A bill to ban energy-hogging incandescent light bulbs in California cleared its first legislative hurdle Monday. The California Assembly’s Utilities and Commerce Committee voted 7-2 to approve the legislation (AB 722) sponsored by Van Nuys Democrat Lloyd Levine. The bill would prohibit the sale of 25 watt to 150 watt traditional light bulbs beginning in 2012. While the bill doesn’t prescribe what should replace the bulbs, its backers hope people will switch to compact fluorescent lighting, which uses 70 percent less electricity than incandescents, and that consumer demand will lower the cost of LED lighting. A legislative analyst estimates that a bulb ban would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in California by 1.82 million metric tons. Light bulb manufacturers like General Electric (GE) oppose an outright bulb and favor setting energy efficiency standards. Philips (PHG), however, is backing efforts to phase out incandescents. The bulb bill goes to the Appropriations Committee next and then to the full Assembly.
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photo: green wombat
Solar power company SunEdison today broke ground on a 8-megawatt photovoltaic power plant at Alamosa in south central Colorado. The Maryland-based company will sell the electricity produced by the plant to to utility Xcel Energy (XEL). Colorado law requires the state’s utilities to get 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2015. Xcel Energy execs have pledged to generate 20 percent of the utility’s electricity from green power by 2020. There seems to be a boomlet in utility-scale PV solar power plants: Also today, PowerLight (SPWR) was to put the shovel to the ground on a 15-megawatt solar panel power plant at Nevada’s Nellis Air Force Base. Berkeley-based PowerLight is building the plant, which will be financed and owned by by San Francisco’s MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA). Like PowerLight, SunEdison has been best known as a designer and installer of commercial rooftop solar arrays. But as utilities turn to solar power plants to meet their green energy obligations, the companies are expanding into the utility-scale solar business. Unlike solar thermal plants – which use the sun to heat synthetic oil, hydrogen or other substances that then create steam to drive electricity-generating turbines – PV power stations convert sunlight directly into electricity like home rooftop arrays do. PV power is more expensive and the plants tend to be smaller scale than solar thermal stations. But such plants are increasingly fulfilling a niche – particularly in rural areas like Alamosa. PowerLight, for instance, last month opened an 11-megawatt PV power station in Portugal (photo above) and is building three more in Spain. When it comes to renewable energy, Colorado’s blue-state governor and Nevada’s red-state governor want to be green. Both leaders attended today’s solar power plant groundbreaking ceremonies in their respective states.
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photo: runs brooklyn
California utilities’ appetite renewable energy has spawned big opportunities for solar startups, wind farm operators and other green power providers. But those companies face a huge hurdle: the best sun and wind are often in areas away from transmission lines, and the high cost of connecting a renewable energy plant to the grid can strangle a startup. But yesterday the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, approved California’s plan to spread those connection costs among the state’s utilities until a green power station is up and running and generating revenue as well as electricity. That ruling should speed the development of renewable energy in California – and elsewhere – as well as make it easier for green power startups to obtain financing for their projects so they can secure renewable energy contracts with PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE). "Growing concerns about losing ground toward a goal of U.S. energy independence, environmental sustainability, and climate change have heightened interest in harnessing renewable energy resources as a response to there critical issues," said FERC commissioner Suedeen Kelly in a statement. "The successful integration of renewable energy generation into large power systems if fundamental to successfully addressing energy independence, environmental sustainability and climate change concerns."
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oakland photo: in2jazz
Which of the United State’s 50 biggest cities is the greenest when it comes to using renewable energy? Portland, Oregon? San Francisco, perhaps? Seattle? Nope. The top spot goes to Oakland, the city across the Bay from San Francisco whose gritty reputation belies its crunchy environmental policies. Oakland gets 17 percent of its electricity from renewable sources such as geothermal, solar and wind, according to SustainLane, a San Francisco firm that compiles data on government sustainability initiatives. Three other California cities tied for second place with 12 percent of their electricity generated from renewable sources: San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento.
Here’s the rest of the list:
- Portland, Oregon: 10 percent
- Boston: 8.6 percent
- San Diego: 8 percent
- Austin: 6 percent
- Los Angeles: 5 percent
- Minneapolis: 4.5 percent
- Seattle: 3.5 percent
- Chicago: 2.5 percent
It’s no accident that six of the top cities are in California. The Golden State has set aggressive renewable energy portfolio standards for its three big investor-owned utilities – PG&E (PCG), Southern California Edison (EIX) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SRE). And city-owned utilities like the Sacramento Municipal Utility District have been green-energy pioneers. One city to watch is Austin. The Texas capital’s government has committed itself to going carbon neutral by 2020, and its municipal owned utility – Austin Energy, a leader in renewable energy – has been given a mandate to generate 100 megawatts of solar power and make all new plants zero emission.
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Ground will be broken Monday on a 15-megawatt photovoltaic solar power plant at Nellis Air Force Base outside of Las Vegas. The plant is the latest utility-scale solar project from PowerLight (SPWR), which is building the facility. Last month a PowerLight-built 20-megawatt solar power plant opened in Portugal and the SunPower subsidiary is building three more PV solar power stations in Spain. The Nevada solar plant will be financed and operated by MMA Renewable Ventures (MMA), a San Francisco firm that finances large-scale commercial solar arrays and now is getting into the solar power plant business.
"At the end of the day, the real upside for us is doing the bigger deals…the big PV plants," MMA Renewable exec Mark McLanahan recently told Green Wombat.
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Largely overlooked in the predictable media hullabaloo over Yahoo’s (YHOO) not-so-hot quarterly earnings Tuesday was the announcement that the Internet giant will neutralize its greenhouse gas emissions by New Year’s Eve. Yeah, tell me something new, you might well say, now that just about every company save ExxonMobil is joining the carbon-neutral brigade. But there are a few things about Yahoo’s approach worth noting – and emulating. For one thing, the company is not greenwashing away eco-guilt by just writing a check to offset CO2 produced by its server farms and sprawling headquarters. "We know carbon neutrality isn’t without controversy," wrote Yahoo co-founder David Filo on his blog yesterday. "And it’s honestly deserved if companies and individuals don’t first make an effort to find direct ways to reduce their impact. We’ll continue to be vigilant about cutting ours, looking for creative ways to power our facilities, encourage even more employees to seek alternative commutes, and generally inspire Yahoos around the world to think differently about their energy use." First, Yahoo is hiring an outside auditor to calculate its "carbon footprint" to gauge its contribution to global warming. Commuting is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Silicon Valley and Yahoo already offers programs designed to get employees out of their cars – from Wi-Fi-equipped biodiesel shuttle buses to bike lockers and public transit subsidies. The Sunnyvale company also has implemented various energy efficiency and recycling initiatives. But to go completely carbon neutral, Yahoo will finance renewable energy projects, and it’s being upfront about how it will do that: The company will invest only in programs that produce direct and measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions; those results will be verified by an outside auditor; and the company will only support projects that result in additional C02 reductions that would not have otherwise happened.
Which brings Green Wombat to another issue in the carbon neutral debate: transparency. Yahoo’s decision to lay out its thinking, criteria and plan of action will help give credibility to corporate carbon campaigns and put questionable carbon credit middlemen and their clients on notice. The company is also enhancing is green cred by using Web 2.0 to involve Yahoo users and crowdsource them for ideas it can adopt to fight global warming. Yesterday, Filo went on Yahoo Answers and threw out to the masses the question, "How should Yahoo go carbon neutral?" As I write this, 204 people have posted replies. And in contrast to the smart-ass postings that often appear on Yahoo Answers, many gave Filo thoughtful and potentially useful proposals.
Rival Google (GOOG) also has committed itself to take the green path by installing a massive solar array on its headquarters buildings, subsidizing employee purchases of fuel-efficient cars, etc. So who knows – maybe it won’t be too far down the road when analysts on a quarterly earnings call ask about a company’s greenhouse gas emissions, and Wall Street whacks its share price when the numbers go up, not down.
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How green are Wal-Mart (WMT) shoppers? We’re about to find out. The world’s largest retailer is launching a Live Better Index to track customers’ purchases of five eco-friendly products: compact fluorescent light bulbs, organic milk, concentrated/reduced-packaging liquid laundry detergents, extended-life paper products and organic baby food. The idea is that the index will gauge Wal-Mart’s 180 million customers’ attitudes toward buying green by using those five products as proxies. "Wal-Mart recognizes that environmentally friendly products don’t do much for the environment when sitting on a shelf,” said Wal-Mart sustainability exec Andy Ruben in a statement. “Our role is continuing to drive accessibility and affordability for sustainable product to consumers who may have not thought about buying ‘green’ in the past.” The Live Better Index site tracks purchases by state. Connecticut Wal-Mart shoppers, for instance, buy the most energy-efficient light bulbs while Californians spend the most on organic baby food. Overall, New Hampshire has the greenest Wal-Mart shoppers while Mississippi has the least. About 13 percent of the retailer’s customers nationwide have bought CFLs, and 1 percent are paying a premium for organic milk. Love Wal-Mart or hate it, there’s no denying the company’s market power or its ability to use the enormous amount of data it collects to drive environmental change.
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The world’s first zero-emission, hydrogen fuel cell-powered jet made a successful maiden flight over the skies of Bern, Switzerland, earlier this month. Okay, the aircraft is about five-feet long (1.6 meters), has a three-foot wingspan and weighs 13 pounds. Still, the flight (video below) was pretty bloody impressive as the HyFish swooped and swooshed, reaching speeds of nearly 125 miles an hour. The jet is a collaboration between the German Air & Space Center and Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies. Don’t expect to board a hydrogen-powered Boeing or Airbus any time soon, though. But with commercial aviation a growing source of planet-warming greenhouse gases, hydrogen-fueled planes may eventually replace unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, used for military missions and environmental
monitoring.
"We are confident that record-breaking 15 to 30 hour flight times are now within reach for
small UAVs, which would offer new and disruptive possibilities in the aviation industry," Horizon CEO George Gu said in a statement. The Singapore-based company has a 
knack for making really cool toys to publicize the potential for its industrial-grade fuel cells. The H-Racer, Horizon’s solar-powered, hydrogen fuel cell toy car (photo at left) was a winner in Business 2.0 magazine’s Bottom Line Design Awards this year. The H-Racer certainly captured the imagination of my eight-year-old son and his buddies when I brought it home for a demo, prompting lengthy discussions about cars and global warming. Their interest is sure to be peaked by the HyFish. Now if Green Wombat could only bring one of those home.
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Sustainable Silicon Valley is a coalition of tech firms and other companies that have joined local governments and agencies to work toward reducing the Valley’s greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. The organization has released a survey of what its members are doing to help employees go carbon neutral, given that in the sprawl that is Silicon Valley most people’s greenhouse gas emissions are produced driving or while at home. (Only frequent fliers who travel more than 50,000 miles a year emit more.) "To radically reduce CO2 emissions, businesses must think outside the box of the workplace," wrote Bruce Karney of KM-Experts, the consultant that conducted the survey. It asked 14 questions, ranging from whether companies encourage telecommuting to whether they offer charging stations for electric cars.
Subsidizing the purchase of a hybrid or other fuel-efficient car has increasingly become a green fringe benefit in the valley. ETM Electromatic and Hyperion (recently acquired by Oracle (ORCL) ) give workers $5,000 while Integrated Archive Systems dangles a $10,000 incentive to get employees to ditch their SUVs. Google (GOOG) uses internal social networking sites to coordinate carpools while software company Ideas offers preferred parking for hybrids. Drug developer Alza, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) and PARC give employees $1 for each day they bike, walk or carpool to work. PARC – the fabled Palo Alto Research Center – also offers $100 toward a bicycle purchase and maintenance. On the home front, Santa Clara University has distributed a thousand energy-efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs while two renewable energy companies – Akeena Solar and 3 Phases Energy – subsidize employees’ installation of solar panels.
Despite the much-publicized greening of Silicon Valley, only 25 companies bothered to respond to the survey. Big name Sustainable Silicon Valley "C02 Pledging Partners" who were no-shows include Cisco Systems (CSCO), eBay (EBAY), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Oracle, and Sun Microsystems (SUNW).
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The challenges posed by global warming can seem insurmountable, demanding such radical economic, political and lifestyle changes as to be beyond the realm of the doable. But we’ve made such seismic shifts before, as Green Wombat was reminded watching an Earth Day program about the San Francisco Bay Area environmental movement on Quest, the half-hour science show produced by local public television station KQED. (In an apparent first for public TV, "Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Headed" premiered online five days before it is to be broadcast tomorrow. Quest’s managing editor is Paul Rogers, Green Wombat’s former colleague from the San Jose Mercury News and one of the nation’s best environmental journalists.) For those of us who live here, the Bay Area has been an ecotopia for so long now that it’s easy to forget the dystopia that was developing in the 1960s, in the days before the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the EPA and the Bay Area 
Rapid Transist system. Today I can look out my 29th floor window (crappy camphone photo at right) and enjoy the view of a sparkling Bay, the Marin headlands and Mount Tamalpais, thanks to the fact that the region suffers only a couple of smoggy days a year; in the Summer of Love era, the average was about 65 bad air days annually, though there were four million fewer people and some three million fewer cars in the Bay Area in the late 1960s. While Rachel Carson was penning Silent Spring, plans were afoot to fill in 70 percent of the Bay. Not that you could enjoy much of the shoreline back then – only 4 miles were accessible and fire-prone landfills dotted the best bayfront real estate, as Quest minds us. Today, 200 miles of shoreline are available for hiking and biking. Where I mountain bike in Marin was to be the site of a new city, and let’s not even talk about that six-lane coastal freeway and nuclear power plant planned near where seals frolic in Bolinas Lagoon. So what happened? As Quest shows, a grass roots environmental movement of hippies, housewives, conservationists and their allies in the local, state and federal governments changed the law and then an entire way of life – one that we now take for granted. That’s not to minimize the incredible hurdles posed by radically lowering greenhouse gas emissions and revamping a global industrial infrastructure. But present-day enviros enjoy one advantage: while the nascent green movement of the ’60s and ’70s spent a signficant amount of time, energy and money fighting Big Business, Corporate America is beginning to enlist as allies in the fight against global warming, out of enlightened self-interest if nothing else. And technology – from the Internet to solar power – is being deployed to search for solutions rather than destroy.
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Green Wombat 