Chill Your Power Bill

by Carl Pope
Sierra Magazine
March/April 2009

Retrofitting America could jump-start our economy...

...Quite simply, we need to rebuild America. We need to retrofit our entire housing stock, and in a hurry. Economically it makes sense. Most older buildings could halve their energy consumption with improvements that pay for themselves. Homeowners and small-business owners ought to be able to call a toll-free number to arrange for an energy audit and the necessary retrofit work. Their utility bills would decrease, and half the savings could go to repaying their loans. GreenSaver, a nonprofit in Toronto, has embraced this concept and is already making money; Berkeley, California, is letting citizens who install solar power systems pay for them over 20 years through their property taxes.

Happily, this prescription is no longer being promoted solely by the Sierra Club and a handful of progressive cities and states: President Barack Obama himself has embraced the vision described here. His first economic recovery package emphasized retrofitting public buildings--it's easy and fast. This will jump-start the green building industry by requiring worker training and new factories to make energy-efficient windows, insulation, furnaces, and air conditioners. Local and state governments will see their operating costs plummet (utility bills are often their second-biggest expense after salaries) and could repay the loans with the savings.

And once we finish with public buildings, we will have the infrastructure in place to rebuild the rest of the country. Every year the federal government gives out $5 billion to help poor people pay their utility bills; why not spend $100 billion, once, to insulate and retrofit homes to slash power bills permanently? (continued)


http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200903/create.aspx

Cascade Green: 100% Carbon Offset Beer

“...for beer drinkers who have an interest in environmental issues.” Burp.

We’ve covered a couple of green Antipodean beers before (Green Man and Mountain Goat), but here is a another twist. Cascade Brewery, from Tasmania, have declared their new Cascade Green as 100% carbon neutral from the picking of hops to the eventual deposit in the recycling bin.

And although the company isn’t claiming the ingredients are organic or vegan or suchlike, they do suggest they are all locally sourced from Tasmania. That the brewery has already reduced its energy usage by 16% and water usage by 30% per unit of production over the last six years. And that Cascade Green will travel to drinker’s lips courtesy of what is said to be lightest weight, highest recycled content glass bottle currently available in Australia. And cartons of stuff will traverse the land in 100% recycled cardboard printed with two-colour biodegradable vegetable inks.

The carbon neutral aspect comes via the purchase of Australian Government Greenhouse Friendly certified carbon offsets go to supporting the Hobart Landfill Flare Facility. This AGL operated landfill extracts methane-rich gas from decomposing organic waste to generate 7,500 MWh of electricity per annum, enough to supply more than 1,100 homes. The project is said to save over 35,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum, equal to taking 9,200 cars of the road each year.

Cascade is owned the Australian brewing powerhouse Fosters. Their Sustainability Manager, Scott Delzoppo said that "Reducing our carbon footprint makes good business sense. The work completed to understand and reduce the carbon footprint of Cascade Green is an important input into our continuing group efforts to reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions." ::Cascade Green, via The Australian.

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/03/cascade_green_1.php

Norway Aims to Go Carbon Neutral by 2030

OSLO (Reuters) - Norway, which last year set what it called the world's most ambitious target for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, said on Thursday it aimed to go "carbon neutral" in 2030, which is 20 years earlier than its previous target.

The new target was set when the Labour-led coalition government reached agreement with three opposition parties to bring the goal forward from 2050.

The government said last year that Norway would aim to cut net emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) to nil by 2050 by reducing emissions at home and investing abroad in environmental projects that will give Norway CO2 reduction credits.

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The plan includes offsetting Norwegian emissions by spending around 3 billion crowns ($553.1 million) per year to combat deforestation in developing countries. Forests act as a sink for CO2, the main greenhouse gas blamed for causing global warming.

Under the Kyoto Protocol curbing greenhouse emissions, countries do not get credit for the effect of their own forests, but they can get credits by planting trees in developing lands.

"The parties now think it is realistic to assume reductions in Norwegian climate gas emissions of 15-17 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents by 2020 when forests are included," the government said in a statement.

Three million metric tons of that reduction would come from Norway's forests absorbing carbon, it said.

The initial target was to cut 13-16 million metric tons of CO2.

Achieving the target will require cutting Norway's total emissions by two-thirds domestically, the statement said.

Environmental groups said the deal was too vague, and Oil and Energy Minister Aaslaug Haga acknowledged: "We don't know how we will achieve the goals yet, and that is challenging."

A "significant sum" of money will be earmarked for investment in renewable energy, mass transport and measures to reduce emissions from the transport sector, while tax on diesel fuel will rise by 0.1 crowns ($0.018) per liter and on gasoline by 0.05 crowns, the government said.

"Both carrot and stick will be used to promote more environmentally friendly behavior and to reduce climate gas emissions," the centre-left coalition said.

Finance Minister Kristin Halvorsen of the Socialist Left (SV) party said the policy would lead to reductions in greenhouse gas emissions both in Norway and abroad.

"The agreement gives Norway a far-sighted climate policy that can stand independently of shifting governments," Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said in the statement.

MOON LANDING

Stoltenberg, who heads the Labour Party, has said Norway's policy on cutting CO2 emissions is the world's most ambitious and he has likened the challenge of fighting climate change to a "moon landing" for the 21st century.

Norway, with a population of just 4.7 million, is the world's fifth-biggest exporter of oil and Western Europe's biggest exporter of natural gas.

Endowed with rivers and waterfalls, it gets almost all its own electricity from non-polluting hydroelectric stations. But the Nordic country aims to begin burning natural gas for power generation in the future to satisfy growing demand.

The government wants emissions from such power plants to be captured and buried, a technology still under development.

"The agreement implies technologies that are not known yet," Stoltenberg told a news conference.

The government said it would spend an extra 70 million crowns ($12.91 million) this year on research into renewable energy and carbon capture and storage this year, and funding for such research would rise to at least 600 million in 2010.

(Reporting by John Acher; editing by Anthony Barker)



http://www.enn.com/pollution/article/29456