By: Florence Hudson

I speak to groups all around the world on green issues and sustainability. In my travels I get to meet all types of people, from hotshot politicians to corporate bigwigs to average citizens.

Regardless of what part of the social ladder they occupy, I’ve noticed that many people are gamblers at heart; they have an abiding faith that somehow a big-bet, cure-all is just around the corner to deliver us into a greener and more sustainable world. It must be true – the logic usually goes – because there is too much money to be made; or there are huge benefits to reap. When such advancements do not arrive on schedule, it’s a conspiracy, of course.

Now, I am a huge believer in technology and its ability to help mankind leapfrog to a better future, but it seems to me we’re fooling ourselves if we put too much faith in deus ex machina solutions for our complex environmental problems.

We’re not going to become all-solar, all-the-time; and the replacement for the internal combustion engine – which has been “just around the corner” since I was a kid – will take more time, apparently. In the meantime we can make incredible progress towards a more sustainable future using the tools we have and the inventions that already exist – because some of them are quite powerful.

Take a gaze out of your window and you’ll likely see one of the most glaring environmental problems that can be rectified now, with the tools we have – the commercial buildings and structures that populate our planet. There are about 5 million of them in the U.S. alone.

The HVAC system, the lights, the water, the elevators, the power and cooling for technology, the heating and cooling for people: all contribute to making buildings a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions–and a leading energy user. Lights blaze and air conditioners hum in empty offices at night, and lawn sprinklers turn on even during a rainstorm. Commercial buildings can lose as much as 50 percent of the water that flows into them.

Consider:

The building sector is responsible for more electricity consumption than any other sector, 42 percent, and 15 percent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) Emissions.

In the U.S., buildings represent 72 percent of all energy usage and 39 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (pdf). Yet, up to 50% of that electricity is wasted.

In New York City, buildings account for 80 percent of carbon emissions.

By 2025, buildings will be the single largest energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gas on our planet.

Technology already exists that will allow us to utterly transform our buildings’ impact on the environment. It’s called the Internet. Along with cheap sensors (less than a penny each in some cases), the Internet becomes a network that can allow these buildings to be controlled for maximum energy efficiency; monitored for compliance; and customized to work better for inhabitants – floor by floor, room by room.

This is already happening today. Check out this example with the Calgary city school system in Canada.

We don’t need any new inventions or legislation to solve one of our biggest environmental problems. What are we waiting for?

By: Annie Spiegelman

This summer, with a plethora of states across the country experiencing drought conditions, learning about low-volume watering is crucial to having your yard survive the dry months. This simply means applying water to a uniform depth directly to the plant’s root zone. This reduces water waste and your water bill at the same time. It’s win-win. But first, let’s make sure you’re soil is helping you by holding all the moisture it can.

What’s Up with your Soil?

Before changing anything having to do with your irrigation system, add 2-3 inches of compost (either homegrown or purchased at the plant nursery or Waste Management site) on top of your soil. Do this once or twice a year preferably in the fall and spring. You don’t even have to dig it in. Digging is so old school! The microorganisms in the compost will nourish your soil doing the underground work for you. Incorporating compost (organic matter) increases the water-holding capacity of your soil. With sandy soil, you’ll lose less water to the subsoil and with compacted clay soil, water will easily and slowly trickle its way to the plant’s roots, instead of sitting on the top floor, uselessly, like a lump on a log.

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According to business intelligence provider, IntertechPira, the total value of clean technologies by end-use category globally is expected to rise by over 250% to a sizeable $525 billion in 2019. This represents average annual growth of 13.5% for the ten year period from 2009.

Clean technologies include products and technologies designed to be economically competitive by using less material and energy to reduce their environmental impact compared with incumbent technologies. “The Future of Clean Technologies” report published by IntertechPira takes an in-depth look at the future of clean technologies with quantitative market forecasts to 2019 broken down by product, technology and end-use sector. It details prospects for raw material and technology suppliers and identifies the key materials, products, technologies and end-use sectors most likely to undergo significant growth over the next ten years.

The report covers the global market for clean technology devices and materials. Global is defined as including western Europe, eastern Europe, North America, Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and parts of Africa, principally South Africa. The report finds that growth rates in clean technologies “greatly outperform those aimed at the traditional power generation industry”. According to IntertechPira, the pace of growth, and the promise it may hold, has a lot to do with the high-profile involvement of governments and private investors in many of the sectors.

Clean-tech still seen as expensive

Clean technology investments are still seen as astronomically costly by many venture capital firms, who tend to become nervous when faced with capital-intensive industrial segments. As such, most are making smaller sums available for small R&D teams to work with, rather than releasing larger sums, more appropriate for project finance-type capital investments. The emphasis seems to be very much upon supporting ventures headed by people with operational experience and technical expertise.

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By: Jonathan Hiskes

Obama administration officials have failed to resolve a dispute with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that has shut down Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), according to an email obtained by Grist. The impasse will likely kill the promising clean-energy financing tool until Congress passes legislation addressing it, according to Cisco DeVries, who first created the PACE system three years ago.

Department of Energy officials have been unable to convince the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie and Freddie, to end the corporations’ prohibition on using PACE, DeVries told PACE advocates in an email Friday evening.

PACE allows homeowners to finance solar panels or energy-savings retrofits through an addition to their property tax bill, paid back over 15 to 20 years; the programs are funded through local government bonds. Fannie and Freddie have expressed concern that if homeowners go into default, PACE loans would have to be repaid before mortgages.

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by Laurie Johnson

A new analysis of the American Power Act (APA), comprehensive climate and energy legislation released mid-May by Sens. Kerry and Lieberman, points to an economy with healthy growth in GDP and jobs, and significant savings in household energy expenditures. The analysis uses a new and highly innovative tool developed by McKinsey & Company, a widely respected international consulting firm that advises many of the most influential businesses and institutions in the world. The tool is the first of its kind to combine several powerful macroeconomic models with McKinsey’s extensive modeling of individual markets in energy efficiency technologies and abatement options.

The study finds that under APA:

* There will be 440,000 more jobs on average between 2012 and 2020, and 540,000 more between 2012 and 2030. These gains will be in both strong and weak sectors of the economy, with industries experiencing growth under business-as-usual expanding further under APA, and industries in decline being strengthened. This is due to new investment in low-carbon technologies, such as efficient appliances, wind power, or carbon capture and storage.
* While energy prices increase, household utility bills decline due to gains in energy efficiency and allowance rebates to energy consumers. By 2020 households will save an estimated $69 per year, and by 2025 $71.
* Maintain an average annual GDP growth rate of 2.3 percent per year (GDP reflects the value of output, but says nothing about the labor or capital requirements needed to produce that output. Hence, it is possible to have employment gains despite no change in GDP growth).
* Greenhouse gas emissions will be 3.6 billion tons lower per year by 2030, a 45 percent reduction from business-as-usual.

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