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The audio series Ecological Awareness from More Than Sound Productions helps Wal-Mart explain the two pillars of its sustainability initiative - Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and consumer awareness - to private brand suppliers. Click here for link to original article.

Northampton, MA (PRWEB) November 19, 2009 -- Wal-Mart has pledged to address the sustainability of every aspect of its business - from the energy-efficiency of stores to greening the supply chains that produce their private brands. But what does it mean to 'green' supply chains - and how do you tell with certainty which products are ecologically better than others, and in which areas? Wal-Mart is answering these questions in part by giving all its private brand suppliers a CD comprised of edits from the series 'Ecological Awareness' released by More Than Sound Productions (www.morethansound.net), to explain emerging consumer awareness through a process called life-cycle assessment (LCA) - a discipline of industrial ecology fast becoming the international standard to truly assess the environmental impact of a product, process, or company.

Though the use of LCA as a sustainability-benchmarking tool is rapidly spreading, the technique, importance, and meaning of it all remain unclear to many companies. 'Ecological Awareness' explains LCA and sustainability through a series of dialogues between Daniel Goleman, author of 'Ecological Intelligence', and industrial ecologists Dara O'Rourke(of the consumer awareness site GoodGuide), Greg Norris(of the open-source LCA platform Earthster), and health researcher Michael Lerner(of the cancer center Commonweal).

The dialogues with O'Rourke and Norris are in-depth primers on the specifics of consumer awareness and LCA. More Than Sound offered a streamlined version of the series to Wal-Mart that includes only what is most relevant to enhancing business understanding of sustainability efforts. The result is the introductory, made-for-business audio series, 'The Radical Horizon: A Primer on Business Sustainability', (www.morethansound.net/The-Radical-Horizon.php) given to all Wal-Mart's private brand suppliers.

More Than Sound co-released a download entitled 'Leading the Necessary Revolution: Building Alignment in Your Business for Sustainability'. Featuring Peter Senge, MIT lecturer and Founding Chair of the Society for Organizational Learning, 'Leading the Necessary Revolution' offers sage advice and proven methods to advance sustainability initiatives within any organization. As Senge explained recently in an interview with BusinessWeek, "This is a huge challenge for people in companies, because so many companies are dominated by short-term perspective and because lots of people in key positions simply aren't very good or don't care very much about the bigger picture. Watch how the decisions are made. Are they thinking of the value of the company 10 years after they retire, or are they thinking about the value of their stock options this year?" To work with existing mentalities, Senge introduces relational intelligence and methods for bridging assumptions and getting the right people on board. 'Leading the Necessary Revolution' (www.morethansound.net/Leading-the-Necessary-Revolution.php) explains the use of relational intelligence and other proven strategies to champion sustainability within one's organization.

Lyon Graulty from More Than Sound explains how these projects came about. "Given our mission of supporting collective growth, it's only fitting that our products help business get on board with sustainability. People need these tools to evolve and meet environmental challenges. 'Ecological Intelligence', written by Daniel Goleman, one of our lead contributors, provided the basis for these audio series, and we're really excited that it's catching on."

More information on these products as well as the rest of the More than Sound product line-up can be found at www.morethansound.net.

Brad Allenby, a professor in the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment, has recently co-authored a book that combines concepts of sustainable engineering with his pioneering work in industrial ecology.

"Industrial Ecology and Sustainable Engineering," co-written with Tom Graedel, a professor in Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, is the first book to fully integrate the two fields.

Industrial ecology broadens the scope of the sustainability concept, Allenby says.

“It looks, for instance, at economic, technological and industrial systems and their interaction with environmental and social systems,” he says.

From that point of view, Allenby says, “You look at a factory not only from merely an economic perspective, but from the perspective of its overall impact on environmental and social systems. You look at things like its carbon emissions and how the factory uses resources, and how they are tied to design choices and manufacturing practices.”

Allenby is writing a second book, "The Theory and Practice of Sustainable Engineering," which is designed to provide students a comprehensive introduction to the subject.

The books “are going to further solidify ASU’s leadership in both sustainability and industrial ecology,” says Paul Westerhoff, interim director of the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment.

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The animals that make up corals are anthozoans, a class of invertebrate within the phylum Cnidaria, which includes a diverse assortment of creatures like jellies, hydroids, and sea anemones. In this mostly marine and entirely carnivorous club you can either float or anchor yourself to a surface, and many do both within their lifespan.

When corals anchor themselves, they do so as attached polyps in large colonies, and they do it by using calcium carbonate, or lime, as a cement. The Great Barrier Reef along Australia's northeastern coast is a huge collection of these colonies, built on the 10,000-year-old ruins of their ancestors' exoskeletons.

Their method for building their homes is worlds away from the way humans have been making cement and concrete, but one company has developed an innovative method for using seawater (which corals also utilize to make calcium) to both make cement and sequester carbon dioxide. But first, we'll look at how corals make their homes.

Coral reef communities in general, and coral polyps in particular, exhibit that characteristic so common in these crowded, diverse environments: interdependence. When real estate is expensive, you find a way to make a living (ask any of my fellow Californians). Stiff competition makes for some pretty creative methods, however, and often they include the mutually beneficial relationship called symbiosis.

The carnivorous corals can't go it alone so they have co-evolved with an algae boarder, a paying house guest who supplies most of their energy needs through photosynthesis. The algae are there for the same reason as everyone else: clear, calm and relatively warm water. For their tithing of sugars they receive the shelter and protection of the corals' limestone fortress. They also receive a daily nutritious dose of nitrates and phosphates from the corals' waste. While this mutualism is beneficial to both parties, it isn't entirely unforced. The corals excrete a digestive solution that causes the algae cell walls to leak their precious food. It's estimated that 80 percent of the algae's sugars go to the corals. An entire ecosystem is based on this relationship that translates the energy of the sun into the building of a massive underwater world.

Corals are extremely sensitive to small changes in the magic formula that makes up their habitat. Even slight changes in temperature, salinity, light and nitrogen can kill them outright. It has been estimated that half of the world's reefs could die out within 50 years. How we reduce and reverse the air pollution that is causing climate change will be critical to the survival of these shallow seas ecosystems. Ironically, the corals themselves may provide part of the answer for us.

Unlike their human counterparts, anthozoans don't make their cementitious homes by mining fossil rock. They don't grind it up, cook it to over 1,450 degrees C and then pound the baked material back into a pulverized dust. No, they just take in plain seawater, and precipitate out calcium and magnesium at normal temperatures and pressure. The calcium is turned into a crystal form of carbonate called arogonite. They secrete this lime out a little at a time while they are multi-tasking with other things like gathering food and having sex. No worries.

I think we could use some pointers from our salty friends, especially since cement production is the third largest source of GHG emissions in the U.S., according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The $11.9 billion industry produced approximately 110.3 million metric tons of cement in 2007, from 116 plants in 36 states. Yearly global production of cement dwarfs this figure: it is reckoned by the Portland Cement Association to be approximately 1.25 billion metric tons, with much of it spurred by development in China and India. Sobering indeed, when you consider that every ton of cement produced is matched by another ton of carbon dioxide (CO2) put into our atmosphere. Happily, there are some companies that are developing ways to make cement production more like the coral's methods. 

The Calera Corporation operates a small facility on the central California coast that is testing some of these biomimetic processes. Located next to the Moss Landing Power Plant, the facility has been making small batches of cement by processing CO2 gas through seawater to make first carbonic acid and then carbonates. Their process is proprietary and in patent development, but, if successful, could revolutionize how we make cement and, perhaps more importantly, how we capture and sequester carbon.
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It is an elegant scheme: Take a waste product, CO2, that is so damaging but ubiquitous that governments like the state of California are forced to regulate its reduction. Use this waste as a feedstock, process it through the most abundant substance on earth, seawater, and produce a material that not only can be used for building but permanently entombs the offending carbon. To power part of your processing use the free waste heat from the power plant itself. When you are done, return the unheated, unpoisoned seawater back safely, or pass it on as a pretreated (and money saving) stock for desalinization. 

As an example, the Moss Landing plant is a gas-fired electricity generating facility that produces about 1,000 megawatts of power. While it is doing this it is also pumping out about 30,000 parts per million of CO2 into the air. Calera claims that it can capture most of this carbon and sequester a half-ton of carbon for every ton of cement that it makes. Company officials are currently describing their product as a supplementary cementitious material admixture, rather than as a replacement for Portland cement. It is being promoted as a replacement for fly ash, which can be increasingly hard to obtain, and as a better performing portion of a greener concrete mix when 50 percent recycled materials are specified.
 
The eventual possibilities sound a lot like the interdependent material cycling in coral colonies that we have just discussed, and the industrial ecology practiced in Kalundborg, Denmark. There, for instance, the city's power plant shunts several by-products to waiting, intentionally located industries, including “waste” heat, fly ash, heated seawater, and gypsum (another ingredient, by the way, in Portland cement). A similar symbiotic arrangement of power plant, carbon capture cement plant and desalinization plant seems worthy of study.

This process holds even greater promise for what the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change considers a critical option for reducing climate-changing air pollution: Carbon capture and sequestration. Most any power plant will do as a source of stock; in fact, the dirtier the better. We have a wealth of this waste-turned-resource in the United States. Approximately 2.5 billion metric tons of CO2 were produced in 2006, by 2,775 power plants. Of these, 600 were coal-fired plants that spewed 5 times more pollution (or should we say grey gold?) than the Moss Landing operation. The Calera process would take sequestration one step further by recycling the carbon into a very useable and worthwhile product.

Since Calera potentially provides at least three benefits, pollution abatement, seawater treatment and cement production, the company seems to have the opportunity to engage in several separate markets. This may offer the chance to be as innovative at the business table as at the manufacturing plant. Indeed, a recent article in the Harvard Business Review noted that the company was considering giving the cement away for free while making its income from carbon capture. Whatever their eventual business model, I'm sure the anthozoans will be pleased at their success.

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Bourbon Tay Ninh Joint Stock Company broke ground for the Bourbon An Hoa Industrial Garden in the southern province of Tay Ninh October 30, with a total investment of over VND3 trillion.

Full article here.   The industrial zone is located in An Hoa, Trang Bang District, and covers 1,020 hectares. Some 760 hectares will be used for an industrial zone, 76 hectares for housing resettlement and 184 hectares for the port and warehouses.

The project aims to protect the natural and local environment. Each factory will be permitted to use just 70 percent of the area to build house machinery, and cover the remaining 30 percent with trees.

When the industrial zone is operating, it will be given priority for businesses that produce consumer products, household equipment and cosmetics.

The zone will also be able to treat its own sewage.

The industrial ecology zone is an advanced model, which has been already applied in other countries.

Download the PDF here.

Full article here.  Sugarcane biomass, a significant waste product from sugar production, could be a renewable energy source for electricity production, according to research published in the current issue of the international journal Progress in Industrial Ecology.

Engineer Vikram Seebaluck of the University of Mauritius and energy technology Dipeeka Seeruttun of the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden, have demonstrated that an optimal blend of sugarcane agricultural residues (30%) mixed with 70% sugarcane bagasse (the fibrous residue left after sugar production) can be used to generate electricity at a cost of just 0.06 US dollars per kilowatt hour. That figure is on a par with the costs of other renewable energies, including wind power at $0.05/kWh.

Sugarcane is a giant perennial grass of the genus Saccharum that can be found in wet and dry tropical and partially subtropical regions. It consists of an above-ground bamboo-like stalk with trash, cane tops and leaves and underground rhizomes and roots. 30 tonnes per hectare of fibre and sugarcane juice are sent to factories for sugar production, which leaves 24 tonnes per hectare of waste biomass. Currently, sugarcane bagasse is burnt for onsite heat and electricity production at sugar factories and surplus electricity is exported to the grid. That still leaves 24 tonnes per hectare of waste in the fields.

This waste has a similar energy content to bagasse, Seeruttun says, which could make it technically viable to use this material together with bagasse in a more effective way for electricity production. The 30:70 mixture of waste and bagasse reduces the risk of fouling or slagging of the furnaces used to burn the material.

'The combustion of SARs for the production of electricity is technically and economically feasible and creates opportunities for increasing the renewable energy share in sugarcane-producing countries,' the researchers explain.

The researchers analysis of the economics and technology required to exploit sugarcane waste products effectively suggests that bioenergy expansion from cane biomass would create rural jobs, reduce costly energy imports, and cut greenhouse gas emissions overall. Its use in electricity generation displaces the equivalent of 230 kg of coal for the equivalent amount of energy generated and 560 kg of carbon dioxide per tonne.

They caution that harnessing this bioenergy and biomass potential will require significant increases in investment, technology transfer and international cooperation. Nevertheless, its high efficiency and concentration, mostly in the developing world, should be viewed as a global resource for sustainable development.

Original Article here.

Clarkson University and National Grid today announced the creation of a $350,000 endowment at Clarkson. The National Grid Endowed Fund for Student Research Opportunities in Sustainable Energy will annually fund up to five summer research opportunities for Clarkson Honors Program students studying sustainable energy.

"Clarkson has a rich history of educating engineers for the energy industry and we are proud to be able to support and broaden its resources dedicated to building our industry's sustainable future," said Tom King, president of National Grid, U.S. "National Grid's endowment at Clarkson University is designed to provide educational and career pathways for bright young students and is an investment in the future of sustainable energy and engineering. The endowment supports National Grid's community involvement goals, which are focused on energy and the environment; education and skills; and community development."

"We are most grateful to National Grid for this generous endowment, which will enable further research opportunities for our undergraduate students in one of the University's signature areas of research, the environment and energy," said Clarkson President Tony Collins. "Partnerships like this one provide our students with access to state-of-the-art research technology, while simultaneously benefitting our nation's energy consumers. National Grid is enabling Clarkson and its students to continue playing a key role in research that will ultimately strengthen the economy of both New York state and the nation."

"This support will enable some of our most promising students to perform cutting-edge research and acquire the skills necessary to contribute to a sustainable future for all of us," said David M. Craig, director of the Honors Program.

The students' research includes areas like power systems, energy education, energy efficiency, energy harvesting and storage, bioenergy, fuel cells and hydrogen fuel, solar energy systems, and wind energy.

"Our need for sustainable energy may be the biggest challenge the world has ever faced," said Prof. Kenneth D. Visser, director of Clarkson's Center for Sustainable Energy Systems. "We are very grateful for National Grid's generosity and belief in the importance of investing in this research."

The students will also benefit from a series of seminars and workshops on sustainability and participate in field trips and team-building activities.

Built upon current and emerging problems in science, technology and society, Clarkson's Honors Program offers unique academic challenges and opportunities for Clarkson's most promising students. The University admits no more than 30 new students to the program each year.

Clarkson recently announced a new minor in sustainable energy systems for all engineering and engineering and management majors. The minor requires courses in technology, policy and industrial ecology, encouraging students to examine the human side of energy issues.

National Grid is an international energy delivery company. In the U.S., National Grid delivers electricity to approximately 3.3 million customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island, and manages the electricity network on Long Island under an agreement with the Long Island Power Authority (LIPA). It is the largest distributor of natural gas in the northeastern U.S., serving approximately 3.4 million customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island. National Grid also owns over 4,000 megawatts of contracted electricity generation that provides power to over one million LIPA customers.

Clarkson University launches leaders into the global economy. One in six alumni already leads as a CEO, VP or equivalent senior executive of a company. Located just outside the Adirondack Park in Potsdam, N.Y., Clarkson is a nationally recognized research university for undergraduates with select graduate programs in signature areas of academic excellence directed toward the world's pressing issues. Through 50 rigorous programs of study in engineering, business, arts, sciences and health sciences, the entire learning-living community spans boundaries across disciplines, nations and cultures to build powers of observation, challenge the status quo, and connect discovery and engineering innovation with enterprise.

Photo caption: Clarkson University and National Grid have announced the creation of a $350,000 endowment at Clarkson. The National Grid Endowed Fund for Student Research Opportunities in Sustainable Energy will annually fund up to five summer research opportunities for Honors Program students in sustainable energy. Left to right: Honors Program Associate Director Hayley H. Shen; National Grid Vice President, Energy Solutions Services, Susan Crossett; Clarkson University President Tony Collins; National Grid, U.S., President Tom King; and Prof. Kenneth D. Visser.

[News directors and editors: For more information, contact Michael P. Griffin, director of News & Digital Content Services, at 315-268-6716 or mgriffin@clarkson.edu.]

MEDIA RELEASE, Original article here

Hilo and Kailua-Kona. How have these two Hawaii Island urban areas evolved in such different ways over the last 50 years?

Researchers at Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the U.S. Forest Service in Hilo, and The Kohala Center, backed by a grant from the National Science Foundation, are going to take a stab at answering this question.

“Hawaii Island provides a model setting to test theories about human impacts on the earth system and about resource constraints on urban growth. Resource management issues are of critical concern for Hawaii Island,” said Marian Chertow, director of the industrial environmental management program at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.

“By focusing on the major urban areas of Hilo and Kailua-Kona, this project will provide a comparative analysis of the structure and function of two socio‐ecological systems related through resource exchanges, geographic proximity, and historical and contemporary cultural configurations. Although similar in population and area, these areas have markedly different socioeconomic and biophysical characteristics,” Chertow said. “These areas could benefit tremendously from a close analysis of resource allocation and use and how their patterns of consumption affect the island’s human and natural communities.”

The study is a first step in the Long-Term Industrial Ecosystem Model for Hawaii Island initiated this spring by a local-global partnership that aims to help Hawaii Island decision-makers discover what sustainability means for the island and management of resources.

“Finding qualitative answers to the evolution of East and West Hawaii and other frequently asked questions about how to resolve our island’s significant challenges with energy, food, water resources, and waste management will play a critical role in the revitalization of Hawaii Island’s economy. The entire project supports decision-making through high quality information and independent analyses,” said Matt Hamabata, executive director of The Kohala Center, a partner in the project.

The Kohala Center and the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University are working on the long-term project with the University of Hawaii at Hilo, the Redlands Institute, the Institute for Advanced Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, and the Institute for Social Ecology in Vienna, Austria.

Mayor Billy Kenoi’s administration submitted a letter of support to the National Science Foundation, endorsing the work of this unique research partnership.

“The science of sustainability, [or] ‘industrial ecology,’ looks at energy, food, and water sustainability, as well as the unique characteristics of this island, in terms of its social, cultural, historical, and industrial systems,” Kenoi said.

“When we think about how to become sustainable, we see that we need to make a collective effort and work together to change the status quo. Contained in this community are the answers for moving forward into the next generation,” Kenoi said. “We have many assets. This project will help us talk about the gifts we have, including our island leaders.

“This partnership is ideal. It gives public- and private-sector decision-makers access to high quality information and independent analysis, so that we can make informed choices about resource allocation in areas such as agriculture, forestry, energy, housing, and public infrastructure. This partnership helps us work with the fact that we live in a world with limited resources and turn that limitation into ways in which we can be more efficient, create greater local business opportunities, and enhance the health of our ecosystems.”

Hamabata said, “The project offers careful and informed thinking about the future of our island society. This effort will show the linkages across sectors-for example, how high utility costs have a negative effect on the farming industry-just when it is clear that local food production is critically important in light of the fact that we import 85 percent of the food we eat and that we have 10 days or less of food on the shelves.”

“The important point is that we need to talk about and look at the bigger picture to understand how best to move forward in light of this island’s unique local circumstances. The bottom line is that we can do a lot better in maximizing our sustainable use of materials and energy than we’re doing now,” Chertow said.

This work is not new.

The Kohala Center and its university partners have been working with island experts, especially those in the County’s Division of Research and Development, on resource allocation and consumption issues on Hawaii Island since February 2007.

For example, the county Energy Sustainability Plan showed the growth in fossil fuel consumption between 2007 and 2030 could largely be eliminated through efficiencies.

Hamabata gives more examples of the cross-sector linkages-the Department of Water Supply is the largest consumer of electrical power in the county government because of the need to pump water; thus, fixing leaks not only conserves a precious resource (potable water) but also reduces the consumption of electricity, which in turn reduces the island consumption of fossil fuels.

“What this project will do is allow leaders and residents to see these interlinkages. When the project develops the capacity to build scenarios rapidly, using GIS technology, leaders and residents can actually visualize what will happen, given the choices they are about to make. This is all useful and practical stuff. It just makes very accessible useful information and analyses from independent sources,” Hamabata said. “How much better can this get?”

Among other things, the long-term project will generate comparative scenarios-for example, heavy biofuel development versus local food production-which will help stakeholders visualize which futures they want, and which futures they don’t want. These analyses will be of immediate use to the county, but the project will have global benefits as well.

By addressing the concerns of island residents, the regular gathering and analysis of data will-over the years-lead to significant understanding of the complex interaction between human and natural systems. Thus, the resolution of Hawaii Island’s local challenges will have global impact. Indeed, this project positions Hawaii Island as a global knowledge resource.

Existing long-term projects such as the Hubbard Brook research site in New Hampshire in which Yale has been deeply involved and Hawaii Island’s own Mauna Loa CO2measurement facility have been essential for global understanding of environmental phenomena such as acid rain and climate change.

The Hawaii study will add social and cultural depth to the research on natural systems already underway on the island, as well as provide a platform for the synthesis and integration of hundreds of ongoing studies.

Hawaii is a perfect location for a system-wide project-as an intricate, diverse, urban-rural environment, it contains the full complexity of human-natural interactions, but it is a small and bounded environment, allowing scientists to track those interactions in real time.

The ongoing work is projected to cost between $150,000 and $300,000 a year. The Kohala Center and its university partners continue to raise funds for the project.

In addition to the National Science Foundation $145,346 grant, funds will also be raised from national and international research agencies and private foundations.

— Find out more:

www.kohalacenter.org

Working with Vogt Landscape, Martin Stockley Associates and Price & Myers, the practice intends to create a ‘working’ woodland landscape for the new London Sustainable Industries Park (LSIP) at Dagenham Dock.

A spokesman for the practice said: ‘The aim is to make the [142 ha] park a wholly self-sustainable enterprise and to develop an industrial symbiosis over time, where businesses use each other’s by-products and share resources.

‘A managed and maintained woodland landscape will provide a strong spatial setting for the park to emerge and develop through to 2040, and fulfils a purpose as a working landscape, as well as physically unifying the park as a single entity.’

The practice was appointed by The Thames Gateway Development Corporation to develop an initial vision, as well as the development framework and future design guidelines for the huge riverside plot which will also house a 16,000 m² ‘clean energy from waste’ plant and a new 3,500m² Institute for Sustainability.

Sergison Bates is working alongside stakeholders the London Borough of Barking & Dagenham, the Environment Agency, Design for London, the Port of London Authority, Transport for London and the site’s existing tenants.

A detailed planning application for the infrastructure and landscape design for the first phase of the park is due to be submitted in January 2010.