A grant of $3 million from Google to the US Green Building Council (USGBC) was announced during the annual Greenbuild conference which is taking place in San Francisco this week. Google has been a leader with the greening of its own facilities and has taken a very proactive step in avoiding the use of "red list" construction materials in its own facilities.

The grant is meant to be used for furthering green building materials research and the promotion of communications in and around the green building process. "The grant supports three related efforts: research on building materials and their effect on health, development of new building transparency tools, and encouraging conversation between industry stakeholders." More specific detail about how this grant will be applied by USGBC remains to be announced.

Google's grant gives the USGBC some leverage of its own since some credits in the LEED building rating system have been targets of objection by strong monied interests.  These include the credit for use of certified sustainable wood and the proposed materials credits that incorporate open reporting of chemical content of products and "for selecting products for which the chemical ingredients in the product are inventoried using an accepted methodology and for selecting products verified to minimize the use and generation of harmful substances."

via: Eco-Structure

Like the plot of a low-budget spy movie, this past July, roughly 100 tons of iron sulphate was dumped into the waters of the Pacific Ocean by a "controversial American businessman." The program was not part of any governmental- or consensus-based program, but is instead a private project to effect large-scale change to the planet.

The rationale for this is a belief that it will promote growth of plankton, which will grow (in a plankton bloom) and absorb carbon dioxide before sinking to the ocean bed. The CO2 will remain sequestered if the plankton do not subsequently break down on the sea floor. However, earlier tests have not proved successful.

Tests caried out a few years ago showed only limited succes with ocean fertilization. Critics point out a number of potential unwanted side effects to this approach:

"It is difficult if not impossible to detect and describe important effects that we know might occur months or years later," said John Cullen , an oceanographer at Dalhousie University. "Some possible effects, such as deep-water oxygen depletion and alteration of distant food webs, should rule out ocean manipulation. History is full of examples of ecological manipulations that backfired."

The California-based businessman behind this dumping has been involved in previous failed projects do similar things near the Galapagos and the Canary Islands. His earlier efforts are also credited as part of the incentive for the United Nations to pass an international moratorium on ocean fertilization experiments.

image: Public Domain - US EPA

via: Guardian

Installing grid-scale solar power arrays has gotten a bit easier with a new program recently rolled out by the US Department of the Interior to allow simpler, more streamlined process for projects on federal land in six western states.

Locations have been identified for an initial set of 17 Solar Energy Zones (SEZs), totaling about 285,000 acres of public lands, that will serve as priority areas for commercial-scale solar development. These are sites that are suited for solar power development and that have access to existing or planned power transmission lines, allowing for ready integration with the grid.

The sites have been identified by the Department of Energy as having excellent solar access, as well as having "relatively low conflict with biological, cultural and historic resources." This allows a faster approval process for developing these areas with less red tape to be dealt with.

image: Public Domain U.S. Marine Corps photo by Pfc. Jeremiah Handeland/Wikimedia

via: Department of Interior Press Release

Recycling and reusing electronic components could be made much easier with a new polymer that produces a circuit board that will dissolve when immersed in hot water. The circuit board was developed by the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL) as part of the ReUSE (Reuseable, Unzippable, Sustainable Electronics) project.

The circuit board material is hardy enough to withstand ordinary heat and moisture, but full immersion in hot water acts to release the components from the board. This allows for over 90% of the electronics materials to be recovered, whereas typically less than 2% of the materials on a circuit board are re-used.

Although this is not necessarily beneficial for the repairability of electronics, it could be a definite improvement in helping get a handle on the growing mountains of electronics waste and make recycling of electronics components and recovery of minerals an easier process.

Video link: YouTube

image: CC BY-SA 1.0 by Mark Pellegrini/Wikimedia

via: Treehugger

An English company called Air Fuel Synthesis has begun producing gasoline (petrol) directly from air and water. Using carbon capture technology to sequester CO2 out of the atmosphere, and electrolysis to crack water into its constuituent hydrogen and oxygen, the company's process then combines the hydrogen and carbon dioxide to create synthetic gasoline or other fuels.

To be carbon emissions neutral, any carbon that is going to be burned as fuel ought to have come from the atmosphere, rather than from fossil sources buried in the ground. That is why plant-based and microbial methods of producing fuel are considered relatively clean, since the carbon in them was atmospheric. This process short circuits that even further by directly extracting the CO2 from the air and synthetically creating the gasoline replacement.

In addition to the direct atmospheric carbon extraction, the process also uses renewable energy to power the electrolysis process, so that the carbon debt is not merely transferred. Although the feedstock is free, the other costs of the process are likely too high for this to be an immediate replacement for oil drilling and refining, at least in the short term. And the process has only been able to produce a small amount of fuel in its test facility, yielding just five liters (less than 1.5 gallons) in two months. But cost and capacity are issues that can be improved as the method is developed and scaled up.

This adds to the number of non-petroleum processes being developed for fuel production we have seen. It seems less a question of whether these methods will work than it is one of which ones will reach commercial scale, and how soon that happens.

via: Treehugger

While it may sound like a repeat of the Organic Vinyl April Fools joke from a few years ago, new bio-polymers are getting touted as a green alternative for conventional plastic. While there are some positive aspects to using plant-based feedstock rather than fossil materials, Building Green offers a strong critique of the problems still inherent in bio-PVC.

Avoiding petroleum feedstocks is a good move in general, although the diversion of food crop products is as troubling to us as it is when it is done to produce fuel. Price fluctuations and increased volatility in the oil markets make this a good business strategy for companies producing and using these plastics. But, the core question remains: "Is it greener, or is it merely greenwash?"

Although carbon issues are now closely linked with the broader green movement, carbon isn't the only deciding factor that makes something green or not. With vinyls, as Building Green writes, "The problem is that material sourcing isn't the issue with PVC--and the biggest concerns that have made PVC the subject of more debate than other polymers have come from problems on the "salt" side of the manufacturing process. Dioxins--the most potent cancer-causing chemicals known to science--are produced in large quantity in the manufacture of the vinyl chloride monomer and then again when this chlorinated plastic is burned in incinerators and uncontrolled landfill fires. Getting the polymer from a biobased source merely sugarcoats PVC without addressing the fundamental problem."

Other plastics like PET, the primary material used for carbonated beverage bottles, are also being produced from biomaterial stocks. This is more of an advantage since the resulting products are compatible with current recycling programs instead of needing to be separated as some other bioplastic containers have needed.

image credit: Cjp24/Wikimedia Commons

via: BuildingGreen

Further bad news for the electric vehicle market comes with word that A123, the company that owns the largest battery manufacturing plant in North America, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week.

The two A123 manufacturing plants, which have been making batteries for electric vehicles including those built by General Motors and Fisker, will be taken over by Johnson Controls, which is acquiring A123's automotive assets.

In addition to its vehicle batteries, A123 also produces cells and batteries for portable equipment, telecommunications and electric grid applications, and stationary power backup systems.

An earlier deal to sell most of the ownership of A123 to a Chinese manufacturer, the Wanxiang Group, apparently fell through, and the bankruptcy filing coincided, at least in part, with A123 failing to make a scheduled loan repayment to Wanxiang.

via: Autoguide.com

For efficiency, solar panels need to be as absorbtive as possible of the light that strikes them. Any light that reflects off the panel is not producing energy, so anti-reflective coatings have been studied by researchers trying to boost the performance and efficiency of solar panels. Highly efficient coatings have already been available for a number of years, but recent developments have been able to bring the costs down, as well.

The latest coating development from the Australian company Brisbane Materials is able to be applied at room temperatures, rather than needing high temperatures, as other coatings have needed to affix the coating. With this coating, solar panels can have an improvement of about 3% in efficiency. This may be a small increase, but, as we've pointed out before, accumulating small increases in efficiency are how improvements come about.

In addition, the coating can also be combined with anti-soiling coatings, which will help keep the panel cleaner for a longer period of time, which also helps maintain the effectiveness of the panel.

via: Treehugger

Cork is a very versatile material with a great green pedigree. It is considered a rapidly renewable material because the bark of the cork oak can be harvested without killing the tree, allowing repeated cycles of production over the 200+ year lifespan of the tree. While cork has long been an attractive choice for flooring, it is now being used to provide building insulation boards, as well.

Like cork flooring, the cork insulation is also made from granules of cork that are left over after wine corks have been punched out of the bark. Cork granules are treated under heat and pressure to release a natural binder and produce billets of expanded cork which are then cut to size. The expanded cork has an R-value of 3.6 per inch. This isn't as good as the highest performance materials, but is comparable to fiberglass batts, cotton (blue jean insulation), and cellulose insulation.

Expanded cork insulation at present is a comparatively expensive material for insulation. The cost comparison from Building Green (who have an extensive write-up of the material) indicates that cork might be as much as 5 times the cost of a similar amount of polyisocyanurate insulation board, and more than twice as expensive as extruded polystyrene. But the cork does not rely on petrochemicals for its manufacture, and offers an all-natural insulation product that will definitely appeal to some builders and building owners.

In addition to its energy performance, the cork insulation is also highly flame resistant, helps with sound absorbtion, and does not offgas any significant VOCs. From a LEED perspective, it is a very useful material, qualifying as a rapidly renewable material in addition to being manufactured from the waste byproduct of the manufacture of another product (wine corks). Many cork forests are already FSC certified. And, from the perspective of a materials red list, it is 100% natural.

via: Jetson Green

An intriguing method for storing excess power from renewable generation sources is based using super cooled air as a means of storing power until it is needed. British-based Highview Power is developing the system with a pilot plant adjacent to a heat and power plant at Slough.

The frozen air storage system cools air to cryogenic temperatures around -200 degrees F (-129 degrees C) and stores it in tanks. When power is called for, the liquified air can be evaporated and used to run turbines to produce electricity. Fundamentally, it is similar to other steam-based systems, relying on a phase change of a liquid to a gas being used to run a turbine. The process can be coupled with systems that produce waste heat which can be used to augment the efficiency of the system.

The current pilot frozen air storage does not have nearly the efficiency as many other power storage systems (most of which average 70-80% if not better). But the engineers working on the project believe that they can reach similar efficiencies as other systems offer when the system is scaled.

As a small added benefit, the frozen air storage system requires the air to be cleaned of soot and small atmospheric particles, as well as water vapor, before it is cooled down, so in addition to storing power, the process also results in slightly cleaner air.

via: Treehugger