According to a study co-authored by University of Texas Professor Dr. Michael Webber and his former student researcher Amanda Cuellar*, American’s could save roughly 2 percent of its total energy consumption in one year if it could significantly reduce or eliminate its food waste. According to Dr. Webber, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering and the associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy at The University of Texas at Austin:

“The amount of energy embedded in the food we throw away is more than all the energy we get from the corn ethanol we produce in a year, so this is a big number and it’s a big, underutilized policy option for us to consider.”

The sentiment was echoed in Sheril Kirshenbaum’s article on wasted food and the corresponding energy waste in yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen. In her article “A supersized waste of energy” Kirshenbaum writes that:

“When asked what contributes to unnecessarily heavy energy consumption, many people envision oversized, inefficient SUVs. They are among the most visible culprits because we regularly observe rising gas prices and feel the pinch on our own wallets at the pump.

What may not come to mind is food production, which is, in reality, an extremely energy-intensive process. Of course, it seems like a necessary sacrifice given we must eat to survive.

But take a closer look at the journey from farm to table, and you’ll see that a tremendous amount of energy gets lost along the way. And at a time when nations around the world are becoming ever more desperate to secure remaining energy reserves, including Canada’s oilsands, it just doesn’t make any sense to be throwing so much of it away.”

With their study, Webber and Cuellar present an interesting summary of what types of food American’s waste. Included is the corresponding amount of energy embedded in that food.

To access the entire report, go here.

*Amanda Cuellar is currently a graduate student in MIT’s Technology and Policy Program. She is expected to graduate this spring.

Reference:

1. Cuellar, Amanda and M.E. Webber. Wasted Food, Wasted ENergy: The Embedded Energy in Food Waste in the United States. Environ. Sci. Technol., 2010, 44 (16), pp 6464–6469 DOI: 10.1021/es100310d Publication Date (Web): July 21, 2010

In the electricity world, energy storage generally refers to electricity, thermal, or potential energy storage. Examples include batteries (electricity), molten salts (thermal), and pumped hydro projects (potential energy). Today, the vast majority of installed grid-scale energy storage is pumped hydro technology, where water is pumped to a higher elevation when electricity is cheap and then gravity moves the water downhill to produce electricity during peak (expensive) periods.

But, large (utility) scale energy storage technologies can be used to meet a variety of other functions, including assuring power quality and deferring infrastructure upgrades.

The value of these functions is hinged on the fact that the electric grid requires a constant balance of electricity supply and demand. The latter is constantly shifting, which forces grid operators to constantly make changes in order to maintain acceptable reliability and power quality.

Earlier this month, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) published a visual depicting types of energy storage technologies in terms of their discharge time and total capacity. Both are indicative of the types of applications that the system could be used for. For instance, certain types of battery technologies can not only respond quickly – providing power when needed – but also supply a large amount of total energy if needed.

It should be noted that the visual above does not include an axis for price. Many of these technologies are not widely used at this point because of their total system cost compared to their expected benefits.

Photo Credit:

1. Pumped hydro graphic courtesy of the U.S. Geologic Survey (a part of the Department of Interior) and can be found here.
2. Energy storage discharge time versus capacity graphic courtesy of the U.S. Energy Information Administration and can be found here.

In addition to being a talented musician, Yauch was a cinema buff and directed many of the Beastie Boys’ videos, eventually starting his own production company, Oscilloscope Laboratories, profiled here in the New York Times. It’s under Oscilloscope that the highly acclaimed water documentary “Flow” was released in 2008 (film website).

I hadn’t seen flow yet, so I dropped in to Vulcan Video – a local, independent video rental chain in Austin (yes, there are still several of those left) – to pick up the DVD. The clerk remarked that he hadn’t realized MCA had directed or been involved with so many films. Join the club.

Anyways, “Flow” is a 90 minute documentary directed by filmmaker Irena Salina that takes us on a world tour of challenges facing the global water supply. We see the tug of war between multinational corporations looking to privatize water resources in places like Bolivia (aided by the World Bank, whoops) and citizens who just want access to clean water they had before corporations moved in and Spaceballed their water.

We see open sewers draining into rivers in India, and dams displacing millions worldwide. We learn that over 2 million people worldwide die of waterborne illnesses each year – more than AIDS or wars. And we see Indian villagers successfully force the Coca-Cola Company to shut down operations for polluting their water supply with cadmium and lead.

Pretty heavy material for an MC from Brooklyn to foster with his indie film outfit. Or is it? I think what drew me to MCA more than the rest of the Beastie Boys was the arc of his career and life, from 80s punk rocker to Buddhist who organized benefits for Tibet. Someone who learned from his mistakes and tried not to make the world worse off.

Supporting a documentary about the most precious resource we have makes a lot of sense.

In the hours before the sut sets tonight, here’s another unique (and gorgeous view) of space. While cruising through this timelapse video courtesy of the International Space Station, one can see how and where the world’s energy development has occured. Not to mention some impressive lightening.

The Review launched this week and covers a wide range of topics, like this brief about climate change and biodiversity (“Biodiversity Left Behind in Climate Change Scenarios”):

They find that simply using the traditional classification of a species in climate change simulations can underestimate the true scale of biodiversity loss. This happens because the subtle genetic variations among similar-looking species – typically hidden from view – are overlooked. Such a misstep in the models could undermine future conservation efforts.

And another about the effect of air pollution standards on economic growth (“Economic Growth by Stricter Regulation”):

Environmental regulation is often cast as a growth-inhibiting tax on producers and consumers. But a recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) provides a strong foundation for the economic benefits of regulation. The authors flip the conventional view on its head and present tighter regulation as an investment in human capital, and thus a tool for promoting economic growth.

A quick glance at the topics page hints at future articles: business, climate change, ecosystem conservation, energy, environmental policy, industrial ecology, land management, urban planning, and water resources. It’s practically a greatest hits album of pressing environmental policy issues.

For all of us who furiously scratch our heads or pull our hair out when we hear scientific misinformation being used to influence public debate or create public policies, briefs like these are a welcome addition to the dialogue.

So anyway, congrats to the Kathryn Siegel and the whole team at Yale who put the Review together! Read the Yale Environment Review here.

Rise ‘N Shine Farm’s first bounty of the year

Spring is here, and with it the first harvest of the season. It’s my family’s second year belonging to a CSA. This time around we chose a farm with a drop off site much closer to home. Our produce now comes from Rise ‘N Shine Organic Farm, which produces vegetables, fruits, poultry and eggs. Don’t the strawberries look luscious? Time to get munching.

In the library, William learned about the physics behind wind energy. Inspired by diagrams and pictures of windmill designs, William decided to build two of these machines. The first provided electricity to power his family’s home. The second provided an arguably more valuable commodity – a constant supply of drinking and irrigation water for his family’s farm.

William constructed his windmills using spare parts and available scrap materials, including bicycle frames and wood. The end result can be seen in the pictures that William showed in this TED talk:

But water only comes in at fifth place ahead of home energy efficiency and carbon emissions.

Water is connected to so many important social and technical issues: growth of cities, climate change, agriculture, natural gas exploration, cooling thermoelectric power plants, etc. I would hope it would register higher up in the poll.

But is it all that surprising to see energy topics at the top of the list? Gasoline is always on our minds. It stares us in the face when we fill up our cars. We see the price fluctuate every several days and keep mental lists of stations with “the best” prices. And because it’s election year, we’re hearing about gas prices a lot. President Obama is talking about it. Mitt Romney’s talking about it. A lot. You would be working pretty hard to NOT hear about the cost of energy. Whether or not energy is in the news because we’re talking about it, or we’re talking about it because it’s in the news is beside the point – it’s on our minds.

I’m convinced that water is severely undervalued and taken for granted, especially here in the United States. Those of us with reliable access to clean water have it real good. Water is pulled out of a river or the ground somewhere, sanitized, and delivered to our homes. It sits in endless rows of bottles at the grocery store, cold and inviting. And all of this costs us relatively little. The most recent water bill for our household of three 20-something males came to $25 (not including wastewater). Not too shabby, and definitely not what I would expect for a region in severe drought. I would posit that most of us only fret about access to water at music festivals, when we go ballistic at the thought of paying $6 for a bottle of something that is practically free from a faucet.

And with more and more of us living in cities and urban centers, we’re becoming more and more removed from the ups and downs of rainfall patterns out in the country. We’re left with a false sense of security that because water is flowing now, it will continue to do so
in the future.

But this is dangerous thinking.

I lump this in with our general inability to anticipate problems if they are far off in the future. Like social security or limiting carbon emissions, we’re kicking the can down the road by not planning for depletion of water resources and an increasing population that can be expected to consume even more water. It seems that if the problem isn’t immediate and staring us in the face, we tell ourselves we’ll get to it later.

Except water is both an immediate and long-term problem. For now, it’s not registering with the general public.

These results are only one snapshot in time. We’ll be able to track how popular views on water and energy change over time. You can read more about the UT Energy Poll here and you also might also enjoy Melissa’s write up about the UT Energy Poll.

Healthy soil begets healthy plants, says the Dirt Doctor. (photo courtesy of shutterstock)

Some people take Earth Day more literally than others. Howard Garrett is one of them. Better known as the Dirt Doctor, Garrett believes that the health of the planet begins with the earth beneath our feet; it starts with cultivating strong vibrant soil, and blossoms outwards from there.

“Without healthy soil, we won’t have healthy plants, animals or people,” says Garret over the phone from his home in Dallas, Texas, where he advocates for natural organic gardening, landscaping and living.

The soil, he says, is a living entity that’s frequently mistreated. To thrive, it needs to be biologically active and chemically and physically balanced. This means it needs the right ratio of nitrogen, potassium, phosphorous and trace elements like calcium and magnesium. It also needs microorganisms, insects and other animals, as well as good tillage and drainage. This equation ensures a bevy of benefits, including improved plant growth, innate disease and pest resistance, better water filtration, and decreased erosion.

Intensive cultivation, chemical applications and limited crop rotations harm this balance. In turn, the soil suffers and so does its counterparts – water, food, biodiversity and climate.

Ohio State University soil scientist Rattan Lal has a principle that sums up this cycle of deterioration, it’s the law marginality. It states that marginal soils, which are cultivated with marginal inputs, produce marginal yields and support marginal standards of living. Taking it one step further, Lal also says that the process of restoring these marginal soils will not only improve food security, biodiversity and water quality, it can help mitigate climate change.

In an era of soaring concentrations of atmospheric carbon, soil can be an incredible source of atmospheric carbon and a powerful sponge for absorbing it. One example is in Lal’s home state of Ohio (and the greater Midwest corn belt region), which has lost 50 percent of its soil carbon over the last 150 years due to cultivation. This means that most soil in the region has lost about 15 tons of soil per acre over that period.

On the global scale, the soils of the world have been stripped of approximately 100 billion tons of carbon, or 75 to 80 percent of its carbon pool, since the first days of agricultural production. If this soil could be returned to a relatively healthy state, Lal believes it would be similar to drawing down 25 ppm of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere is 394 ppm.

Research from the Rodale Institute, an organization that promotes organic agriculture, says that organic farming can sequester more than 1,000 pounds of carbon per acre of soil. Non-organic soil management can have the opposite effect – a carbon deficit.

Simply, soil health can have far reaching beneficial effects on the environment. Regenerative agriculture embraces this notion. It aspires to strengthen soil productivity through traditional organic practices such as composting, cover cropping, and reducing or eliminating tillage. And the idea is catching on, albeit slowly, says the Dirt Doctor.

“We’re fighting an uphill battle to have healthy soil,” says Garrett, who when asked about the significance of Earth Day as it relates to soil health get a bit cynical before finding the silver lining. “We’re dealing with it every day. It ought to be a 365-day deal.”

But as a board member I’m still a science writer first, and so whatever’s going on INSIDE the museum, what’s charged me, especially in my role here as Plugged In’s unofficial “unplugged” correspondent, is the outside. Most especially, the outside of the three-story globe that is the museum’s signature. Called the Daily Planet, it’s filled with interactive high-tech video and sound. But outside it’s a globe — possibly the world’s largest truly representational globe, even though, pierced by a walkway and a building, part of the globe is missing.

As a science writer and producer, I’ve followed around Todd and Bill Ulrich of Worldfx Inc., the guys who have put the skin on the globe. They’ve been up and down on lifts, laying on their backs beneath the gigantic thing, and in general shaking a serious tail feather to make this enormously detailed satellite mosaic take shape on this enormous globe. The new globe joins a wonderful and complicated ecosystem of the giant globes we have known, including the Unisphere from the 1964-1965 World’s Fair; Eartha, the DeLorme globe in Maine; and the unforgettable Mapparium, the enormous inside-out stained glass globe at the Mary Baker Eddy Library in Boston.

It’s been a treat to watch the creation of the Daily Planet globe, and so I started documenting it. More than that, as people began passing by and noticing the continents taking shape, it became clear how, long before the museum opened, the Daily Planet, simply as a globe — a gigantic scientific instrument — was already teaching people science. I collected some video, some sound, some images, some context, and came up with this. A new globe — a new world.

This was the headline of a paper published on Friday by Nature’s Scientific Reports, an open-access online journal. According to the paper’s authors, this porous carbon material is elastic, compressible, flexible, and lightweight. It is also hydrophobic and oleophillic – meaning that it “hates the water… and loves the oil.” This leads to a potential application in environmental cleanup after oil spills.

The paper’s primary author, Rice University graduate student Daniel Hashim, explains the technology in a short video:

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Air Force’s Office of Scientific Research MURI Program. Contributing authors hail from around the world, with primary authors from Rice and Penn State Universities.

Reference

1. Daniel P. Hashim, Narayanan T. Narayanan, Jose M. Romo-Herrera, David A. Cullen, Myung Gwan Hahm, Peter Lezzi, Joseph R. Suttle, Doug Kelkhoff, E. Muñoz-Sandoval, Sabyasachi Ganguli, Ajit K. Roy, David J. Smith, Robert Vajtai, Bobby G. Sumpter, Vincent Meunier, Humberto Terrones, Mauricio Terrones, Pulickel M. Ajayan.Covalently bonded three-dimensional carbon nanotube solids via boron induced nanojunctions. Scientific Reports, 2012; 2 DOI: 10.1038/srep00363 [Photos by Mike Williams, Rice University]

 
If you poke around the website you’ll find an assortment of basic tips to reduce water waste around the house, such as this one tailor made for my Dad: “Easier still, stop pre-rinsing dishes. Most modern dishwashers only need you to remove large bits of food. So you get to do less. Bonus!” and this one: “Want a chance to show off your muscles? Tighten leaky faucets around the house while you flex and say, “Oh yeah!” It’s as if Kool-Aid Man himself wants you to save water. I love it.
 
There are a lot of different sources of water waste, from leaky water pipes and  other infrastructure, to the behavioral sources like watering sidewalks. The good thing about behavioral water waste is that it’s relatively cheap to address; you don’t need to spend millions of dollars repairing ancient infrastructure, only a million dollars to create some hilarious online videos and a website.
 
You can learn more about water waste at the EPA’s Water Sense site.

According to the poll, almost two-thirds (65%) of energy consumers say that energy is important to them. Further, the majority of survey respondents would be more likely to vote for a presidential candidate who backs expanded domestic natural gas development. Consumers also appeared to support increasing financial incentives for companies engaged in renewable energy and the creation of a (presumably national) renewable portfolio standard.

On the environmental front, the Energy Poll observed a distinct decline in support for environmental protection since the last poll was conducted 6 months ago. In this go-round, when asked to choose between economic growth or environmental protection, more consumers preferred growth. In the last poll, the response was more evenly split. Further, fewer consumers said they are willing to pay much higher prices for energy in order to protect the environment (at 30% compared with 38% last fall).

To read more about the survey and its results, visit UT Energy Poll Director Sheril Kirshenbaum’s comments (here), or visit the UT Energy Poll website (here).

Note: The University of Texas at Austin Energy Poll reflects the views of 2,371 Americans surveyed during March 5-16, 2012. The data were weighted using U.S. Census Bureau figures, as well as propensity scores, to ensure the sample’s composition reflects the actual U.S. population.

Photo Credit – UT Energy Poll

fabulous online undertakings focused on connecting you physically to your physical world.

The first is this unbelievably lovely website called Wind Map, showing you a moving, realtime image of the wind all over the United States. Naturally it’s breathtakingly zoomable and clickable, giving you a right-this-second reading of wind direction and speed for the degrees-and-minutes latitude and longitude over which you hover your cursor. That’s nice enough, though honestly for that you can stick your arm out the window, right? But the whole-continental-USA image is almost zenlike in its soothing representation of the flowing wind as moving white lines streaming in weather patterns. I’d love a way to click a current radar map or frontal diagram onto it to help drive home: this is air, moving from higher to lower pressure, and this is the weather you get along boundaries. Developers? Anybody?

Of course I’ll suggest that you need one more step – the site expresses wind in the standard unit of measure of miles per hour, which frankly doesn’t mean much to even scientific types. Ten miles an hour? Heck, my car NEVER goes that slow – that must be pretty still, huh? Of course not – 10 miles an hour is enough wind to constantly move leaves and twigs and extend a flag. You’d call it a windy day when you stepped into your office. That’s an expression of the Beaufort Scale, on which don’t get me started. I’ve literally written a book on the subject, but the point is it describes the wind in numbers and words that will connect to you viscerally – when it blows your umbrella, when it’s hard to walk against, when it ripples the lake, when it knocks down trees. I’d also love to see the data on this page expressed not just in mph but in Beaufort numbers, with the scale’s descriptions. That would tell you a lot more about the wind on, say, the plains, or along one of the coasts.

Anyhow, this site has links to

Wikipedia info about the wind and about wind energy, which is great – but I just like to remind people that the wind is real, it’s energy in motion, and that it affects you and you should pay attention to it. This site does that.

The second get-on-out-there site is Creekwatch, a free iPhone app that encourages you, when you’re out around a waterway, to take a picture and note whether there’s water present, whether it’s moving, and whether there’s trash around. You can get the information presented on a map or as a table. Here too of course I have suggestions. The nice thing about the map is you can check in where you like, and at least at this point it’s a great indicator of where there are good streamwatch organizations. We have a great one in Raleigh – Neuse Riverkeeper Foundation – and consequently there’s lots of updates from this area.

On the other hand, you can’t click on table heads and organize information by state, by zip code, even by watershed – and the reports themselves don’t even include the waterway name: just latitude and longitude and the three pieces of information. I’d love to see the site make at least a best guess about the waterway from the location, easily organize them at least by

state and zip code – and better if you could organize by waterway and even watershed. Again: Developers? Anybody?

It’s also worth just poking around – the site was developed at IBM–Almaden in California, and one of the wiseacres there included this update, which is eithervery funny or a terrifying suggestion of where the only moving water in California is.

Anyhow. Two more ways to use the interwebs to not just look at cool stuff but to remind you: connectivity isn’t about sitting in front of your computer clicking on things. Now get out there into the water and the wind.

Hickory Ridge landfill solar cover as seen by air when flying into Atlanta's Hartsfield Jackson International Airport (Photo courtesy of HDR Engineering Inc.)

Hickory Ridge landfill outside of Atlanta, GA, is full. Like most landfills that reach capacity, it was capped to contain its noxious mix of debris that will slowly degrade over the decades and centuries to come. But unlike most, Hickory Ridge glistens on a sunny day due its over 7,000 thin-film photovoltaic solar panels plastered to a geomembrane that has been stretched over the hill like a swim cap.

The goal for this new capping system is to create an alternative to traditional landfill covers that will create revenue, boost renewable energy use, and utilize obsolete land, said Mark Roberts, Senior Project Manager for HDR Engineering Inc., the company which developed the technology.

Normally when a landfill closes, the waste is sealed using a polyethylene cap, buried under a couple feet of compacted soil and seeded with grass. The grassy knoll is then effectively useless, albeit somewhat pleasing to the eye.

In contrast, a solar energy cover aims to eliminate the typical maintenance costs of mowing and soil replacement, and instead allows a closed landfill to continue being useful by generating revenue through renewable energy production. This new system uses a durable geomembrane constructed for roofs and fastens it to the landfill with vertical anchor trenches. The geomembrane-covered landfill slopes then serve as a secure and clean surface for the solar panels.

Much of the cost associated with solar caps occurs during the initial stage of buying and installing the solar panels (the project at Hickory Ridge cost roughly $5 million, $2 million of which was offset by federal stimulus money through the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority). This cost (Republic Services, the owner of Hickory Ridge landfill, was unable to disclose the agreed rate) will slowly be regained as the solar energy is sold back to the local utility.

This is exactly what’s taking place at Hickory Ridge. It’s now the world’s largest solar cap, producing 1 megawatt (MW) of electricity, which is enough to power about 225 homes, or offset the total energy use of the landfill itself. And, it’s not the lone example.

The first solar energy cover was installed in San Antonio, TX., in 2008 at a landfill called Tessman Road. Others exist in Mass., NY, and NJ. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, there are about 10,000 old municipal landfills in the United States that could potentially serve as the groundwork for renewable energy projects. Many of these landfills are located on the outskirts of cities and already possess the necessary infrastructure for solar power. Hickory Ridge landfill did.

The view while climbing Hickory Ridge landfill (Photo courtesy of HDR Engineering Inc.)

And as I climbed the green rubbery slopes of Hickory Ridge landfill last Thursday, its solar-covered apex loomed above prompting me to think about this odd nexus of materials – garbage and solar. Not only was I observing a fairly new achievement in engineering, to me it also seemed to be something more meaningful. Below my feet were 9 million cubic yards of garbage, a stark representation of our world’s waste, yet, it had been capped with solar panels, a symbol for abundant, clean energy. It was like walking through the streets of Rome and seeing advancements in civilizations built upon one another.

I was witnessing a small step forward.

“We’re trying to change the perception that landfills are the great evil,” said Andy Keith, Environmental Specialist, Republic Services, “They aren’t evil. They can be sources of green energy and could be an asset to the community instead of a liability.”

Keith is drawing on a when given lemons make lemonade way of thinking, and it’s helping spur innovation.

While the future is literally bright for solar energy covered landfills, landfills are not the final destination for these caps. HDR Engineering Inc. is looking to design these solar energy covers for coal combustion product monofills and impoundments around the country and internationally, and the EPA is looking to use them for brownfields.

And on this World Water Day, when many turn their attention to the billions in the world who lack access to clean water, it’s worth reminding ourselves that those of us who do have access to water take it for granted shamefully. Which makes it nice that Raleigh has joined dozens of cities in signing an open letter created by Corporate Accountability International to President Obama requesting better funding for the nation’s water infrastructure. The letter notes that “Thirty-five years ago, the federal government covered 78 percent of water system funding. Today it’s a paltry 3 percent.” It also points out the usual horrifying defaults on our water infrastructure investment (we fall $23 billion behind in water spending each year), to say nothing of the gross amount we’re behind in total — about $2.2 trillion, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers.

But back to Raleigh and its water. As recently as November 2011, Raleigh’s Falls Lake was more than four feet low – which doesn’t sound like much until you recognize that the 12,000-acre, 42-billion-gallon reservoir, averages only around 12 feet deep. It’s rained some of late, yet the upper Neuse River basin – Raleigh’s water source – still suffers under what the USGS calls a moderate hydrologic drought (our stream flows are between the sixth and ninth percentiles) and almost the entire state of North Carolina is either abnormally dry or under drought conditions.

So what are we doing about this? A quick search of the database of the News & Observer yielded an initially promising 77 results for a search of “drought 2012,” but once you filter out metaphorical droughts suffered by sports teams, droughts in other parts of the world, and droughts in economic indicators like home sales, you end up with … zero.

Raleigh’s hometown newspaper has not written a single word about drought this year, and its water supply has been low since July and significantly low since September. In fact, the Wake County Commission has taken this time to insanely object to the recommendations of a sustainability committee it empanaled itself because it finds in its recommendations for things like sensible water management terrifying overtones of the New World Order and such.

Now maybe we shouldn’t be panicking about reservoir water levels. After all, it started to rain again, and now here we are, the lake surface is at just about its standard 251.5 feet above sea level, and there’s more rain in the forecast. Bully for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who built a reservoir big enough to cope with the ephemeral flows of Raleigh’s surface water. The current anemic release by the dam of 72 cubic feet per second might even climb higher, though it seems unlikely that it will anytime soon approach the 500-plus cubic feet per second that is its mean flow this time of year. That is, the lake is full, but this time of year it usually maintains its level by releasing seven times as much water as it currently does. So nobody’s looking at a full reservoir and saying, “Okay, we’re safe.”

Mostly, regrettably, because nobody outside of people in the water and engineering industries is paying any attention at all.

You can pay attention, though — and on World Water Day you probably should. Here are a couple things you can do.

For one, just like Raleigh’s Public Utilities director, you can sign that open letter: just go here and sign it. You can also send a letter to your governor reminding him or her what a terrible deal bottled water is. Not just in how it reduces confidence in public water or in the terrible waste of all those bottles. In pure economics, the dollar you spend on a quart bottle of water in a convenience store could buy you in the Raleigh public water system about 300 gallons of water if you just opened your tap. Plus – no bottle!

Perhaps more important, though, you can do nothing more complex than get familiar with your own reservoir, the source of your own water. Where’s it come from? How much of it is on hand? How does that stack up to historical means? That is, what’s your water situation, and what’s its future? The USGS makes it preposterously easy for you to do that: start here and work your way to all kinds of information about your own region’s water. This site from the EPA lets you enter your zip code and go directly to your own watershed. This site takes me directly to water data about North Carolina and allows me to click on my own Neuse River watershed for a clickable map filled with information on flow rates, precipitation, groundwater conditions, and plenty more. If you replace the “NC” in the url with the two-letter abbreviation for your own state, you’ll get something similar and just as much fun.

Or play “How much Water Is on Your Plate?,” a game on the onedrop.org website helping you understand how much water your food needs. A piece of chicken, a tossed salad, bread and butter, and an apple, for example, requires 748 liters (197.6 gallons!) of water – and that’s before you cook it, and before you run a nice cold glass of water from the tap.

So again: it’s world water day. And chances are you’re one of the lucky ones, and all you have to do is turn on the tap for nice, clean, potable water. Spend a moment thinking about that. And what your responsibility is to take care of it.

These tariffs were developed in response to concerns regarding Chinese solar manufacturer trade practices – specifically, the fact that Chinese solar manufacturers appear to have been dumping illegally subsidized PV panels into U.S. markets. As a result, U.S. solar companies – like the now infamous Solyndra – were unable to take a piece of the domestic market. (read more here). Last year, Chinese solar panels represented more than 50% (or about $2 billion) of the U.S. solar market while domestic manufacturers made up about one-third of overall sales.

While there is seemingly widespread support of these tariffs among U.S. solar manufacturers, there are also many critics. Generally, these critics believe that the tariffs will be bad for growth in U.S. solar generation capacity. Some have argued that low prices for solar, regardless of the source, should be encouraged and capitalized upon (in the form of increasing total installed solar capacity). And so, any cheap capacity should be welcomed into U.S. markets – if the Chinese government wants to subsidize a product that the U.S. wants to buy, that’s just fine. Other critics believe that the maximum 4.73% tariff will not be enough to achieve the stated goal of increasing U.S. domestic manufacturing market share. Therefore, it will only hurt the U.S. by decreasing the total amount of new solar PV capacity being installed.

But, good or bad, it appears that import tariffs on Chinese solar are on the rise.

Photo Credit:

1. Photo of solar panel by Andreas Demmelbauer and used under this Creative Commons License.

Earth Now pulls its image sets from the MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) instrument on the Aqua and Terra satellite platforms, which measure terrestrial, atmospheric, and ocean conditions. Seven data layers are currently available in the app: carbon dioxide concentrations, ozone, carbon monoxide, atmospheric temperature, water vapor, gravity field variations (!), and sea level fluctuations variations.

I’ve been playing around with it, and I’m impressed. I viewed carbon dioxide and saw higher concentrations around Texas, which makes sense with all of the petrochemical refining along the Gulf coast. Also interesting, there appears to be a ring of higher carbon dioxide concentration in the southern hemisphere.

Being able to visualize data is super useful, and having it presented in a form where you can manipulate it with your fingers makes it a little bit more accessible. This app seems well suited for classrooms where students can learn about the various aspects of the Earth’s climate with technology students are already familiar with.

I do have a couple of minor gripes with the app, though. Pinch-to-zoom could be less sensitive; a small movement with my fingers makes the globe zoom in or out really quickly. A little more friction or resistance in the zooming would be good, along with higher resolution images at closer zoom levels.

These minor gripes aside, the app excels at showing what is possible with technology that is readily available and accessible today, and makes me excited for what people will create in the future. As an example, I would like the ability to show time lapse variations in data layers, say carbon dioxide concentration over time.

Earth Now is available for iOS devices, although the app doesn’t appear to support the new iPad’s ‘Retina Display’ yet. I imagine these satellite images would look stunning on a high quality screen in the new iPad. Android versions are also on the way, apparently.

Check out Earth Now on the App Store here.

Update: Aha! I wrote above that I wished for animated data sets. As it turns out this feature is already available. If you poke around the “Details” tab you can turn on animated maps.

In their February 9, 2012 vote, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) approved the addition of two new reactors at Georgia’s Plant Vogtle Plant. Jointly owned by Georgia Power, Oglethorope Power Corporation, Municipal Authority of Georgia, and Dalton Utilities, this plant originally came online in 1987 and currently runs with two Westinghouse pressurized water reactors (PWRs).

The NRC’s February vote approved the addition of two Advanced Passive 1000 (AP1000) reactors in Plant Vogtle.  Like their 1980s counterparts, these pressurized water reactors will be built by Westinghouse. But, they will be the first of their kind in the United States . In fact, the 3^rd generation AP1000 design was only added to the NRC’s approved list in December (the original design was approved in 2006).

On the other hand, outside of the United States, the 3^rd generation AP1000 design is expected to “account for close to 60 percent of China’s future projects,” according to Dave Dai, a Hone Kong-based analyst at Daiwa Securities Capital Markets Company. Already, the Chinese government is planning to build at least 60 reactors by 2020, with four already under construction.  The country is already running 11 nuclear power generating units with 2^nd generation AP1000 technology.

This relatively slow rate of acceptance of new nuclear technology in the United States compared to other countries is not only seen in the deployment stage. New innovations in reactor design are treated with a skeptical eye as concerns regarding safety butt heads with discussions regarding the impact of power sector greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. And, while caution is certainly appropriate when dealing with a technology that could pose significant threat to human health and safety, just how cautious one should be is less clear.

For example, take a look at the Bellvue, WA-based startup TerraPower and its traveling wave reactor.

TerraPower is a unique venture – one of the only privately funded research companies in the U.S. nuclear industry. And, its technology is also a step apart. Instead of focusing on making incremental improvements to existing reactor designs, this company’s traveling wave reactor would shift the type of uranium used to generate electricity in nuclear power plants. In fact, this technology might be able to take existing nuclear waste and turn it into fuel that could allow these plans to run for decades without needing to shutdown to refuel.

A traveling-wave reactor is designed to convert nonfissile material (like the nuclear waste currently sitting in dry or wet storage at power plants around the nation) into fuel to generate electricity. Today’s conventional reactors use uraium-235, while the TWR would primarily use the more common uranium-238, with only a small layer of enriched U-235 required.

What does this mean?

According to TerraPower’s CEO John Gilleland, their TWR design “can represent a nearly infinite supply of low cost energy – carbon free energy – for the world” which also addressing some of the “social and technical problems associated with nuclear power.”

According to Gilleland, after the initial layer of enriched U-235 is used to ignite the process, the fissile U-238 material can maintain the nuclear fission chain reaction for decades. In other words, it is possible that no refueling or waste removal would be required for the life of the reactor, which could decrease electricity generation costs and increase nuclear power plant safety.

But, this traveling wave reactor (TWR) is a fourth-generation nuclear reactor. This means that it is still in the theoretical stage, currently undergoing research to determine its potential. But, thanks to the power of supercomputing and the support of investors like Bill Gates, the promise of this reactor design has been shown “on paper” and is now ready for some serious testing.

At last month’s ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, Bill Gates took the stage with Secretary of Energy Steve Chu. In their conversation regarding energy technology, Gates spoke directly to the underfunding of U.S. energy research and the potential for nuclear technologies – like TerraPower’s traveling wave reactor – to help the world transition from carbon-intensive baseload power generation to carbon neutral technologies (see 2:30 – 3:30 of this highlights video – or the entire discussion here) .

But, to test this theory and to address concerns regarding some key materials problems in TerraPower’s TWR design, a demonstration project is needed.  And, this demonstration is unlikely to occur in the United States due to regulatory constraints and public concerns.

Last summer, TerraPower announced that it was seriously looking outside of the U.S. to put portions of its TWR theory into practice with a pilot version of this reactor.  According to Roger Reynolds, TerraPower’s technical advisor, “[TerraPower has] had conversations with the Chinese, the Russians, the Indians, the French…We have an aggressive schedule where we think it is important to get something built and accumulate data so that we can eventually build them in the U.S. Breaking ground in 2015, with a startup in 2020, is more aggressive than our current [U.S.] regulatory structure can support.” To date, TerraPower has not announced a demonstration project partnership with any organization in- or out-side of the United States.

While it appears that the United States is prepared to move forward in developing its nuclear power industry through the approval of new reactor construction, it is unclear if the country is ready to move forward in its support of nuclear innovation past the bench. And so, while two new reactors have been approved and existing reactors are being improved, nuclear energy innovation might struggle with its ability to get off the bench.

Photo Credit:

1. Photo of nuclear power plant and sunflower field by Jess and Peter and used under this Creative Commons License.
2. Photo of TerraPower TWR reactor design from TerraPower.

Personally, I think we take packaging too far. Does everything we buy need to be individually wrapped in cellophane? I know there are legitimate health concerns that warrant packaging food; of course meat and other perishables should be packaged to prevent spoilage and contamination. But at a certain point it becomes absurd when we are packaging single-serving cups of coffee concentrate (the K-Cup). And not to mention the resources used to produce all of these single-serving bottles or wrappers (usually petroleum or paper), that will likely end up in a landfill (or a recycling yard if we’re lucky).

Perhaps it’s more convenient to buy single servings of things (like water, or coffee) and dispose of it when it’s used up, rather than brew a whole pot of coffee, or heaven forbid, drink faucet water (gross!). I just have a feeling (no data, yet) that K Cups and its kin are the new baby diapers – piling up in landfills for no real good reason.

Am I just making something out of nothing? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter: @davidwogan.

In the President’s remarks, he stated that “…critical to our long-term success is the question of energy. How do we use less energy? How do we produce more energy right here in the United States of America.”

These statements echo earlier comments by the President. On March 7, he told a North Carolina audience that:

“We’re not going to be able to just drill our way out of the problem of high gas prices…If we are going to control our energy future, then we’ve got to have an all-of-the-above strategy. We’ve got to develop every source of American energy—not just oil and gas, but wind power and solar power, nuclear power, biofuels.”

Earlier this week, Scientific American’s David Biello published a piece where he explored this “all-of-the-above” approach to U.S. energy in a discussion with Secretary of Energy Dr. Steven Chu. In this piece, Biello and Chu explore the concept of energy independence and the biggest cost drivers in our energy systems, including climate change. They also engage in a lively banter regarding new technologies – and the potential for America to continue to lead as the world’s great innovator. You can find the entire story here – including a extensive discussion in the comments area.

Eventually, three of the boiling-water reactors at the Fukushima plant would experience full meltdowns, the result of a series of failures that started with the tsunami-induced power outage. After the plant lost its grid-based power supply, the diesel generators that were meant to provide back-up power also failed, and the battery back-up system’s 8-hour capacity would prove to be insufficient. As a result, cooling water could not be properly circulated through the reactors, and water levels fell dangerously low. Without adequate cooling water circulating through the plant, the nuclear fuel rods inside of the reactors started to melt and subsequent explosions (the result of hydrogen gas buildup) and fires resulted in the release of enough radioactive material to necessitate a 20-km “exclusion zone” around the power plant.

As a result of the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has spent significant man hours focusing on the lessons that can be learned from the disaster. On Friday, the NRC revealed some of their learnings as they issued three new orders designed to improve U.S. power plant safety. According to NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko, these new orders “reflect a significant step forward on our post-Fukushima efforts…[but] there’s still a great deal of work ahead of us.’’

These three orders require additional safety equipment to be installed on all U.S. reactors, with additional requirements for those reactors with Mark I and II containment structures (like those found at Fukushima). Specifically, these orders require all U.S. commercial nuclear power plants, including the newly approved Georgia Vogtle reactors, to install new safety equipment. This equipment includes enhanced technology for monitoring water levels in each plant’s spent fuel pool. Additionally, all boiling-water rectors (BWRs) with Mark I or II containment structures are required to improve their venting systems in order to “prevent or mitigate core damage in the event of a serious accident.”

The U.S. commercial nuclear power plant fleet has until December 31, 2016 to complete any modifications needed to fulfill these three orders.

[For those interested in more information on the Mark I containment design and its role in the U.S. power plant fleet, see David Biello's recent piece on the safety of U.S. Nuclear Reactor designs.]

A paper hill at SP Recycling in Forest Park, Ga.

About once a week, my family tends to clean-up of the contents of our fridge before dinner. After searching for the Möbius band on common recyclables, a debate often ensues about whether or not last week’s polystyrene takeout package, yesterday’s marinara-smeared pizza box, or the rare plastic grocery bag can join the contents of our recycling bin.

My personal modus operandi is to err on a liberal interpretation of the city’s recycling guidelines in hopes that down the line the material will be reincarnated as a plush carpet, a cozy fleece jacket, or a soda can. If for some reason it doesn’t meet any of the recycling requirements, may it then find its way to the landfill to slowly degrade over hundreds of years.

But like many who dutifully place their recyclables curbside, I question what occurs once the materials are whisked away. Where do they go? Does my pile of paper fibers, plastics and metals actually get sorted into separate and usable products? And in the end, who’s buying our pile of yogurt containers, cereal boxes and cat food cans once they’ve been processed?

Here’s the quick and dirty on those questions and more.

Many cities nowadays utilize the single-stream collection process, enabling all types of recyclables to be comingled in one container, explained Luann Chambers, Regional Procurement Manager for SP Recycling, while I toured the single stream plant in South Atlanta. These commodities are then sorted at a materials processing facility, like our own, using machinery as well as “ten-finger technology,” continued Chambers while guiding me past rolling hills of paper and bales of aluminum (about 1,500 pounds/bale).

Here, a cacophonous network of conveyor belts, eddy currents, disc screens and magnets sort the 9,000 tons of plastics, papers products and metals each month – a number that could be exponentially higher if recycling were more readily embraced. Once sorted, resorted and sorted again, the materials are stacked and sold to end markets that turn the “trash” back into usable products we recognize.

Workers cleaning out the disc screen at SP Recycling.

The average person in the Peach State discards 4.5 pounds of garbage per day (the 2010 national average was 4.3 pounds/person), 40 percent of which is recyclable. According to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs, 48,000 tons of this annual garbage heap is comprised of aluminum cans. Recycling these cans would use 95 percent less energy than manufacturing them from scratch, ensure that they were back on store shelves within 60 days, and generate an estimated $89 million. Lost recyclables have the potential to save 4 percent of Georgia’s annual total energy consumed.

“Recycling is one of the easiest ways to save energy, conserve water and protect our natural resources over mining for raw materials,” said Gloria Hardegree, Executive Director at Georgia Recycling Coalition, by email. “Additionally and equally as important is the fact that recycling or composting creates green jobs and tax revenue for local communities. Reusing materials formerly considered “waste” allows us to realize a higher beneficial use over landfilling.”

Despite the state’s highly developed end markets (the world’s largest aluminum recycler, Novelis, is headquartered here, and 30 percent of the country’s recycled drink containers are turned into carpet in the northern part of the state), financial incentives for recycling are still hard pressed.

It’s cheaper for a company to run one truck and dump all the material than to run two trucks, one with recyclables,” said Chambers. The state’s 56 municipal solid waste landfills have 34 years of capacity remaining, which keeps dumping costs down. So while there’s a movement afoot for improved recycling and reuse, a better economic time is necessary for recycling and reuse to soar.

Knowing this changes things, at least at home. While my family’s homegrown debate over recycling the marinara-smeared pizza box probably won’t change much, we now know that our recycling’s existence and value doesn’t end, but begin, at the bin.

According to the Pew Research Center’s survey results, while Republicans were more likely to support the Keystone XL project than Democrats, there is still significant support from moderate Democrats. According to the report:

“Among those who have heard at least a little [about the project], there is strong public support for building the pipeline. About two-thirds (66%) think the government should approve the building of the pipeline, while 23% say it should not be approved.

Republicans overwhelmingly support the building of the pipeline. Fully 84% say the government should approve the Keystone XL pipeline, including 88% of conservative Republicans.

Even among Democrats who have heard about the issue, a 49% plurality support the government approving the pipeline while 33% say it should not be approved. But there is a strong ideological division among Democrats; 63% of conservative and moderate Democrats support the building of the pipeline, compared with just 30% of liberal Democrats. A plurality of liberal Democrats (49%) say the pipeline should not be approved.”

To review the full results of the Pew Research Center’s survey, see the full report here. Below is the chart presented by the Pew Center, which summarizes their main findings surrounding public support for the Keystone XL pipeline project.

Photo Credit:

1. Chart of Pew Research Center survey results produced by the center.

H/T to Sheril Kirshenbaum at Culture of Science for bringing this report to the author’s attention.

Amazing: guerilla direction signs.

A culture in which you need signs to show you where to walk – and you only get them by covert action – could be cause for despair, but most of Raleigh, including its planning department, sees this as further good news for a city trying to reclaim its scale and sense of place. This terrific video by the BBC tells the story.

How to get America to walk

The undertaking was little short of brilliant. Matt Tomasulo, a graduate student in landscape architecture and urban planning at NC State University and UNC-Chapel Hill, has created a little enterprise called Walk Raleigh, and in that guise installed 27 signs around downtown Raleigh, strapping them to poles under cover of darkness.

“It’s an 18-minute walk to Glenwood South,” says one in purple, with an arrow pointing to one or Raleigh’s popular entertainment districts; “It’s a 7-minute walk to Raleigh City Cemetary,” says a green one, its arrow pointing to the oft-overlooked site of the remains of some of Raleigh’s earliest citizens. Each sign, of course, has a QR code linking to a map.

Tomasulo’s idea is to get people thinking in minutes, which makes walking seem sensible, rather than miles, which instantly evokes cars. Though the signs were unsanctioned – and have come down – they stayed up for more than a month, called by Raleigh Planning Director Mitchell Silver “very cool.” The Atlantic, the local paper, the Sierra Club, local TV, and a local culture website all weighed in to kvell, and a city already planning along Complete Streets guidelines gets another jolt in the right direction.

Tomasulo’s company, cityfabric, has worked to engage people with their surroundings before, by using city maps as fodder for clothing and décor. He’s also just undertaken a project in New York called North Is That Way, involving signs pointing north. The story in Atlantic CIties talks about other guerilla civic projects — gardens, signs, and so forth — but misses another one: guerilla libraries in unused New York pay phone kiosks.

Those kiosks and other guerilla projects are reminders that though so much of the movement towards improved cities — and improved walkability — focuses on health and efficiency, there’s more to it than that. Tomasulo has entered North Is That Way into the Venice Biennale as a Spontaneous Intervention. That is, Tomasulo’s point is less utilitarian than artistic: it’s important to know where you are. It’s important to know which way you’re going. And walking is just better.