CleanTechnica

Mix steel, oil, and chemical companies together with the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and you have a chunk of the financial backing behind the Southeastern Legal Foundation, which has just filed a petition challenging the U.S. EPA’ recent determination on greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.

In challenging the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gasses, the Southeastern Legal Foundation joins the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and a number of companies including  Massey Energy (which includes mountaintop removal in its coal mining operations).  Though these actions are taken against a government agency, they are also yet another indication that an epic battle of titanic proportions is brewing in the private sector, pitching old school fossil fuel industries against climate-conscious companies including Nike, Starbucks, Apple, and Exelon (the nation’s largest utility) – each of which has protested the Chamber’s position on global warming.

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A team of students at Columbia University has made it to the next round of Walmart’ s Better Living Business Plan Challenge.  They achieved their spot in the sustainability-focused competition by yes, reinventing the wheel.  The team has proposed a business venture that would make energy efficient, lightweight composite wheels for buses, trucks and other large vehicles.  Advancing in the competition means a chance to pitch the plan to top Walmart execs and earn seed money to get started.

Lightweight composite wheels are familiar to bicyclists and ATV enthusiasts, but their use in wheels for heavier vehicles has been limited so far.  That could be about to change.  Three of the four members of the team are Boeing employees involved in the distance learning program of the Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, so a likely inspiration for the project is the growing use of durable, lightweight composite materials in aircraft.

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In the burgeoning world of carbon capture technology, all sorts of interesting things are popping up.  Here’s one from UCLA graduate student Hexian Deng and biochemistry professor Omar M. Yaghi, who have developed synthetic crystals that can be used to trap carbon dioxide.

Carbon capture is often conflated with so called clean coal technology for power plants, but UCLA’s “designer crystal” approach opens the door for more low cost, scalable applications, such as trapping carbon dioxide from factories or vehicle exhaust pipes.

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Pentadyne's new flywheel weighs less, stores more energy.

Flywheels are the ultimate green energy storage machines.  They store energy mechanically, like a wind-up toy, so they don’t involve large quantities of lead, acid, or other environmental hazards, and they have a much longer lifespan than conventional batteries.  That makes flywheels an ideal storage format for sustainable energy, but until recently their full potential wasn’t exploited.  Early versions were heavy, difficult to maintain, and not very efficient compared to lead-acid batteries.

Pentadyne Power has come out with a new GTX flywheel that represents the kind of next-generation improvements that are pushing the technology into more widespread use.  It combines lightweight carbon fiber components with magnetic levitation to achieve a level of energy efficiency that competes favorably, pound for pound, with conventional lead-acid batteries – and shows how the new developments are beating old school flywheels at their own game.

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The Obama administration is moving ahead with not one, but three EPA rules that will start to reduce our use of coal, (by far the worst emitter of greenhouse gases in the nation) despite misuse of the Senate filibuster by Republicans who are heavily funded by fossil interests to obstruct this kind of good governance.

As a result, even in the absence of climate and energy policy being written by congress to turn around our use of harmful energy sources and fund an investment in clean safe energy sources, US greenhouse gas emissions will start to drop as coal powered electricity is already being reduced, halting pollution of our air and water.

Coal was the only energy source that was lower last year as coal-powered electricity was swapped by many utilities in favor of natural gas. Most coal power stations could equally well burn natural gas, which is not without its own health problems, but it is only about half as harmful to our climate as coal.

But more constraints are coming from the new Democratic administration, which should lead to further drops in the future, and to replace it, an increase in renewable energy purchases by utilities, which are now eligible for 30% tax credits for renewable energy investment to move the nation towards a cleaner, safer, healthier energy future.

The three EPA rules…
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Nike has been one green company lately — in the last year, it has pushed for a strong clean energy and climate bill in Congress on its own and in concert with others and it has helped to reduce deforestation of the Amazon. Now, Nike has also just reported that it reduced its own carbon footprint last year while still growing economically. In fact, it has tremendously reduced greenhouse gas pollution over the last decade and 2009 just kept the ball rolling.

On top of all of that, Nike announced today that along with nine other organizations — Yahoo!, Best Buy, Creative Commons, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-op, nGenera, Outdoor Industry Association, salesforce.com, and 2degrees — Nike will “collaborate and share intellectual property (IP) which can lead to new sustainability business models and innovation.” This “Web-based marketplace” — GreenXchange (GX) — was announced at a CEO breakfast at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland this morning.

If this all has you feeling warm inside, read on.

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Pitchers and catchers don’t report for spring training until February 18 but the Minnesota Twins are already getting a jump on the 2010 baseball season by installing a huge new rainwater harvesting and recycling system at the team’s new home, Target Field.

The new Rain Water Recycle System was designed by by Minneapolis-based Pentair, a global water innovator.  Using a gigantic underground water storage tank the size of a freight car, the team aims to save more than two million gallons of water yearly – and that’s all part of a bigger sustainable plan for Target Field.

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Chemical treatment is becoming a less desirable way to provide safe drinking water, and water professionals have been searching for a less expensive, more reliable and more sustainable method of killing pathogens.  Cavitation Technologies, Inc. has come up with one solution.  The company’s new process uses mechanical and electrical systems to blow the little bugs to smithereens.

The company’s CaviGulation reactor sounds like a piece of equipment that would be at home in Frankenstein’s lab.  It delivers up a complex set of reactions based on kinetic energy, chemical, electro-chemical, and hydrodynamic principles.  The result: a water disinfection process that’s 1,000 times more effective than conventional systems.

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Transportation is one of the biggest parts of our lives, whether we think about it or not. How will 2010 help shape the future of transportation in the US? How should it do so?

And, more specifically, what is going on in government on this matter? With an expired (in September of 2009) and extended and extended and extended and extended (yes, four times) 6-year transportation bill, what is coming in 2010?

The following discussion goes into my own thoughts on some of the major issues with the help of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials’ (AASHTO’s) “Top Ten Transportation Topics” list and other stories.

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Wastewater treatment plants are vast expanses of bubbling tanks that sprawl around the outskirts (and sometimes the inskirts) of cities and towns.  All that acreage can be put to another use and one solar energy company, SunPower Corp. is pointing the way.  The company recently completed work on a one-megawatt solar power system at the West Riverside Wastewater Treatment Plant in Corona, California.

The new solar power system will generate about 25 percent of the plant’s energy needs, and that’s significant in terms of a more energy efficient and  sustainable future.  Wastewater treatment plants are packed with industrial-sized aerators, pumps, and other energy-gobbling machines, so getting them off the conventional energy grid would be a major step forward.

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