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New Civilization News: Green Energy Development |
Category: Entrepreneurs, Money Making 7 comments 28 Mar 2008 @ 08:48 by jazzolog : Jim Phillips ReportsI knew the Athens News Senior Writer was in the audience, and I had hoped his article would be online by the time I wrote yesterday. It's up now though. Since he was taking notes, there are details that I missed~~~ Business leaders say ‘green’ approach doable, profitable By Jim Phillips Athens NEWS Senior Writer March 27, 2008 What if Ohio-based companies could cut greenhouse emissions, wean America off imported oil – and kick-start the state’s economy in the process? A no-brainer, right? This happy scenario is achievable, three business leaders told an audience at Ohio University Tuesday, and the key is alternative energy. “I’m going to talk about a very real business opportunity for Ohio,” said Neill Lane, president and CEO of the Athens-based Sunpower, Inc., a company that makes free-piston engines. “Things are not changing slowly – they’re changing enormously quickly.” Lane was one of three presenters at the Green Energy Summit, sponsored jointly by OU’s Consortium for Energy, Economics and the Environment (CE3), the Pew Environment Group, and the office of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio. The event brought government and business leaders together to discuss ways to promote “green” and sustainable businesses in the region. Lane noted that Sunpower, founded by local engineer William Beale, has been toiling away in relative obscurity for years, making Stirling engines that, when heated externally, produce electricity. Though using reflector dishes to heat banks of Stirling engines with solar power can provide large amounts of clean electricity, he said, little attention was paid to the process until recently. But suddenly, with both global temperatures and oil prices shooting up, interest in Stirling technology is rising as well, he said. “The world is different now from what it was three months ago, based on my phone ringing,” he observed. Lane stressed that the technology – including many inventions to which Sunpower holds exclusive patent – already exists to move toward large-scale electric generation. One model is already being tested in Europe, where Stirling-based combined-heat-and-power (CHP) units completely power individual homes. “It’s a power station on your wall,” Lane explained, adding that Sunpower has partnerships with four European companies that together account for over a third of the European Union’s heating-equipment market. With concentrated solar technology, Lane said, the promise may be even greater. One 100-mile-square field of dish collectors and Stirling engines in a sunny state like New Mexico, he said, could meet the entire U.S. energy demand. The best part of the story for Ohio, he added, is that the state is positioned to midwife a huge, new, clean industry that can provide both knowledge-based and manufacturing jobs. Lane estimated the industry has the potential to be worth over $28 billion by 2025. “This is ours to lose,” he said. “This is Ohio’s to lose, and the USA’s to lose.” BEN SCHAEFFER IS president of American Hydrogen Corporation, a company that recently opened in southeast Ohio to commercialize technology created at OU to generate hydrogen fuel by electrolyzing ammonia. The firm has an office in Athens and is opening a plant in Meigs County. Where older methods created hydrogen at a cost of around $10 a kilogram, Schaeffer said, his company’s process brings the cost to 30 cents a kilo. Schaeffer argued passionately that cleaner alternatives to oil must be found, and fast. He cited the “Hubbert’s peak” of oil production, named for a geophysicist who shocked the world in 1949 by predicting that the fossil fuel era wouldn’t last long. Hubbert said that with unrestrained extraction of a natural resource in a given area, a graph of production levels will be a bell curve, peaking when the resource is about half exhausted. The world is near or past that peak now, Schaeffer warned. And as oil supplies peter out, the risk of global conflict over what’s left goes up. Last year, he noted, China bought 55 percent of the world’s spot market in oil – up from about 3 percent five years earlier. Globally, he said, “$1.8 million an hour is what we spend on oil.” For the United States, whose domestic oil production has long since peaked, this means lots of purchases from the Middle East and elsewhere. “I’d like to not be dependent on people who are organized slightly differently from what we are,” he noted wryly. Citing the well-worn metaphor of the frog slowly boiled alive as the temperature under his pan of water is gradually raised, Schaeffer offered an alternative to the “boiled” frog – the “bold” frog that sees the long-term trend and acts to change it. “I’ve always been curious why the frog didn’t turn the heat down,” he joked. Schaeffer said American Hydrogen is committed to being a waste-free, completely sustainable business. The ammonia for its electrolysis is widely available as industrial waste, he said. And while the Meigs County plant will be on the utility power grid at first, he promised, as soon as possible it will generate its own power with fuel cells. “We’re going to be eating our own dog food,” he said. “Our plant is going to run on the electricity we produce.” AN OFFICIAL FROM a large food-processing plant in Jackson, Ohio, provided an example of how an existing, old-school industrial business can take huge steps toward cutting pollution and increasing energy efficiency. Ryan Wright, utility/sustainability manager for the Bellisio Foods plant in Jackson, described how the 63-acre plant, which runs 20 production lines to create frozen entrees, has begun using its food waste to generate methane gas for energy. The wastes are fed into a large treatment tank where they are “digested” by bio-organisms to create methane, which is then used to fire boilers. The project cost $4.65 million, but has allowed the company to save on natural gas use, and the costs of trucking food wastes to a landfill, Wright reported. He estimated that it also cuts down on carbon dioxide production by over 43,000 tons annually. “It’s great project; we’re proud of it,” Wright said. In addition to the cost savings, he added, “it’s the right thing to do.” http://www.athensnews.com/news/local/2008/mar/27/business-leaders-say-green-approach-doable-profita/ 28 Mar 2008 @ 17:43 by quinty : So ready to be done.... I too am among the legions of the ignorant. But whenever I flip on the TV and happen to see a CEO or President of a major American corporation speak upon the subject it sounds to me as if the private sector is ready to go Green. That what’s needed is that final financial boost only government can provide to set up the framework. That we are actually very close to the technological solutions to many green problems. Having once worked in the public sector, in a large urban public library, I have always been wary of “public/private” alliances. For one, the private sector, lacking the appropriate education and training, may not be competent to make important professional decisions for an unrelated public sector service, and, secondly, an appearance of cronyism and corruption may arise if a financial link develops between the two. In the case of the library I worked for the vice president of a local phone company sat on the city’s Library Commission, and the library had several contracts with the phone company. (Technical stuff regarding mostly the internet.) Perhaps even worse, though, were the numerous incompetent decisions this VP made regarding important library matters. He simply knew nothing about the fundamental mission of a public library, which is entirely foreign to the profit motive. Nor was he at all temperamentally suited in that regard. But when it comes to green technology a public/private approach seems to be the best way to go. For once established the green technologies and products will be provided by the private sector. With, of course, proper government oversight and regulation. But at this time it appears that public money will be required to launch the “green revolution.” All this time lost. If only we had a decent president to lead the way. Maybe next year? 29 Mar 2008 @ 18:07 by a-d : Jazzo, I'm delighted over your article! THANK YOU SOOOOO MUCH! Yes, like Vax has pointed out a thousand times: It's ALL "Out There"; the Know-How and the Materials needed for SUSTAINABLE Living are out there -and have been for OVER a hundred years already, but always killed by the BIG (-Boy-owned/international) CORPS!!!.... either the machines or the Inventors and in --far too many instances-- both!... One can only wonder WHAT in the WOOOORLD goes through these people's minds when not understanding that SUSTAINABLE means just that: LIFE SUSTAINING!!!!... INLCUDING sustaining THEIR lives!.... When Rudolf Diesel presented his "Diesel Motor" at the Paris Fair 1905, I think it was, he powered it with nothing but PEA NUT Oil! Where did Rudolf end up??? Five years from that day he was found in floating the English Channel! I don't think he gone swimming!..... What happened to Tesla? Who was his "Benefactor and Marketing Manager??? ONE OF THE PRESCOTT BUSH FAMILY Members!!! What happened to Wilhelm Reich???.... Exactly!... on & on it goes!.... http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bldiesel.htm http://www.hempcar.org/diesel.shtml http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1435.htm http://world.std.com/~jlr/doom/diesel.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orgone http://www.orgonelab.org/wrhistory.htm http://skepdic.com/orgone.html http://inventors.about.com/od/qrstartinventors/a/orgone.htm http://www.pbs.org/tesla/ll/index.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikola_Tesla http://www.inventiveproducts.com/Pages/introtoIPMWO.html?gclid=CJOY-ub2spICFSLYYAodTiLjGQ http://www.lifetechnology.org/teslashield.htm I let these be suffice! ; ) .... just know; there's MOOOORE.... Out There -for those who want ! BTW: Take a Air Compressor and a small diesel motor; install in your car and now you can hummm down the road to Athens and the neighbouring Hoods some 250 miles / one gallon diesel oil -OR you can convert the 'Thing' to an all Non - Petro-Chemical driven!.... "just like" the "Ponies" in the wonderful pic here in your article! I love it! Another BTW: Flathead Valley here in MT, where I live, is having the Big Introduction Kick Off Bash for Flathead Barter Hours: the (New) LOCAL CURRENCY at the April 29th!.... I'm soooo tickled.... and trust me ; this is all without my involvement -though I COULD have been .... : ) -- or any other kind of input from my part. !... ; ) Hugs/A-d 7 Apr 2008 @ 10:04 by jazzolog : We Bring Democracy To The Fish It is unacceptable that fish prey on each other. For their comfort and safety, we will liberate them into fishfarms with secure, durable boundaries that exclude predators. Our care will provide for their liberty, health, happiness, and nutrition. Of course all creatures need to feel useful. At maturity the fish will discover their purposes. Poem: "We Bring Democracy To The Fish" by Donald Hall, from White Apples and the Taste of Stone. © Houghton Mifflin Company, 2007. 5 May 2008 @ 09:12 by jazzolog : The Free Market Saves The World Something inside rebels against that title, especially on Karl Marx' birthday. The fact is increasingly I'm hearing from people in business that Going Green saves them money and gets us, at least partially, out from under the thumb of King Coal and the oilmen. One of the people attending the meeting this article is about was Ben Appleby, who's an installer at Third Sun Solar & Wind here http://www.third-sun.com/ and an active Sierra Club member. Ben claimed in one of the discussion groups the biggest problem Third Sun has is finding enough educated or trained workers in what green energy is all about. The best explanation I've seen of these innovative solutions nationwide appeared in a Rolling Stone article last year by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Titled "What Must Be Done," Mr. Kennedy also argued for cessation of corporate welfare to oil and coal. Not only do our taxes pay for their research and development plus subsidies to drill and mine, but we have to clean up their mess too. What other business gets this treatment? I see the article is online and I urge everyone to read it. Here's the first of its 6 pages~~~ In early May, 100 of the nation's top business leaders gathered for a summit at a private resort nestled on 250 acres in California's Napa Valley. The attendees, gathered at the invitation of Silicon Valley venture capitalists, included CEOs and other top executives from such Fortune 500 corporations as Wal-Mart, Proctor & Gamble and BP. They had been invited to discuss ways to end America's fossil-fuel addiction and save the world from global warming. But in reality they had come to make money for their companies---and that may turn out to be the thing that saves us. For three days, the executives listened as their colleagues and business rivals described how they are using new technologies to wean themselves from oil and boost their profits in the process. DuPont has cut its climate-warming pollution by seventy-two percent since 1990, slashing $3 billion from its energy bills while increasing its global production by nearly a third. Wal-Mart has installed new, energy-efficient light bulbs in refrigeration units that save the company $12 million a year, and skylights that cut utility bills by up to $70,000 per store. The company, which operates the nation's second-largest corporate truck fleet, also saved $22 million last year just by installing auxiliary power units that allow drivers to operate electric systems without idling their vehicles. In a move with even more far-reaching potential, Wal-Mart has ordered its truck suppliers to double the gas mileage of the company's entire fleet by 2015. When those trucks become available to other businesses, America will cut its demand for oil by six percent. The executives gathered at the retreat weren't waiting around for federal subsidies or new regulations to tilt the market in their direction. Business logic, not government intervention, was driving them to cut energy costs and invest in new fuel sources. "We haven't even touched the low-hanging fruit yet," Kim Saylors-Laster, the vice president of energy for Wal-Mart, told the assembled CEOs. "We're still getting the fruit that has already fallen from the trees." As the discussions at the summit demonstrated, America's top executives know something that the Bush administration has yet to realize: America doesn't need to wait for futuristic, pie-in-the-sky technologies to cut its reckless consumption of oil and coal. Our last, best hope to stop climate change is the free market itself. There is gold in going green, and the same drive to make a buck that created global warming in the first place can now be harnessed to slow the carbon-based pollution that is overheating the planet. And green investment will not just enrich a few corporations. We know from past experience that it will strengthen America's economy, not to mention our national security, our economic independence and the effectiveness of our world leadership. During the oil crisis sparked by OPEC in the 1970s, American business and government went into overdrive to promote conservation and develop alternatives to Middle Eastern oil. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15051506/global_warming_a_real_solution Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is professor of Environmental Law at Pace University in New York. He also is chief prosecuting attorney for the Hudson Riverkeeper Fund and senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He directs NRDC’s Estuary Enforcement Project. Through these organizations and in conjunction with the Pace Environmental Litigation Clinic, he has brought successful legal actions prosecuting governments and companies for polluting the Hudson River and Long Island Sound. He has successfully argued cases to expand citizen access to the shoreline and to promote environmental justice. The Clinic has taken a leading role in protecting New York City’s water supply and reservoirs. Professor Kennedy has written numerous articles on environmental law and litigation, environmental justice and advocacy. With John Cronin, he wrote The Riverkeepers, published in 1997. 6 May 2008 @ 08:58 by jazzolog : How Business Goes Green Step By Step This feature article from yesterday's Akron Beacon Journal. Now how about schools and churches? Growing greener good for business Group hoping to find new ways to turn waste material into profit By Paula Schleis Beacon Journal business writer Published on Monday, May 05, 2008 Maybe it was Wal-Mart's pressure on suppliers to adopt environmentally friendly packaging. Or General Electric's EcoImagination, a commitment to ecologically sound products and services. Or perhaps it was Al Gore's global warming alert in An Inconvenient Truth. Or something more immediate, like rising energy costs. Whatever the reason, a Northeast Ohio group founded eight years ago to help startup companies learn about ''sustainable'' business practices has been attracting a lot of attention from veteran companies, nonprofits, academics and government agencies. Today, some 5,600 people have joined Entrepreneurs for Sustainability, known as E4S. The organization runs training programs for companies looking to reduce their environmental footprint, and last year the Cleveland-based group started holding regular networking events in Akron. ''Until a year or two ago, not that many people knew about it,'' Holly Harlan said of E4S, which she founded in 2000. Now many people are finding benefits to sharing their stories and hearing others. ''These ideas are still new and you can learn a lot from your peers,'' Harlan said. Supported by funding from the GAR Foundation, E4S hosted three events in the Akron area last year. This year it will hold six meetings. Meanwhile, monthly meetings at the Great Lakes Brewing Co. in Cleveland will continue as they have for seven years. The meetings typically involve a one- to two-hour program — which could be a panel discussion or local companies presenting their own green practices — with plenty of time before and after to network. ''Every month what surprises me are the number of connections, people who meet each other and find new customers, new suppliers, new financing,'' Harlan said. The next meeting, on May 14, will introduce half a dozen businesses that are finding ways to turn waste into a business opportunity. Joseph Hensel of Akron's Polyflow Corp. said he began attending E4S meetings more than five years ago looking for strategic partners or the occasional investor. This month he will attend the Akron meeting as a presenter, explaining his company's ongoing development of a way to recycle mixed plastics and mixed rubber. Arguably, polymers (plastics, rubber) are the most useful material known to man, but their durability has also been their Achilles' heel. While there is a recycle market for water bottles and milk jugs, products that use many different materials — like children's toys, tires, carpet — are destined for landfills, Hensel said. Polyflow is close to commercializing a process that reverts those ''mixed plastics'' back into monomers, their building blocks. Monomers, normally derived from crude oil and natural gas, are used by the petrochemical industry to make polymers. ''We think we have the greatest advancement in the polymer industry since the invention of polymer,'' Hensel said. Harlan said she loves to hear about those kinds of advances, but added that being ''green'' doesn't have to involve complex technology. ''We don't want you to implement anything that would break the bank,'' said Harlan, who recommends companies consider the ''triple bottom line benefit'' before acting. That means implementing changes that have positive environmental, economic and social impact. Typically, the first place companies should look at is energy efficiency. Harlan recommends doing an energy audit and then looking for simple solutions, like turning off unnecessary lights or idle computers. The second most common consideration is waste reduction. It costs money to dispose of waste, Harlan said, so companies that can think of a way to use byproducts save landfill costs while creating more profit. Being more ''environmentally conscious'' and saving money are two of the three main reasons Americhem asked E4S for guidance, said Paul Feezel, who leads Americhem's internal ''green team.'' The Cuyahoga Falls company, which makes pigment concentrates, joined the ''Sustainability Initiative,'' an eight-month corporate program that includes seminars and homework. The first month's assignment: Audit the company's trash. ''We, like a lot of companies, are starting to focus on initiatives that balance people, profit and planet,'' Feezel said. The third driver was an intimate understanding of customer needs, he said. For instance, applying a non-degradable coloring to a customer's biodegradable product is counterproductive. ''So we have to ask, is there something we can do to meet their needs but have a lower environmental impact,'' Feezel said. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Paula Schleis can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. ©2008 The Akron Beacon Journal http://www.ohio.com/news/top_stories/18570794.html?page=all&c=y 29 Apr 2016 @ 05:31 by Bandar Togel @103.12.162.4 : brilliant! 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27 Mar 2008 @ 11:26, by Richard Carlson