clean energy agency's headquarters and leadership. Prior to the vote, Australia, Costa Rica, Japan, the United States, and the United Kingdom joined the agency.

Major industrialized countries such as the United States and Japan were initially hesitant to join IRENA because of the existence of other organizations that provide advice for renewable energy development, such as the United Nations and the International Energy Agency.

Hermann Scheer, a member of the German parliament who first called for IRENA's formation in 1990, said that neither of those organizations provides sufficient focus on renewable energy.

"The fact that 136 states have signed IRENA's statute will rebut the skeptics. There does not exist another international governmental organization which had so many members at its formation," said Scheer, who chairs the World Council for Renewable Energy, in a statement. "It is now crucial to swiftly set up a powerful organization and to endow it with the necessary resources to support member states in drafting policies to introduce renewable energies nationally."

The headquarters will be located in Abu Dhabi's Masdar City, a new planned city that aims to produce zero net carbon emissions and zero net waste. To raise support for hosting IRENA, the UAE government committed $22 million of annual support through 2015. The Abu Dhabi Fund for Development also offered $50 million in annual loans to finance renewable energy projects in developing countries.

"We in the UAE extend our hands to all countries of the world. The agency is not exclusively for the Emiratis. It is an international asset," UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan told the Emirates News Agency. "All countries of the world have a right in the agency."

Competing cities Bonn, Germany, and Vienna, Austria, withdrew their bids to host the agency at the Sharm el-Sheikh meeting. The countries' leaders forged a deal that will instead divide IRENA among the new headquarters in Abu Dhabi, a center of technology and innovation in Bonn, and an inter-organizational liaison office in Vienna.

The compromise "reflects the spirit of cooperation that is needed for IRENA to grow into a strong and effective organization," an IRENA statement said.

Copenhagen, Denmark, was the fourth city nominated to host the agency, but the Danish government withdrew from the competition prior to this week's meeting in an effort to support a Bonn location.

An Abu Dhabi location received support from the African Union, France, Spain, Italy, and several Arab nations.

Clean energy advocates raised concerns that the UAE and France were attracting votes for one other in an effort to support unrelated interests such as new nuclear energy projects. The advocates supported their complaints in part by pointing to deals that the United States and France finalized earlier this year to develop several nuclear reactors in the UAE.

Pelosse, the newly elected interim director-general, said in an interview with the Worldwatch Institute that these concerns were unfounded.

"The idea that IRENA would be tainted by nuclear interests is simply wrong," said Pelosse, the French Minister of State's deputy head of staff in charge of international affairs. "Firstly, it is not in its statutes. Second, there already is an international organization in charge of nuclear energy. There is no way IRENA is ever going to deal with nuclear energy."

Pelosse led last year's European Union negotiations to form binding targets of 20 percent renewable energy by 2020. She has also helped design France's renewable energy policy and the Mediterranean Solar Plan, an effort to develop 20 gigawatts capacity of new renewable energy resources in the Mediterranean region by 2020.

"Ms. Pelosse has established a long record of outstanding experience and profound knowledge of the renewable sector as well as strong communication and representation skills," an IRENA statement said.

The other director-general candidates were Juan Ormazabal of Spain, Arthouros Zervos of Greece, and Hans Jǿrgen Koch of Denmark.

Abu Dhabi Chosen to Host IRENA

This piece originally appeared in Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org. This article is a product of Eye on Earth, Worldwatch Institute's online news service.

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(Posted by Ben Block in Cities at 2:26 PM)

San Francisco Carves a Park from the Midst of Its Pavement

WorldChanging Team — 2009-07-01T13:22:36-08:00

by Paul Jaffe

The entire family of San Francisco city agencies responsible for maintaining its streets made an unconventional decision to close a portion of a street to cars and convert the new space into a simple, yet elegant, public plaza. The project combines all the important elements of plaza creation that have been successful in New York City and elsewhere: take space from cars, use simple treatments to convert the space into a pedestrian sanctuary, including movable furniture and leftover granite blocks from city salvage yards, and engage commercial interests around the plaza to help maintain and care for the new public realm.

Though some neighborhood constituents voiced skepticism that the plaza would be empty at best, or filled with miscreants and vagabonds at worst, the plaza's success is hard to dispute. In fact, so many people are using the new space and enjoying the tables and chairs, the businesses around the plaza have contemplated leaving the furniture out later than sunset, which was the initial closing time agreed upon between them and the Castro/Upper Market Community Betterment District. This film takes an in-depth look at the construction of the plaza with some of the agencies responsible for it, and includes some entertaining man-on-the-street interviews.

This piece originally appeared in Streetfilms.

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(Posted by WorldChanging Team in Urban Design and Planning at 1:22 PM)

Stay Connected: Worldchanging Now on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and LinkedIN

Sarah Kuck — 2009-06-30T17:27:46-08:00

Hey Worldchangers! Staying informed and keeping in touch with Worldchanging solutions and people has never been easier. We are constantly tweeting news, posting to Facebook, updating Myspace and connecting to friends on LinkedIn. Click on the icons below to stay up to date on the latest news from the Worldchanging team:

...and click these icons to stay in touch with our executive director, Alex Steffen:

Now, you can become a fan of Worldchanging on Facebook! Get good news about Worldchanging innovations straight from Facebook by signing up to be a fan.

Looking forward to seeing you online!

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(Posted by Sarah Kuck in About Worldchanging at 5:27 PM)