Showing Results 1 to 20 of the Green Rankings Global Top 100PreviousNextPageof 5 Rank Company Industry Sector Green
Score Envtl.
Impact Green
Policies Rep.
Survey
1 International Business Machines» Technology 100.00 93.96 91.30 96.00
2 Hewlett-Packard» Technology 99.33 58.92 95.56 92.87
3 Johnson & Johnson» Pharmaceuticals 98.51 42.98 100.00 77.58
4 Sony» Consumer Products, Cars 96.40 56.94 97.26 64.32
5 GlaxoSmithKline» Pharmaceuticals 94.18 64.95 91.36 73.62
6 Novartis» Pharmaceuticals 91.48 53.97 89.64 67.43
7 Deutsche Telekom» Technology 91.40 95.94 84.04 67.04
8 Panasonic» Consumer Products, Cars 90.67 44.96 90.63 64.19
9 HSBC Holdings» Banks and Insurance 90.18 96.93 78.80 81.72
10 Toshiba» Technology 87.73 52.98 86.61 55.09
11 Vodafone» Technology 87.09 62.97 83.22 61.81
12 Barclays» Banks and Insurance 86.55 88.91 78.22 64.28
13 Intesa SanPaolo» Banks and Insurance 86.42 92.97 82.92 37.50
14 Nokia» Technology 86.01 79.90 71.97 100.00
15 ING Groep» Banks and Insurance 85.56 70.99 80.22 59.85
16 Nippon Telegraph & Telephone» Technology 85.41 94.95 79.42 45.87
17 Toyota Motor» Consumer Products, Cars 85.15 33.97 82.40 75.71
18 Honda Motor» Consumer Products, Cars 84.98 29.91 85.31 68.43
19 Allianz» Banks and Insurance 84.32 69.90 75.28 73.91
20 Pfizer» Pharmaceuticals 83.18 54.96 78.11 59.27
Order 2010 Green Rankings Reports for expanded analysis.Showing Results 1 to 20 of the Green Rankings Global Top 100PreviousNextPageof 5 *Green number denotes overall list ranking
For the 2009 Green Rankings list go to greenrankings2009.newsweek.com
More In Green Rankings
Why There's Still Hope for Cutting Carbon Interactive: 100 Places To Remember 10 Big Green Ideas
View the 2009 Green Rankings list.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Post-BP Gulf gets slightly lower grades from experts
Post-BP Gulf gets slightly lower grades from experts
Average health score is 65, down from 71; big questions about spill impacts lie below the sea Interactive
Grading the Gulf Advertisement | ad info
Patrick Semansky / AP
An oil-covered crab crawls on a glove worn by Plaquemines Parish coastal zone director P.J. Hahn in Bay Jimmy, La., last Thursday.
By Cain Burdeau and Seth Borenstein
The Associated Press
ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. — Six months after the rig explosion that led to the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, damage to the Gulf of Mexico can be measured more in increments than extinctions, say scientists polled by The Associated Press.
More U.S. news Dems make $250 pre-election pitch to seniors
Democrats are making a pre-election pitch to give Social Security recipients a one-time payment of $250, part of an effort to lure senior voters. Full story
Updated 6 minutes ago 10/19/2010 4:27:53 PM +00:00 JetBlue attendant in famous meltdown pleads guilty Updated 24 minutes ago 10/19/2010 4:09:51 PM +00:00 Police account of NY student's death is questioned Updated 14 minutes ago 10/19/2010 4:19:35 PM +00:00 Nurse: 3 soldiers unafraid facing Fort Hood gunman Updated 55 minutes ago 10/19/2010 3:38:51 PM +00:00 Police hunt shooter after bullets hit Pentagon In an informal survey, 35 researchers who study the Gulf lowered their rating of its ecological health by several points, compared to their assessment before the BP well gushed millions of gallons of oil. But the drop in grade wasn't dramatic. On a scale of 0 to 100, the overall average grade for the oiled Gulf was 65 — down from 71 before the spill.
This reflects scientists' views that the spilled 172 million gallons of oil further eroded what was already a beleaguered body of water — tainted for years by farm runoff from the Mississippi River, overfishing, and oil from smaller spills and natural seepage.
The spill wasn't the near-death blow initially feared. Nor is it the glancing strike that some relieved experts and officials said it was in midsummer.
"It is like a concussion," said Larry McKinney, who heads the Gulf of Mexico research center at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "We got hit hard and we certainly are seeing some symptoms of it."
Will the symptoms stick around or just become yesterday's headaches? That's the question that couldn't be answered at a conference earlier this month of 150 scientists at a hotel on a Florida beach untainted by the spill. The St. Pete Beach gathering was organized by the White House science office to coordinate future research.
"There's the sense that it's not as bad as we had originally feared; it's not that worst case scenario," said Steve Lohrenz, a biological oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi. "There's still a lot of wariness of what that long-term impact is going to be."
Steve Murawski, the chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, compared scientists research to a TV crime drama: "It's the end of the story that counts, not all the steps along the way."
We're only at the 30-minute break in an hour-long drama, Murawski said.
Focus turns to sea bottom
And there's a plot twist. Research findings already released have led scientists and the government to shift their focus from the sea's surface to deeper waters and the ocean bottom.
A month-long cruise by Georgia researchers on the ship Oceanus reported oil on the sea floor that they suspect is BP's but haven't proven yet. Government officials still question whether there is oil on the sea floor, but the Georgia scientists say the samples smelled like an auto repair shop.
They took 78 cores of sediment and only five had live worms in them. Usually they would all have life, said University of Georgia scientist Samantha Joye. She called it a "graveyard for the macrofauna."
"The fact that there isn't living fauna is a signal that something happened to these sites and these sediments," Joye said. "The horrible thing is they've been inundated with this oily material... There's dead animals on the bottom and it stinks to high heaven of oil."
University of South Florida's Ernst Peebles said the oil on the floor "is undermining the ecosystem from the bottom up."
David Hollander, also at South Florida, found some of the first plumes of the oil beneath the surface, something that government officials first disputed but now concede is real. Keeping the oil off the surface minimized damage to wetlands, beaches and some wildlife, so in some ways, "we dodged the bullet," he said.
Patrick Semansky / AP
Plaquemines Parish coastal zone director P.J. Hahn walks through oiled marsh grass in Bay Jimmy, La., last Thursday.
There are several reasons a sizable amount of oil didn't make it to the surface where it could do more visual harm. For one thing, BP used 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants to break up the oil. But scientists give more credit to the high pressure and high temperature of the gusher that spewed the oil in droplets so tiny, they didn't float to the surface.
"We still don't know the long-term effect," Hollander said.
Scientists worry the oil deep below will get into plankton and the food web, maybe not killing species directly but causing genetic mutations, stress or weakening some species, with effects that will only be seen years later.
"I think populations are going to be affected for years to come," said Diane Blake, a Tulane University biochemist. "This is going to cause selective (evolutionary) pressure that's going to change the Gulf in ways we don't even know yet."
It was a long-term assault from the well. From April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 people, to July 15 when the well was initially plugged, oil bled at a prodigious rate that BP and government officials had a hard time understanding. Initially, officials said only 42,000 gallons a day was flowing, but government scientists eventually said it was as much as 2.6 million gallons a day.
Example of Exxon Valdez and herring
One of the species mentioned most often during two days of scientific sessions in Florida doesn't even live in the Gulf. It's herring. After 1989's much smaller Exxon Valdez spill, it took awhile for the effects on Alaska's herring to be noticed, but the once prolific species crashed to extremely low levels. While other species in Prince William Sound recovered, the herring population has yet to bounce back. And Gulf researchers are wondering if that sort of thing will happen again.
Only on msnbc.com 'Double standard' in White House leak probes? Hot-button issue: Discussing politics at work What to do if we find alien life Could Hollywood be the next Chinatown? PhotoBlog: Faces of the Tea Party Moms, teach your daughters about money too If one species in the Gulf is likely to wind up like the herring, it's probably the bluefin tuna. And answers about its fate may be sitting in a lab in Poland.
Thanks to a 30-year agreement that dates to Cold War politics, that distant lab is analyzing samples of Gulf water collected in the spill area for the U.S. government. The tests are to find out what the oil did to the larvae. The bluefin was already in trouble before the spill, its spawning stock down 90 percent in the last 30 years.
The spill, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, happened in the precise place at just the right time to threaten the bluefin larvae bobbing on the surface. The Gulf of Mexico is the only known spawning area for western Atlantic bluefin.
"Was it catastrophic for the bluefin? Probably not," said NOAA's John Lamkin, who expects data back from Poland near the end of the year. But he added: "Any larvae that came into contact with the oil doesn't have a chance."
Average health score is 65, down from 71; big questions about spill impacts lie below the sea Interactive
Grading the Gulf Advertisement | ad info
Patrick Semansky / AP
An oil-covered crab crawls on a glove worn by Plaquemines Parish coastal zone director P.J. Hahn in Bay Jimmy, La., last Thursday.
By Cain Burdeau and Seth Borenstein
The Associated Press
ST. PETE BEACH, Fla. — Six months after the rig explosion that led to the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history, damage to the Gulf of Mexico can be measured more in increments than extinctions, say scientists polled by The Associated Press.
More U.S. news Dems make $250 pre-election pitch to seniors
Democrats are making a pre-election pitch to give Social Security recipients a one-time payment of $250, part of an effort to lure senior voters. Full story
Updated 6 minutes ago 10/19/2010 4:27:53 PM +00:00 JetBlue attendant in famous meltdown pleads guilty Updated 24 minutes ago 10/19/2010 4:09:51 PM +00:00 Police account of NY student's death is questioned Updated 14 minutes ago 10/19/2010 4:19:35 PM +00:00 Nurse: 3 soldiers unafraid facing Fort Hood gunman Updated 55 minutes ago 10/19/2010 3:38:51 PM +00:00 Police hunt shooter after bullets hit Pentagon In an informal survey, 35 researchers who study the Gulf lowered their rating of its ecological health by several points, compared to their assessment before the BP well gushed millions of gallons of oil. But the drop in grade wasn't dramatic. On a scale of 0 to 100, the overall average grade for the oiled Gulf was 65 — down from 71 before the spill.
This reflects scientists' views that the spilled 172 million gallons of oil further eroded what was already a beleaguered body of water — tainted for years by farm runoff from the Mississippi River, overfishing, and oil from smaller spills and natural seepage.
The spill wasn't the near-death blow initially feared. Nor is it the glancing strike that some relieved experts and officials said it was in midsummer.
"It is like a concussion," said Larry McKinney, who heads the Gulf of Mexico research center at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. "We got hit hard and we certainly are seeing some symptoms of it."
Will the symptoms stick around or just become yesterday's headaches? That's the question that couldn't be answered at a conference earlier this month of 150 scientists at a hotel on a Florida beach untainted by the spill. The St. Pete Beach gathering was organized by the White House science office to coordinate future research.
"There's the sense that it's not as bad as we had originally feared; it's not that worst case scenario," said Steve Lohrenz, a biological oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi. "There's still a lot of wariness of what that long-term impact is going to be."
Steve Murawski, the chief fisheries scientist for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, compared scientists research to a TV crime drama: "It's the end of the story that counts, not all the steps along the way."
We're only at the 30-minute break in an hour-long drama, Murawski said.
Focus turns to sea bottom
And there's a plot twist. Research findings already released have led scientists and the government to shift their focus from the sea's surface to deeper waters and the ocean bottom.
A month-long cruise by Georgia researchers on the ship Oceanus reported oil on the sea floor that they suspect is BP's but haven't proven yet. Government officials still question whether there is oil on the sea floor, but the Georgia scientists say the samples smelled like an auto repair shop.
They took 78 cores of sediment and only five had live worms in them. Usually they would all have life, said University of Georgia scientist Samantha Joye. She called it a "graveyard for the macrofauna."
"The fact that there isn't living fauna is a signal that something happened to these sites and these sediments," Joye said. "The horrible thing is they've been inundated with this oily material... There's dead animals on the bottom and it stinks to high heaven of oil."
University of South Florida's Ernst Peebles said the oil on the floor "is undermining the ecosystem from the bottom up."
David Hollander, also at South Florida, found some of the first plumes of the oil beneath the surface, something that government officials first disputed but now concede is real. Keeping the oil off the surface minimized damage to wetlands, beaches and some wildlife, so in some ways, "we dodged the bullet," he said.
Patrick Semansky / AP
Plaquemines Parish coastal zone director P.J. Hahn walks through oiled marsh grass in Bay Jimmy, La., last Thursday.
There are several reasons a sizable amount of oil didn't make it to the surface where it could do more visual harm. For one thing, BP used 1.8 million gallons of chemical dispersants to break up the oil. But scientists give more credit to the high pressure and high temperature of the gusher that spewed the oil in droplets so tiny, they didn't float to the surface.
"We still don't know the long-term effect," Hollander said.
Scientists worry the oil deep below will get into plankton and the food web, maybe not killing species directly but causing genetic mutations, stress or weakening some species, with effects that will only be seen years later.
"I think populations are going to be affected for years to come," said Diane Blake, a Tulane University biochemist. "This is going to cause selective (evolutionary) pressure that's going to change the Gulf in ways we don't even know yet."
It was a long-term assault from the well. From April 20, when the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded, killing 11 people, to July 15 when the well was initially plugged, oil bled at a prodigious rate that BP and government officials had a hard time understanding. Initially, officials said only 42,000 gallons a day was flowing, but government scientists eventually said it was as much as 2.6 million gallons a day.
Example of Exxon Valdez and herring
One of the species mentioned most often during two days of scientific sessions in Florida doesn't even live in the Gulf. It's herring. After 1989's much smaller Exxon Valdez spill, it took awhile for the effects on Alaska's herring to be noticed, but the once prolific species crashed to extremely low levels. While other species in Prince William Sound recovered, the herring population has yet to bounce back. And Gulf researchers are wondering if that sort of thing will happen again.
Only on msnbc.com 'Double standard' in White House leak probes? Hot-button issue: Discussing politics at work What to do if we find alien life Could Hollywood be the next Chinatown? PhotoBlog: Faces of the Tea Party Moms, teach your daughters about money too If one species in the Gulf is likely to wind up like the herring, it's probably the bluefin tuna. And answers about its fate may be sitting in a lab in Poland.
Thanks to a 30-year agreement that dates to Cold War politics, that distant lab is analyzing samples of Gulf water collected in the spill area for the U.S. government. The tests are to find out what the oil did to the larvae. The bluefin was already in trouble before the spill, its spawning stock down 90 percent in the last 30 years.
The spill, 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, happened in the precise place at just the right time to threaten the bluefin larvae bobbing on the surface. The Gulf of Mexico is the only known spawning area for western Atlantic bluefin.
"Was it catastrophic for the bluefin? Probably not," said NOAA's John Lamkin, who expects data back from Poland near the end of the year. But he added: "Any larvae that came into contact with the oil doesn't have a chance."
Monday, October 18, 2010
Super typhoon hits Philippines
The Philippines declared a state of calamity in a northern province after super typhoon Megi made landfall on Monday, cutting off power, forcing flight cancellations and putting the region's rice crop at risk.
Megi, the 10th and strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year, hit Isabela province at 11:25 a.m. (0325 GMT) and was heading west-southwest across the north of the main island of Luzon with winds of 190 kph (117 mph) near the center, forecasters said.
Tropical Storm Risk (www.tropicalstormrisk.com) said Megi, known locally as Juan, was a category 5 super typhoon, the highest rating, with winds of more than 250 kph (155 mph).
The weather bureau said the typhoon had weakened and slowed down after it slammed into mountains in northwest Luzon late in the morning.
Lieutenant-General Gaudencio Pangilinan, head of the military in northern Luzon, said the typhoon's fury was felt in Cagayan and Isabela provinces, where trees were uprooted and roofs of houses blown away.
"There's almost zero visibility in some areas due to heavy rain and strong wind," Pangilinan told Reuters by phone. "We expect extensive damage on property and agriculture. We're still validating reports from the field."
The typhoon is expected to clear Luzon island on Monday night, and head across the South China Sea toward China and possibly Vietnam, which is already suffering from floods
Megi, the 10th and strongest typhoon to hit the Philippines this year, hit Isabela province at 11:25 a.m. (0325 GMT) and was heading west-southwest across the north of the main island of Luzon with winds of 190 kph (117 mph) near the center, forecasters said.
Tropical Storm Risk (www.tropicalstormrisk.com) said Megi, known locally as Juan, was a category 5 super typhoon, the highest rating, with winds of more than 250 kph (155 mph).
The weather bureau said the typhoon had weakened and slowed down after it slammed into mountains in northwest Luzon late in the morning.
Lieutenant-General Gaudencio Pangilinan, head of the military in northern Luzon, said the typhoon's fury was felt in Cagayan and Isabela provinces, where trees were uprooted and roofs of houses blown away.
"There's almost zero visibility in some areas due to heavy rain and strong wind," Pangilinan told Reuters by phone. "We expect extensive damage on property and agriculture. We're still validating reports from the field."
The typhoon is expected to clear Luzon island on Monday night, and head across the South China Sea toward China and possibly Vietnam, which is already suffering from floods
EPA: Blowing Big Coal’s Top on Mountaintop Coal Mining
If it were ever possible or even realistic to put the words Appalachia and victory in the same sentence, this might be one of those rare times: the Environmental Protection Agency's Region 3 Administrator Shawn Garvin has recommended the withdrawal of the mining permit for the nation's largest proposed mountaintop removal coal mine site, the Spruce No. 1 Mine in Logan County, West Virginia.
If Garvin's decision, released in an 84-page report on Friday, becomes the final EPA say about Spruce No. 1, the mine's owner, Arch Coal, will be barred from disposing mining waste in the state's streams. This will effectively block operation of the mine.
A year ago the EPA determined that Spruce No. 1 "raised significant environmental and water quality concerns" and halted further action on the company's Clean Water permit process. A subsequent legal maneuver appeared to set the stage for EPA and Arch to work out their differences regarding Spruce No. 1 and for EPA to determine if a revised mining plan could be developed that would comply with the Clean Water Act.
But Garvin's report said the mine should be halted because "mitigation is not likely to offset anticipated impacts."
If allowed to proceed, Spruce No.1 would clear more than 2,200 acres of forest, bury more than seven miles of headwater streams, and contaminate the downstream water supply. In mountaintop coal removal, the tops of mountains are literally blasted away to get at the coal seams.
If Garvin's decision, released in an 84-page report on Friday, becomes the final EPA say about Spruce No. 1, the mine's owner, Arch Coal, will be barred from disposing mining waste in the state's streams. This will effectively block operation of the mine.
A year ago the EPA determined that Spruce No. 1 "raised significant environmental and water quality concerns" and halted further action on the company's Clean Water permit process. A subsequent legal maneuver appeared to set the stage for EPA and Arch to work out their differences regarding Spruce No. 1 and for EPA to determine if a revised mining plan could be developed that would comply with the Clean Water Act.
But Garvin's report said the mine should be halted because "mitigation is not likely to offset anticipated impacts."
If allowed to proceed, Spruce No.1 would clear more than 2,200 acres of forest, bury more than seven miles of headwater streams, and contaminate the downstream water supply. In mountaintop coal removal, the tops of mountains are literally blasted away to get at the coal seams.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Offshore Wind Power Line Wins Praise, and Backing
Google and a New York financial firm have each agreed to invest heavily in a proposed $5 billion transmission backbone for future offshore wind farms along the Atlantic Seaboard that could ultimately transform the region’s electrical map.
Shaun Curry | AFP | Getty Images
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 350-mile underwater spine, which could remove some critical obstacles to wind power development, has stirred excitement among investors, government officials and environmentalists who have been briefed on it.
Google [GOOG 601.45 60.52 (+11.19%) ] and Good Energies, an investment firm specializing in renewable energy, have each agreed to take 37.5 percent of the equity portion of the project. They are likely to bring in additional investors, which would reduce their stakes.
If they hold on to their stakes, that would come to an initial investment of about $200 million apiece in the first phase of construction alone, said Robert L. Mitchell, the chief executive of Trans-Elect, the Maryland-based transmission-line company that proposed the venture.
Marubeni, a Japanese trading company, has taken a 15 percent stake. Trans-Elect said it hoped to begin construction in 2013.
Several government officials praised the idea underlying the project as ingenious, while cautioning that they could not prejudge the specifics.
“Conceptually it looks to me to be one of the most interesting transmission projects that I’ve ever seen walk through the door,” said Jon Wellinghoff, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate electricity transmission. “It provides a gathering point for offshore wind for multiple projects up and down the coast.”
Industry experts called the plan promising, but warned that as a first-of-a-kind effort, it was bound to face bureaucratic delays and could run into unforeseen challenges, from technology problems to cost overruns. While several undersea electrical cables exist off the Atlantic Coast already, none has ever picked up power from generators along the way.
The system’s backbone cable, with a capacity of 6,000 megawatts, equal to the output of five large nuclear reactors, would run in shallow trenches on the seabed in federal waters 15 to 20 miles offshore, from northern New Jersey to Norfolk, Va. The notion would be to harvest energy from turbines in an area where the wind is strong but the hulking towers would barely be visible.
Trans-Elect estimated that construction would cost $5 billion, plus financing and permit fees. The $1.8 billion first phase, a 150-mile stretch from northern New Jersey to Rehoboth Beach, Del., could go into service by early 2016, it said. The rest would not be completed until 2021 at the earliest.
Richard L. Needham, the director of Google’s green business operations group, called the plan “innovative and audacious.”
“It is an opportunity to kick-start this industry and, long term, provide a way for the mid-Atlantic states to meet their renewable energy goals,” he said.
Yet even before any wind farms were built, the cable would channel existing supplies of electricity from southern Virginia, where it is cheap, to northern New Jersey, where it is costly, bypassing one of the most congested parts of the North American electric grid while lowering energy costs for northern customers.
Generating electricity from offshore wind is far more expensive than relying on coal, natural gas or even onshore wind. But energy experts anticipate a growing demand for the offshore turbines to meet state requirements for greater reliance on local renewable energy as a clean alternative to fossil fuels.
Four connection points — in southern Virginia, Delaware, southern New Jersey and northern New Jersey — would simplify the job of bringing the energy onshore, involving fewer permit hurdles. In contrast to transmission lines on land, where a builder may have to deal with hundreds of property owners, this project would have to deal with a maximum of just four, and fewer than that in its first phase.
Ultimately the system, known as the Atlantic Wind Connection, could make building a wind farm offshore far simpler and cheaper than it looks today, experts said.
Environmentalists who have been briefed on the plan were enthusiastic. Melinda Pierce, the deputy director for national campaigns at the Sierra Club, said she had campaigned against proposed transmission lines that would carry coal-fired energy around the country, but would favor this one, with its promise of tapping the potential of offshore wind.
“These kinds of audacious ideas might just be what we need to break through the wretched logjam,” she said.
Projects like Cape Wind, proposed for shallow waters just off Cape Cod in Massachusetts, met with fierce objections from residents who felt it would mar the ocean vista. But sponsors of the Trans-Elect project insist that the mid-Atlantic turbines would have less of a visual impact.
The hurdles facing the project have more to do with administrative procedures than with engineering problems or its economic merit, several experts said.
By the time the Interior Department could issue permits for such a line, for example, the federal subsidy program for wind will have expired in 2012, said Willett M. Kempton, a professor at the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware and the author of several papers on offshore wind.
Another is that PJM Interconnection, the regional electricity group that would have to approve the project and assess its member utilities for the cost, has no integrated procedure for calculating the value of all three tasks the line would accomplish — hooking up new power generation, reducing congestion on the grid and improving reliability.
And elected officials in Virginia have in the past opposed transmission proposals that would tend to average out pricing across the mid-Atlantic states, possibly raising their constituents’ costs.
But the lure of Atlantic wind is very strong. The Atlantic Ocean is relatively shallow even tens of miles from shore, unlike the Pacific, where the sea floor drops away steeply. Construction is also difficult on the Great Lakes because their waters are deep and they freeze, raising the prospect of moving ice sheets that could damage a tower.
Nearly all of the East Coast governors, Republican and Democratic, have spoken enthusiastically about coastal wind and have fought proposals for transmission lines from the other likely wind source, the Great Plains.
“From Massachusetts down to Virginia, the governors have signed appeals to the Senate not to do anything that would lead to a high-voltage grid that would blanket the country and bring in wind from the Dakotas,” said James J. Hoecker, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who now is part of a nonprofit group that represents transmission owners.
He described an Atlantic transmission backbone as “a necessary piece of what the Eastern governors have been talking about in terms of taking advantage of offshore wind.”
So far only one offshore wind project, Bluewater Wind off Delaware, has sought permission to build in federal waters. The company is seeking federal loan guarantees to build 293 to 450 megawatts of capacity, but the timing of construction remains uncertain.
Executives with that project said the Atlantic backbone was an interesting idea, in part because it would foster development of a supply chain for the specialized parts needed for offshore wind.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose agency would have to sign off on the project, has spoken approvingly of wind energy and talked about the possibility of an offshore “backbone.” In a speech this month, he emphasized that the federal waters were “controlled by the secretary,” meaning him.
Within three miles of the shore, control is wielded by the state. Nonetheless, if the offshore wind farms are built on a vast scale, the project’s sponsors say, a backbone with just four connection points could expedite the approval process.
In fact, if successful, the transmission spine would reduce the regulatory burden on subsequent projects, said Mr. Mitchell, the Trans-Elect chief executive.
Mr. Kempton of the University of Delaware and Mr. Wellinghoff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the backbone would offer another plus: reducing one of wind power’s big problems, variability of output.
“Along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard, we tend to have storm tracks that move along the coast and somewhat offshore,” Mr. Kempton said.
If storm winds were blowing on Friday off Virginia, they might be off Delaware by Saturday and off New Jersey by Sunday, he noted. Yet the long spine would ensure that the amount of energy coming ashore held roughly constant.
Wind energy becomes more valuable when it is more predictable; if predictable enough, it could replace some land-based generation altogether, Mr. Kempton said.
But the economics remain uncertain, he warned, For now, he said, the biggest impediment may be that the market price of offshore wind energy is about 50 percent higher than that of energy generated on land.
With a change in market conditions — an increase in the price of natural gas, for example, or the adoption of a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide from coal- or gas-generated electricity — that could change, he said.
courtasey....Newyork times
Shaun Curry | AFP | Getty Images
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The 350-mile underwater spine, which could remove some critical obstacles to wind power development, has stirred excitement among investors, government officials and environmentalists who have been briefed on it.
Google [GOOG 601.45 60.52 (+11.19%) ] and Good Energies, an investment firm specializing in renewable energy, have each agreed to take 37.5 percent of the equity portion of the project. They are likely to bring in additional investors, which would reduce their stakes.
If they hold on to their stakes, that would come to an initial investment of about $200 million apiece in the first phase of construction alone, said Robert L. Mitchell, the chief executive of Trans-Elect, the Maryland-based transmission-line company that proposed the venture.
Marubeni, a Japanese trading company, has taken a 15 percent stake. Trans-Elect said it hoped to begin construction in 2013.
Several government officials praised the idea underlying the project as ingenious, while cautioning that they could not prejudge the specifics.
“Conceptually it looks to me to be one of the most interesting transmission projects that I’ve ever seen walk through the door,” said Jon Wellinghoff, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which oversees interstate electricity transmission. “It provides a gathering point for offshore wind for multiple projects up and down the coast.”
Industry experts called the plan promising, but warned that as a first-of-a-kind effort, it was bound to face bureaucratic delays and could run into unforeseen challenges, from technology problems to cost overruns. While several undersea electrical cables exist off the Atlantic Coast already, none has ever picked up power from generators along the way.
The system’s backbone cable, with a capacity of 6,000 megawatts, equal to the output of five large nuclear reactors, would run in shallow trenches on the seabed in federal waters 15 to 20 miles offshore, from northern New Jersey to Norfolk, Va. The notion would be to harvest energy from turbines in an area where the wind is strong but the hulking towers would barely be visible.
Trans-Elect estimated that construction would cost $5 billion, plus financing and permit fees. The $1.8 billion first phase, a 150-mile stretch from northern New Jersey to Rehoboth Beach, Del., could go into service by early 2016, it said. The rest would not be completed until 2021 at the earliest.
Richard L. Needham, the director of Google’s green business operations group, called the plan “innovative and audacious.”
“It is an opportunity to kick-start this industry and, long term, provide a way for the mid-Atlantic states to meet their renewable energy goals,” he said.
Yet even before any wind farms were built, the cable would channel existing supplies of electricity from southern Virginia, where it is cheap, to northern New Jersey, where it is costly, bypassing one of the most congested parts of the North American electric grid while lowering energy costs for northern customers.
Generating electricity from offshore wind is far more expensive than relying on coal, natural gas or even onshore wind. But energy experts anticipate a growing demand for the offshore turbines to meet state requirements for greater reliance on local renewable energy as a clean alternative to fossil fuels.
Four connection points — in southern Virginia, Delaware, southern New Jersey and northern New Jersey — would simplify the job of bringing the energy onshore, involving fewer permit hurdles. In contrast to transmission lines on land, where a builder may have to deal with hundreds of property owners, this project would have to deal with a maximum of just four, and fewer than that in its first phase.
Ultimately the system, known as the Atlantic Wind Connection, could make building a wind farm offshore far simpler and cheaper than it looks today, experts said.
Environmentalists who have been briefed on the plan were enthusiastic. Melinda Pierce, the deputy director for national campaigns at the Sierra Club, said she had campaigned against proposed transmission lines that would carry coal-fired energy around the country, but would favor this one, with its promise of tapping the potential of offshore wind.
“These kinds of audacious ideas might just be what we need to break through the wretched logjam,” she said.
Projects like Cape Wind, proposed for shallow waters just off Cape Cod in Massachusetts, met with fierce objections from residents who felt it would mar the ocean vista. But sponsors of the Trans-Elect project insist that the mid-Atlantic turbines would have less of a visual impact.
The hurdles facing the project have more to do with administrative procedures than with engineering problems or its economic merit, several experts said.
By the time the Interior Department could issue permits for such a line, for example, the federal subsidy program for wind will have expired in 2012, said Willett M. Kempton, a professor at the School of Marine Science and Policy at the University of Delaware and the author of several papers on offshore wind.
Another is that PJM Interconnection, the regional electricity group that would have to approve the project and assess its member utilities for the cost, has no integrated procedure for calculating the value of all three tasks the line would accomplish — hooking up new power generation, reducing congestion on the grid and improving reliability.
And elected officials in Virginia have in the past opposed transmission proposals that would tend to average out pricing across the mid-Atlantic states, possibly raising their constituents’ costs.
But the lure of Atlantic wind is very strong. The Atlantic Ocean is relatively shallow even tens of miles from shore, unlike the Pacific, where the sea floor drops away steeply. Construction is also difficult on the Great Lakes because their waters are deep and they freeze, raising the prospect of moving ice sheets that could damage a tower.
Nearly all of the East Coast governors, Republican and Democratic, have spoken enthusiastically about coastal wind and have fought proposals for transmission lines from the other likely wind source, the Great Plains.
“From Massachusetts down to Virginia, the governors have signed appeals to the Senate not to do anything that would lead to a high-voltage grid that would blanket the country and bring in wind from the Dakotas,” said James J. Hoecker, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, who now is part of a nonprofit group that represents transmission owners.
He described an Atlantic transmission backbone as “a necessary piece of what the Eastern governors have been talking about in terms of taking advantage of offshore wind.”
So far only one offshore wind project, Bluewater Wind off Delaware, has sought permission to build in federal waters. The company is seeking federal loan guarantees to build 293 to 450 megawatts of capacity, but the timing of construction remains uncertain.
Executives with that project said the Atlantic backbone was an interesting idea, in part because it would foster development of a supply chain for the specialized parts needed for offshore wind.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, whose agency would have to sign off on the project, has spoken approvingly of wind energy and talked about the possibility of an offshore “backbone.” In a speech this month, he emphasized that the federal waters were “controlled by the secretary,” meaning him.
Within three miles of the shore, control is wielded by the state. Nonetheless, if the offshore wind farms are built on a vast scale, the project’s sponsors say, a backbone with just four connection points could expedite the approval process.
In fact, if successful, the transmission spine would reduce the regulatory burden on subsequent projects, said Mr. Mitchell, the Trans-Elect chief executive.
Mr. Kempton of the University of Delaware and Mr. Wellinghoff of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the backbone would offer another plus: reducing one of wind power’s big problems, variability of output.
“Along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard, we tend to have storm tracks that move along the coast and somewhat offshore,” Mr. Kempton said.
If storm winds were blowing on Friday off Virginia, they might be off Delaware by Saturday and off New Jersey by Sunday, he noted. Yet the long spine would ensure that the amount of energy coming ashore held roughly constant.
Wind energy becomes more valuable when it is more predictable; if predictable enough, it could replace some land-based generation altogether, Mr. Kempton said.
But the economics remain uncertain, he warned, For now, he said, the biggest impediment may be that the market price of offshore wind energy is about 50 percent higher than that of energy generated on land.
With a change in market conditions — an increase in the price of natural gas, for example, or the adoption of a tax on emissions of carbon dioxide from coal- or gas-generated electricity — that could change, he said.
courtasey....Newyork times
Hawaii to pay individual renewable power producers
Hawaii property owners who install solar power panels on their rooftops will get paid for their excess homegrown electricity under a Wednesday ruling by state regulators.
The decision allows both homeowners and businesses to sell power to the electric utility and get paid nearly as much per kilowatt hour as residents pay to use retail energy.
Those who sign up for the program will get paid 21.8 cents per kilowatt hour of solar power fed into the electric grid, according to the ruling by the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission. That compares with an average of 25.3 cents per kilowatt hour paid last month by Oahu customers of Hawaiian Electric Co.
"This is an option for people who generate more energy than they use," said Scott Seu, vice president for energy resources at Hawaiian Electric, which serves most of the state's power needs along with its subsidiaries, Maui Electric Co. and Hawaii Electric Light Co. "It's for anybody who has a fair amount of open space that's not being used."
Hawaii, the nation's most fossil-fuel dependent state, is one of the first regions in the country to institute this policy, known as a feed-in tariff. It guarantees renewable energy producers a fixed price for their power for 20 years.
It's part the state's goal of getting 70 percent of its power from clean sources by 2030 - 40 percent from renewables and 30 percent from efficiency improvements.
"You're going to see a lot more renewable energy projects happen a lot quicker," said Darren Kimura, chief executive for Sopogy, a Honolulu-based concentrated solar power company.
Similar feed-in tariff systems have been created in other parts of the country, including Vermont, Oregon, parts of Wisconsin and Gainesville, Fla.
The Hawaii ruling sets rates for small and mid-sized renewable energy producers to sell solar, wind and hydropower. Sign-up for the program starts Oct. 27 on Oahu, and Nov. 24 on the Big Island and Maui.
It allows for electric grids on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island to add up to 5 percent to their current power output - an additional 60 megawatts on Oahu and 10 megawatts on each of the other two islands. The decision doesn't cover Kauai, whose grid is run by Kauai Island Utility Cooperative.
Currently, electric customers statewide may reduce their power bill by providing energy to the grid. But they aren't paid for producing more energy than they use.
Hawaii may see its solar energy production triple from its current level of about 27 megawatts statewide, said Hawaii Energy Administrator Ted Peck.
"It's a gold rush," Peck said. "The intent is to add new systems and new renewables."
The decision caps project size limits at 5 megawatts for the island of Oahu and 2.72 megawatts for Maui and the Big Island.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The decision allows both homeowners and businesses to sell power to the electric utility and get paid nearly as much per kilowatt hour as residents pay to use retail energy.
Those who sign up for the program will get paid 21.8 cents per kilowatt hour of solar power fed into the electric grid, according to the ruling by the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission. That compares with an average of 25.3 cents per kilowatt hour paid last month by Oahu customers of Hawaiian Electric Co.
"This is an option for people who generate more energy than they use," said Scott Seu, vice president for energy resources at Hawaiian Electric, which serves most of the state's power needs along with its subsidiaries, Maui Electric Co. and Hawaii Electric Light Co. "It's for anybody who has a fair amount of open space that's not being used."
Hawaii, the nation's most fossil-fuel dependent state, is one of the first regions in the country to institute this policy, known as a feed-in tariff. It guarantees renewable energy producers a fixed price for their power for 20 years.
It's part the state's goal of getting 70 percent of its power from clean sources by 2030 - 40 percent from renewables and 30 percent from efficiency improvements.
"You're going to see a lot more renewable energy projects happen a lot quicker," said Darren Kimura, chief executive for Sopogy, a Honolulu-based concentrated solar power company.
Similar feed-in tariff systems have been created in other parts of the country, including Vermont, Oregon, parts of Wisconsin and Gainesville, Fla.
The Hawaii ruling sets rates for small and mid-sized renewable energy producers to sell solar, wind and hydropower. Sign-up for the program starts Oct. 27 on Oahu, and Nov. 24 on the Big Island and Maui.
It allows for electric grids on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island to add up to 5 percent to their current power output - an additional 60 megawatts on Oahu and 10 megawatts on each of the other two islands. The decision doesn't cover Kauai, whose grid is run by Kauai Island Utility Cooperative.
Currently, electric customers statewide may reduce their power bill by providing energy to the grid. But they aren't paid for producing more energy than they use.
Hawaii may see its solar energy production triple from its current level of about 27 megawatts statewide, said Hawaii Energy Administrator Ted Peck.
"It's a gold rush," Peck said. "The intent is to add new systems and new renewables."
The decision caps project size limits at 5 megawatts for the island of Oahu and 2.72 megawatts for Maui and the Big Island.
Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
IITM-EU chart monsoon variability in India
City-based Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) has come together with the European Union (EU) for a project to understand the variability of monsoon in India over the last three years.
"The tie-up began in 2008 and is part of the Indo-EU collaboration on fighting climate change in India that took shape in 2004. Scientists from both parties are trying to find out the reason behind the huge variation in the monsoon season as witnessed in the country between 2008 and 2010," said officials of the British High Commission here on Wednesday.
The Reading University in the United Kingdom (UK), the European Centre for medium-range forecasting, the Hadley Centre of UK Meteorological Office are part of the project which is being co-ordinated by the IITM.
IITM scientist K Krishna Kumar, who is coordinating the project in India, said, "We are trying to explore various matters related to monsoon. In the last few years, the country has been seeing drastic variations during this season. For example, we will try to understand why there was drought in India in 2009 and a fairly good monsoon this year."
Kumar also said, "The fluctuating monsoon season in India will be studied along with the global phenomenon and its impact on the Indian monsoon. We are trying to find out this link and EU experts will be helpful on this front. Weather is fluid and nothing happens in isolation. For instance, some weather phenomenon in one part of the world will invariably have a cascading effect on other parts. Though, the monsoon variations in our country are undoubtedly a local occurrence, but they do have a global connection."
The project is in its second phase, and two research students have been sent to UK to attain their doctorate in one of the climate change topics, the officials said, adding "Broadly, we are also undertaking various monsoon predictions projects, such as vegetation of India during the monsoon, predicting the monsoon about 15 to 20 days in advance, among other things."
Meanwhile, Kumar said UK has earlier also been involved in research pertaining to monsoon in India. "It is out of mutual interest that we strive to understand increase in the green-house effects on global warming and what will be its impact on monsoon."
courtsey...Times of India
"The tie-up began in 2008 and is part of the Indo-EU collaboration on fighting climate change in India that took shape in 2004. Scientists from both parties are trying to find out the reason behind the huge variation in the monsoon season as witnessed in the country between 2008 and 2010," said officials of the British High Commission here on Wednesday.
The Reading University in the United Kingdom (UK), the European Centre for medium-range forecasting, the Hadley Centre of UK Meteorological Office are part of the project which is being co-ordinated by the IITM.
IITM scientist K Krishna Kumar, who is coordinating the project in India, said, "We are trying to explore various matters related to monsoon. In the last few years, the country has been seeing drastic variations during this season. For example, we will try to understand why there was drought in India in 2009 and a fairly good monsoon this year."
Kumar also said, "The fluctuating monsoon season in India will be studied along with the global phenomenon and its impact on the Indian monsoon. We are trying to find out this link and EU experts will be helpful on this front. Weather is fluid and nothing happens in isolation. For instance, some weather phenomenon in one part of the world will invariably have a cascading effect on other parts. Though, the monsoon variations in our country are undoubtedly a local occurrence, but they do have a global connection."
The project is in its second phase, and two research students have been sent to UK to attain their doctorate in one of the climate change topics, the officials said, adding "Broadly, we are also undertaking various monsoon predictions projects, such as vegetation of India during the monsoon, predicting the monsoon about 15 to 20 days in advance, among other things."
Meanwhile, Kumar said UK has earlier also been involved in research pertaining to monsoon in India. "It is out of mutual interest that we strive to understand increase in the green-house effects on global warming and what will be its impact on monsoon."
courtsey...Times of India
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)