GreenClips.49 06.05.96 ENERGY STAR TO IDENTIFY EFFICIENT PRODUCTS The US Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency will soon offer appliance and building material manufacturers the right to use a Government seal of approval, the Energy Star, if their products meet energy efficiency standards. The two agencies will rank all competing product brands and offer the Energy Star to the top 25 percent. The Energy Star program will focus on products used in buildings, which account for one-third of the nation's energy consumption and two-thirds of its electricity use. The logo will be available to manufacturers of the more energy efficient refrigerators, water heaters, air conditioners, thermostats, exit signs, and building materials like insulation. By Federal law, some products already carry stickers describing their energy use and comparing them to competing products, but the complicated guides are hard for consumers to understand. Under the Energy Star program consumers can easily identify the better performers. The agencies are also working with builders on standards for awarding the seal to entire houses. - The New York Times, June 4, 1996, p. C19, by Matthew L. Wald. FUEL CELLS REPLACE DIESEL GENERATORS Fuel cells produce electricity from an electrochemical process that makes water from hydrogen and oxygen. They are clean, quiet, and reliable. But expensive. Their high priced parts are platinum catalysts and electrolytes made of molten carbonate or solid oxide ceramics. On the verge of commercialization, fuel cell technology's first big market is power for utilities and hospitals who can sustain premium prices for a more reliable and a far cleaner replacement for diesel generators. Healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente, for example, has installed four 200-kilowatt power plants from International Fuel Cells Corp. in three California hospitals. One has run continuously for more than a year with no maintenance. Fuel cell emissions "are cleaner than the ambient air in Los Angeles," says Kaiser energy specialist Thomas A. Damberger. And the US Department of Energy offers a 33 percent subsidy that cuts the price to $2,000 per kilowatt. – Business Week, May 27, 1996, p. 90, by William C. Symonds, Peter Coy, and Keith Naughton. INTEL INNOVATES UNDER EPA'S PROJECT XL Computer-chip maker Intel Corporation is one of first companies to enlist in the EPA's Project XL. The pilot program allows companies to devise their own pollution control plans without having to follow the usual cumbersome bureaucratic procedures. In exchange the program binds companies to an enforceable contract to surpass existing environmental standards. As part of the deal, Intel will consolidate an array of pollution control paperwork into a single comprehensive permit for its new $1.6 billion integrated-circuit plant on 745 acres south of Phoenix, Arizona. This saves Intel time which, according to Terrence McManus, manager of environmental programs at the Chandler plant, "is the only competitive advantage we have out there". Innovations at the Chandler plant under the EPA program include buying effluent from the city's waste-water treatment plant and recycling it in the factory's cooling towers for landscape irrigation [sic]. And much of the water used in the chip-making process goes to a filtration plant Intel built for the City of Chandler where a reverse osmosis process scrubs the water so clean that it can be re injected into the precious groundwater. The Chandler plant's net consumption of potable water is about one million gallons per day, one-fifth of normal. Under EPA's Project XL, Intel has taken unusual steps like these to fulfill an ambitious promise - to meet or exceed every applicable environmental standard on water quality, air pollution, solid waste management, and the handling of acids, gases, and other chemicals. -The New York Times, May 27, 1996, p. 31, by John H. Cushman, Jr. ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINTS More than ever, urban industrial societies require a land area vastly larger than they occupy to produce the resources and assimilate the waste of their population and economy. William E. Rees calls the total area, wherever it's located, an "ecological footprint". He directs the University of British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning. Rees says that the average North American needs at least 10 to 12 acres of productive land to support our consumer lifestyle. Greater Vancouver's 1.6 million people, for example, live on about 724,000 acres but use over 17 million acres - an area 23.5 times larger than their political territory - to support themselves. Rees is the author of Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing the Human Impact on the Earth. - YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, Spring/Summer 1996, p. 26, by William E. Rees. NOAA EXPECTS OZONE COMEBACK Ozone-destroying chemicals in the atmosphere are declining for the first time according to researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Boulder, Colorado. New ground level measurements on three continents and two Pacific islands detected a 1 to 1.5 percent reduction from peak chlorine concentrations in 1994. Stratospheric ozone destruction should peak between 1997 and 1999, say the researchers, and then the ozone shield should begin to recover. The most common chemicals responsible for thinning the ozone layer include chlorofluorocarbons, halons, and chlorine-based solvents. But not all of them are declining, notes NOAA scientist Dr. Stephen A. Montzka. Montzka expects levels of CFC-12, common in cooling compressors, to continue to edge up because many old refrigerators and air conditioners contain it and because it lasts more than a century in the atmosphere. - The New York Times, May 31, 1996, p. A 11. SUSTAINABLE MAHOGANY EXPERIMENTS While the Rainforest Action Network calls for a boycott of mahogany, a tropical wood used for fine furniture and cabinetmaking, others believe we should continue buying it. "If there's no market for the wood, the forests will be mowed down and the land turned to agriculture," says Nick Brokaw, a tropical forest ecologist at the Manomet Observatory for Conservation Sciences in Manomet, Massachusetts. The best way to save the tree and the rainforest, say researchers at Manomet, is to grow and harvest mahogany under natural conditions. Disasters like hurricanes, floods, and fires make natural clearings that mahogany trees need to re-seed. At the Rio Bravo Conservation and Management Area in northern Belize, a small Central American country, Manomet scientists are using a variety of tactics to simulate natural disasters. "We're saying that if Rio Bravo is to support active forestry we have to intervene to disturb the forest more than would occur naturally or with selective logging," says Dr. Brokaw. "We can't just wait around for a hurricane." But Dr. Frank H. Wadsworth, a research forester at the International Institute of Tropic Forestry in Puerto Rico, is skeptical about the Manomet experiment. The future of mahogany is in plantations, he says." We're growing mahogany to maturity and larger on plantations in Puerto Rico." - The New York Times, June 4, 1996, p. B6, by Les Line. US SOLAR INDUSTRY FINDS MARKETS ABROAD From India and Indonesia to Mexico and Brazil, American-made solar panels are sprouting on thousands of rooftops and lighting jungles, deserts, and other hard-to-wire areas of the developing world not connected to conventional power grids. Most of the solar investments are small, about $400 to $600 per house. But they add up quickly and mean big business for Astro Power in Newark, Delaware, Solec International in Hawthorne, California, and Solarexin Frederick, Maryland. These and other US companies garner about $300 million a year or 30 percent of the worldwide solar manufacturing market eclipsing Japan, Britain, Italy, and other major competitors. What's driving the US solar boom? The sheer size of the potential foreign market – about one-third of the world's population or two billion people live without electricity. India is the largest foreign market, with a $400 million solar power commitment over the five-year period ending in 1997. And the World Bank is adding $55 million in loans to bring solar power to 50,000 Indian homes and many commercial buildings. - The New York Times, June 5, 1996, p. C1, by Julie Edelson Halpert. DESIGN TOOLS FROM GREEN BUILDING PRESS UK publisher Green Building Press recently released GreenPro, an interactive environmental building database available in three software versions - Construction Researcher, Construction Specifier, and Construction Search. But after running a beta version of Construction Researcher for several hours, reviewer Richard Twinch wondered about the benefit of the software over the publisher's excellent product and services directory in print called Greener Buildings. Greener Buildings is a good value at 31.50 pounds, says Twinch, and the software's limited cross-reference searches make it hard to find information. Now in its third edition, Greener Buildings features articles, a section on how building products are made and what is wasted, a directory of green products, and a list of professionals with green expertise. GreenPro's Construction Researcher version targets research bodies, local authorities, libraries, and others requiring detailed product literature, research papers, photographs of products and projects, and product test reports. Construction Specifier is geared to help busy smaller practices with product sources and services, but without detailed reports. Construction Search includes only Fast Find products and services. Greener Buildings and GreenPro are available from the Green Building Press, call 01453 890757. - Building Design, April 19, 1996, p. 17, by Richard Twinch, and a GreenPro advertisement.