November 23rd, 2009

Chinese wallboard gets a dirty bill of health

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 2:32 pm

Categories: Blogroll, China, air pollution, building, environmental health, federal government, housing

Tags: U.S., Health Care, Vertical Industries, Benefits, Healthcare, Human Resources, Harry Fuller

Some Chinese wallboard imported after Hurricane Katrina is giving off toxic fumes. Numerous lawsuits are already underway.

The feds have just confirmed what we already knew.
The investigators concluded that both formaldehyde and hydrogen sulfide are exuding from the wallboard, especially when it’s damp. There may be sixty thousand homes in the southern U.S. with the imported, dangerous wallboard. It corrodes metal, and is unhealthy for inhabitants. Imported wallboard is now unregulated in the U.S. Currently there are no requirements on content of imported wallboard or its possible health hazards.

November 20th, 2009

Science of better fuel cells

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 11:58 am

Categories: Blogroll, energy, engineering, green tech, housing, renewable energy, research, water

Tags: Fuel Cell, Fuel Cells, Emerging Technologies, Harry Fuller

An MIT energy and chemistry researcher is working on better ways to produce energy on a personal, household level. His goal: workable fuel cell tech that is efficient. Today he explained on NPR how his group has found a new catalytic process that takes water and through hydrolysis releases hydrogen which is then burned in the fuel cell to produce electricity.

The MIT hydrolysis process uses a catalyst consisting of cobalt metal, phosphate. Then add an electrode.

November 18th, 2009

California Dreamin' revisited

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 5:47 pm

Categories: Blogroll, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, green tech, housing, law & politics, renewable energy, solar, wind

Tags: California, BV, Telecom & Utilities, Harry Fuller

I recently blogged about the future of greentech in the State of California in the current state that state is in. Can greentech enable California to get its mojo back?

Well, here comes a blog report on how the state’s goal for alternative energy use could invigorate the statewide economy. One thing California has is plenty of sunshine, especially in those parts of the state with the least amount of water from Palm Springs to San Diego and northward toward Santa Barbara.

Can California get one-third of its electricity from renewable by the 2020 target? That’s the official state target. Sure, the state government’s in deep money trouble. Furloughs of workers, cutbacks in services–standard across the state agencies and universities. But much of California has cash, especially some of the little tech companies most of us have heard of: Intel, Google, Cicsco, Oracle, Apple to name a few landowners in Silicon Valley. And the state has hugely productive agribusiness. Then there are all those parking lots in the San Diego and Los Angeles sprawl. Think this conjures up dreams of a solar powered future?

Some think it may lead to high value for roof space that faces south, or value in covering parking lots with solar collectors. And it would mean re-thinking and re-engineering the electric grid.

Earlier this year the state’s Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) issued a report on what’s needed to bring desert solar-generated electricity to the California urban areas which are mostly along the coast. RETI projected billions and billions in cost. But now one of their consultants, Black and Veatch, says smaller rooftop and subrurban solar farms could decentralize power production. BV says the cost of solar panels is decreasing, as an unwritten corollary to Moore’s Law would suggest. Even in crowded Silicon Valley there are hundreds of days of sunshine yearly plus hundreds of square miles of roofs and parking lots, so, what are we waiting for?

Black and Veatch also see much more harvesting of wind energy, another plentiful California resource.

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November 17th, 2009

Smart grid networking with smart appliances

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 4:49 pm

Categories: Blogroll, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, green tech, housing, research

Tags: Appliance, General Electric Co., Network, Grid, Harry Fuller

More information and more efficient use of the electrical grid is clearly a way to save energy and customers’ money. So now utlities and large appliance makers are working to get the smart grid to talk to the smart appliances. Like a clothes dryer or dishwasher that waits to run after the electric rates drop overnight.

GE is working with several utlities in smart grid test programs. Reliant Energy and The Vineyard Energy Project join Masdar City and Louisville Gas & Electric as the latest to launch pilot projects using GE‘s smart grid enabled appliances.
Courtesy GE. For a more legible version of this image click here.

How about appliances that really turn themselves off completely? And where are our electric sockets with off/on switches like you find in many parts of Europe? The passive or “phantom” waste of electriciy by home appliances is notoriously pointless. Too many items are in constant syand-by as long as they’re plugged-in. Even if the homeowner is on vacation in another country, that toaster or TV is ready to roll at all times.

November 16th, 2009

Hawaii getting first-hand look at global warming?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 3:51 am

Categories: Blogroll, building, conservation, engineering, environmental health, global warming, green tech, housing, ocean, research, state government, tidal

Tags: Harry Fuller

The beaches are shrinking in Hawaii. It is not clearly linked to global warming though some website reports leap to make a connection.

Global warming or no, the current beach erosion is closely linked to other human activity. Upscale homes are built next to the beach. Research shows their expensive sea walls change the wave action and actually speed up beach erosion. So the wealthier beachfront developments will be losing their sand faster than other areas. Won’t that affect real estate values? Perhaps there could be a greetech solution: virtual beaches so the homes could be built further from the real ocean to begin with? Solar-powered sand dredges to re-build the beach as fast as it waves away?

November 12th, 2009

Could be a trend--million Energy Star homes

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 12:27 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, building, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, federal government, green tech, housing

Tags: Home, Harry Fuller

The EPA says there are now a million Energy Star homes in the U.S.

TEXAS CITIES LEAD

The top two cities in the nation for Energy Star ratings: Houston and Dallas. Then come Vegas, Phoenix and L.A. Partly this is the advantage of having a recent building boom. But it also shows the widely recognized advantages of an energy-efficient home.

Chicago and Minneapolis with their northerly climate did not even make the top twenty list of U.S. cities.

Says the EPA: “More than 1 million ENERGY STAR® homes have been built in the United States since the program first began labeling homes in 1995. Thanks to the dedication of our partners, families living in ENERGY STAR qualified homes will save more than $270 million this year on their utility bills, while avoiding greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to those from 370,000 vehicles.”

Here’s Heather’s recent blog on the PA’s Energy Star program.

November 11th, 2009

Green building boom

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 2:41 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, building, conservation, energy, engineering, green tech, housing

Tags: Economic Activity, Green, Recruitment & Selection, Human Resources, Workforce Management, Harry Fuller, Green Building, jobs

A study sponsored by the Green Building Council sees major spending on green building in the U.S. for the next four years. The study finds almost 8 million jobs supported and nearly a half trillion dollars in green building economic activity through 2013. The current level of green building activity is estimated at two million jobs and $100 billion in GDP.

“Our goal is for the phrase ‘green building’ to become obsolete, by making all building and retrofits green – and transforming every job in our industry into a green job,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chairman of USGBC.

November 6th, 2009

Update on Chinese wallboard with a side order of sulphur

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 1:36 pm

Categories: Blogroll, China, air pollution, building, environmental health, housing, law & politics, research

Tags: chinese wallboard, toxic, sulphur, drywall, Hurricane Katrina, coal ash

Lawsuits. Post-pollution huffing and puffing. Perhaps a hundred thousand homes with sulphur exhaling wallboard. Questions of free trade vs. consumer protection. This one’s got a lot of fingers pointing in different directions.

Here’s a recent summary of some of what’s happened. I first blogged about this Chinese import issue back in March.

Here’s S 1606, a bill that would require overseas manufacturers to make products that meet American industrial regulations. It is NOT legal in the U.S. to use sulphur-bearing coal ash to make wallboard. That’s apparently what happend in the Chinese drywall. And we all know that China has mountains of coal ash. The Chinese drywall was imported across the Pacific after Hurricane Katrina because U.S. domestic production was suddenly not enough to meet demand. That meant it was profitable to ship wallboard thousands of miles to the southern U.S.

The problem is so widespread there’s a conference today in Sarasota. It’s devoted to sharing all the many investigations and test results tracking the wallboard and its possible toxic effects.

Some research indicates there is a chemical trail that is causing the problems with the imported wallboard. There is elemental sulfur in the wallboard. That reacts with tiny amounts of carbon monoxide in the air and that can produce carbonyl sulfide. In turn that reacts with moisture and produces hydrogen sulphide and even sulphuric acid. So the sulphur-bearing wallboard is particularly problematic in the humid U.S. Gulf Coast region.

An opposing theory about the sulphurous wallboard: blame some sulphur-fixing bacteria.

November 5th, 2009

Happy hardware: tech lobbyist brings home the bacon

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 11:16 am

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, building, cars & traffic, conservation, energy, engineering, environmental health, federal government, fossil fuel, geothermal, green tech, housing, law & politics, renewable energy, research

Tags: National Electrical Manufacturers Association, Hardware, Research & Development, Telecom & Utilities, Business Operations, Harry Fuller, HR 3183, electricity, smart grid

Not everybody in Washington these days is growling angry. The National Electrical Manufacturers Association (NEMA) announced today that President Obama signed into law some NEMA-advocated funding as part of the Fiscal Year 2010 Energy and Water Development Appropriations Bill.

NEMA has lobbied Congress to increase funding for federal agencies, departments, and programs that are important to NEMA companies. These increased funding amounts include:

· $2.24 billion for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, including $200 million for the Building Technologies Program, a 43 percent increase
· $32 million for the Federal Energy Management Program, a 45 percent increase
· $125 million for the research and development for Smart Grid, energy storage, and clean energy transmission and reliability technologies
· $27 million for solid state lighting, a $2 million increase.

Beyond electricity there is money in this bill for a variety of green-related businesses:carbon capture, geothermal development, even money for the autmotive X-prize. Here’s an early blog on the X-prize auto competition.

This money is a small part of the total $33.5 billion fiscal 2010 Energy and Water Appropriations bill. The money is administered by several agencies: Department of Energy, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Reclamation, the Army Corps of Engineers, and others.

According to NEMA President and CEO Evan R. Gaddis, the funding is in addition to the economic stimulus package. NEMA describes itself as “associaton of electrical and medical imaging manufacturers.” Members include ABB, Bosch, DuPont, Duracell, eight units of GE, Formica, Kodak Batteries, Mitsubishi, National Semiconductor, Panasonic, eight units of Phillips, three units of Siemens, Sumitomo, Toshiba. In addition dozens of cable, wire, insulator and electrical hardware folks are members. These are companies expecting to thrive with the greening of the American energy industry and smartening up the grid.

November 4th, 2009

How about your own smarter grid at home?

Posted by Harry Fuller @ 3:02 pm

Categories: Blogroll, air pollution, conservation, energy, engineering, green tech, housing, weather

Tags:

Silicon Valley’s EcoFactor is moving to automate efficient home energy use. Working with current residential broadband providers, EcoFactor says it can save every home owner and renter 25% or more on their energy use, regardless of how the home is heated or cooled. The only hardware required is a two-way programmable thermostat. EcoFactor then uses the existing broadband connection to monitor the homes temperature every sixty seconds and it makes the complex calculations to determine the most efficient way to heat or cool a home. Tge instruction are sent via Internet to the home’s thermostat(s).

They’ve been running field tests in real family homes in Minneapolis and Adelaide. Depending on the home and the conditions desired by the residents, it may make sense to keep a home around 80 degrees on very hot days and then cool it off an hour before the first family member gets home in the afternoon. Temperatures may be varied depending on external conditions, when the home is occupied, etc. At all times–like car cruise control–people living in the home have complete over-ride ability. But when parents are at work, kids at school, EcoFactor will be monitoring to make sure the HVAC isn’t burning up energy unnecessarily.

I recently spoke with company executives. They are most excited about their just-announced deal with the Dallas-area utility, Oncor. EcoFactor will now be available to the three million retail customers in Oncor’s service area. As EcoFactor says, the smart gird is more than metering and data. The optimum use of that data is an automated service using software that can rapidly calibrate and calculate the best use of the building’s existing HVAC system under all conditions, and under the specific requirements of the occupants.

EcoFactor is pledged to provide Oncor with 3MW of on-demand savings on very hot days. That is aimed at preventing any brown-outs or mandatory shut-downs in the Oncor service area. The other 350+ days when power loads are not an issue, EcoFactor will continue to provide energy and money savings to Oncor’s customers. Oncor is the largest electricity provider in Texas.