Last week, I went down to San Francisco’s Fort Mason, a former military pier turned into a bright, scenic conference center, for some inspiration at the first “Pathways to 100% Renewables” conference. The new event attracted such speakers as SF Mayor Ed Lee and the Small Planet Institute’s France Moore Lappé. Sponsored by a variety of international agencies and NGOs, talks ranged from technological gains to innovations in the electric vehicle industry. The presence of many German agencies and companies naturally led to highlighting their successes in solar and feed-in tariffs (a long-term contract policy that encourages investment in renewable energy). From the perspective of CRS and Green-e, I was excited to have BMW present their Electric Vehicle program, which now makes Renewable Energy Certificates available through Green Mountain Energy, a participant in Green-e Energy, and on-site solar incentives for their ActiveE test group. You can learn more about it at: http://www.greenmountain.com/ActiveE/. BMW explained that around 30% of their drivers currently use renewables (RECs or on-site) to power their ActiveE cars, and 60% of the remainder are looking into on-site solar or REC options. We like those numbers, now let’s just bring the national purchasing average up to 30% and see renewables continue to take off.

Brendan Cook is an analyst with Green-e Marketplace and believes many hands can make change. He can be reached at brendan [at] resource-solutions.org

by Orrin Cook

My colleague Alex Pennock and I recently travelled to snowy Berlin to attend the RECS Market Meeting hosted by RECS International.  After the long journey, we arrived in the historic German city and were greeted warmly by the almost exclusively European conferencegoers.

Why go to Europe?  Over the past few years, there have been numerous conversations and e-mails to Green-e about our potential involvement in Europe, given that there has been no functional equivalent to Green-e there and that there is a large potential market.  This trip was intended to assess the need and/or potential for Green-e to assist with the development of this market, which to date remains less harmonized than in the U.S.

However, as we observed at the conference, there are a variety of initiatives to move the market forward.  Key among these are efforts by RECS International, the Association of Issuing Bodies, and the European Commission to move towards a common tracking system through the European Energy Certificate System (or EECS) and more standardized tradable certificates in the form of Guarantees of Origin (GOs).

There were numerous  utilities showcasing their country-specific green power programs and discussing the relative importance of carbon accounting and creating market impact with renewable energy purchases, discussions that we have seen recur many times here in the States as well. There is also a movement in Europe to grow the market for GOs, including a new certification offered by the Finnish Association for Nature Conservation, called EKOenergy.

Orrin Cook is manager of Green-e Marketplace and works with businesses that improve their sustainability through renewable energy commitments. Contact him at orrin [at] resource-solutions.org.

by Orrin Cook

On March 18th, Green-e hosted an event at the Columbia Tower Club in Seattle featuring some great views of the city and even better visions of the future of sustainability in the print industry. Joined by panelists Jennifer Stewart of Modern Species, a sustainable branding and graphic design studio based in Seattle, and Richard Kouwenhoven of Vancouver-based Hemlock Printers, Green-e led a discussion on best practices and latest developments in the print and paper industry.

Jennifer highlighted the need for graphic designers to set boundaries for clients and to work within a sustainability framework. Richard highlighted the importance of environmental initiatives to be part of an overall company ethic, giving greater credibility to sustainability efforts. We touched on the energy intensity of the paper industry and highlighted Green-e’s re:print initiative, which is intended to make it simple for print buyers to lower their impact buy supporting paper lines and printers that use renewable energy.

In the final part of the program, the audience of designers, print buyers, printers, paper companies, and print professionals took over. Pulling from a wide variety of backgrounds and experience, a great discussion ensued about how to build greater awareness of sustainability and communicate the business value of action. Overall, the event was a great success and proved that when you are on the 76th floor of a building, the perspectives it provides can be awe-inspiring.

Orrin Cook is manager of Green-e Marketplace and works with businesses that improve their sustainability through renewable energy commitments. Contact him at orrin [at] resource-solutions.org.

This is a repost from Switchboard, the staff blog of the Natural Resources Defense Council. The original was posted on November 29, 2012, you can read it here.

Everyone knows that gasoline is made from oil, and how much a gallon of the stuff costs at the pump, but most people would be hard pressed to accurately explain what a kilowatt-hour is, let alone what one costs, or how it was made.  Thankfully, research suggests that when people plug in their cars, they start to think differently about their energy sources and choices.  If you choose to drive on electricity, you’ll be driving free of oil, as less than one percent of our nation’s electricity is derived from petroleum.  Driving an electric car on the average U.S. electricity mix also emits only half the amount of global warming pollution as does the average new passenger vehicle.  In California, where the grid is cleaner, an electric car emits only a quarter as much.  However, many drivers are motivated to go even further and drive emission-free, often on homemade energy.  Thirty-nine percent of the first wave of California’s electric car adopters have solar on their roofs, and an additional 17 percent say they will install solar within a year.

“Plugging Vehicles into Clean Energy,” a paper jointly authored by myself, Ed Pike, and Andreas Klugescheid, explores these themes. The paper reviews research demonstrating the consumer demand for linking electric cars to clean energy, explores five voluntary pathways to connect the two, and argues that doing so would help accelerate the markets for both clean transportation and clean energy.

Researchers from the University of California at Davis and Simon Fraser University found that providing conventional car buyers participating in a design exercise the option to buy green energy caused them to buy electric cars 23 percent more frequently.[1] Automakers are taking note.  Ford and Nissan have partnered with SunPower, and BMW has partnered with Real Goods Solar to offer their electric car customers an opportunity to install rooftop solar.  However, rooftop solar is only one of the five pathways to link plug-in cars to clean energy described in our paper.  The four others are:

1) Energy Efficiency—The cleanest and cheapest electricity is the electricity you don’t use.  Energy efficiency upgrades in both the residential and commercial contexts have the potential to completely offset the electricity required to charge a car.[2] This type of clean energy also pays for itself, providing a steady stream of reduced utility bills.  If you’re going to buy an electric car or install a rooftop solar system, consider a home energy audit.  Energy efficiency upgrades could offset any bill increases that could result from charging your car, and allow you to install a smaller solar system than would otherwise be necessary.  If your water bucket is leaking, plug the holes before you go back to the well.

2) Off-Site Local Renewable Energy Projects—Some utilities, such as the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, offer their customers the opportunity to buy a share of the renewable electricity generated at a local facility.  This is a good option for those who wish to install their own generation, but are unable to do so.  Utilities that already offer customers this option should consider targeting electric car customers, and utilities that do not currently offer such programs may wish to do so to meet the growing demand amongst electric car customers.

 3) Renewable Energy Certificates—When the sun shines on a solar panel or the wind spins a turbine, two products are generated: 1) electrical energy; and 2) the green attributes of that energy.  If you want to buy the latter, you buy a Renewable Energy Certificate, or a “REC,” which grants you the exclusive right to make claims about the green nature of the associated electricity.  The sale of RECs provides an additional revenue stream to renewable facilities that compete against fossil generation.  If you’d like to buy RECs sufficient to match your electric car’s consumption, look for “Green-e” certified RECs.  Twenty dollars will likely buy you more than enough to offset a year’s worth of driving.  If you are the customer of a utility that offers “green pricing,” you can opt to have your electricity provider purchase RECs on your behalf for all your electricity needs.  Or, if you happen to be a BMW “Electronaut,” you can opt to have Green Mountain Energy provide you with wind energy RECs sufficient for all the driving you’re likely to do during your two-year ActiveE lease.  In sum, RECs provide a widely available, affordable, and scalable solution to connect vehicles to clean energy.

4) Facilitating the Integration of Variable Renewables—To keep the electrical grid stable at 60 Hertz, grid operators must match supply and demand continuously, exactly, and instantaneously.  The variability inherent in wind and solar generation makes that job a bit more challenging, but electric vehicles can help.  Cars are parked for the vast majority of the day, which means there’s a large window during which the charging necessary for daily driving needs can be accomplished, shifting demand to meet supply.  Time-of-use utility rates provide drivers with a financial incentive to charge during late evening and nighttime hours, when wind facilities typically are at peak production.  This is already happening in San Diego, where time-of-use utility rates combined with effective customer education and outreach have pushed 80% of vehicle charging to the hours between midnight and 5:00 AM, when electricity is cheap:

Shifting charging to off-peak hours also minimizes adverse grid impacts, mitigates the need for otherwise unnecessary investments in generation capacity, and can be accomplished with the simple timers that come in today’s electric cars.  With a little more technology, charging can also be actively managed remotely to match real-time renewable production, and in the longer term, energy from vehicle batteries could flow back into the grid to help meet peak system demand.

Bringing it all together, imagine living in a super-efficient home, driving a super-efficient, super-sexy car, both of which are fueled with cost-effective renewable electricity.  No oil, no coal, no sweat.  Now imagine that both your car and your clean energy were made here.  That’s no stretch.  Electricity is almost entirely domestically produced and electric cars are helping America reclaim its leadership in global automotive innovation.  The Chevy Volt was named the 2011 North American Car of the Year as well as the 2012 European Car of the Year, and the Tesla Model S was named 2013 Automobile of the Year by Automobile Magazine, and 2013 Car of the Year by Motortrend, whose authors conclude the Model S is proof “America can still make things. Great things.”  How can you make a great thing even better?  Plug it into clean energy.

The paper, “Plugging Vehicles into Clean Energy,” is available here.

Max Baumhefner is a Sustainable Energy Fellow in NRDC’s San Francisco office. His focus is the juncture of the electricity and transportation sectors. He works on policies designed to integrate electric vehicles into the grid and maximize their environmental benefits.

by Skip Laitner

This post is a re-post from Real Climate Economics, posted June 7, 2012. Read the original here.

Because I roam the desert a lot, the UV Index is something I pay attention to.  It is an international standard that measures the strength of ultraviolet radiation from the sun at a given time and place. Canada was the first to adopt such an index in 1992. The U.S. followed in 1994, as have any subsequent number of countries since that time.  Today the World Health Organization (WHO) has standardized the UV Index by replacing the many different regional methods that otherwise provided an inconsistent set of results.

A UV index of zero is essentially a nighttime reading.  An index of 10 (highlighted by the color red) roughly corresponds to the midday sun beating down on the earth through a clear sky.  Here on the desert we often hit the extreme, at noon, with index of 11.  That is the color purple and not really all that uncommon.  And as I reflected on the thought experiment I am about to describe, yes, I was out on the desert floor at roughly the time when the UV Index hit purple.

Knowing my exposure, I suspect some are likely to think that the intense sunshine will explain my estimate of a $3 trillion loss to the U.S. economy. But, I was properly protected and not really outside for all that long. And if we step back to think about it, that very big number may prove a useful metric to help us understand the huge economic opportunities that await us—should we begin to think big about energy efficiency. And I discuss all of this in the context of the 2012 Earth Summit to be convened in Rio later this month.

The 1992 and the Coming 2012 Earth Summit in Rio
Twenty years ago the United Nations convened what was called the Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. It was also known variously as the Rio Summit, the Rio Conference, and the Earth Summit. While there was advancement on several environmental fronts, a number of critics suggested that significant progress, both during and following the 1992 Earth Summit, was derailed by what has been called the North-South divide; in effect, the serious economic differences between the rich industrial nations and the many developing countries.

I might suggest, in fact, that progress was held up more by failure to read and understand the energy intensity index. We can think of this as a connection between environmental quality and the huge inefficiencies with which we use energy, water and other natural resources (see More by Waste than Ingenuity for a different look at the scale of our wastes).

More to the point, if we pay attention to increased energy productivity, we are better able to see that we can actually afford the investments which will enable our efficiency upgrades; and we will find we are better off if we make those large-scale efficiency improvements over the next several decades.  The question becomes one of how we might introduce the productivity perspective when the United Nations convenes the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development later this month—hosted again by Brazil in Rio de Janeiro. Rio 2012 or Rio+20 will be an important 20-year follow-up to that historic 1992 summit.

An Energy Efficiency Thought Experiment
Yes, it absolutely does require energy to drive our economy. But we can power economic activity so much more efficiently and cost-effectively if we’ll step back and ask better questions—ones that lead to more productive investment patterns.  We can get a sense of the scale and missed opportunity these past 20 years by examining the change in our energy intensity over the last bunch of years, especially since 1950 to provide a historical context, and also since 1992 when the last Earth Summit was convened.  And we can then compare the year 2012 as we now expect it to look with what a greater energy efficiency improvement might have otherwise provided. Key data are provided in the table that follows.

Source: Various data from the Energy Information Administration and author calculations based on those data.

Before we examine the table above, we first need to understand what we might think of as the energy equivalent of a UV Index, or what we call energy intensity. In this case we measure energy intensity as the number of energy units, Btus or British thermal units, as they are consumed per dollar of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Here we compare physical energy units to constant dollars of GDP to remove the effects of inflation.  It is not an entirely satisfying indicator but we can use the reduction in Btus per dollar of GDP as a proxy for improvements in energy efficiency.

In 1950, for example, we needed 17.3 thousand Btus of energy for every dollar of economic activity recorded in that year.  That might be akin to the color purple in the UV Index. Our total energy needs in that year was about 34.6 Quadrillion Btus, or Quads. By 1992 a variety of efficiency gains dropped that index to 10.4 thousand Btus; unfortunately, still in the red zone.  While there was something of a roller coaster effect in the actual year-to-year changes, the data above show an average 1.2% rate of decline over that 42-year period.

The good news is that we showed some improvement with a rate of decline that accelerated to 1.9% annually over the period 1992 to 2012. Hence, our nation’s energy intensity will have dropped to somewhere close to 7.2 thousand Btus later this year.  While this is, indeed, a decent rate of improvement, we are still in the orange or high zone. We could have done much better.

If we had followed the kinds of improvements that were laid out in the January 2012 study published by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), the Long Term Energy Efficiency Potential, we might have encouraged an even better 3% annual rate of decline in our nation’s energy intensity.  That would have pulled us down to 5.6 kBtus per dollar of economic activity—what we might think of as now in the yellow or moderate zone. By way of comparison, the ACEEE Long Term Energy Efficiency Potential study suggests that, with smart policies and improved investment patterns, we could get down below 2.0 kBtus over the next three to four decades.  That would certainly put us in the green zone.

The table above doesn’t show all the individual annual values but as it turns out, we actually did achieve a 3% rate of improvement four different times out of the 20 total years since the last Rio summit. But if we had actually sustained a 3% rate of improvement over the full 20 years, we would be using 21% less energy than we do today, or 76.7 quads instead of the 97.1 quads now projected for the end of this year.

More critically, our nation’s economy would have saved something very close to a cumulative $3 trillion in avoided energy costs over the period 1992 through 2012.  Again referencing the ACEEE study, that magnitude of energy bill savings would have been more than sufficient to pay for the program and investment costs—and still have left a health amount of money for households and businesses to pay for goods and services other than energy.  Perhaps equally compelling, the physical energy savings would have saved us two years of greenhouse gas emissions. In effect, a smart pattern of energy efficiency investments would have produced a net savings of money, and would have greatly reduced the impact on the global climate and environment.

The Usual Caveats Do Apply, But It’s Still a Pretty Good Story
I’m the first to admit the usual caveats apply.  These are rough values which I offer more in the way of gedankenexperimenten, or thought experiments that are very much in the tradition Hans Christian Ørsted and Albert Einstein, rather than as a counterfactual or the basis for specific actions that we might undertake following Rio+20. To be sure, there are a good many questions that we would need to answer. For example, would the economy have rebounded and grown slightly larger with a higher level of productivity? In effect would we have used up some of the energy savings with a slightly larger economy?  But would energy costs have dropped as a smaller demand would create a downward pressure on energy prices?

And with smaller levels of demand, might we have eliminated a proportionately larger share of fossil fuels which are the single biggest driver of greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants?  Yes, this thought experiment would benefit from a further validation, but I think it’s still a potentially powerful story; and one that might allow us to follow Rio+20 with a much smarter pattern of behaviors and investments.

John A. “Skip” Laitner is Director of Economic and Social Analysis for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), based in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at jslaitner@aceee.org.

by Michael Leschke

It’s National Political Party Convention Time! Presidential Platforms are being finalized and our focus is slowly shifting from campaign flubs and gaffes toward actual policy issues (hopefully anyway, hilarious though said gaffes may be). Now it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty, meat and potatoes world of things like energy policy. Hooray! And this means people are going to start talking about sexy buzzwords like energy production, renewable energy, clean power, energy independence, emissions reductions, and other energy related issues containing two words. It’s about to get hot.

Like moths to a bright light at night, one of the shining beacons around which these sexy buzzwords congregate happens to be Natural Gas. Good Ol’ Fashioned North American Natural Gas: It’s abundant (but finite, especially here in North America[1])! It’s clean(er than other resources, but less clean than others[2])! And there’s a lot of it right here in our own backyard (good for our national security[3], potentially bad for our health[4])!

Whatever your opinion of it is, the fact of the matter is that in the U.S. natural gas production and use is increasing exponentially. The energy industry has seen a clear shift away from coal production and generation and is increasingly leaning on natural gas to power America, with a nice assist from renewable resources such as solar and wind power. From a purely environmental perspective, this is a good thing. The shift away from coal means reduced greenhouse gas emissions and cleaner air and water resources. On the other hand, not all the effects are positive. According to a study by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology[5] (that’s MIT to you and me), there are 3 clear uncertainties associated with using natural gas. First, increased reliance on natural gas has left utilities unsure of their ability to cope with wild swings in electricity demand on an hourly basis. Second, the more natural gas is used, the more of a natural gas centered infrastructure is needed; purchasing and/or building the pipelines needed to transport the gas can potentially cost a LOT of money, may take a long time to be completed, and risks being obsolete once the usefulness of natural gas is tapped. Finally, using a finite resource is inherently a temporary solution and increased reliance on natural gas as a power source risks stunting the growth of cleaner, permanent resources such as the above mentioned wind and solar generation. Why is this bad? Well, it’s like telling a kid they can have a little piece of chocolate now or a whole chocolate bar later. As adults, we know better. Some of us do, anyway. And do you really want to be responsible for the entire emotional trauma associated with missing out on all that chocolate for just a taste of it now? No. It’s better to put off instant gratification for something a million times more meaningful in the future.

The best part is that in this scenario, renewable resources are like a chocolate bar that never, ever ends. And I love chocolate.

But there is still a lot of value in natural gas. It’s possible that in the short term, it makes sense to continue increasing production and use of natural gas. It’s relatively cheap, especially compared to some of the pricier renewable options; it is available now and can help wean our dependence on coal or even petroleum; and it’s certainly cleaner than coal or oil. The MIT report puts it best when it states, “While taking advantage of this gift in the short run, treating gas as a ‘bridge’ to a low-carbon future, it is crucial not to allow the greater ease of the near-term task to erode efforts to prepare a landing at the other end of the bridge.”

Remember last election when some talking heads were telling other talking heads, “thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere”? Well, people like bridges when they actually go somewhere. If a larger portfolio of renewables is on the other side of the river, natural gas is best seen as a bridge that can get us there. And everyone speaks well of the bridge that carries him (or her!) over.

Michael Leschke is a Green-e Energy Associate. He really likes chocolate and thinks that energy policy talk is so hot right now. He has no strong feelings toward bridges, though.

by Jennifer Barnette

When Garrett Hardin wrote his famous essay The Tragedy of the Commons in 1968, he used the example of herdsman grazing their animals in a common pasture to exemplify the “tragedy” that results when multiple actors, acting independently and “rationally” (in the economic self-interest sense), will deplete a shared finite resource, even when it is in no one’s long-term best interest. Many have likened this phenomenon to the failures of global multilateral action to address climate change: everyone agrees in theory that global warming is bad in the long-run, but no one is willing to forego their own high carbon development to halt it. At least so the theory goes.

Supporters of this theory cite the failure of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) conferences to establish a global action plan for emissions reductions. The largest overall emitters, the U.S. and China, refuse to commit to low-carbon growth without strict guarantees from the other. Developing countries like Bolivia blame industrialized countries for contributing the lion’s share of historic emissions, and demand payment for climate debt. And thus it seems like the weak document that emerged from the recent Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development is just another in a line of failed multilateral negotiations regarding climate change and sustainable growth.

For sustainability advocates, the news out of Rio was depressing. While more than 50,000 people descended upon the Brazilian coastal city for the 20-year anniversary of the Earth Summit, hoping to make significant strides towards a sustainable future, most left sorely disappointed. Major heads of state were missing (read: President Obama) and the major outcome of Rio, a  53-page document entitled “The Future We Want,” did little more than reaffirm the goals and commitments that were espoused 20 years ago at the first UN conference on sustainability.

But there are signs that our climate has not been written off as a tragedy of the commons quite yet. The hope from Rio lies in the more than 700 voluntary commitments that were made by governments, multinational corporations, financial institutions, universities, NGOs, and other members of civil society, and the initiative to monitor and track the implementation of these commitments. According to the Rio+20 Secretariat, “collectively, these tangible commitments mobilize more than $500 billion in actions towards sustainable development.”

A few examples:

• Australia will establish the world’s largest and most comprehensive network of marine reserves by placing more than 1 million square miles of Australia’s oceans under conservation management.
• Germany announced its commitment to achieve 80% electricity production from renewable energy sources by 2050.
• The United States committed to create and fund the U.S.-Africa Clean Energy Finance Initiative (US-ACEF), in order to catalyze much-needed private sector investment in clean energy projects in Africa.
• Microsoft has committed to achieve carbon neutrality by the end of 2013.
• Bank of America has set a goal to commit $50 billion over ten years to finance energy efficiency, renewable energy and energy access, and other activities that advance the low-carbon economy.
• Coca-Cola set a global water stewardship goal to safely return to nature and to communities an amount of water equivalent to what it uses in all its beverages and their production by 2020.
• Five major stock exchanges, collectively listing more than 4,600 companies, committed to promoting long-term, sustainable investment in their marketplaces.

Many of these commitments are being monitored by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) on their newly created Cloud of Commitments website. “Launched at the Rio+20 Earth Summit, the Cloud aggregates and tracks commitments to take specific actions which contribute to the rapid transition to a low-carbon green economy. The Cloud is a first step in creating a global platform to record, encourage and hold accountable all of hundreds of initiatives being brought to Rio by governments at all levels, business, and civil society groups.”

It is a positive sign to see public and private entities alike committing to more sustainable practices. And it is even more encouraging that civil society is going to hold them to their word. This is exactly the type of communal pressure that Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for “her analysis of economic governance,” suggests can overcome the tragedy of the commons dilemma: in essence, climate governance from below. Ostram writes, “Global and national environmental policy frequently ignores community-based governance and traditional tools, such as informal communication and sanctioning, but these tools can have significant impact.” Bottom-up accountability mechanisms can overcome the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of the nation-state framework in combating global issues like climate change by allowing citizen, non-governmental, and even corporate activists to take the leadership reins in transitioning to sustainable global development. Informal sanctions, like  a thumbs-up (or thumbs-down) from watch-dog NGOs like the NRDC, and broad approval (or disapproval) from activists and engaged citizens around the world, might be enough to get the commitment-makers to follow through.

Many of you will be quick to point out that these commitments are only voluntary, and that watchdog organizations have very little leverage in holding corporations and governments accountable. Others will argue that even if the commitments are all reached, it is still far too little too late to have any tangible impact on reducing GHG emissions without binding commitments from nation-states. And I agree that voluntary commitments are insufficient on their own, but they do represent a citizen-driven strategy towards progress in the face of political standstill at the United Nations level. While still a far cry from a solution to the colossal challenge of climate change, Rio+20 commitments and the accountability mechanisms developed alongside them do represent an alternative to overcoming the tragedy of the commons mentality in the context of global warming.

Jennifer Barnette  is a legal intern at CRS, she can be reached at jbarnette [at] resource-solutions.org.

by Michael Leschke

“We revel in the laxness of the path we take.” – Charles Baudelaire

Ah, laziness.  Sloth is one of the seven deadly sins and idle hands do the devil’s work.  Generally speaking, laziness is bad.

But I don’t care.  I have no problem freely admitting it to any who will listen: I’m lazy.  Ask my family, roommates, friends, multiple ex-girlfriends, etc.—they’ll all tell you that I have many (many, I swear!) redeeming qualities, but motivation usually isn’t one of them.  For your consideration: 1) I love soccer, but I’m too lazy and out of shape to play.  2) I love music but I absolutely don’t want to take the time to learn how to play an instrument and I’m self-conscious.  3) I am passionate about environmental issues, but I usually don’t want to spend the energy to canvas, advocate, eat granola and climb trees, or really get “out there” to make a difference.  I’m willing to bet there’s a whole lethargic army of people out there who are just like me, stumbling around in a daze of self-imposed languidity, unsure how to express their interest in something and act on their passions without having to do too much work and feeling more than a little guilty about it.  Life can be tough sometimes; trust me, I know, I deal with it on a daily basis.

People are seldom too lazy to spend money though, and you know what? People are willing to spend money on issues that are important to them.  Go figure.  According to a fresh-off-the-presses report by researchers from Harvard and Yale[1], Americans care about clean energy and its use is important to us as a nation.  How much so?  Something to the tune of the average American being willing to pay $162 extra per year on their electric bills so that 80% of their power is coming from clean or renewable resources by the year 2035.  Yes, $162.  That’s not chump change; people wouldn’t be willing to spend beaucoup bucks on a non-issue.  Not only that, but based on past voting records, there appears to be bipartisan support in congress to pass national legislation introducing a National Clean Energy Standard.  You go, America!  Oh, and by the way, it doesn’t cost ANYWHERE near $162 extra a year to purchase renewable energy.  According to the annual report published by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory[2], the customers who sign up for a Green Power Pricing Program generally spend less than $10 dollars a month extra.  $10.  Ten.  Dollars.  In fact the average is $6.30 a month[3].  Yet only 2% of Americans sign up for such programs when they’re offered by their utility.

What does this mean?  This means nationwide support and spending money is out there among the masses on clean energy issues, but as of yet is relatively untapped.  The average American—like me—has a soft spot in his or her heart for using clean and renewable energy.  And why not?  With more and more studies linking the use of renewable energy to health benefits[4] as well as cost savings over time and increased national security[5] what’s not to like?  I like that and I self-identify as a hater.  It seems we’re all just unaware of the opportunity here to do something positive without actually breaking a sweat or even leaving the couch/desk/bed, and this is where I switch on like a toaster.  I love feeling like I’m doing good things without actually, you know, working for it.  It’s an artform and I’m the master.  Well, this report says we’re all more than willing to throw some spare change every month toward an issue that the general public can and does support.  (It’s also why I have a job).  There are no habits that need to be changed and no extra effort that needs to be made.  We actually just have to do it.  Sign up for a certified renewable energy program in your area.  What if there is no program in your area?  Well, go to www.buycleanenergy.org to search by zipcode to see if one is offered to you, and either way you  can offset your electricity use by purchasing renewable energy certificates.  San Francisco people, I’m looking at YOU – consider it your penance for making a fool out of yourself at Bay to Breakers this past weekend. I saw you and I feel ashamed for you.

The bottom line is that many Americans—me included—are interested in finding ways to make a difference without having to do too much actual work, and they’re just unsure where to focus their (lack of) energy.  Well, this is one simple way and according to the Harvard and Yale report, it’s a tune we can all dance to.  The benefits of using clean and renewable resources make this the easiest way to actually do something that makes a huge difference by barely doing anything at all.  America is all ready to make a difference by relaxing and spending some spare coin and that’s the way I like it.  Treat yourselves and revel away!

Michael Leschke has been with Green-e Energy since January 2012 as an associate and is a go-getter and a real catch.  He can be reached at michael [at] resource-solutions.org

by Alex Pennock

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has recently opened a fourth comment period for many of its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building standards. The review process has been long and involved, but I’m extremely pleased to see that the language for the updated Green Power credit is no longer up for comment and seems settled, as it contains a number of significant changes that will amplify the positive impact of LEED certified buildings.

Under current Green Power criteria offered in certain LEED standards, buildings can earn points for purchasing green power for 35% of their electricity for two years. The slated changes for the LEED 2012 standard will recognize green power for up to 100% of electricity use for a minimum of 5 years for some LEED standards. This could result in an increase of more than 600% for green power use in a LEED certified building, resulting in greater and longer-term support of renewable electricity generation, and even more CO2 and other pollution being avoided, since that amount won’t be drawn from traditional sources of electricity.

Under the new green power credit, a 20,000 square foot certified building could avoid roughly 850 more tons of CO2 compared to purchasing 35% green power for only two years.[1] For reference, this is the amount of CO2 emissions from burning almost 1,800 barrels of oil. Renewable energy does more than just preventing carbon from getting into the atmosphere, however; renewables avoid emissions of mercury, particulates and other pollutants, help create and maintain domestic jobs, and heighten energy security.

LEED reference guides point out that buildings account for 73% of electricity use in the U.S. LEED standards have long been adopted voluntarily by developers, architects, and others who want to reduce the environmental impact of buildings, and these standards are increasingly being required by city codes and highlighted in government environmental guidelines. With LEED uptake expanding rapidly, these changes to the green power credit will go a long way toward making sure an ever-more sizeable chunk of that 73% comes from domestic renewable sources instead of fuels linked to mountaintop removal, foreign conflict, human health deterioration, and a host of other impacts that reveal the true cost of fossil fuels.

Alex Pennock is manager of Green-e Energy, and if he were a building he’d earn one (1) point for riding a bicycle to work every day. He can be contacted at alex [at] resource-solutions.org.

“go green” by Stephen Jones

by Laurel Hilton

Kinetic Energy Harvesting. Sounds like a futuristic B-rated horror movie, or maybe a new age farm in northern California.

You’d be wrong.

We’ve made leaps and bounds with solar, wind, wave, and biomass for renewable energy development. But more and more, energy innovators are turning to the human race for the next generation of renewable energy powered solutions. The way we walk, dance, exercise, and even the way we move in our clothes will help shape the way we think about capturing, storing, and using electricity in our everyday lives.

A UK-based cleantech company has developed an energy-capturing tile, a low-carbon solution that brings kinetic energy harvesting to the streets. Designed for heavy foot traffic areas, the tiles convert kinetic energy from footsteps of pedestrians into renewable electricity. The energy can be used to help power street lighting, displays, alarms, and advertising.

Each time someone steps on the tile, a central light illuminates, helping to produce the 2.1 watts of electricity per hour the tiles can generate. It also provides self-sufficient lighting for pedestrian crossings.

The average active person walks 8,000–10,000 steps per day, which is about four to five miles over at least a few hours.  Each watt of electricity equals one hour of traditional electricity. You can see this starting to add up!

You probably haven’t seen or “used” these tiles yet. But if you were lucky enough to be on the dance floor at Bestival on the Isle of Wight in 2011 you may have experienced the tiles first hand. They’ve also been monitored for durability in a London area school corridor where 1,100 students pass through every day, generating the electricity to power lighting applications.

These innovative tiles will take center stage this summer during the London 2012 Olympics along one of the main crossing points for Olympic athletes and visitors.

Fitness centers across the country are embracing the green revolution too. Many gymnasiums have retrofitted their equipment such as stationary bikes, stair steppers and elliptical machines to capture the motion of the pedals which is then used to generate electricity. The additional power produced by avid gym-users can offset some of the gym’s energy needs.

The textile industry is another interesting example of the creative development and application of renewable energy. Scientists have been experimenting with small wires that are woven into fabrics and rely on movement, pressure, or body heat to generate energy. The concept is in the early stages of testing. It’s too soon to have conclusive results, but can you imagine charging up your mobile device by plugging it into your shirt or jacket?

Though in their infancy, all of these examples show promise for use with people all over the world. As individuals, we often feel unsure of how to contribute to the growing need for clean energy generation. These initiatives allow us to become a part of the conversation and to participate directly in making sustainably minded choices.

As our options for harnessing renewable energy become ever more creative, the possibilities are endless.

What’s next? Power-pack chewing gum, anyone?

Laurel Hilton is development director at CRS and named after the Mountain Laurel. She is also mother to two year-old Zinnia Bleu, named for a favorite flower. Laurel can be reached at laurel [at] resource-solutions.org.

Images courtesy of IActionable

by Robin Quarrier

One of the promising ecotrends is the gamification of sustainability. Gamification is the process of using the feedback elements from computer games—such as scores, leaderboards, achievements, and the feeling of progression—and incorporating them into things that aren’t games. For example, typical gamification of a website would enable visitors to earn badges for “checking in” to the site and points for answering questions or providing feedback. Essentially, environmental advocates are making sustainable actions fun, rewarding, and potentially competitive. Evidently standing on the street corner with a sign that the world is about to end is not as persuasive as some had thought.

It is a very good thing that environmentalists are trying new approaches to encourage sustainable behavior, as the beating drum of factual explanations about climate change is giving many people headaches. Rather than spurring positive behavior, climate change messages often lead people to feel depressed and think that individual action is insignificant and not worth the effort.  Gamification is a way for environmentalists to reach an a broader audience and infuse otherwise mundane or onerous activities with a bit of fun.

Furthermore, people really like playing Angry Birds and Draw Something. Americans are spending an increasing amount of time connected to the internet via smart phones and engaged in online games. According to appdata.com, the game company zynga has over  60 million daily active users today, and over 280 million monthly active users.  Americans spent over $2 billion in the last quarter of 2011 on gaming content alone, leading corporations and environmentalists alike to seek opportunities in gamification for incentivizing behavior change.

Gamification in Action

There are many different kinds of gamification, depending on the desired action and type of game functionality employed.

For example, some simple game types make the desired action more fun. To encourage appropriate disposal of trash and recyclables, TheFunTheory, an initiative of Volkswagen, equipped a trash can with a device that senses when trash is deposited and then emits a noise similar to that of an object falling into a very deep well. During one day nearly 160 pounds of trash were collected, 90 pounds more than the normal can nearby. TheFunTheory had similar success with a glass recycling bin that sounded and flashed like an arcade. It was used by nearly a hundred people in one evening as compared to a conventional bin nearby that was used by two people.

Electric and hybrid vehicles like the Nissan Leaf, Toyota Prius, and Ford Focus EV, use real-time key figures that display fuel efficiency metrics, resulting in awareness, desire to improve fuel efficiency, and modified driving behaviors. The Nissan Leaf goes further with its “Eco Mode” software which not only keeps track of speed and power usage but also displays achievements through symbols that look like pine trees. Drivers can create online profiles and compete with other Leaf drivers.

The business software maker SAP offers corporate software users with gamified applications to track and reduce their or their organizations’ carbon footprints, like SAP Home Carbon Challenge, SAP Carbon Exploration, or Vampire Hunter. These applications frequently have interactivity with social networking sites like Facebook, so that one can show off high scores and compare achievements.

SAP employed this approach when educating their employees about sustainability. Employees move around a Monopoly-like board, answering questions about energy efficiency, recycling, and sustainable behavior. In case of a wrong answer, the computer-generated opponent “Betty Sustainability” advances.

Games About Climate Change

There are some games where people can try to solve climate change issues (like the sobering Fate of the World), but these are merely climate change games, not the gamification of sustainability. Some games like this aren’t intended to change behavior, and they can leave one feeling helpless and inconsequential rather than jovial and empowered.

Companies That Can Gamify Your Website or Application

Companies like Bunchball, Badgeville, Fanzy, Gamify, IActionable, and BigDoor offer services to help you gamify your idea or application. BigDoor offers websites of any size a way to quickly and easily create their own Gamified Rewards Program. Rewards, such as exclusive content, unlocked powers, exclusive virtual items, community status and even tangible rewards create deeper engagement with a site and rewards users for their loyalty. IActionable and CloudApps’ SuMo works on the SalesForce contact-management platform that many organizations use.

Bike Your Way to Badges and Virtual Glory

Thursday May 10, 2012 is the 18^th annual Bike to Work Day. The organizers are employing gamification techniques to encourage participation in biking to work for the entire month of May. Riders create company teams and log miles each day. Scoring is based on miles ridden with more points awarded for miles ridden by new riders. Weekly rankings are distributed to the riders via email.

I hereby challenge you and your coworkers to try to beat CRS in the Bike to Work challenge. ;o) Let’s see who is motivated by badges, stars, and Facebook status enough to get us biking in the rain.

Robin Quarrier is CRS Counsel and never leaves the house without her 20-sided die. Contact her at robin [at] resource-solutions.org.

To learn more about gamification and sustainability:

The Gamification Community

enterprise-gamification.com’s sustainability page

Wikipedia’s Gamification Page

“Gamification and Sustainability: Changing Behavior with Fun,” Sustainable Brands

“Gamification driving corporate sustainability initiatives”, IT World

“Play with yourself. It’s good for the planet.”, CloudApps

“Gamification of Environment,” Gamification Wiki

“Can ‘gamification’ make your life more sustainable?”, E&E News

by Brendan Cook

Take a second and consider what the following things have in common:

-       A documentary on the decline of the honeybee

-       Bamboo bicycle frames

-       Mapping green sea turtle routes

-       A solar powered backpack

-       A rooftop edible garden

If you’re still stumped, these ideas are now budding projects that are currently being funded by amateur donors and investors. The method is called Crowdfunding; think of it as asking friends, family and (frequently) total strangers to give a cause that much-needed financial boost. Crowdfunding enables new projects to take off by connecting with audiences who support their idea, but these funders may not necessarily be dishing out million-dollar grants. Since sustainable ideas tend to mobilize some passionate action, a variety of projects are happening through these nontraditional means.

Many of these sustainable projects require less than $15,000 and in many cases have tens, sometimes hundreds of individual funders for their single cause. Crowdfunding has become a popular way for sustainable projects to get traction and have their stories told, ranging from a whole host of films to small-scale renewable energy systems.

The platforms not only allow for a convenient way to raise funds, but just as importantly connect with an audience and involve them in your cause, something that is difficult to do with few investors. Crowdfunding taps into that urge to give someone a leg up in the world while championing our individual beliefs. Some of the funders bank on a “reward” system, which is a way to increase the amount of money donated or payback a financier’s generosity.  A kind donor might receive a DVD of the film he’s supporting or a mention on Twitter.  For many of the people and projects, the donation is considered its own reward. Often, most are not expecting any kind of reward. In some instances, extended action in the form of volunteers, media attention, or a like-minded friend rooting for your project can develop after that $25. IndieGoGo, a broad crowdfunding site recognizes this instantly in their advice on starting up a campaign:

“Contributors fund ideas they’re passionate about and support people they trust. Introduce yourself and your background. Describe your project and why it’s important to you. Explain to contributors what you’re hoping to achieve. Keep it concise, yet personal.”

As funding becomes more focused and limited, it requires us to prioritize issues and can hinder creativity. Crowdfunding gives fresh, creative ideas a chance, as long as their creator is able to tell a story. Causes related to sustainability frequently sell themselves, but after looking around on the sites, you may be impressed by the funding results from more “challenging” ideas.

Think your concept is too technical? PetriDish, one of the more focused sites, explains that “Professional researchers use our platform to increase awareness about their work, raise money for new projects and manage relationships with private donors.” Here the money aspect is only part of the equation (although a critical one) but what these sites encourage is ongoing relationships with “donors.” Many continue to update and tell their story of success and challenges through photos, videos, blogs, and other methods.

These crowdfunding sites have caught on so quickly that federal legislation and large-scale capital investors are looking at how Crowdfunding will fit into their future plans and what guidelines will need to be set in place. In a rocky economy, sustainability-oriented startups will be looking for non-traditional ways of raising money when competition increases and funds become scarce.  These first time funders not only provide the capital, but the foundation of an audience for their projects.  What better way to tell a story than from the beginning?

Resources
IndieGoGo – http://www.indiegogo.com/
Kickstarter – http://www.kickstarter.com/
PetriDish – http://www.petridish.org/
Wiki – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowd_funding

Brendan Cook is an analyst with Green-e Marketplace and believes many hands can make change. He can be reached at brendan [at] resource-solutions.org

by Todd Jones

I’ve been hearing a lot lately that we in the environmental community consistently employ the wrong messaging to advance the cause of climate change mitigation, and that we need to change tactics in order to broaden our appeal and ultimately realize the ends we seek. Recent polling, focus group, and other public opinion and consumer studies have apparently revealed that, while most people (in the U.S.) will say they support environmental protection and are generally aware of environmentally responsible options, they do not respond to words like “climate change,” nor are they moved by the list of current biophysical impacts like shrinking glaciers, loss of sea ice, extreme weather events, changes to water and food availability, shifting migration and mating patterns, spread of disease, groundwater salinization, and more. The same studies also apparently reveal that for most people no amount of information about increasing emissions, temperatures, and the number and severity of future impacts will move respondents to change their opinion or behaviors related to climate change.

After they tell me that I’m out of touch and what I care about is “boring,” the messaging consultants usually recommend tailoring messaging to “different personal values.” To define these, their studies usually break the world down into oversimplified archetypes of people and worldviews that usually consist of the elitist choir, the apathetic middle class, the callous rich, and remaining crazies, with most of the world falling into the latter three camps. The message, they say, should appeal to the audience’s existing conception of happiness or the life they want to live, which can of course have little to nothing to do with the matter of concern—the environment. The messaging should not employ guilt, fear, or too much information. And it should avoid controversial or complicated terms like “climate change.” They want us to sell climate mitigation like it’s some kind of new toaster thing that people don’t really need. Except it’s more important than that. It’s our lives. If you listen, the messaging consultants are not saying communicate the message more effectively, or be more specific. They’re saying communicate something else; change the content; make it about something other than climate change.

There’s a difference between knowing your audience and being patronizing and manipulative. Climate change is the issue I care about. That’s the substance of what I’m selling. So, it comes down to this: am I willing to sacrifice a message I believe in for one that “works?” The answer depends on two things: 1) what will a new non-climate change message in fact do—what will the actual outcomes be—and 2) can I live with it—is it a matter of principle that’s worth standing by?

What will selling mitigation as happiness, as opposed to as mitigation, produce? Will it actually lead to climate change mitigation, and give us a foot in the door with people who would otherwise be unreceptive? Or on the other hand, will this sort of message achieve something substantively different? Will the absence of climate change in the message have an effect on the outcomes? Will there be unanticipated consequences to removing climate change from discussions and activities aimed at addressing climate change? Discourse is important, as any poll, focus group administrator, or public opinion consultant knows. If we change the discourse away from “green” and “climate change,” at what point do we actually get something other than green and climate change mitigation as outcomes? And can we change the discourse without changing the outcome? Historically, the answer is no. Change the terms of the discussion and the outcomes will tend to follow—he who controls the discourse has the power. Such a deletion of the matter of concern—climate change—therefore represents not just a dilution of the message, but an appropriation of the cause by those we are meant to convince and on behalf of opponents of environmentalism.

The other part is that it matters to me that I don’t get lost in the messaging. I care about the means, not just the ends. I’m not selling toasters. I want real, lasting change. And that’s more than a marketing campaign with a limited time horizon can deliver. It comes from an informed society, not one that’s been sold climate change mitigation under the guise or in the shadow of something more appealing or comfortable. I want people to help mitigate climate change on purpose, because they’re aware of and care about the real consequences of their actions, and because climate change threatens everyone’s vision of a world in which our children can grow free and strong. That’s not moralistic; it’s empirical.

I’m not a politician or an advertising executive and I can’t talk to people like one. So here’s the truth: people are not just morons, crazies, or jerks. They’re much smarter than the messaging police and political consultants give them credit for. They’ll smell a fraud. We can’t trick people into caring, or doing, for that long. So I’m going to run on what I believe in. I deal in facts. Beware happiness.

Todd Jones is manager of Green-e Climate. He can be reached at todd [at] resource-solutions.org.

Photo copyright Flickr user Kristjanath

—by Laurel Hilton

Like many consumers, I try to buy organic, grass-fed, energy conscious, fair trade, shade grown and every other socially progressive label on the market. I value the privilege we enjoy as citizens of the U.S. to have access to these kinds of sustainability safeguards.

My buying habits usually go as far as what my family puts in their mouths―milk, eggs, beef; what they put close to themselves―organic cotton shirts, sheets, hats; or how we save fuel-carpooling and hybrid cars. But I have never given more than a fleeting thought to what we gaze at on our dining table, or inhale blissfully as we waltz by at the market―something that is especially popular this time of year―flowers.

Did you know that the majority of cut flowers we Americans so enjoy come from thousands of miles away. Columbia, South America holds sway over 70 percent of the U.S. market alone, that is a lot of flowers!

As with many of our societal concerns on importation, the flower industry has all the usual suspects: substandard labor laws, the use of pesticides and fungicides, transportation over long distances, harsh working conditions and often questionable loyalty to the thousands of employees it supports in developing countries. It is an unregulated market, but now consumer watchdogs are beginning to turn their attention to this lucrative industry.

Becoming better aware of this issue and then acting in good conscience has been my goal. Should we boycott another consumer item and refuse to purchase the lovely blooms we see at the store, amidst our gray and chilly winter backdrop, of course not. The story is actually more complicated than that.

The backbone of the flower industry is the people who work hard—from the farmers to flower assemblers to the drivers. Most of the workers (especially the farmers and assemblers) are women. Steady income from this work enables them to have autonomy and independence from fathers, husbands, and other male relatives. It empowers them to feel a sense of community and freedom, something we often take for granted in the U.S.

If we suddenly shunned store-bought flowers, we may put this workforce in a potentially worse situation. Regulators are starting to look more closely at growing and shipping practices and soon you will see certification labels on flowers in stores, much like you do on USDA labeled meat, products made with renewable energy, fair trade coffee and non-hormone treated milk.

You too can also be a conscientious consumer. Inquire at your local store about where flowers are sourced and if they have plans to support certified flowers in the future.

Last week, we celebrated Valentine’s Day and have many other flower-filled celebrations to look forward to this spring, such as Mother’s Day. Until a proper flower certification program is introduced, there is a small gesture you can embrace. When your loved one comes home with flowers for you in his or her arms, give thanks not just to your thoughtful partner, but consider offering a silent thought of gratitude to the person in a far distant land who nurtured a seedling into a beautiful bloom, packaged it and shipped it here, perfect and fragrant.

Laurel Hilton is development director at CRS and named after the Mountain Laurel. She is also mother to two year-old Zinnia Bleu, named for a favorite flower. Laurel can be reached at laurel [at] resource-solutions.org.

The San Francisco Federal Building, By Thom Mayne, Morphosis

by Maggie Fitzgerald

We’ve all seen buildings with huge metallic plaques near the door boasting an environmental performance award of some kind. But to the average person, these awards mean little when we do not know what they represent and what standards were met to achieve them. Here, I will provide you the basic facts of the major certifications so you can know just what it takes to get that shiny plaque.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)

LEED is the longest-running and one of the most recognizable certifications. Started by the U.S. Green Building Council in 1992, LEED uses a point scale to assess a building’s greenness. Based on the points achieved through the six main credit categories for evaluation (sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design) an approved building can be either simply certified, or receive a Silver, Gold, or the coveted Platinum certification level.

While LEED is an internationally recognized and respected certification, the high cost of certification is a deterrent to many builders and building owners (numbers vary, but estimates range from $2,500 to $25,000 for registration and assessment) as is the amount of paperwork involved. So why do it? Being LEED certified is a significant honor achievement that will draw attention (and perhaps esteemed higher-paying tenants) to a building. It is an expensive investment, but one that many owners feel will pay off in the long run due to improved recognition and overall cost savings from environmental efficiency, specifically energy savings.

Energy Star

Most people recognize the blue Energy Star label, which began with the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 as a voluntary labeling program for energy-efficient products. A few years later Energy Star certification became available for new homes, and in the years since it has expanded to include commercial buildings as well. As one may gather from the initial use of the Energy Star label, the main qualification as applied to buildings is energy savings; a building must be in the top 25% for energy efficiency nationally among similar buildings in order to qualify. This energy-only based approach not only makes Energy Star unique, but also compatible with other certifications. It is not uncommon to see a building boasting both an Energy Star and a LEED certification.

Green Globes

Green Globes, a relative newcomer into the U.S. building certification market, was launched in Canada and came to the US in 2004. Green Globes rates buildings on a 1,000-point scale in the areas of energy, indoor environment, site, water, resources, emissions, and project/environmental management. In order to be qualified, a building must achieve at least 35% of a possible 1,000 points, and from there will receive a rating from one to four globes. While Green Globes has not reached the popularity and recognition that LEED and Energy Star enjoy in the US, it is becoming more popular due to its affordable price—$500 for a 5-year subscription per building.

As you can see, the major certification programs have the same goal: recognize buildings that go above and beyond to reduce their environmental impact. Though there are perks and downfalls to each, these programs deserve applause for drawing attention and bringing prestige to green buildings.

Maggie Fitzgerald is a volunteer with Green-e Marketplace researching green building certifications. She graduated from Santa Clara University in 2010 and can be reached at maggie [at] resource-solutions.org.

Forest conversion and loss hasn’t rated very high on the U.S. political agenda since federal climate legislation stalled in 2010. But that doesn’t mean deforestation—nor its climate damage—has stopped.

We’re still losing about 90,000 acres of forestland, along with its capacity to safely absorb and store greenhouse gases, every day around the world (Source: FAO). Here at home, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates more than 57 million acres of U.S. forests will be converted to other uses by 2030 (Source: USDA).

Which is why it’s encouraging to see that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released a report detailing the potential of forests to combat global climate change.

Entitled Deforestation and Greenhouse Gases, the report assesses the climate role of forests and identifies the challenges facing policymakers in more fully harnessing forests in the fight against global climate change.

The report was compiled at the request of Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a co-author of the last attempt at a federal climate bill in 2010. He should be applauded for his commitment to this issue, says Pacific Forest Trust Board Secretary Andrea Tuttle, Ph.D., the former director of the California Department of Forestry. A global forest and climate consultant, Tuttle attends the negotiating sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as an observer for PFT.

“It’s great to see this issue back in the Congressional spotlight,” Tuttle said. “One of the bright spots in the UN climate negotiations has been the progress in setting the standards for measuring and slowing the global rate of deforestation. There’s a key role for the U.S. and other developed countries to play by incentivizing forest protection through well-designed markets for the climate benefits of forests.”

Unlike most other sectors, forests are unique in their capacity to act as either a net source of carbon sequestration OR a net source of the carbon emissions fueling climate change. When conserved and healthy, forests are a climate defense, absorbing and storing far more carbon dioxide than they emit. When cleared or degraded, forests become net emitters of greenhouse gases. Currently, forests hold about 760 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide globally—or more than 100 times all U.S. emissions in 2009. Despite the impressive magnitude of this carbon storage, however, deforestation and degradation continue to undermine global forest carbon sinks at an alarming rate. During the 1990s, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimated that forest loss was responsible for 20% of global GHG emissions in terms of warming impact. While this number fell to about 12% during 2000 to 2005, this decline was due to drastic increases in fossil fuel consumption—not any great reductions in deforestation.

The considerable carbon storage capacity of forests and the emissions associated with their loss make forests a central concern in addressing global climate change. In its assessment, the CBO recognizes the great potential of forests in climate change, but identifies several challenges that first must be overcome before this potential can be more fully realized. For instance, unlike many other emissions sources—where GHGs can be tracked at the end of a smokestack—quantifying emissions and sequestration from forests is much more challenging.

Generally, this requires monitoring changes in forest carbon storage from year to year, and converting gains and losses in wood volumes to GHG equivalents. However, with 95% of forest-based emissions arising from only 25 countries, most of which are developing nations in the tropics, existing forest inventory data are often inaccurate at best—or nonexistent at worst.

Further, the CBO notes that designing policies to reduce emissions through avoided deforestation can pose substantial challenges. For instance, when deforestation is halted in one location, demand for the goods that would have been produced may simply displace deforestation to another location. As a result, unless policies can find ways to prevent this demand-driven “leakage,” avoiding deforestation in one location may, in actuality, do little to reduce atmospheric GHG concentrations. Finally, even if these challenges can be overcome, governance issues in developing countries may complicate the implementation of policies to reduce forest loss.

Although attempting to address governance issues in developing nations may be challenging, the CBO notes that cultivating technical expertise, policy solutions, and strong markets for emissions reductions are all important ways in which developed nations can work toward reducing global deforestation.

California’s climate program, along with the development of other state and regional climate programs, also are important steps to addressing deforestation abroad, Tuttle notes.”Many states and provinces already offer examples of pro-climate forest policies. Certainly California is known for its programs, but forest landowners in New England, the Southeast and Northwest are also taking advantage of forest carbon protocols and markets.”

Low-density housing developments like this one in Maryland account for much of the 1.7 million acres of U.S. forestland that are converted each year.

While the challenges of reducing global deforestation may be considerable, the actions developed nations have taken to confront these issues internally are important first steps to addressing them internationally. Though deforestation in the U.S. pales in magnitude when compared to losses in the tropics, the technical expertise, markets, and policy approaches being developed here at home can have great applicability abroad. The CBO’s Deforestation and Greenhouse Gases report is an important reminder that the development of policies to address deforestation and emissions at home is a critical part of also doing so abroad.

Learn more about the Pacific Forest Trust’s work to pioneer forest and climate policy solutions here at home on their Working Forests, Winning Climate page.

You can read Andrea Tuttle’s analysis of the forest and climate progress made at international negotiations in Durban, South Africa, on the PFT blog.

This post is a re-post from the Pacific Forest Trust blog entry from January 18, 2012. Read the original here.

Anton Chiono is a policy Analyst at Pacific Forest Trust

by Ada Torres-Ramírez

The cost of electricity for most of the island nations along the arc of the Caribbean is triple what the average customer pays in the US (around 38 cents per kilowatt). Almost all of the electricity distributed comes from burning of imported fossil fuel. An oil based economy is a sad reality, in spite of the fact that there’s potential for renewable energy generation. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and ocean kinetic capacity is spread throughout the region. However, because islands are tiny, there’s not enough opportunity to have a return on investment for energy production. Since market scale is the obstacle, one way to go around it is to interconnect. The benefits that a green energy grid could have are worth the effort. In fact, a regional energy market for the Caribbean may already be brewing.

Establishing interconnection between islands through submarine cables can make investment more attractive through economies of scale. Electrical interconnection will facilitate the Caribbean Region’s economic development through access to affordable electricity and the establishment of an energy-trading industry.

Other regions have already taken bold measures to advance their infrastructure planning towards a Green Energy Grid. In the European Union, there is already a formal collaboration between regulatory agencies, transmission system operators, private entrepreneurs, and other groups that are involved in a progressive process of strategic planning. This includes zoning criteria and pre-permitting for project sites for different renewable energy sources. One of the valuable contributions of this meticulous planning process is that, in addition to enabling operational integration, it also facilitates financing for projects. As more efficient use of funding is made possible through the creation of energy markets, these markets will lower the costs of achieving renewable energy portfolio targets. The stability that a regional framework provides is a valuation criterion for investment purposes.

In the Caribbean, the business case for a similar undertaking is becoming clearer. This region’s natural assets make it an attractive tourism destination. Tourism accounts for up to 70% of Gross Domestic Product in some islands, and tourism is an energy-intensive industry. Any effort to secure access to renewable energy for the long term is welcome, as is the fact that the region will become an environmentally friendlier destination. Construction of renewable energy projects is at a very early stage. The capital investments required are huge, which makes any mechanism that will make the projects viable worth considering. Puerto Rico recently enacted its Renewable Portfolio Standard, allowing developers to sell renewable energy credits as part of their financing structure. Other Caribbean countries, like the Dominican Republic, use the Clean Development Mechanism to incentivize mitigation projects.

The establishment of a regional transmission energy grid and market for the Caribbean has many challenges. But the potential arising from it is also exciting. Notice has been taken by savvy international investors, and several projects in the Caribbean have already received funding from investors from as far away as the Middle East. The potential for wind, solar and geothermal energy is there, and the region does not intend on wasting it.

Ada Torres-Ramírez is the owner of BusinessWise, a Puerto Rico-based sustainable management and environmental marketing firm. She can be reached at adatorres [at] getbusinesswise.com.

by Rick Umoff

Even if you don’t pay close attention to the state of renewable energy financing, you’ve likely heard of the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) loan programs for renewable energy projects[i]. The DOE’s programs were made famous in 2011 by the bankruptcy of Solyndra, a California solar panel manufacturer that received a $535 million loan guarantee from the DOE[ii].

The Solyndra bankruptcy has whipped up a swarm of political controversy around the DOE’s loan programs. As someone who is both interested in renewable energy development and a U.S. taxpayer, I thought it appropriate to take a closer look at these programs and get some perspective on Solyndra independent of the political commentary.

So, What Are These Programs?

The DOE’s Loan Guarantee Program (LGP) is designed to fund clean energy projects that cannot otherwise get funding from the private sector[iii]. LGP loans are guaranteed by the federal government, meaning that if a loan recipient defaults, the federal government foots the bill.  The technology funded under this program must avoid, reduce, or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic (man-made) emissions of greenhouse gases.  This program was first put into place by Section 1703 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and extended by amendment in section 1705 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Some examples of companies funded by this program include[iv]:

• BrightSource Energy, Inc. (Solar Generation) – $1.6 billion
• US Geothermal, Inc. (Geothermal Generation) – $97 million
• Red River Environmental Products, LLC (Energy Efficiency) – $245 million

The Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) Loan Program[v] consists of direct loans (i.e. non-guaranteed loans) to support the development of advanced technology vehicles in the U.S. The main focus here is increased fuel efficiency. This program provides loans to car makers for the cost of re-equipping, expanding, or establishing manufacturing facilities. Some examples of companies funded by the ATVM program include[vi]:

• Ford Motor Company – $5.907 billion
• Nissan North America, Inc. – $1.448 billion
• Tesla Motors – $465 million

 Where Solyndra Fits In

Solyndra was a recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee under the LGP[vii]. This means that when Solyndra failed, the federal government backed the loan and took the loss—a huge hit to the taxpayer right? Well, yes. But to put things in perspective, the entire value of the LGP and ATVM loan programs combined is $35.9 billion[viii]. This means that Solyndra’s loan was about 1.5% of the DOE’s entire loan portfolio. And, although Solyndra borrowed a large chunk of change, it is not even close to the largest projects funded by the LGP. For example, both AREVA and Georgia Power Company are nuclear projects that received $2 billion and $8.33 billion respectively[ix].

In addition, the bankruptcy of Solyndra resulted in the loss of about 1,100 jobs[x]. That is a lot of jobs to lose during tough economic times. However, the DOE claims to have created 64,776 jobs through its loan programs[xi]. In other words, Solyndra resulted in the loss of roughly 1.7% of all the jobs created thus far under the DOE loan programs.

The failure of Solyndra is disappointing and deserves inquiry. However, stepping back to view the DOE loan programs in their entirety provides valuable perspective that is often lost in the political crossfire.

Rick Umoff is a legal intern at CRS and a third-year law student at the University of San Francisco. He can be reached at rick [at] resource-solutions.org.

by Andreas Karelas

On Wednesday October 19th, a group of seven U.S. solar manufacturers filed a formal complaint with the Department of Commerce and the International Trade Commission against China for illegally dumping inexpensive solar panels in the United States. The group is known as the Coalition for American Solar Manufacturing, and is led by SolarWorld, a U.S.-based solar manufacturer. The other six members are choosing to remain anonymous.

The Coalition claims that Chinese manufacturers have been receiving unfair subsidies from their government allowing them to provide solar at prices drastically lower than U.S. manufacturers with “dumping margins well in excess of 100 percent.”1

Supporters are arguing for heavy tariffs on Chinese solar panels coming into the U.S. in order to make “an even playing field” according to Kevin Kikelly, President of SolarWorld Americas. 2

Chinese government officials have responded to the claim strongly, accusing the American solar industry of protectionism. They also suggested that imposing tariffs could have dire consequences for American companies that do business with Chinese panel makers. 3

This move has stirred up controversy in the solar industry.

Renewable energy professionals are pointing out the potential implications of such measures for the burgeoning solar industry in the U.S.

Steve Leone of Renewable Energy World reported on October 20: “If a final determination is made in favor of the American companies, it could mean a doubling in the price of panels coming into the U.S. market.” 4

While the verdict on the legality of the Chinese solar subsidies is still out, the recent decrease in solar prices has created a massive boom for solar in the U.S. According to the Solar Electric Industries Association, “More than 100,000 Americans work in the solar industry, double the number since 2009. In the last year, solar grew by 69 percent, making it one of the fastest growing sectors in the economy.” In combination with increasingly popular solar finance mechanisms such as the solar lease and power purchase agreement, the falling prices are making solar economically viable for Americans.

The 1603 Cash Grant also played a huge role in the recent solar boom, although it is set to expire at the end of this year. The Cash Grant offers a cash rebate to renewable energy project developers in lieu of a 30% Federal investment tax credit. Without it, developers will have to look for tax equity in an investment climate where the demand far exceeds supply. Recurrent Energy CEO Arno Harris points out that “there’s $10 billion worth of need for tax equity, probably $3 billion of supply, and with the expiration of the grant coming up, we face a tremendous challenge.” 5

Losing the cash grant alone will put the solar industry in a very precarious position. If the U.S. puts heavy tariffs on solar photovoltaic panels imported from China, as the SolarWorld coalition requests, this could put a halt to the rapid growth of the U.S. solar industry seen in recent years.

Barry Cinnamon, CEO of Westinghouse Solar, had this to say: “The market’s growing up. And especially what that means for our industry, is there’s a lot more installation jobs out there. I cringe when I think about the number of installation jobs and projects that would get canceled around the country if the price of panels were to double overnight.” 6

Julie Blunden, executive vice president of solar manufacturer Sunpower and CRS Board member said: “We don’t plan to join” [SolarWorld’s petition]. The petition, she said, is “an unfortunate distraction from the efforts to work together to expand the opportunity for solar.” 7

The U.S. has already delayed global climate negotiations by not signing the Kyoto Protocol or agreeing to mandatory emissions reductions. If the U.S. attacks the Chinese for investing in its solar industry, it will create even more roadblocks to climate solutions.

A handful of U.S. solar manufacturing companies, like Solyndra and others, are failing in part because of weak federal policy support for renewable energy in an ever-competitive global market. Rather than trying to lock the Chinese out of the U.S. market, the U.S. should be trying to compete. The U.S. would be wise to strengthen its support for American solar rather than try to diminish Chinese support for Chinese solar.

Meanwhile, House and Senate Democrats are advocating the elimination of over $20 billion in subsidies for oil companies in an effort to reduce the federal deficit. If the U.S. government can start to shift subsidies away from the fossil fuel industry and apply them towards renewable energy, it would be taking the right steps towards remaining competitive in the growing global clean-tech industry, as well as lowering greenhouse-gas emissions. 8

In 1957 the Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite into the Earth’s Orbit, and the Space Race began. Determined to be the leader in space exploration, the United States competed with the Soviet Union tirelessly for decades. As history would show, those investments made during the Space Race would later lead to new technologies that transformed the economy, created countless jobs, and changed the way the world operates.

Now we see that the Solar Race is on. As a nation and an industry, we can choose to call foul on the play, and hope that the referees will stop the game; or we can tighten our laces, keep running, and hope to catch up.

Andreas Karelas is the founder and Executive Director of RE-volv (www.re-volv.org), a nonprofit organization that raises money through donations to finance community solar energy projects. He can be reached at andreas [at] re-volv.org.

by Brendan Cook

Did you know that just about everything is bringing about the end of the world? That really is a shame. We’ve all heard it, and from just about every angle, calls to action (or non-action) are loaded with despair. I’ll assume that our CRS Blog followers are up to speed with the state of our global environment, so no need to list our challenges. To make strides, creativity is needed to bring about more sustainable behavior and to truly understand our world. If one lesson is to be learned, scare tactics are not necessarily bringing about creative change. Beneath all that doom and gloom, however, lie innovation, opportunity, and whole host of people who are passionate about changing things for the better.

Great! Now, where to find all of this inspiration?

TED
If you’ve been online for more than a few months, chances are a TED video has shown up in a social media feed. What is TED? TED simply provides “ideas worth spreading.” It’s exactly that, a wide range of inspiring ideas all delivered through the accessible way of storytelling. TED has an annual (and very expensive) conference, but has conveniently moved more local, with chapters known as TEDx springing up around the globe. Can’t make it? Not to worry, you’ll find most of the talks online and the annual conference is streamed live. The topics are as diverse as the speakers and I suggest starting with a subject you would normally deem boring; one might become suddenly entranced by ant communication or building a toaster from scratch. www.ted.com

Pecha Kucha
The name may sound strange, but Pecha Kucha fits the modern, focused attention span. PK’s story begins in Tokyo, and taking its name from the “sound of conversation,” provides a quick forum for designers to talk about their work. Presenters show 20 slides, each for 20 seconds. Even if PowerPoint puts you in a sleepy daze, Pecha Kucha keeps it simple, fun, and the speakers regularly incorporate sustainability into their designs. Pecha Kucha may not have all their videos online, so what better excuse to experience the talks in person. Lucky for you, Pecha Kucha boasts events in 445 cities around the globe. Watch out, Tampere, Finland. www.pecha-kucha.org

PopTech
For those techno-centric thinkers who can’t get enough of the TED style format and the content of Wired magazine, there’s PopTech, which focuses on the social innovations happening with new technologies. PopTech has an accelerator foundation, a fellows program and plenty of online videos to get your brain moving. They’re not as local as some of the others, but if you find yourself in Maine, they hold their annual conference each October. www.poptech.org

Your City
Do your research, online and in person; chances are your community has a similar forum for better and even improbable ideas. If not, start one! Whether you attend the Aspen Ideas Festival or set up a blog about local issues, find a good fit to help you carve out your niche of change.

Brendan Cook is an analyst with Green-e Marketplace and an unabashed optimist. He can be reached at brendan [at] resource-solutions.org

by Todd Jones

I’ve always been interested in land use planning and transportation as an environmental sub-discipline. So when I heard Peter Calthorpe on National Public Radio talking about his new book, Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change, I went straight online and ordered a copy. Well, not straight. First, I went into a bookstore (a what?) and asked for it. They told me it was categorized as a textbook and I had to order it online. I would not be deterred however, not even by the $35.00 price tag.

I beamed when it finally arrived. I ran it into the house and destroyed the packaging. “It’s…it’s really thin,” I said out loud. That $35.00 price tag was starting to smart a little. 130 pages soaking wet. Given the complexity of both urbanism and climate change, I was disappointed before even opening it.

I had taken a couple classes on urban land use planning and transportation in grad school, and even written a couple papers of my own on the subject (one that was upwards of 50 pages long, which I thought must rival Calthorpe’s book in terms of sheer length). I looked over at my copy of The Reluctant Metropolis on the bookshelf, easily my favorite of the books I’ve read on the subject—400+ pages. I’m no expert, but I knew enough to know something had to be missing from Calthorpe’s book.

Still, I thought, he sounded great on NPR, and he’s a big deal. I looked back at my bookshelf and saw the battered spine of Blaikie’s The Political Economy of Soil Erosion in Developing Countries, a book scarcely 200 pages long that absolutely transformed my view of environmental science and policy once upon a time. Reinvigorated, I sat with my new book and prepared myself for another Blaikie moment.

In spite of infographics that are distracting at best and confusing at worst, this book is an accessible outline of how climate and land use are related, and a vivid vision for sustainable, climate-smart growth. Calthorpe presents urbanism (and in its most advanced form, green urbanism) as a critical solution to rising greenhouse gas emissions and other resource issues, but also as the most suitable and modern design approach, which brings various other social and economic benefits.

He lays out the various elements of urbanism and presents important ideas like regional planning, mixed-use zoning, and the urban transit network. He makes thoughtful arguments for design over engineering, place-based design approaches, improving accessibility over transportation, integration of planning professions over specialization and departmentalization, and human-scale development with community-scale services. He explains important concepts like transit-oriented development (TOD), systems efficiency, walkability, human scale, community, diversity, conservation, and connectivity. He also provides a useful new lexicon of zoning and planning terms as a part of a new planning tool, The Urban Footprint.

Alas however, no Blaikie moment. It’s all just a successful introduction to what should be a much heftier work. Though Calthorpe occasionally uses examples to illustrate these concepts, he fails to adequately put them to use for the reader. He never unpacks them or contextualizes them in the political, social, and historical ecology of any place in particular. He never situates his vision amidst the power relations that constrain all resource use, especially land. We are denied the gritty reality of what it takes to achieve the political and social change needed to achieve changes to the physical environment.

It is case studies that are missing. Case studies are different than examples. They don’t just explain the “what,” but the “how” as well. “How” is the question that’s really begged by this book. The “what” (urbanism) and the “why” (climate change) are well covered. “Where” is tackled in general but not specific terms. “Who” is also conspicuously muted. But the absence of “how” leaves the whole story feeling hypothetical. How can we implement all of this? Not in general, but in particular. How has it happened before? How has it failed before and why? Who wins and who loses?

Fulton’s The Reluctant Metropolis is chock-full of horror stories, ways that entrenched political interests and historical processes in land use decisionmaking can prescribe the type of development that occurs, regardless of community involvement or individual effort. This helps explain why Los Angeles looks and works the auto-centric way it does. Calthorpe gives us a brief history of land use development in America in his second chapter, but it’s depoliticized and so it stops well short at: the auto suburb was once suited to our lifestyles and now it is not. Sprawl is still a black box. This depoliticized history yields a depoliticized prescription. But regional planning, for example, involves questions of municipal autonomy for crying out loud. This can’t work the same everywhere. Calthorpe essentially offers up a toolkit but without any information about the worksite or conditions. As a result, many or all of the tools may be completely unsuitable for the work, or worse yet, may yield an entirely unintended product.

My second chief complaint with Urbanism in the Age of Climate Change is that it is focused squarely on the next wave of growth, not existing sprawl. Perhaps that is not the aim of the book, in which case it’s hardly a fair criticism, but I am curious how we get from sprawl to green urbanism. And how do we break the cycle of sprawl once it’s in place, since existing sprawl will demand auto-centric development suited to sprawl. In so many areas, we are not starting from scratch. How would walkable, mixed-use development work when it’s surrounded by sprawl? Would it work at all? Perhaps it all goes back to regional planning, which needs to account for integration of existing outlying low-density areas with new urbanism. There is some discussion of urban infill, redevelopment, and retrofit in the book, but Calthorpe’s examples are limited to either redevelopment of individual lots in an already dense downtown or new urban designs for undeveloped swaths.

Both of my chief complaints illustrate a crisis of context for the book: the sociopolitical and historical context as well as the existing physical built environment.

I realize I’ve been heavy with the Tabasco in this review, so let me emphasize that this book is worth reading (though perhaps not buying in hardback), especially if you’re new to the subject. It’s certainly not that Calthorpe has nothing new to say. He clearly has a great deal of experience and I hope that in future volumes he decides to ground the work in these experiences and paint a decidedly less apolitical picture…with fewer infographics.

Todd Jones is manager of Green-e Climate, and lives in a neighborhood he can afford with a walk score of 65. He can be reached at todd [at] resource-solutions.org

by Orrin Cook

With the celebration of Labor Day in early September came a report of Americans having the highest rating of dissatisfaction with their job in modern history. Given the muddled state of our national economy, maybe it’s not such a surprise. And it’s certainly not hard to imagine jobs in which the hours of 9–5 are a grind, where you might feel disconnected from your values and not “fully present” in your position—I’ve certainly been there before! If you’re running a business, there are myriad reasons you want your employees to be as happy as possible: greater productivity, higher creativity, increased loyalty, better recruitment, and improved resiliency. The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index suggests that this disengagement is a crisis costing America $300 billion in lost productivity annually. But what are the paths to managing greater job satisfaction? There are many contributions to greater workplace well-being, but I’d like to focus on one: employee engagement.

Much of the literature today suggests that those employees who perceive their company to be good corporate citizens will bring a greater part of their “true self” to work, because the company reflects more of their own value set. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, a long-time buyer of renewable energy, puts this into practice. President Bob Stiller has talked openly about how their meaningful workplace gives the company a competitive edge in attracting and retaining employees:

I’ve learned that people are motivated and more willing to go the extra mile to make the company successful when there’s a higher good associated with it. It’s no longer just a job. Work becomes meaningful and this makes us more competitive. (see Glavas and Piderit 2009).

If we’re looking to create programs, benefits, or incentives to address a common set of values that speak to employees, then why not focus on renewable energy? Over 80% of Americans are supportive of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar. In a divisive age, with entrenched views expressed through sharp tongues, the value of renewable energy rises neatly above the political spectrum because of its numerous and often universal appeals: energy independence, clean air, economic growth opportunities, and generational responsibility.

Marty Sedler, Intel’s Director of Global Utilities and Infrastructure, provided insightful discussion in a recent Green-e webinar “Engaging Employees in Sustainability: Insights from the Field.” While Intel is long known as the top U.S. purchaser of renewable energy, Sedler outlined the company’s recent work on many new initiatives, including installing solar panels on covered parking for employees and negotiating group discounts with a solar panel manufacturer for employees who were looking to install solar panels on their own homes. He talked of having workers so engaged and creating so many new sustainability ideas that Intel is now looking to set up management systems just to harness this burst of employee-led innovation.

The workplace is the location where we spend the single most amount of time in our waking life, so job satisfaction is critically linked to life satisfaction. If organizations want to create environments that help reflect employee’s personal values and bring bottom line benefits, then there certainly is an opportunity for engagement around renewable energy.

Orrin Cook is manager of Green-e Marketplace and works with businesses that improve their sustainability through renewable energy commitments. Contact him at orrin [at] resource-solutions.org.

by Robin Quarrier

This post is not about social networking. Or, let me correct that, it’s not about online networking, but rather the socializing related to networking. In particular, green or environmental networking in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Along with renewable energy claims, the FTC’s Green Guides, certification marks, and baking the perfect oatmeal cookies, I consider green networking in the bay area one of my areas of expertise (though I’ve spent far more time on the latter two).

First, a little background in why I spend so much time networking. I’m from the East Coast, went to college back east, did a two-year stint in Boston as a utility consultant, then to University of Arizona for law school. After law school I went straight to the bay area, and to Center for Resource Solutions (CRS). As my geographic history would suggest, I came to my role at CRS with few bay area connections, and even fewer attorneys to call upon when questions outside of my experience popped up. I knew early on that I would have to build a network when I found myself dealing with questions as in-house counsel that I believe associates in big law firms can only dream of, in such cutting-edge areas of the law as certification marks, renewable energy and carbon offset transactions. Being on my own, however, meant risking thousands of dollars in outside counsel fees or, alternatively, jumping in solo as a fresh attorney and risk ethical violations for working so far outside of my realm of expertise.

Building a network of resources I could call on when I needed them turned out to be a lot more fun than I expected, and I’ve met many people in related industries that I turn to frequently for help and advice. Here are a few organizations that I highly recommend:

1. The Women of Wind Energy (WoWE)

The first group I joined was the Women of Wind Energy. The group is part of a national organization that is affiliated with the American Wind Energy Association, and has chapters all around the country. This group of women is warm and friendly, organizing educational and networking events. Many of the women are engineers, transmission and permitting consultants, and developers, and members work at large companies and small start-ups (sometimes founded by the women themselves). The group has an intimate and relaxed feel. All events are open to men and women. The Bay Area chapter is organized by Andrea Tabor.

Next Event: Women in Renewable Energy Career Panel
Thursday, October 13, 2011, 6:30 PM-8:30 PM
HubSoMA, 901 Mission Street, San Francisco
Notable female industry leaders including Jan Blittersdorf-CEO of NRG Systems, Daphne Li- Former COO of Sungevity, Sonita Lontoh- Head of Corporate Marketing at Trilliant, and Stephanie Wang-Director of Programs and Campaigns for the Clean Coalition, will discuss their professional and personal development in the renewables field and how they are individually paving the way to a clean energy future.

2. The Women’s Environmental Network (WEN)
I attended a couple of WEN events, and knew that this was a group I would like to be a part of. I have been on the WEN board for over a year now and consider the women to be great friends. As a WEN member you receive a monthly newsletter with events, job postings, and spotlights. They host a diversity of events and all events are open to men and women.

Next Event: Happy Hour at Jupiter
Tuesday, September 13 from 6:00 – 8:00 PM
Jupiter,  2181 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, California

3. Green Drinks
These events are crowded. It is more bar scene than networking. I did meet some interesting women there, and reconnected with folks I had met elsewhere—that said, I was surprised by the number of men I met who were not working in the environmental fields at all. I have my guesses as to why they were there, but it’s not just the men who are looking for women in green. Likewise, one of my male friends who works in environmental law said that he is always surprised how many women he meets who do not have a demonstrated interest in the environment. These events take place once a month. There is also Green Business Drinks, which is focused on sustainable business and meets on the 2nd Thursdays of the month at Elixir on 16th and Guerrero from 6:00–8:00PM.

This event reoccurs on the first Tuesday of the month
Time: 5:30-8:30 p.m.
Location: 111 Minna Art Gallery, @ 2nd Street

4. Eco Tuesday
EcoTuesday is a structured networking event for sustainable business leaders. This organization is an answer to my qualms with Green Drinks. The events attract people of specific interests by organizing around a speaker. At the start of the event everyone stands around in a large circle and introduces themselves. This may sound like a waste of time, but it makes networking later far more effective an amounts to communal speed networking. Nearly everyone I meet has some interest or skill to contribute. Event locations vary. You may want to snack before hand, as drinks are available for purchase, but food is notably absent. Also, these events are so good that you will want to stay until the very end, which may be as late as 9pm.This event reoccurs on the fourth Tuesday of each month in cities across the country.

5. Women in Cleantech & Sustainability

If you are in the South Bay, I highly recommend this organization, and I hear that they are expanding to host more San Francisco events. Lisa Ann Pinkerton, President of Technica Communications started this meetup to support the careers of women in the fields of cleantech and sustainability, from student and entry level all the way to the executive level.They have interesting topics, great food and drinks. The group has an intimate feel and you will have the opportunity to speak with industry leaders.

Next event: Living a Sustainable Life, Inside and Out
Sept 15 6pm-9pm at Silicon Valley Pad 1370 Willow Rd  in Menlo Park.
This event will cover maintaining balance on all levels of life including natural health remedies, limiting exposure to toxins, and simple ways to handle emotions and stress. Special guests include, Dr. Daniel Auer DC, Integrative Health Physician, Julien Adler, Executive Business Coach, Master Hypnotherapist and Neuro-Linguistic Programmer, Lauren Shroyer, MS, & ATC Personal Trainer and Lifestyle Coach, Susan Cann, NYR (Neal’s Yard Remedies) Organic Skin Care, Independent Consultant. [See the Meetup Page]

6. Climate One at the Commonwealth Club
Hugely informational discussions draw in both quality speakers and informed audiences. There are networking opportunities before and after the events—however in my experience everyone is so focused on the speakers that attendees often forget or are too distracted to start up conversations. Don’t forget to carry your business cards everywhere you go. Hope to see you out there!

Robin Quarrier is Chief Networker and in-house counsel at CRS. She can be reached at robin [at] resource-solutions.org.

How you can explore California by bike while supporting CRS in Climate Ride California 2011

by Anne-Franziska Sinner

“Wind is blowing into my face. It is a strong cool breeze, almost pushing me backwards. At least that’s what it feels like. I see a steep hill in front of me with the top approaching very slowly. I can smell the trees which inch towards me in slow motion. Birds are singing and in the background I hear the sound of the ocean rushing. I am exhausted. Sweat is running down my face, my legs are burning and my hands heart from clutching the handlebar. But I do not want to give up and stop before I have reached the top of the hill. I let my mind wander away, thinking about how beautiful and undisturbed it seems, the nature around me … and how lucky I am that I get the chance to breeze the salty air, hear the natural sounds of the environment, being able to stop whenever and wherever I want, feeling the freedom without rushing, being away from my daily work and the stressful city life…

…And suddenly, I have reached the top of the hill. My hard work is rewarded with a view which almost takes my breath away: A long beautiful beach with colorful dunes to the fore and the blue endless ocean disappearing in the thin haze. My pain from cresting the hill is already forgotten. And after a long break, I am ready to fly down the hill again. The speed and the energy will help me to climb the next hill where another breathtaking view is waiting for me. And that excitement is motivating me to go on and on.”

I wrote this last year, as part of my travel diary when biking along the Californian Coast, from San Francisco northwards.

You might think “why”? Why bike if you can take the car? By car, it would be much more relaxing, not as exhausting to go the same route, you can go even further and get to see even more.

Indeed, biking is slow and I obviously did not get as far as I would by car. But biking is about the details. The much slower travel offers you experiences you would never have sitting or passing by in a car. On a bike, I get much closer to my environment. I feel it, I smell it, I hear it. Also, travelling seems less rushed and more relaxed when you have the excuse to take a lot of breaks.

Of course, biking is exhausting. But it is also a very satisfying feeling, to be totally tired when going to bed knowing that you have biked 60 or more miles. And what I enjoy most is reaching my final destination. When biking, this makes me happy and fulfilled. I like the concept of approaching something step by step when it actually seems really far away. And because travelling by bike is so strenuous and everything seems pretty far, milestones get really important. These can mean anything small to look forward to, anything that takes me a little bit closer to my destination. Usually I use a map to determine good stopovers, but sometimes other milestones come up, like the top of the hill with the ocean view.

I really like this kind of step-by-step concept. It is a very nice approach that can be applied in any other context as well. At CRS we identify best practices and create implementation tools that promote renewable power generation. We work a lot with environmental policy regarding renewable energy. Here too it is important to have a roadmap: a detailed plan to guide us in setting standards and determining a course of action to develop a sustainable energy system in the future. We need milestones, a series of steps to be carried out to accomplish our goals and develop an energy supply system that does not contribute to climate change.

One step could be something very easy like a switch to a more sustainable transportation mode, like moving from cars to bikes whenever possible.

This idea has been taken up by Climate Ride California 2011, a charitable bike ride to support sustainable solutions, bike advocacy, and environmental causes. Climate Ride California is a 5-day bicycle ride in Northern California. CRS is a beneficiary for this year’s California Climate Ride, which runs from October 2–6 and travels from Eureka to San Francisco. Anyone who signs up for the ride is able to choose to raise money for CRS and support our work to advance sustainable energy. CRS has chosen to represent a “Team Buy Clean Energy,” named after our ongoing campaign to promote clean energy purchases among individuals and businesses at www.buycleanenergy.org.

This brings me back to the point of my small story: when you’re sitting on your bike, wind blowing in your hair, you are escaping civilization, and absorbing the gorgeous California landscape while passing beautiful beaches, redwood trees, and vineyards—all by following the road map to finally cross the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco. This is something so amazing, you have to try it! And the Climate Ride is a perfect opportunity.

To learn more about Climate Ride California 2011 and sign up, see the announcement on the CRS site.

Anne-Franziska Sinner is a Green-e Energy Analyst and avid cyclist. She can be reached at afsinner [at] resource-solutions.org.