wrdforwrd

Reports of the solar industry’s pending demise have been greatly exaggerated, at least according to research by McKinsey.

According to the consultancy, the solar-power industry is merely suffering from “growing pains.” The article, “Solar power: Darkest before dawn,” dispels the notion that the industry has “lapsed into a classic cycle of boom and bust after a decade of unprecedented growth” even though that might appear to be what’s happening. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are on the fence about that new Nissan Leaf or Chevy Volt, how does taking $10,000 off sound? That’s right, those thinking about jumping into the EV market could pocket a nice new incentive in the form of a $10,000 rebate, which is part of President Obama’s Fiscal Year 2013 budget plan.

While lacking in specifics, the proposal is a boost and a change in approach – buyers of electric vehicles currently are eligible for a $7,500 tax credit for the tax-filing year in which the vehicle is purchased, while the new rebate program would allow consumers to slice $10,000 off the top of an EV at the time of purchase.

It’s a big incentive for potential buyers who are scared off by the pricing of EVs, which are still a bit beyond the comfort zone of what many consumers are prepared to pay, even though their yearly savings at the gas pump will be substantial. It should also boost sales for vehicles such as the Chevy Volt and the Nissan Leaf. For example instead of making payments on a Volt, which lists at $41,000, a buyer would see that financing hit drop to $31,000. For the Leaf, the base price would drop to about $26,000 with the rebate.

It’s argued that the tax credit idea—a product of the Bush Administration—favors wealthy buyers who can more easily afford higher upfront payments in exchange for a lower tax rate in April. The Obama rebate makes EVs more accessible to the average American.

The rebate could also apply to natural gas vehicles and other high tech, green cars, according to reports.

Assuming Congress will go along with this, which is a major if given the parlous conditions there, it’s a great idea that’s a win-win-win for the makers, sellers and buyers of EVs. It’s also a big win for the environment, sustainability and energy independence. That’s a lot of wins.

It’s far from a done deal, but this could change a lot of minds about EVs, especially now that gas prices are spiking—again. For example under the rebate plan, a Leaf might be financed for about $300 a month, which is probably what many people have to scrape up each month for gasoline in their current driver.

Companies have yet to post significant emissions reductions across their supply chains despite the opportunities those actions would mean for cost savings, according to the Carbon Disclosure Project and Accenture.

That disheartening conclusion from an environmental sustainability perspective was revealed in A New Era: Supplier Management in the Low-Carbon Economy, the CDP’s fourth annual global survey of the preparedness of company supply chains for climate change impacts. Read the rest of this entry »

Like a mixed green salad, GreenBiz Group‘s fifth annual 2012 State of Green Business report offers a jumbled view of the current green and sustainable business landscape.

“Things aren’t going as well as we’d hoped,” said Joel Makower, principal author of the 84-page report. “For the first time since we began doing our assessment, in 2008, several of the indicators have taken a downward turn.”

Each year GreenBiz examines sustainable business by tracking 20 indicators of progress that measure such things as carbon emissions, e-waste recycling, green office space, vehicle fleet emissions, toxic emissions, energy efficiency, employee commuting, corporate reporting, and a dozen other metrics. Read the rest of this entry »

Is it really possible that urban planners and transportation planners aren’t very much in sync when they do their planning things?

Apparently so, although it’s a situation that’s changing, according to a new book from Jeffrey Tumlin, Sustainable Transportation Planning, published this month by John Wiley & Sons.

“Transportation must be seen as inseparable from land use planning or economic development – indeed, the best transportation plan is a good land use plan,” he says.

Early on in the book, he makes this salient and telling point: “City planners and urban designers are often in conflict with transportation professionals.” Of course his statement is true if reversed, but he adds that for a long time “transportation professionals may have barely noticed the planners.” Read the rest of this entry »

I believe it is. Police can break up the various “Occupy” camps across the country, but they can’t break the movement. As disorganized, disparate and disheveled as some would like to believe Occupy Wall Street and its regional allies are, the barn door is open and the horse is romping freely in the field.

This could well be the early stages of a new progressive movement, according to Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. The Occupy gatherings “are most likely the start of a new era in America,” he wrote in a recent New York Times article.

“Historians have noted that American politics moves in long swings,” he continued. “We are at the end of the 30-year Reagan era, a period that has culminated in soaring income for the top 1 percent and crushing unemployment or income stagnation for much of the rest. The overarching challenge of the coming years is to restore prosperity and power for the 99 percent.”

The roots of today’s crises of vast income and wealth inequality, corporate dominance and feckless, inept elected leaders lie with the direction that Reagan took the nation – making government the problem, slashing taxes for the rich along with outlays on public services and infrastructure investment, and sweeping deregulation.

“Reagan’s was a fateful misdiagnosis,” Sachs says. “He completely overlooked the real issue — the rise of global competition in the information age — and fought a bogeyman, the government. Decades on, America pays the price of that misdiagnosis, with a nation singularly unprepared to face the global economic, energy and environmental challenges of our time.”

And yet Washington “still channels Reaganomics… Both parties have joined in crippling the government in response to the demands of their wealthy campaign contributors, who above all else insist on keeping low tax rates on capital gains, top incomes, estates and corporate profits. Corporate taxes as a share of national income are at the lowest levels in recent history. Rich households take home the greatest share of income since the Great Depression.”

The American people are waking up and the OWS movement wants to challenge and change the channel of inequality.

“Following our recent financial calamity, a third progressive era is likely to be in the making,” Sachs writes. “This one should aim for three things. The first is a revival of crucial public services, especially education, training, public investment and environmental protection. The second is the end of a climate of impunity that encouraged nearly every Wall Street firm to commit financial fraud. The third is to re-establish the supremacy of people votes over dollar votes in Washington.”

Sachs says the people in Zuccotti Park and more than 1,000 cities have put the nation on a path to renewal.

While it’s hard to think in absolute terms about something so new, something without central leadership or a written platform, the need to reverse obvious flaws has touched a chord.

Perhaps, as Sachs says, a new generation of leaders who are not on the corporate take is just getting started. Perhaps it is history in the making and the dawn of a new progressive era. Perhaps it needs to be the crowd-sourcing movement it is and not a party or corporation or organization that’s easily corrupted and dominated by the wealthiest few. Perhaps the pendulum—as pendulums do—is swinging back.

Yeah, that’s a lot of perhaps – but one thing is certain – the OWS idea. A tent can be taken down and people can be dispersed with pepper spray. Not an idea.

In The Stand, one of Stephen King’s early (and imo best) novels a nuclear power plant becomes a central part of the action, and indeed is instrumental in keeping the world from descending into barbarism.

It sort of makes the point that, as The Police say, “When the world is running down/You make the best of what’s still around.” There is something to be said for the role of nuclear power as part of the modern-day, post-carbon-based fuel energy mix.

But a revised and updated version of the Sierra’s Club‘s classic Nukespeak throws some needed clear thinking about the inherent dangers of nuclear energy and concludes, as the first edition did, that it’s not really worth the risk.

Nearly 30 years ago, in the wake of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, the first edition of Nukespeak from Sierra Club Books was published and immediately framed public debate on the immense risks of nuclear technology.

The extensively revised and updated edition promises to continue that debate, especially in the aftermath of the March earthquake and tsunami that struck the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan.

According to the Club, the original 1982 edition broke through the “linguistic filter of the nuclear mindset,” by documenting how nuclear developers confused their hopes—remember the dream of energy too cheap to meter?—with reality, covered up damaging information, harassed and dismissed scientists who disagreed with official policy, and generated false or misleading statistics to bolster their assertions about the benefits and safety of nuclear power. Read the rest of this entry »

Shipping lines, shipbuilders, banks, insurers and shippers are joining forces on a major sustainability initiative that’s “designed to help the industry make long-term plans for future success.”

They call it the Sustainable Shipping Initiative/Vision 2040. They even assert that “radical changes” are needed to make the global shipping industry more energy efficient, environmentally-friendly and sustainable for the long haul.

The initiative unites maritime-related companies from across the industry with the NGO’s Forum for the Future and WWF, including:

• Ship owners, charterers and operators: BP Shipping, Bunge, Cargill, Carnival Corporation, China Navigation Company, Gearbulk, Maersk Line, Rio Tinto Marine and Tsakos Energy Navigation.
• Shipbuilders, engineers and service providers: Daewoo Shipbuilding & Marine Engineering; Wärtsilä.
• Banks and insurers: ABN Amro, RSA.
• Classification society (which set technical standards): Lloyd’s Register
• Representing shipping customers: Unilever Read the rest of this entry »

Containerization revolutionized the maritime freight transportation industry more than 50 years ago; those ubiquitous 20- and 40-foot steel intermodal boxes seen in ports and on truck and rail chassis have made cargo handling faster, easier, safer and more efficient.

The next revolutionary phase of containerization might well reside in the vertical folding container from Staxxon Technologies, a clever solution to the old trade imbalance problem of moving and repositioning empty containers from where the freight isn’t to where the freight is. Read the rest of this entry »

Mark your calendars: The Amsterdam-based GreenTouch™ Consortium, a global research initiative that wants to improve the energy efficiency of information and communications technology (ICT) networks by a factor of 1,000, will reveal a comprehensive Roadmap at an Open Forum on Thursday, November 17, in conjunction with the organization’s Members Meeting November 14-17 at the Edgewater Hotel in here in Seattle.

The GreenTouch Roadmap will be presented to consortium members and the public during the Open Forum’s morning session, and expert speakers will make presentations on energy-efficient network technologies, eco-sustainability, climate change and related topics during the afternoon. There is no charge to attend the GreenTouch Open Forum, but advance registration is required.

GreenTouch is a global consortium of leading service providers, academic and industrial research institutions and non-governmental organizations working together to “define the challenges, identify the trends and issues and develop solutions that will achieve the goal of delivering within five years the architecture, specifications, roadmap and demonstrations of key components needed to increase the energy efficiency of ICT  networks ‒ in particular, the service provider networks that make up the Internet ‒ by a factor of 1,000 from current levels.”

Since its formation last year the consortium has grown rapidly and now includes more than 300 participants from 50-plus member organizations in 19 countries. GreenTouch is comprised of diverse constituencies, including global telecommunications industry leaders, acclaimed research centers and premier academic institutions.