For Tomorrow's Show: http://www.asyousow.org/

As you Sow...interesting name.  What does it mean?  Tomorrow at 1p, ET we both get to find out as we welcome their Executive Director, Danielle Fugere to the live show.  You can tune in right here on this blog by hitting the on-air button.

As You Sow has a wide, diverse mix of battle they fight...around waste (better packaging), energy (cutting fossil fuel use) and environmental health issues that include food production and control of pharmaceuticals.  Their victories are many.  Here's some base info.  Please join us tomorrow or view the show later on Renewable Now. biz:



Danielle Fugere, President and Chief Counsel, As You Sow

Danielle is responsible for strategic management of the Energy, Environmental Health, and Waste programs. She brings a wealth of experience in achieving broad and lasting change and in-depth knowledge of clean energy, conservation policy, toxic enforcement, and team building. Danielle served most recently as Executive Director of the Environmental Law Foundation. Prior, she was Legal Director and Regional Program Director for national nonprofit Friends of the Earth, where she spearheaded innovative legal strategies to reduce global warming pollution and directed campaigns to reduce pollution and promote sustainable alternative energies and fuels. 

Through her work, Danielle has been instrumental in securing compliance with environmental laws and industry conversions to environmentally sound technologies, including a settlement with the City and County of Los Angeles resulting in a $2.1 billion sewer system upgrade. Danielle was recognized with the WaterKeeper’s Environmental Achievement Award in 2000 for her outstanding achievements protecting California waters from pollution and compelling polluters to assume the costs of environmental degradation. She holds a JD from the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and a BA in Political Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

THEORY OF CHANGE

Over the past century corporate power has become the most dominant force on the planet. Of the 150 largest economic entities in the world, 87 are corporations – that’s 58%. This concentration of resources gives companies power and influence over their workers, customers, and the communities in which they operate.

It is critical for corporate leaders to address the impact of their policies and actions. By ignoring this impact, they are creating risk for their customers, employees, shareholders, and themselves. Ultimately, companies that view the world not in months, but in years, decades, and generations will be able to reduce their long-term risk and ensure success. Shareholder actions press corporations to undertake this broader risk analysis and make decisions that benefit people, planet, and profit over the long term.

Since 1992 As You Sow has utilized shareholder advocacy to increase corporate responsibility on a broad range of environmental and social issues. As shareholder advocates, As You Sow communicates directly with corporate executives to collaboratively develop and implement business models that reduce risk, benefit brand reputation, and increase the bottom line while simultaneously bringing positive environmental and social change.

OUR IMPACT

Since 1992 As You Sow has been using shareholder advocacy to move corporations into greater responsibility.

We have filed hundreds of shareholder resolutions and led hundreds more shareholder dialogues. These shareholder engagements have resulted in long-term positive change in behavior at the largest companies in the world.

The Paris Agreement

This past December in Paris, over 190 countries reached an unprecedented international agreement to halt climate change, and As You Sow was there supporting strong action. Today in New York, the global push for climate action — by citizens, NGO’s, shareholders, businesses, and local, state, and federal leaders, among a broad range of other actors demanding action — will be realized in the official ratification of the treaty to hold global warming at 2 degrees Celsius, or less.

Read our statement here. 

RECENT SUCCESSES

• Resolutions and engagement with HP, Dell, Apple, and Best Buy established industry-wide electronic waste take-back and recycling programs keeping over 500,000 tons of e-waste from landfills every year.
• Filing of two consecutive shareholder resolutions contributed to FirstEnergy’s commitment to retire nine of its coal plants in West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, and to CMS Energy’sabandonment of plans to build a 930 megawatt coal plant in Michigan.
• Commitments secured from our extensive engagement with Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Nestlé Waters NA to recycle 50% of their plastic bottles (70 billion bottles a year) in North America.
• Commitments secured from Yum! Brands (KFC, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut), Whole Foods Market,Safeway, and Walmart to stop using BPA-laden cash register receipts.
• Following remarkably high support from investors (29%), McDonald’s launched a pilot program in March 2012 to replace Styrofoam cups with recyclable paper cups at 2,000 of its U.S. stores.
• After three years of engagement and resolutions, Starbucks committed to in-store recycling of a significant portion of the three billion paper cups used annually and increased recycled content in their containers.
• Meetings between oil and gas companies and our investor coalition in 2011 resulted in FracFocus.orgbeing created, providing the first voluntary public reporting of chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluid.

Did Norway just give Tesla a big win?

Great story turned in by our Boston-based co-host, Jack Gregg which he sourced on CNBC.

What an amazing moment in this latest industrial revolution as we migrate away from fossil fuel to clean energy...we are on the precipice of a nation, Norway, banning the sales of fuel cars.  As Elon Musk said, "you guys rock".

You can imagine the industrial design changes that will speed the transition.  The world's economy will shift dramatically, perhaps like never before as we generate our energy locally and keep the money and jobs at home.

What a jump start on pushing towards the limits set in Paris.  This may be the most exciting, historic year of our century:

Phil LeBeau | @Lebeaucarnews

Bobby Yip | Reuters

CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk

One tweet by Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk has given fans of electric vehicles the kind of news they never could have imagined just a few years ago.

Musk tweeted out the front page of a Norwegian newspaper "Dagens Naeringsliv" and wrote: "Just heard that Norway will ban sales of fuel cars by 2025. You guys Rock!!

The Norwegian headline says four political parties have agreed on an energy message: "Stop sales of diesel and gasoline vehicles in 2025."

The question is whether or not Norway has officially signed off on a ban of gas-powered cars nine years from now. While the country offers some of the biggest tax incentives in Europe to buyers of electric vehicles, the majority of cars and vans sold each year are gasoline and diesel powered.

A draft of the country's 2018-2029 National Transport Plan presented this spring set a target of zero emissions from new cars by 2025, according to several media sites. But there's a clear difference between having a goal of zero emissions vehicles and outright banning the sale of gas powered cars. 

Norway's auto population is not very big. In fact, its auto sales are among the smallest in Europe, with just over 150,000 cars sold last year.

Still, for any country to completely stop selling new gas and diesel powered vehicles would be a major step toward accelerating adoption of electric vehicles.

Phil LeBeauCNBC Auto and

Southern US States Lead Growth in Biomass Electricity Generation

This is something we don't talk a lot about, but biomass is a major contributor to our renewable production.  Thanks so Seth Handy, a co-host on the radio side, for sending over this timely--and encouraging--story:





May 31, 2016
By Fred Mayes 
Alternate Fuels Data Experts, U.S. Energy Information Administration

Over the past five years, U.S. electricity generation from biomass across all sectors grew from 56 terawatthours (TWh) in 2010 to 64 TWh in 2015. Much of this growth occurred in southern states such as Virginia, Florida, and Georgia. In 2015, electricity generation from biomass across all sectors accounted for 11.3 percent of renewable electricity generation and 1.6 percent of total electricity generation in the U.S.

Nearly half of the electricity generated from biomass in 2015 was at industrial facilities outside of the electric power sector, such as pulp and paper mills. Within the electric power sector, biomass accounted for 6.3 percent of renewable electricity and 0.8 percent of total U.S. electricity generation.

Electricity generation from biomass uses several types of fuel, including forest wastes from clearing and thinning, sawmill residues, and urban landscape trimmings. These fuels can have widely varying physical properties and moisture contents, meaning biomass electricity generation plants often face unique fuel-handling challenges. Many power plants that burn biomass are cofiring plants, meaning that they use biomass as a partial substitute fuel.
Several states, especially those in the South Census region, have increased their electricity generation from biomass. 

These states have ample forest resources, generally poor wind resources, and relatively unfavorable solar resources (compared to the Southwest), making biomass among the more readily available renewable energy resources in the region.

Virginia has a statewide program to convert coal plants to biomass, with several plants that converted during 2013. Three of these plants, each rated at 51 megawatts (MW) and operated by Dominion Power, are located in Alta Vista, Hopewell, and Southampton. The conversions to biomass are part of Dominion's commitment to achieve Virginia's voluntary goal of generating 15 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025. Also in 2013, the Northern Virginia Electric Cooperative (NOVEC) commissioned a 50 MW wood waste biomass plant in South Boston, Virginia. In 2012, Miller-Coors Brewing also opened a biomass-based electricity plant in Elkton, Virginia, to dispose of brewing wastes. Finally, an industrial plant in Altavista switched from natural gas to biomass as its primary fuel and upgraded capacity to add wood solids to its fuel mix.

Increases in electricity generation from biomass in Georgia and Florida were each due primarily to a single new plant coming online. In Georgia, the 55 MW Piedmont Green Power plant began operation in 2013, fueled by urban wood waste and mill and logging residues. Georgia Power built the plant to improve its fuel diversity.

Florida opened one of the largest new biomass plants in the United States, the 102.5 MW Gainesville Renewable Energy Center. The plant began generating power commercially in December 2013, but performance has not been consistent, with two major shutdowns in 2015.

The western part of the United States also had notable growth in biomass between 2010 and 2015, increasing electricity generation from biomass by 15% over that period. Most of the growth in the West comes from a few large plants in California that are helping the state meet its renewable electricity target.


This article was originally published by the U.S. Department of Energy in the public domain.

New Show: Renovation Angel

Today we finished recording a great segment with their founder and Ex-Director, Steve Feldman.  Steve and his team keep millions of pounds of home fixtures out of landfills, across the US, while raising millions of dollars for charities.  Talk about a triple-bottom line win.  We love it.

Here's some advance info on Renovation Angels.



In 2005, Steve Feldman founded Green Demolitions in Greenwich, Connecticut. Green Demolitions has now spread its wings to become Renovation Angel, America’s premier recycler of luxury pre-owned kitchens and renovation items. Steve and his team of professionals have conducted thousands of projects for members of the Forbes 400, Celebrities, Sports Stars, and High-Net Worth property owners.

Recycling luxury is the savvy way to renovate. Homeowners receive:

Thousands in savings with a full tax deduction
Free professional, insured, white-glove removal/pack/transport
Support high quality non-profit organizations
Renovation Angel is a donation program of Recovery Unlimited, a section 501(c)3 non-profit organization established in 2005.

Charitable Mission

a) Creating Jobs - The white-glove removal, transportation, and resale of these items creates numerous construction, logistics, and retail jobs as these items are prepared for re-purposing.

b) Protecting the Earth – Recycling luxury kitchens, bath fixtures, home furnishings, and architectural elements diverts millions of pounds from landfills.

c) Supporting high quality non-profit outreach programs – Proceeds earned from selling recycled luxury creates support for innovative and life-changing outreach programs in the areas of: at-risk youth, addiction recovery, job creation, and social entrepreneurship.

Achievements since 2005:

Job Creation – Over $13 million in jobs
Kitchens Sold – Over 4,000 pre-owned and showroom kitchens sold
Non-Profit Support – $2 million distributed to outreach programs
Positive Press – The New York Times, CNN, This Old House, Success Magazine, NBC-TV, DIY-TV, Forbes, etc.
Green Results –  Diverted over 22 million pounds from landfills through kitchen recycling
Luxury donations we accept:

Custom kitchens – cabinetry, appliances, countertops, islands, pantries, and sinks/faucets
Bath fixtures – vanities, pedestal sinks, faucets, medicine cabinets, and tubs
Custom millwork – libraries, wardrobes, desks, offices, and wet/dry bars
Furniture – antiques, mantels, artwork, mantels, decorative, tabletop, and outdoor
Lighting – chandeliers, sconces, pendants, ceiling lights, outdoor, and lamps
Exteriors – architectural elements, generators, doors/windows, and mechanicals
Designer surplus – showroom displays and new-in-box products
Where we recycle:

All 50 United States, Canada, and beyond

Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O Wilson – review

Do we need any more evidence of the crying need to bring the environment and economy--one that can sustain a growing world population--back in balance?

Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life by Edward O Wilson – review

by Robin McKie

 

A chilling warning that we’re in danger of wiping out all wildlife on Earth

 

 A newborn Kihansi spray toad clings to the back of an adult female at the Bronx Zoo in New York. The toad was last seen in the wild in 2004. Photograph: Julie Larsen 

Workers finished construction of a hydropower plant in Tanzania’s Udzungwa mountains. A giant reservoir was created by damming 90% of the water that had previously poured into nearby Kihansi gorge. The consequences for indigenous species were disastrous, in particular for the tiny, golden-hued Kihansi spray toad. The little amphibian once thrived, in its thousands, in a single two-hectare patch of forest watered with spray from the gorge’s falls. 

Those waters dried up, as did the little homeland of the toad, which became extinct in the wild within a couple of years. Thus the end product of a million years of evolution was removed fromFor Edward O Wilson, the spray toad’s fate perfectly encapsulates a biological crisis that now hangs over the Earth, a global endgame that threatens to eradicate virtually all our wild animals and plants. 

Among the many other victims outlined in this deeply disturbing work are the yellow-blossom mussel, the plateau chub, the mammoth, the passenger pigeon, the stirrup shell, the Tasmanian tiger, the dodo, the ivory-billed woodpecker and the baiji dolphin. However, the fate of the Kihansi spray toad touches Wilson most of all.“The plight of the little animal should all by itself serve as a wake-up call to us for mass extinctions imminent or in progress round the world,” he states. “We’re extinguishing Earth’s biodiversity as though the species of the natural world are no better than weeds and kitchen vermin. Have we no shame?”

The answer, of course, is a straightforward no. For the most part, we don’t give a damn. The activities of Homo sapiens – “a lucky accident of primate evolution”, as Wilson describes us – have made us the most destructive but unrepentant species in Earth’s history. When not constructing dams, we build farms, holiday resorts and factories that obliterate precious habitats and by using the atmosphere as the carbon dump of the Industrial Revolution we are transforming Earth’s climate system into a hothouse. To these ecological crimes we can add global pollution, unrestrained population growth and overhunting. The result? A thousandfold increase in species extinction rates since modern humans first appeared in Africa more than 100,000 years ago.

So intense has been our impact on the planet that most scientists, Wilson included, believe we have now entered a new epoch, one defined not by natural influences but by those let loose by human beings. This is the Anthropocene, which is delineated by the way we are now altering habitats, the climate and even the earth beneath our feet. “We thrash about, appallingly led, with no particular goal other than economic growth and unfettered consumption,” says Wilson. In the meantime, nature withers and dies.

What really concerns Wilson, however, is what is likely to follow. As the Anthropocene grinds on, humanity will continue to wipe out wildlife and plants. Earth will end up being inhabited by people, domesticated plants and animals, croplands as far as the eye can see – and little else except for some fungi, microbes and jellyfish. We will then have entered the next Earthly epoch: the Eremocine, the Age of Loneliness.

We should note that in wiping out species at a rate that far outstrips our ability to understand or study them, humanity leaves itself seriously compromised. Consider the problem of invasive species that are a danger to agriculture. One day a new type of fruit fly will appear in our fields and threaten our crops and orchards. A first line of response would be to look at this invader’s natural enemies in order to ally them to our cause. But in the near future, we may well find that by then we have eradicated them, thus seriously compromising our ability to fight off the new invaders.

Then there is the moral issue. For centuries, we have been obliterating species for the most trivial of reasons, with the rhinoceros providing a particularly chilling example. Millions of these great animals once thundered over African plains or slipped silently through Asian rain forests. Today the rhino has been driven close to extinction because its horn is valued as a traditional medicine when, in fact, it is as effective as a healing agent as a human fingernail.

So what should be done? For Wilson, there is only one solution. We must increase the land we have set aside for reserves for protecting wild plants and animals until this terrain covers half the globe. Such a project would then give us a reasonable chance of saving around 80% of species still alive today, he argues.

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It is an audacious idea. But given the identity of its proposer – Wilson is one of the world’s greatest naturalists and a double Pulitzer prize winner – it is one that should surely be taken seriously. And given that habitats protected by governments and agencies already account for 15% of Earth’s land area, according to Wilson, it could be argued that we have at least made some kind of start.

Unfortunately, having prepared his case so carefully, Wilson then stops in his tracks and hesitates, providing no detail of the measures needed to ensure his goal is completed or any indication of how we can expand nature reserves so they reach the Half-Earth status he craves. Nor does he offer any inkling of what territories should be annexed or what funding mechanisms or agreements will be required to achieve his goal. 

This is a pretty serious limitation. Earth’s population is set to rise from 7 to nearly 10 billion people by 2050, so pressure on existing wild territory is destined to rise even further. Yet Wilson seems to think this is no real impediment. His rhetoric soars but practical propositions in Half-Earth are as thin on the ground as spray toads in the Kihansi rainforest.

A book that was a little more prescriptive would certainly have been welcome. This is not say that Half-Earth is a washout. As an outline of our terrible ecological plight, it does a first-class job.

Wilson is, if nothing else, a gifted wordsmith and Half-Earth is a much-needed antidote to the views of those who assert that our worldly woes are exaggerated and that everything is tickety-boo in the Garden of Eden. As he points out, such believers tend to have the least personal experience of the planet, a point once emphasised by the explorer-naturalist Alexander von Humboldt: “The most dangerous worldview is the worldview of those have not viewed the world.” Wilson has certainly viewed the world and seen its wildlife close up and personal. We should at least listen to his warning.

World's biggest floating solar farm powers up outside London

We'd love to see more targeted projects like this.  These are very smart investments that will pay huge dividends in reduced and fixed energy costs. 

World's biggest floating solar farm powers up outside London 

by Fiona Harvey

Five years in planning and due to be finished in early March, more than 23,000 solar panels will be floated on the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir near Heathrow and used to generate power for local water treatment plants 

On a vast manmade lake on the outskirts of London, work is nearing completion on what will soon be Europe’s largest floating solar power farm – and will briefly be the world’s biggest.

But few are likely to see the 23,000 solar panels on the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir at Walton-on-Thames, which is invisible to all but Heathrow passengers and a few flats in neighbouring estates.

“This will be the biggest floating solar farm in the world for a time - others are under construction,” said Angus Berry, energy manager for Thames Water, which owns the site. “We are leading the way, but we hope that others will follow, in the UK and abroad.”

Five years in planning and due to be finished in early March, the £6m project will generate enough electricity to power the utility’s local water treatment plants for decades. The energy will help provide clean drinking water to a populace of close to 10 million people in greater London and the south-east of England, a huge and often unrecognised drain on electricity, rather than nearby homes.

Why put solar panels on water? The answer, according to Berry, is that the water is there, and might as well be used for this purpose. Floating panels, covering only about 6% of the reservoir, will have no impact on the ecosystem, he says.

Though waterbirds, including moorhens and gulls, live on the margins, and a thin scum of litter is visible at the shore, the reservoir is not intended as a home to wildlife, and any fish living here are accidental visitors. Eighteen metres deep, it provides water for Londoners in a constantly churning stream. Although most of the population growth in London tends to be towards the east, most of the water still comes from reservoirs to the west of the city.

But future projects to make use of water companies’ reservoirs in order to provide solar power might be in doubt, Berry said.

The current government has slashed subsidies for solar and wind power. Berry said that this would not affect the QEII project, but might have an effect on whether follow-up projects could go ahead. “We have had to look very closely at the economics of this, at all stages,” he said. “It is not clear what the future economics would be [for other potential projects].”

A similar floating solar farm with around half the capacity of the Thames Water project is being built by water company United Utilities on a reservoir near Manchester. Construction of an even bigger farm - at 13.7MW more than twice the QEII farm - is underway on a reservoir in land-scarce Japan and due to finish in 2018.

Putting solar panels on the water for the QEII scheme has not required planning permission, though big arrays of similar panels on land require official sanction. The government has decided to ban farmers who put solar arrays on agricultural land from receiving EU subsidies for the land.

More than 23,000 solar panels will be floated by developer Lightsource Renewable Energy at the reservoir near Walton-on-Thames, representing 6.3MW of capacity, or enough to generate the equivalent electricity consumption of about 1,800 homes.

The reservoir was commissioned in 1962, and remains one of the biggest serving London. Thames Water said that plans for a “super-sewer” under London would not affect the solar power project.

Our latest event in our Masters of Sustainability, 2016

Will be a fabulous event and broadcast.  Go to our main site at Renewable Now.com for more info.

Headlining will be Jack Groh, Director of the NFL Environmental Program and Aubrey McCormick, the Green Golfer.