All posts by Adam Aston

GreenBiz

BSR 2010: Conflict Mineral Supply Headed Toward a Crisis? | GreenBiz

BSR 2010: Conflict Mineral Supply Headed Toward a Crisis?

The use of “conflict minerals,” already a simmering issue at BSR 2009, shot up the agenda of the manufacturers attending this year’s meeting which are reliant on electronics.

Under a new U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rule, a key deadline to file information on corporations’ sources of these materials is approaching fast. And while industry is working with NGOs, governments and local miners to set up the necessary tracking rules, time may be too short to complete the work.

If not, supplies of these materials could be disrupted and the fragile war-torn economy of the African region where mining of these minerals is taking place could be grievously damaged, said Karen Hayes, director of corporate community engagement for the Africa region at Pact, a nonprofit trying to develop tracking processes for the material. Hayes participated in a panel at BSR 2010 entitled “Responsible Sourcing and Conflict Minerals.”

Corporations are already at work trying to meet the SEC standard, which requires companies to identify and publicize sources of key minerals. Formal reporting of this information is due in 2012, still more than a year away. But in April 2011 the new SEC standard calls for companies to produce a timeline describing plans to comply.

That’s just six months from now, very tight timing for large manufacturers who typically sign supply agreements years in advance. Corporations ranging from GE to Honda and Intel are already wrestling with vagaries of the new rule, and assessing the potential impact on their supply chains if supplies of these key minerals are disrupted. “Companies have an incredibly short timeline,” Hayes said.

The minerals in question are gold and the “three Ts” — tin, tungsten and tantalum — all widely used in electronics and mined in the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Embroiled in a decades-old civil war that has caused five million deaths and even more displaced persons, DRC is the largest producer of the three Ts, and a major gold producer. Army factions exploit countless small-scale mining operations — “taxing” material sales, as well as shipments — to fund war efforts

Alternative supplies of these minerals exist. There’s growing concern that by disrupting their export from the DRC, however, the SEC rules could have unintended tragic consequences by effectively embargoing all mineral exports from the region.

Hayes reported that “artisanal mining” jobs, while hard labor, were a critical source of income, as well as the DRC’s largest sector. Among the possible effects of ending formal exports: thousands of workers displaced, destabilization of the economy and formal government, in parallel with a strengthening of rebel forces.

via greenbiz.com

GreenBiz

BSR 2010: Maersk Slows Down to Go Greener | GreenBiz

BSR 2010: Maersk Slows Down to Go Greener
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Nearly two years after oil’s record pricing run-up, many consumers and businesses have at least softened some of the dramatic changes that $5 per gallon gasoline induced. SUV sales will never be what they were, of course, but big vehicles still rule U.S. roads. And shippers like FedEx and UPS have backed up fuel surcharges, which were tacked onto some shipments.

On the high seas, though, Maersk Line has stuck with the cost-cutting steps it instituted during the energy price spike. At the time, Maersk, the world’s largest operator of container vessels, broke with industry practice and proposed to its shipping clients that by slowing down its ships, Maersk could cut fuel use and lower shipping costs.

While 1,000-foot-long freighters may not have the same zip as a FedEx jet, the container industry has been subject to the same pressure to go “faster, faster, faster” in recent decades, so the move was a gamble, explained Jacob A. Sterling, head of climate and environment sustainability at Maersk Lines, at a BSR 2010 panel yesterday titled Extending Sustainability into the Transportation Sector.

“We’ve always known a minor reduction in speed could deliver energy savings,” said Sterling. A 20 percent reduction in speed can cut fuel use and CO2 emissions by up to 40 percent, the ship operator found. “But for decades, the price of fuel has been so low, shipping costs didn’t factor into companies analysis. The speed from factory to market mattered much more, so we kept pushing to go faster.”

Today, the practice known as slow-steaming has been adopted by many shipping lines, but isn’t the rule on every run. “On a given route — from Asia to Europe, for instance — we’ll run the ships from Hong Kong to Rotterdam at normal speed, or a little slower, because of the high value of the electronics and manufactured goods onboard justifies the expenditure.” But on the return trip, when the ship sails loaded with scrap metal and paper waste headed for Chinese recyclers, slow-steaming makes more sense. “The goods are worth less, and they’re not as time sensitive,” said Sterling. Over 18 months, the shift has cut company CO2 emissions by 7 percent. Maersk has committed to reducing its CO2 footprint by 25 percent by 2020.

via greenbiz.com

Technology Review

China’s Rare-Earth Monopoly | Technology Review

An attractive material: Neodymium (shown here) is one of the rare-earth elements that are key to making very strong magnets for compact electric motors.
Credit: Hi-Res Images of Chemical Elements  

 

Energy —  China’s Rare-Earth Monopoly

The rest of the world is trying to find alternatives to these crucial materials.

  • By Adam Aston | Friday, October 15, 2010

For three weeks, China has blocked shipments of rare-earth minerals to Japan, a move that has boosted the urgency of efforts to break Beijing’s control of these minerals. China now produces nearly all of the world’s supply of rare earths, which are crucial for a wide range of technologies, including hard drives, solar panels, and motors for hybrid vehicles.

In response to China’s dominance in production, researchers are developing new materials that could either replace rare-earth minerals or decrease the need for them. But materials and technologies are likely to take years to develop, and existing alternatives come with trade-offs.

China apparently blocked the Japan shipments in response to a territorial squabble in the South China Sea. Beijing has denied the embargo, yet the lack of supply may soon disrupt manufacturing in Japan, trade and industry minister Akihiro Ohata told reporters Tuesday.

Rare earths include 17 elements, such as terbium, which is used to make green phosphors for flat-panel TVs, lasers, and high-efficiency fluorescent lamps. Another of these elements, neodymium, is key to the permanent magnets used to make high-efficiency electric motors. Although well over 90 percent of the minerals are produced in China, they are found in many places around the world, and, in spite of their name, are actually abundant in the earth’s crust (the name is a hold-over from a 19th-century convention). In recent years, low-cost Chinese production and environmental concerns have caused suppliers outside of China to shut down operations.

Alternatives to rare earths exist for some technologies. One example is the induction motor used by Tesla Motors in its all-electric Roadster. It uses electromagnets rather than permanent rare-earth magnets. But such motors are larger and heavier than ones that use rare-earth magnets. As a rule of thumb, in small- and mid-sized motors, an electromagnetic coil can be replaced with a rare-earth permanent magnet of just 10 percent the size, which has helped make permanent magnet motors the preferred option for Toyota and other hybrid vehicle makers. In Tesla’s case, the induction motor technology was worth the trade-off, giving the car higher maximum power in more conditions, a top priority for a vehicle that can rocket from zero to 60 mph in 3.7 seconds. “The cost volatility going into the rare-earth permanent magnets was a concern,” says JB Straubel, Tesla’s chief technology officer. “We couldn’t have predicted the geopolitical tensions.”

More manufacturers are following Tesla’s lead to shun the rare-earth materials, although the move means sacrificing space and adding weight to vehicles. A week after the China dust-up began, a research team in Japan announced that it had made a hybrid-vehicle motor free of rare-earth materials, and Hitachi has announced similar efforts. BMW’s Mini E electric vehicle uses induction motors, and Tesla is supplying its drive trains to Toyota’s upcoming electric RAV 4. Given the volatility of rare-earth supplies, and the advantages induction motors offer in high performance applications, “It makes sense for car companies to give serious thought to using induction motors,” says Wally Rippel, senior scientist at AC Propulsion. Rippel previously worked on induction motor designs at Tesla and GM, where he helped to develop the seminal EV1…  Continue reading at technologyreview.com

 

GreenBiz

Why Planning for the Worst is Best in Coping With Climate Risks | GreenBiz

Why Planning for the Worst is Best in Coping With Climate Risks

“It’s not a question of if a major hurricane will strike the New York area, but when,” former National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield once told a congressional committee.

Megan Linkin, an atmospheric perils specialist for Swiss Reinsurance America Corp. in Armonk, NY, reminded me of this ominous projection in a recent conversation, following her presentation at Climate Week NYºC 2010.

Linkin who, as a perils specialist at SwissRe, sports one of the most ominous professional titles I’ve come across, has a PhD in in atmospheric and oceanic science. As part of a broader project involving the New York Academy of Science and in partnership with the city government and a host of regional academic experts, Linkin has recently spent time focusing on the financial perspectives of how climate change could affect America’s largest city. Since climate change is expected to intensify the impact of extreme weather events on the city, a major part of her focus is to assess what the cost of major storms could be to New York City.

In the wake of New Orleans’ hurricane Katrina disaster, or the leveling of scores of cities in Pakistan due to flooding this past summer, it’s not as hard to imagine catastrophic weather events in the Big Apple. Indeed, as we spoke, not far from my Brooklyn apartment, workers were cleaning up the tree fall from the third tornado event in the city’s five boroughs in the past few years, unprecedented in recent history. This summer, New York has endured 39 days with temperatures over 90 degrees Fahrenheit, the most in recorded history.

Of course, it’s a mistake to associate near-term weather events with long-term shifts in the climate, but extreme weather does steer collective thinking in that direction. And climate change is predicted to significantly alter the area’s environment.

According to a forecast by Columbia University Center for Climate Systems Research, the city will see average temperatures rise by as much as 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit by the 2050s, and more further out. Sea levels are anticipated to rise by up to a foot by the 2050, and more than twice that if Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets melt quickly. These predictions for average changes bely the destructive potential of outlier events, when heat waves, rainfall, storm surges, or strong winds reach peak power.

New York is uniquely vulnerable in many respects. It is, of course, the most populous conurbation in the United States, with huge swaths of dense building stock merely a few feet above sea level — not just in Manhattan, but also in the city’s most populous boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens as well as Staten Island.

Adding to this list of vulnerabilities are unique sets of infrastructure – subways, tunnels, and bridges – which if damaged or destroyed would wreak long-lasting economic havoc by impairing movement of people and goods between the boroughs. And like Amsterdam, LaGuardia Airport is below sea level and requires constant pumping to keep it dry. JFK Airport is at roughly sea level, facing the Atlantic, so it would likely be at least temporarily knocked out by a major storm.

According to estimates compiled by Linkin, the total value of privately insured coastal properties is $2.4 trillion, including city coastal areas and Long Island, but excluding nearby but similarly vulnerable coastal areas in New Jersey. The city of Hoboken — which has a emerged as a sort of Mini-Me to Wall Street with a clump of office towers housing back office duties for Wall Street’s biggest players — sits directly across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan and would be equally imperiled from a severe storm surge.

via greenbiz.com

NRDC OnEarth

She’s a Genius for Honey Bees | OnEarth

Human practices have brought about a sharp decline in bee health and populations. University of Minnesota entomologist Marla Spivak wants to reverse the trend.

>> Q&A with MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Marla Spivak

Last week, University of Minnesota entomologist Marla Spivak was awarded a $500,000 “genius grant” by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for her work with honey bees. (David Simon, creator of TV’s “The Wire” and “Treme,” was among the other 2010 recipients.) Spivak started studying bees at the age of 18; she’s now 55, and over the course of her career, bees have grown in economic importance as growing numbers have been trucked around the country to pollinate crops, including apples, blueberries, almonds, and countless other fruits and vegetables. Yet over the same period, the health of bees has seen a steady decline, culminating in the phenomenon known as “colony collapse disorder,” in which most bees within a colony simply disappear. (OnEarth first reported on this phenomenon in “The Vanishing” from our Summer 2006 issue.) Continue reading She’s a Genius for Honey Bees | OnEarth →

The Fiscal Times

Offshore wind for Cleveland? Wind Energy Can Create Jobs, Reduce Carbon Footprint | The Fiscal Times

Cape Wind, the planned $2.7 billion wind farm off the coast of Cape Cod, Mass., in Nantucket Sound, got the green light in April from the Interior Dept., the most important approval so far in the project’s nine-year odyssey. Even so, there’s still plenty of reason to doubt it will ever be built.

Despite the environmental merits of replacing a dirty local power plant, and a steady parade of local, state and federal approvals, the project has been besieged by a series of legal challenges backed in part by well-heeled opponents with homes in the area, such as billionaire industrialist Bill Koch.

Cape Wind has also pitted green against green, renewable energy supporters against conservationists. Some have argued the project threatens the area’s shore views, birds and sea life, most famously Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, from whose family compound the turbines would be visible. In the wake of the April approval, opponents immediately vowed to file new suits.

Meanwhile, there’s little opposition to a proposal to put wind turbines in Lake Erie, near Cleveland. Developers there have been careful to focus on the potential to salvage the region’s beleaguered manufacturing sector. Ohio’s plan is smaller than Cape Wind — initially five turbines compared with 130 planned in Massachusetts — and slated to be a fraction of the cost, at about $100 million…

More here: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2010/09/25/Wind-Energy-Can-Create-Jobs-Reduce-Carbon-Footprint.aspx

 

NRDC OnEarth

Once on the Fast Track, Tar Sands Pipeline Faces Tougher Scrutiny | OnEarth

Will a pipeline like this one in Alaska soon run tar sands oil all the way to refineries on the Gulf Coast?
>> Concern mounts that a Canadian company’s plan to transport more tar sands oil across the continent will cause environmental harm and fail to make a dent in U.S. energy prices.

—

For TransCanada, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

First, there was BP’s runaway well in the Gulf. Then, on the night of July 25, the steel skin of a 30-inch-wide oil pipeline split open in a wooded stretch of southern Michigan. By the time the flow had stopped, upwards of 1 million gallons of toxic crude had disgorged into a nearby creek and polluted the Kalamazoo River.

TransCanada doesn’t own the ruptured pipeline — it belongs to the company’s top rival, Enbridge. But the spill in Michigan and the disaster in the Gulf have led both the public and regulators to cast a more skeptical eye on what once looked like a sure thing: TransCanada’s plan to build a $12 billion network of pipeline that would roughly double the capacity connecting Canada’s vast­­ — and highly controversial — tar sands oil reserves to U.S. refineries. Continue reading Once on the Fast Track, Tar Sands Pipeline Faces Tougher Scrutiny | OnEarth →

GreenBiz

Jeff Immelt on Crowdsourcing, 30 Rock, and Why ‘Green’ Is No Longer Gold | GreenBiz

Jeff Immelt on Crowdsourcing, 30 Rock, and Why 'Green' Is No Longer Gold

Last week, at the Tribeca Cinemas in New York City, there was a rare intersection of business suits and hipsters in skinny jeans. The business suit, in this case, was worn by GE’s CEO Jeffrey Immelt, sans tie and relaxed. In the skinny jeans, perched on a stool next to Immelt was Scott Heiferman, co-founder and chief executive of Meetup.com. In the audience, appropriately enough, a hundred or so folks drawn from area groups — called Meetups — focused on entrepreneurialism, the environment, sustainable business, inventing and others.

The gathering was a joint effort by Meetup.com and GE to highlight the  Ecomagination Challenge, a novel effort by GE that aims to “crowd source” new ideas, products and services from the public to create tomorrow’s smart grid. The reward for winning ideas? The opportunity and funding to work with GE to turn them into a business. GE has teamed up with a handful of venture capital players to commit $200 million to take winning submissions from idea to reality.

It may not be obvious why Immelt, CEO of a $157 billion global industrial goods and financial services juggernaut was sharing the stage with Heiferman. In his intro Heiferman was self-mocking, pointing out that Meetup’s annual revenue is what GE churns out in a few hours. But Heiferman’s website is a leader in the online world of social networking. Founded in 2000, the site made wider headlines in 2004 as an emerging tool for Democrats to tap into young voters. These days, Meetup.com boasts over seven million users, who rely on it to help communicate about gatherings and issues on everything from knitting circles to Tea Party rallies.

Immelt was quick to point out that no matter how big GE may be, old school corporate culture is not as agile at identifying and commercializing innovative ideas as a start-up like Meetup can be. Immelt was there to learn: “You don’t get to a job like mine without a healthy paranoia about how new things — like Meetup — work,” he joked. “I need to understand how this works so I can use it sell more stuff in the future.”

For GE, Immelt continued, size is both a liability and a virtue. “How can you, over generations, make size an advantage? That’s really hard to do because size brings bureaucracy and makes you a big target,” he said. With a laugh, he asked: “Does the way Alec Baldwin acts on 30 Rock hurt your feelings?… It can be true!” referring to the NBC comedy’s stinging satire about bureaucracy at GE, the network’s long-time corporate parent. The upside of size, he went on, is running a company that can take a successful idea and scale it quickly. Consider the wind turbine market, Immelt said: “We bought it for $200 million from Enron [in 2002]. This year it will generate $7 billion in sales. We generate as much cash per month from the business as we paid for it.”

via greenbiz.com

NRDC OnEarth

PHOTOS: Greening the US Open | OnEarth

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via onearth.org

You might think the biggest sporting event in the country is the World Series or the Super Bowl. But by head count, neither comes close to the US Open tennis tournament, when 700,000 guests flood into the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens, New York, over the course of two weeks. As at all sporting events, this wave of fans likes to eat, drink, and buy memorabilia. Much of the effort to “green” the tournament has focused on visible aspects, such as recycling waste and food. More, however, goes on behind the scenes. Over the past three years, the United States Tennis Association has worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), among others, to re-plumb the operations of this complex sporting event in order to reduce its environmental impact. See how it’s done. 2010-09-10

The Fiscal Times

Clean Energy Funding Issues May Attract Investment from China | The Fiscal Times

President Obama is touting alternatives to foreign oil, research funds are flowing into renewable energy and venture capital is again surging into the clean technology sector. But the shift to clean energy is still a long way off. As established startups move towards building their first commercial facilities, some are struggling to find the funding to scale up. They’ve exhausted much of their venture capital and can’t yet satisfy the strict risk terms of traditional lenders.

The struggle to find funds to commercialize innovative clean technologies is turning into what industry insiders call the “valley of death,” delaying implementation of wind, solar power, low-carbon fuels, and systems that make energy use more efficient. To build their first full-scale facilities, clean technology startups can require up to 100 times more capital than new software or biotech companies. “Instead of dying for lack of $5 million, clean tech startups can stall and die for the lack of $50 million or $500 million,” says Greg Neichin, vice president of Cleantech Group, which tracks market trends. It may be easier to invent green technologies than to finance their commercial production.

Consider GreatPoint Energy. The Cambridge, Mass., company has raised $150 million in venture capital and strategic investor funding since 2005 to develop a process that converts coal into cleaner burning natural gas and that can capture and store its carbon dioxide emissions. Big companies, including AES Corp., Dow Chemical, Peabody Energy and Suncor Energy, lined up early to invest and team up with GreatPoint. Now that the process has been proven on a pilot scale, GreatPoint needs another $200 million to $400 million to build a plant big enough to prove the technology will work at commercial scale. That’s more than many venture capitalists are willing to risk. And because the technology is still evolving and GreatPoint’s business model is untested, project financiers and private equity investors lack the experience to assess the project’s risks…

More here: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2010/08/02/Clean-Energy-Funding-Issues-May-Attract-China-Investment.aspx