GreenClips.64 01.29.97 O'LEARY ON ENERGY POLITICS "The price of energy is artificially less in the United States," says departing US Department of Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary, and Americans will not be serious about conservation or energy independence until the price of oil goes up or there is another shock. "We need a wake-up call," O'Leary says about US dependence on imported oil, "and I know for a fact that doesn't come from the Secretary of Energy wandering the land and saying what needs to be done, because it's not nearly as dramatic as a price shock or some other dislocation." She says there is no political will to raise prices. Instead, the Clinton Administration's reaction to price shocks is to sell oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to keep its price artificially low. And that, she says, is "a sin, a shame, and it ought to be stopped." About alternative fuel and energy technologies, O'Leary says she has tried to nurture them within budget constraints. The prevailing view, she says, is that "somehow, miraculously, the market will present itself" for technologies like fuel and photovoltaic cells. But Government will have to subsidize these technologies to help lift volumes and keep costs down, or let energy prices rise. — The New York Times, January 20, 1997, p. A9, by Matthew L. Wald. EBN SIMPLIFIES BUILDING MATERIAL SELECTION Environmental Building News offers a simple twelve-step method for selecting environmentally responsible building materials. EBN's editors don't intend the method to replace a thorough life cycle analysis, but offer an accessible decision-making format to help designers focus on the most important environmental issues. Because buildings operate for a long time, product use is often most significant and the method's first steps consider a product's effect on building energy use and occupant health, and its durability and maintenance. The next steps assess hazardous by-products, energy use, and waste from its manufacture. Further steps focus on resource limitations of its raw materials, the impact of extracting them, and transportation. And the final steps evaluate disposal or reuse of a product after demolition and related hazardous waste issues, and review any remaining concerns. — Environmental Building News, January 1997, p. 1, by Nadav Malin and Alex Wilson. CARPET RECYCLING BREAKTHROUGH After five years of research, Collins & Aikman is the first carpet maker to manufacture new carpet from old. Through its Infinity Initiative, the company now offers Powerbond, a 100 percent recyclable carpet with a vinyl backing made from 75 percent recycled material. Collins & Aikman down-cycles old carpet into picnic tables and other products, but recycling it into new carpet has been a technical challenge. The breakthrough came when engineers figured out what to do with the thick rope of black goo generated from melting old carpet and mixing it with vinyl and low-density polyethylene. Using two giant steel rolling pins called a calender from its wallpaper subsidiary, Collins & Aikman transformed the black mixture into a flat sheet of carpet backing. Recycling carpet is the industry's effort to cut dramatically the 3.5 billion pounds of waste carpet that go to landfills each year, costing companies $350 million in dumping fees alone. The Dalton, Georgia-based company expects to recoup the $15 million it invested in recycling in three years. Other regional carpet makers including Interface Inc. and Shaw Industries Inc. are also working to keep used carpet out of landfills. For more information call Collins & Aikman, 800.241.4902. — The Wall Street Journal, Southeast Journal, January 15, 1997, p. S3, by Kelly Greene, and The Green Business Letter, February 1997. WILDWOOD SAYS NO TO SPRAWL When planners wanted to run an expressway through Wildwood, Missouri, they found an extraordinary group of people with an intelligent response to suburban development. Residents of this semi-rural town in western St. Louis County wanted to keep their green space. And they didn't want their shady back roads clogged with minivans or their creek banks eroded from the runoff of newly barren lots. To remove themselves from the influence of a growth-minded county that was not listening to their protests, Wildwood residents called for a referendum to secede. After a three-year legal battle ending at the Missouri Supreme Court, Wildwood seceded in 1995, its 25,000 residents claiming 67 verdant square miles. Though once considered radical in this conservative county, today the secessionists welcome commercial and residential development, but only within limits and as long as it preserves trees and streams. "We are trying to show that there's a choice," says city attorney Dan Vogel, "between becoming the back of a Kmart and becoming a traditional town." — Metropolis, January/February 1997, p. 33, by Bradford McKee. DESIGNING FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES Now that General Motors has introduced its EV 1 electric vehicle, architects have an opportunity to design supporting infrastructure including recharging stations. Unattended and credit card operated, the high-current stations can be freestanding kiosks that need only lighting and a weather or security enclosure. The stations will use either the inductive or conductive recharging method, competing technologies that are both safe and uncomplicated. GM favors the inductive approach in which electricity crosses an air gap from the charging device to the vehicle's paddle-like receptor. Other American and Japanese car makers have adopted the conductive approach that has a direct connection between the power source and the EV's battery. A pig-tail connector will allow both types of EVs to use the same recharging plug. Recharging today's EVs takes several hours. But next generation vehicles will recharge in 20 minutes and McDonald's already wants to set up charging stations at its restaurants to encourage EV drivers to "take a break today". — Architectural Record, January 1997, p. 232, by Joan Blatterman. MARYLAND PLANS SMART GROWTH Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening unveiled a Smart Growth plan this month to curb the ecological, economic, and social harm done by 50 years of city-to-suburbs migration. The Smart Growth plan will 1 Shift development back to existing communities by directing state spending for roads, schools, and sewers to cities, towns, and more densely developed suburbs already served by public utilities. 2 Preserve the state's rural legacy by spending about $163 million over the next five years to buy up to 90,000 acres of farmland and environmentally sensitive areas. 3 Encourage recycling of abandoned or underused brownfield industrial sites by streamlining pollution clean-up requirements. Some farmers oppose the governor's plan and changes in state funding because they fear the measures might hurt their land value. And in rapidly growing Carroll County, Commissioner Donald Dell praises the governor's overall plan, but is concerned that it will cost his county $6 million in state aid for a needed school renovation. — The Baltimore Sun, January 12, 1997, p. B1, by Timothy B. Wheeler.