A new dust-up is brewing over the coal-ash landfill on Hawkins Point in South Baltimore.

Nearby residents, who waged a vain fight to keep power plant waste out of the landfill, now are girding to oppose a proposal to expand it.

Constellation Energy recently began dumping ash there from its three local coal-burning plants, Brandon Shores, H.A. Wagner and C.P. Crane. Meanwhile, the company has applied to the Maryland Department of the Environment for a permit to operate the disposal site and to expand it, bulldozing an acre of wetlands in the process.

The 65-acre site on Fort Armistead Road had been owned by Millenium Inorganic Chemicals, but Constellation bought it about the time MDE approved depositing coal ash there.  Now the energy company wants to expand the landfill on the tract from 28 acres to 32 acres and raise the height by up to 50 feet (from 220 feet above mean sea level to 270 feet, or 156 feet above ground level.)

Some environmentalists and Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold have already weighed in against the expansion.  Leopold, who's maintained a ban on ash disposal in Arundel since an earlier Constellation dump contaminated Gambrills residents' wells, wrote a letter urging the state to deny the permits for the expansion.  The ash contains toxic residues, some of them carcinogenic.

"We weren't crazy about this - we fought it," Mary M. Rosso, a longtime activist from Glen Burnie, said of the landfill.  Now the expansion proposal "just drives me crazy," she added.

She and other residents have dueled with Constellation before over ash disposal and have long complained about air and water pollution from other facilities in the nearby industrial areas of South Baltimore.  This time, she said, she and others are particularly upset about the prospect of losing an acre of noontidal wetlands.

Continue reading "Another tiff brews over Constellation ash landfill" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Obama administration has upped the ante on federal fuel economy standards, calling for cars and light trucks to get up to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson joined Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to announce the administration's proposal to set stronger fuel efficiency and greenhouse gas pollution standards for cars and light trucks made between 2017 and 2025.

Administration officials contend the higher mileage standards will reduce oil consumption by 4 billion barrels and cut 2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas pollution over the lifetimes of the vehicles sold in those years.  But they said it also should save Americans $6,600 in fuel costs over the lifetime of a 2025 model year vehicle, or a net savigns of $4,400 after factoring in projected higher costs for more fuel-efficient vehicles.  For more, go here.

The announcement, which builds on the administration's earlier push to get the nation's vehicle fleet to 35.5 mpg by 2016, drew cheers from environmentalists and raspberries from auto dealers.

Sarah Bucci of Environment Maryland, for instance, predicted that in Maryland alone, the fuel-economy standards would save each family $365 on average, and nationally would create nearly 500,000 new jobs.

The National Auto Dealers Association, meanwhile, warned that the rule could add more than $3,200 to the cost of a new vehicle, which could depress sales and slow fleet turnover, thereby delaying the environmental gains forecast. The group also argued that the regulation would most discourage sales of the industry's most popular, if least fuel-efficient vehicles, such as SUVs and other trucks and vans.

Cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickup trucks account for nearly 60 percent of transportation-related petroleum use and greenhouse gas emissions, according to EPA.

(Traffic in Baltimore, 2010 Baltimore Sun photo by Amy Davis)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Maryland and other Northeastern states have helped rather than hurt their economies with “cap-and-trade” regulation of their power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions, a new study finds.

In the past three years, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative produced a combined economic gain for the 10 participating states of more than $1.6 billion, or about $33 for every person living in the region, according to a report by the economic consulting firm Analysis Group. The ripple effects of making power plants buy permits to release carbon dioxide also created a total of 16,000 jobs, the consultants estimate.

“The program’s working,” said Paul J. Hibbard, a lead author of the study, which tracked the impacts of the carbon auctions through the economy. The research was funded by four foundations.

Consumers across the region are expected to save nearly $1.3 billion on their energy bills over the next decade, the study projects, through government-subsidized investments in home weatherization, energy-efficient appliances and other measures that should reduce demand for power below what it otherwise would be.

Continue reading "Regional climate action pays off, study finds" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Air Pollution, Climate change, News
        

It appears the recent criminal fraud case brought against a Baltimore biodiesel business owner for allegedly peddling phony renewable fuel credits is not an isolated one.

Federal investigators raided another biodiesel firm in Lubbock, Texas, a couple weeks ago, the Avalanche-Journal reported.  In a story last week, the newspaper quoted from unsealed search-warrant affidavits that authorities contend the company, Absolute Fuel, sold $40 million worth of renewable fuel credits without producing the 36 million gallons of biodiesel they were supposed to represent. 

The owner has not been charged, but federal agents seized records and $4.5 million in cash and property, including a Gulfstream jet, luxury cars and jewelry, the paper reported.   Authorities identified another $5 million in real estate held by the business owner.

The Texas case echoes the wire fraud, money laundering and air pollution charges brought by the U.S attorney in Baltimore a month ago against Rodney R. Hailey, president of Clean Green Fuel.  Hailey, 33, of Perry Hall stands accused of generating "renewable identification numbers," as the fuel credits are known, for 21 million gallons of fuel his company never produced.  Hailey's firm made $9 million on the sale of RINs for nonexistent fuel, according to the charges, and spent much of it on a fleet of luxury cars and jewelry, plus a new home.

Agents seized the cars and froze Hailey's bank accounts, but a prosecutor said they'd only been able to account for about a third of the allegedly fraudulent proceeds. Authorites now are seeking to sell Hailey's home, the cars and other property.  He backed out at the last moment last month on a plea agreement and is now scheduled to be tried Dec. 19.

Shortly after that case broke, I reported in The Baltimore Sun that it appeared to be the beginning of a crackdown by federal officials on the lucrative - and until recently, loosely regulated - market in RINs.  Industry insiders said they'd grown increasingly concerned that lax federal oversight of trading in the credits encouraged scams.  An industry group even set up a link on its website for members to report suspicious activity.  It appears that the Texas firm came to authorties' attention through a tip from a suspicious broker. 

The Environmental Protection Agency did move last year to tighten its record-keeping and reporting requirements for the renewable credits. Some in the industry, however, still question whether the feds have done enough.

(Locked office of Clean Green Fuel and related business.  Baltimore Sun photo by Tim Wheeler)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Maryland's effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by the end of the decade shouldn't cost the state any jobs, and may actually trigger new "green" employment, a pair of new studies say.

The two reports by the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Environmental Research were commissioned by the state Department of the Environment, which is required under the 2009 Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act to produce a draft plan by the end of this year for how to curb climate-altering carbon dioxide and other gases.

The legislature, in approving the law nearly three years ago, ordered the administration to show through independent studies that the effort wouldn't hurt the reliability of the state's electricity supply or hurt manufacturing.  Since then, the economy has tanked, Congress balked at adopting any climate-change legislation, and federal regulatory efforts to deal with greenhouse gases have slowed under fire from those who contend they'll hurt an already slumping economy.

The two UM reports conclude that in Maryland, at least, the effort to cut back climate-harming emissions would improve the availability of power, if anything, and that there would be no significant harm done to manufacturing or to the economy in general.

"We've tried really hard to find all kinds of ways in which, especially during this downturn in the economy, we could take a serious look at this and say, 'Where can it hurt us?'" said Matthias Ruth, director of the UM center.  "And we couldn't find it."

Continue reading "UM study finds MD climate law no drag on economy" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Film maker Josh Fox will be on hand this evening (11/1) at the Enoch Pratt Free Library downtown for a free screening of his controversial documentary "Gasland" chronicling problems with "fracking," the widely used drilling technique for extracting natural gas.

The film, which came out in 2010, was nominated for an Oscar and won an Emmy and several other awards. The oil and gas industry contends the movie contains errors and distortions, assertions which Fox rebuts.

It will air at 6 p.m. in the 3rd floor Wheeler (no relation) auditorium at the library, 400 Cathedral Street.  Afterwards, there'll be a discussion led by Fox.  The event is sponsored by Baltimore Green Works.  For more information, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The world's population has hit 7 billion, according to the United Nations, which coincidentally (or not) chose today, Halloween, as the date when that mark would be reached.

The number of humans inhabiting the Earth has more than doubled in the past 50 years, and though the rate of increase has slowed, we're still adding 1 billion people every 12 years.  I'm # 2,658,582,904, according to a nifty calculator published by the BBC.  Enter your birthdate and see what number you are.

But this milestone "is not about sheer numbers," says Geoff Dabelko, director of the Woodrow Wilson Center's Environmental Change & Security Program.  "Demographic trends will significatnly impact the planet's resouces and people's security.

"Growing populations stress dwindling natural resources supplies while high levels of consumption in both developed countries and emerging economies drive up carbon emissions and deplete the planet's resources," Dabelko adds.  "And neglected 'youth bulges' could bolster extremism in fragile states like Somalia and destabilize nascent democracies like Egypt."

For a primer on how we got to 7 billion, check out this brief video from the Population Reference Bureau.  If you want to delve deeper, I recommend the special year-long series by the National Geographic on the world's growing population and what it will mean.

To bring the discussion closer to home, it's worth pointing out that as of last year, an estimated 17.2 million people lived in the six-state Chesapeake Bay watershed, up from 16.9 million in 2008, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.  It's projected that number will hit 20 million by 2030.  For an analysis of how that growing human population works against restoring the bay, check out writer Tom Horton's 2008 report for the Abell Foundation.

(Photos: Top, Beach in China, 2007 AFP/Getty; Above, Commuters in Hanoi, 2011, Reuters)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The second annual Clean Energy Summit blows into B'more today, rescheduled and relocated here after the earthquake in August damaged the Bethesda hotel where it was supposed to be held.  That 'quake may have been an omen.

There'll be a lot of talk at the Hilton Inner Harbor on Friday about solar and wind power, electric vehicles, biofuels, public policy and more.  There's lots happening on those fronts, but plenty of uncertainty and uproar, too. 

Construction is under way on Maryland's first utility-scale solar array in Emmitsburg, for instance, and the state was recently recognized as one of the top 10 states in promoting energy efficiency.  But in Washington, cost-cutting pressures cast a shadow over funding for clean energy, and there's even talk among at least some Republican lawmakers of cutting off tax incentives for virutally all forms of energy, including solar and wind, nuclear and even at least some breaks for oil and gas. 

Despite the federal policy turmoil, more and more businesses and homeowners are looking for clean energy, installing more efficient lighting and solar arrays, among other things.  To help stoke that interest, the summit winds up Saturday with a free consumer show.

From 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., the public has a chance to drive a Chevy Volt and learn more about solar hot water and photovoltaics, geothermal heating and cooling, the new generation of cleaner woodstoves and - perhaps most important of all - how to go about financing the upfront costs that can ultimately lead to lower utility bills.

For more info, go here.

(Wind turbines on Backbone Mountain near Oakland MD.  2010 Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Advocates of developing offshore wind power have come to Baltimore this week with optimism that they're creeping closer to putting the first turbines off the Atlantic coast, but worried that Washington could pull the plug on the fledgling industry just as it gets started.

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar are scheduled to open a three-day conference put on by the American Wind Energy Association.  For details on the affair, go here.

Chris Long, the association's manager of offshore policy, said several federal and state government actions have buoyed the industry and sent positive signals to investors. But liftoff still has not occurred, and there are signs some may be cooling on offshore's wind potential.

On the plus side, the gears of the federal bureaucracy are creaking forward.  In February, the Departments of Interior and Energy released a promised joint strategy for cutting the costs of offshore wind projects and speeding up their regulatory approval.

Then in March, Interior offered its first commercial lease of turbine sites off the Delaware coast, and in April approved a construction and operations plan for what could be the first offshore wind farm, the much-debated Cape Wind project off Nantucket's coast in Massachusetts.

Finally, last July, Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement released a mostly favorable draft environmental impact assessment for issuing offshore wind leases along the entire mid-Atlantic coast, including Maryland.

State actions also have encouraged the industry, such as O'Malley's so-far unsuccessful push to make utilities sign long-term power purchasing agreements with offsore wind developers.

But offshore wind is running into some resistance as well. The New York Power Authority voted recently to drop its plan to develop a 150-megawatt wind farm in the Great Lakes amid anxiety about the costs and the weak economy.  Estimates of how much ratepayers would need to pay to subsidize the project ranged from $60 million to $100 million a year.

Meanwhile, federal subsidies for any type of "clean" energy are drawing more critical scrutiny these days on the heels of the collapse of Solyndra, the California solar manufacturer that received more than $500 million in loan guarantees.

Continue reading "Offshore wind blows into town, with eye on DC" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A new poll says 62 percent of Marylanders favor putting huge wind turbines off Ocean City and would be willing to pay as much as $2 per month on their electric bills for it. 

The poll done by Gonzales Research and Marketing Strategies of Arnold was paid for by environmental groups which favor offshore wind development in Maryland. It was released the day before the opening of an offshore wind industry conference in Baltimore, at which Gov. Martin O'Malley is expected to reiterate his support.

With backing from environmentalists, labor and some clean-energy businesses, O'Malley attemped to spur offshore wind development by pushing a bill that would require the state's utilities to sign long-term contracts to buy the electricity generated by turbines placed a dozen miles or so off the coast. But lawmakers tabled the legislation for more study amid questions about how much ratepayers would have to pay.

O'Malley is expected to renew his push for offshore wind in the General Assembly next year. Supporters say the poll shows he has public backing.

"These poll results couldn’t be more clear," said Mike Tidwell, head of Chesapeake Climate Action Network, one of the groups that paid for the poll " Maryland voters want the General Assembly to bring offshore wind power to the state. Marylanders understand that the benefits of offshore wind are more than worth a modest initial investment."

According to the pollsters, 62 percent of those who responded to the survey agreed that they would be willing to pay $2 more a month on their electric bill to have a greater percentage of their power from "clean, local" wind turbines rather than from coal, oil and gas.

The support was statewide, with 55 percent backing it on the Eastern Shore in in Southern Maryland, 62 percent in Baltimore's suburbs, 67 percent in the DC 'burbs and 75 percent in Baltimore city.  Pollsters said paying up to $2 more for wind-generated electricity also won favor from 75 percent of African-Americans surveyed.

UPDATE: A second poll released today, done for the developer of a new offshore wind transmission grid, finds even stronger public support for putting turbines off the coast - especially if it means the new industry would bring jobs to Maryland.

The survey, done by Frederick Poll for the Atlantic Wind Connection, finds 77 percent of those questioned favor developing wind power off the Maryland coast  Sixty-eight percent - including 51 percent of the Republicans surveyed - agreed with the statement that they want elected officials to push offshore wind, even if it initially costs more.  Seventy-four percent want offshore wind transmission built, even if it also costs more.

(Wind turbines off the UK coast, Getty Images)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Every week or so seems to bring news of another solar installation in Maryland. The latest is a big one, and it's in a place that hasn't seen that much sun power yet - Baltimore city.

Chimes International, which provides job training and other services for people with disabilities, has blanketed a chunk of its 12-acre campus in northwest Baltimore with 3,000 solar panels, said to be the largest in the city.  The system, which features an unusual mix of ground-mounted and three rooftop arrays, is capable of generating up to 670 kilowatts - enough, according to Chimes, to furnish 60 to 70 percent of the nonprofit's electricity.

Washington Gas Energy Service, based in Herndon, VA will own and operate the system, which was designed and built by BITHENERGY, a Baltimore-based energy services firm.  Chimes inked a 20-year contract to buy the sun-generated power.

As if that wasn't enough, the installation includes independent solar powered outdoor lighting and an electric-vehicle charging station.  It isn't the first green project Chimes has undertaken either - its executives say through they've been able to trim $80,000 a year in energy costs at their locations in Maryland, the mid-Atlantic and Israel by weatherizing buildings, installing energy-efficient lighting and appliances and instilling conservation practices among employees.

(Photo by Corey Culbreath for BITHENERGY courtesy of Chimes)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

So if the sun manages to stay out, this weekend promises to be a great one for solar enthusiasts, or for folks just curious about incorporating renewable energy and efficiency into their homes.

The Solar Decathlon runs through Sunday on the National Mall in Washington, where a house designed and built by University of Maryland College Park students and faculty holds a narrow lead in the international competition among 20 teams to create solar-powered houses that are affordable, energy efficient, attractive and easy to live in. 

The UM entry, WaterShed, which includes solar and a green roof, among other features, won the architecture contest Wednesday.  The overall winner in the weeklong Department of Energy contest will be declared on Saturday, Oct., but the entries are open for public viewing through Sunday.  For more, go here.

Meanwhile, solar buffs in western Maryland have put together a tour this weekend of 26 homes featuring solar energy or other green building techology.  Homes are open for inspection from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, with the lineup varying each day.  For more, or a free guide, go to www.mdgoesgreen.org

Finally, if you'd like to do something with your hands, join the Friends of Patapsco Valley Heritage and Greenway on Saturday to help remove trash along Herbert Run in Arbutus.   Cleanup is from 9 a.m. to noon.  Meet in the parking lot behind the Arbutus volunteer fire station, 5200 Southwestern Boulevard.  To register, go to www.patapscoheritagegreenway.org/eventcal.html

(Baltimore Sun photo: Photovoltaic panels on roof of UM's WaterShed house, by Algerina Perna)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Solar power's catching on bigtime on campus.

The University of Maryland College Park has one of the largest solar arrays in the Baltimore-Washington region, with more than 2,600 photovoltaic panels on the roof of its Severn Building. 

It's expected to generate about 792 MWh of electricity in the first year.  That's enough to power 872 homes for one month, and avoids 408 tons of CO2 emissions that would come from burning fossil fuels to get the same amount of juice.

The array is owned by Washington Gas Energy Services, which spent $2 million on the facility installed by Standard Solar.  The project was underwritten in part with a $630,000 state grant, and the university contracted to buy the electricity.

It's one of 16 solar projects supported by the Maryland Energy Administration under its Project Sunburst grant program. Officials say nine of those have been completed so far, providing 5.2 megawatts' worth of solar generating capacity.

(Photo courtesy Maryland Energy Administration)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Climate change, Going Green, News
        

Hundreds of scientists, activists and government officials from around the world have gathered in Baltimore's Inner Harbor to compare notes on cleaning up the planet's troubled coastal waters.

From the Cheapeake Bay to the Seto Inland Sea in Japan, near-shore waters suffer similar insults - too many nutrients from sewage, fertilizer and air pollution, overfishing and habitat degradation.

What's quickly apparent from sitting in for a short while this morning on the four-day global summit is that progress in the uphill battle of restoring stressed and degraded ecosystems depends on one's perspective.

This 9th international conference on Environmental Management for Enclosed Coastal Seas (EMECS) has drawn a sizable contingent from Japan, and several speakers have touched on the devastation wrought earlier this year by the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck the island nation's northeastern coast.

Many conference participants got an up-close look at a much less disruptive natural calamity oer the weekend because they arrived in Baltimore just before Hurricane Irene reached here. Indeed, several sessions planned Sunday morning were postponed in anticipation of the storm.

The Inner Harbor got off light this time, compared with the flooding brought by Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003.  Indeed, at the conclusion of a talk outlining the challenges of managing coastal seas, Dr. Motoyuki Suzuki, chairman of Japan's Central Environmental Council, flashed up before-and-after photos of the Inner Harbor taken from the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront Hotel, where the summit is meeting. The images showed that the storm had not harmed any of the structures along the waterfront, prompting the speaker to say, "Beautiful!"

But the photo taken after the storm had passed showed a swath of caramel-colored water streaming out from Pier 6 by the concert pavilion - where the Jones Falls empties into the harbor.  Evidently the storm washed signfiicant amounts of dirt, harmful bacteria and probably other pollutants down storm drains into the falls and ultimately the Inner Harbor.

It's storm-water runoff like that - every time it rains, even lightly - that's one of the biggest hurdles to making the harbor fit for human contact.  Not the harm wrought by a a tsunami or a truly destructive hurricane, to be sure, but beneath the surface not exactly beautiful, either.

The conference, hosted by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and the Maryland Department of the Environment, meets here through Wednesday.

(2006 Baltimore Sun photo by Robert Hamilton)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 2:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

More than 20 Washington-area environmental activists - including some from Maryland - were arrested outside the White House today as protests continued against building a 1,700-mile pipeline from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico to carry oil wrested from the tar sands of Alberta.

The arrests came on the third day of a series of protests planned through Sept. 3 urging the Obama administration to reject the $13 billion project. TransCanada Corp. is seeking US approval to complete the 36-inch Keystone XL pipeline, which it says will boost American energy security by linking Canadian crude oil with US refineries and sea lanes.

But activists contend the project will lead to oil spills, and that extracting oil from the tar sands will devastate vast forested Canadian habitat and greatly increase climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions. Protestors sported signs supporting development of more wind energy instead.

Mike Tidwell, head of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network, was arrested Saturday along with about 60 others. Among the protest's leaders is Gus Speth, a Vermont Law School professor who ran the  United Nations Development Programme in the 1990s and was President Jimmy Carter's top environmental adviser.

(Photo courtesy Chesapeake Climate Action Network)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

The University of Maryland announced today it's launching a new environmental research center that will bring together economists, ecologists, engineers and other disciplines to tackle complex environmental issues like water availability, sustainable food production and large-scale restoration of degraded ecosystems like the Chesapeake Bay.

The National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, known as SeSynC, is underwritten by a $27.5 million, five-year grant from the National Science Foundation, the largest NSF award ever for the university.

Environmental experts are increasingly recognizing that science alone isn't enough to deal with knotty issues like climate change, ocean degradation and the like.  The center's leadership says its research will draw on social as well as natural science to seek solutions. And they vow to produce what they termed "actionable science," engaging the public as well as scientists.

"The enormity of today's environmental problems requires a new approach to how we conduct research," said Margaret Palmer, a University of Maryland entomologist and environmental scientist who will serve as the executive director of the new center.

To be located in Annapolis, the center will draw additional support from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, which has three laboratories around the state, and from Resources for the Future, a Washington policy think tank.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

An experiment in making "bio-fuel" is slated to get under way this summer at Baltimore's Back River wastewater treatment plant.

The city's Board of Estimates approved Wednesday a $255,000 contract with a small Maryland company to grow algae at the plant and convert it to fuel. The project is underwritten with federal economic stimulus funds the city receved last year.

Under the one-year agreement, Hytek Bio LLC of Dayton will install "bioreactors" to cultivate algae, using the nutrients in the treatment plant's wastewater as food.

"The water's still fairly high in nitrogen and phosphorus, and it's low in dissolved oxygen, which is not good in the (Chesapeake Bay)," said Bob Mroz, Hytek president and CEO. "The algae will consume the balance of the nitrogen and phosphorus and put oxygen back in the water."

In another kind of virtuous circle, the algae's growth will be boosted by feeding it carbon dioxide. The source - the flue gas given off by the generator that's burning methane from the sewage to help power the treatment plant.

City officials are looking to see the algae harvested and converted to biofuel, which might be burned one day in city boilers or used to run city vehicles. Mroz, a retired federal official, says this one-year project is a "small-scale demonstration of the technology." But he's bullish on the prospects for making fuel, oil, cosmetics and even "bioplastics" from the algae while capturing climate-warming greenhouse gases and helping reduce nutrient pollution of the bay.

The biomass-to-biofuel pilot is one of more than 18 initiatives the city's Department of General Services has launched with federal aid to see about reducing the municipal government's energy bills through greater efficiency and conversion to alternative fuels. 

(Sludge digester domes at Baltlimore's Back River treatment plant.  Photo special to the Sun by Colby Ware)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Homeowners, if you've ever thought about ditching your messy, polluting gasoline-powered lawnmower, here's your chance: Swap it for a cleaner, deeply discounted new battery-powered job.

On Saturday (6/11), consumers can turn in their old gas-powered mowers for a marked-down rechargeable Black & Decker mower.  Buyers get 31 percent off the $379 sticker price for an 18-inch, 36-volt model and 33 percent off the $429 ticket for one with a 19-inch blade and a removable battery.

The swap will take place from noon to 4 p.m. at Cardinal Shehan School, 5407 Loch Raven Boulevard. But don't procrastinate - only 200 mowers will be on hand to sell.

Why go to the trouble? Because more than 17 million gallons of gas get spilled each year nationwide refueling lawn and garden equipment. Some of that winds up in the nearest water way, and some gets into the air, adding to our region's choking summer smog.  Even the gas that gets in the tank pollutes: a single 3.5-horsepower gas mower emits as much smog-forming exhaust as a new car driven 340 miles.

And if you let the mulching mower mulch and leave off bagging the grass clippings, you can have a healthy lawn without needing to fertilize as much - another help for stressed local streams and the Chesapeake Bay. That's why the city of Baltimore and the local watershed group Blue Water Baltimore have teamed up to co-sponsor B&D's mower swap. For more, go here.

(Old mowers being turned in for new electric ones. 2010 Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Could weatherizing your home to fight climate change actually be harmful to your health?  Possibly, according to a new study, which warns that indoor environments could be impaired by global warming and some of the measures taken to combat it.

Most research on climate change has focused on its impacts on weather and external ecosystems, but the report today (6/7) by the Institute of Medicine warns people could suffer more from indoor dampness, poor ventilation and emissions from building materials and equipment used to counter the outdoor conditions. Some of the culprits may be the very things done to our homes and workplaces to mitigate climate change by reducing energy consumption, it says.

"America is in the midst of a large experiment in which weatherization efforts, retrofits and other initiatives that affect air exchange between the indoor and outdoor environments are taking place," said Professor John D. Spengler of the Harvard School of Public Health, and the study's lead author. "And new building materials and consumer products are being introduced indoors with relatively little consideration as to how they might affect the health of the occupants. Experience suggests that some of the effects could be negative."

The study, commissioned by the Environmental Protection Agency, calls on the federal agency to address those concerns as building codes, ventilation standards and other regulatiosn are adopted or revised to cope with climate change.  For more, go here.

(Worker weatherizing Howard County home, 2010 Baltimore Sun photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

As if it wasn't hot enough already, some green groups and their business allies turned up the heat today on the O'Malley administration and state lawmakers, issuing a report saying Maryland's efforts to reduce climate-warming pollution are falling short and warning of more flooding like that pictured above.

Only one of the top 10 programs for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state's 2008 Climate Action Plan is on track, according to the report by Environment Maryland, a statewide green group.  Five have shown mixed results, the report says, while the state has made "minimal progress" in one area and no progress at all in three others.

"We've made some progress, but not enough," said Tommy Landers, campaign director for Environment Maryland. To illustrate the need for climate action to avoid rising sea level, he and the others released the report at a press conference on the waterfront in Fells Point, where they displayed a photo of the area under water in the wake of Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003.

The state's participation with other northeastern states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which caps carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants, is the only program that's essentially on track, Landers said.  Even that, though, needs to be tightened to have more impact, he said, and the tens of millions of dollars raised by making utilities buy pollution "allowances" should be spent more on promoting energy efficiency and renewables. 

The decision announced last week that New Jersey would withdraw from the regional greenhouse-gas effort complicates matters, but doesn't mean it still can't benefit Maryland, the activists say. 

The state has been slow to get started and has underfunded programs to help homeowners and businesses improve their energy efficiency, the report says.  Peter Van Buren, head of Terra Logos Energy Group, a Baltimore energy improvement firm, said nearly 500 homeowners have taken advantage of the rebates offered by the Maryland Energy Administration for home efficiency investments, but those funds are about to run out.

Continue reading "Greens say MD lagging on climate curbs" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 5:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

New Jersey's governor is pulling out of a 10-state regional greenhouse gas reduction effort, saying it's ineffective at combatting climate change.  Maryland's Gov. Martin O'Malley has taken his counterpart to task, saying he's "simply wrong."

“The whole system is not working as it was intended to work. It is a failure,” New Jersey's Chris Christie said, according to the Associated Press.  Christie, a Republican, voiced doubts in November about the causes of climate change, but today said he believes it's real and caused at least in part by human activity.

Conservatives have been pressing governors in the Northeast to give up on the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which requires fossil-fuel power plants in those states to buy allowrances for their emission of carbon dioxide, the leading gas blamed for warming the earth's climate.  Critics have pointed out that the caps on carbon-dioxide emissions are too loose to require any real reductions.

Maryland is one of the 10 states participating in RGGI. O'Malley, a Democrat, issued a statement saying he was disappointed by Christie's decision and disputing his claim the initiiative is ineffective.

"RGGI represents an important multi-state effort to address climate change at a time when consensus eludes Congress," O'Malley said.  The initiative has avoided carbon-dioxide emissions in Maryland equivalent to taking nearly 3,500 cars off the road, he said.

The auctions have raised $162.4 million in revenues for Maryland as well.  The funds are used to promote energy efficiency and alternative energy, but much of the money has been diverted to lower electric bills for low-income households.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 2:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Air Pollution, Climate change, News
        

There's been a lot of debate lately about the costs of building commercial wind turbines off Maryland's coast to help ease climate change. 

A new report makes the case that failure to reduce greenhouse gases at all - whether by wind turbines or some other action - could cost state residents jobs, income and maybe even the culinary star of their summertime feasts, Chesapeake Bay crabs.

According to "Pay Now, Pay Later," by a group called the American Security Project, continued inaction to mitigate the effects of climate change could begin to weaken important state industries and erode jobs. Between 2010 and 2050, the report warns, Maryland could lose $23.7 billion in GDP and 163,000 jobs.

"Climate change is happening, and it will ultimately have a costly effect on the economy of Maryland," says Jim Ludes, executive director of the American Security Project, a nonprofit group dedicated to emphasizing the national security implications of climate change and energy policy. 

Maryland is among the states most vulnerable to climate change, the report notes, but also one of the nation's leaders in seeking to do something about it by promoting development of renewable energy.

Early signs of climate change are already manifesting themselves. The bay has warmed by 2 degrees Fahrenheit and sea level has risen in many places by a foot since 1900. Changes in the bay could affect its iconic crab population, the report argues.

Meanwhile, coastal marshes already have drowned, and beaches and islands washed away. The Environmental Protection Agency projects it could cost Maryland $35 million to $200 million to replenish beaches should water levels rise another 20 inches.

But more than real estate is at stake, the report says. As much as 16 percent of the state's labor force could be affected by changes in key state industries, such as fishing, farming, forestry, tourism, even shipping.

On the other hand, the report, argues, continued investment in and development of renewable energy sources such as wind, solar and biomass promise to create jobs and savings for residents. As of 2007, there already were 1,000 "clean energy" businesses in the state employing 12,900 people, and Maryland ranked 6th in renewable energy venture capital investment.

The future of offshore wind is uncertain, as the General Assembly shied from the costs to ratepayers of approving legislation pushed by Gov. Martin O'Malley that would have required the state's utilities to buy electricity produced by turbines placed off Ocean City.

Lawmakers may revisit the issue next year after studying it. But as my colleague Jay Hancock pointed out in a recent column, there are other, less costly ways to slow the increase of climate-altering greenhouse gases, mainly by investing in energy conservation and efficiency.

None of the possible responses to climate change is free up-front, though, so whether it's wind, solar, or energy-efficient lighting, the only real question, as the American Security Project puts it, is whether people are willing to pay now to save later, or pay later for doing nothing now.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Some of B'more Green's readers recently have posted comments critical of electric vehicles, pointing out that they draw their energy from the electric grid, which in these parts gets half its power from burning coal.

Yes, coal-burning power plants are a major source of greenhouse gases. But does that automatically make an EV worse for the climate than an internal combustion engine?

Nope, according to The Energy Blog. After walking through the details, the blog concludes that burning gasoline produces 21 to 58 percent more carbon dioxide than getting the same amount of energy from the electric grid for a car of similar shape and size.

The Energy Blog is written by an alternative energy advocate.  But read the blogger's post  here to judge for yourself if it makes the case or not. 

As a native West Virginian, I'm well aware there are other environmental issues around coal, including the impacts on streams and forests of mountaintop mining.  And though the recession has dampened the demand on our electric grid, there still are issues we need to resolve about ensuring its adequacy for future demand.

But when comparing solely which type of vehicle produces more climate-warming emissions, it appears EVs come out ahead of gas-powered cars and trucks.

(Photo courtesy SemaConnect)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Looking back on the General Assembly session that ended at midnight last night, lawmakers seemed bent on studying environmental issues more than acting on them.  The results of the 90-day session left environmental activists frustrated and in one case blaming the news media for their frustration.

A bid by Gov. Martin O'Malley to boost offshore wind energy development got sidelined for further study by lawmakers nervous about the potential cost to consumers. O'Malley's other major environmental initiative, to limit development on septic systems, got similar treatment amid worries about how it would impact rural economies.

On the other hand, an effort to mandate an industry-financed study of potential harm from drilling for natural gas in western Maryland failed in the final day, despite administration support, amid bickering over terms of the proposed two-year study. industry was willing to put up $1 million plus to pay for the study but wanted to be able to start producing gas while it was still going on.  And while agreeing to ban the use of plastic bisphenol A in baby formula containers, legislators balked at barring arsenic in chicken feed.

Other measures environmentalists hoped for didn't even get out of the starting gate.  A bill to clean up trash in urban waterways like Baltimore harbor by leving a fee on disposable store bags never emerged from committee. Likewise for legislation that would have required Maryland's communities to raise funds for controlling storm-water pollution, or that required commercial building owners to disclose their structures' energy use to potential buyers.

Continue reading "Some hits, but mostly environmental inaction in Annapolis" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

An update on an earlier post - the bill calling for a two-year study of natural gas drilling in western Maryland's Marcellus shale deposits is dead.

Drew Cobbs, a lobbyist for the natural gas industry, said he was informed recently that the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee has given up on trying to forge a consensus on the bill, HB852/SB634. A committee staffer confirmed it.

Cobbs, director of the Maryland Petroleum Council, said what killed the bill was the O'Malley administration's insistence on limiting the ability of state regulators to approve natural gas wells after the first year of the study.

Talks between the gas industry, legislative leaders and the administration had yielded a tentative agreement to ban any drilling using hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," for the first year of the study.

Industry representatives had wanted the Maryland Department of the Environment free to approve drilling and natural gas production after the first year if regulators felt they had learned enough by then about what safeguards to impose to prevent potential environmental impacts of the drilling technique.

Administration officials, though, wanted the bill to allow only limited "exploratory" drilling in the second year, without any gas production -- even though, Cobbs contended, regulators already have ample authority to hold up permits if they feel they need more information.

Two requests for permits to drill in Garrett County have been under study by MDE now for more than a year.

Without a bill, the state still is publicly pledged to study the impacts of "fracking" for up to two years, but there will be no fees collected - more than $1 million worth - to help pay for the study.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

Prospects are dimming for a proposed two-year study of drilling for natural gas in the Marcellus shale deposits in western Maryland. 

The bill, HB852, sailed through the House 98-40 a few weeks ago, after being substantially reworked.  With only hours to go, though, it has yet to emerge from the Senate Education, Health and Environmental Affairs Committee.  Talks between the energy industry, environmental advocates and state officials aimed at resolving their differences over the bill reportedly have broken down.

The House-passed bill calls for the Maryland Departments of the Environment and Natural Resources to study the impact on drinking water wells and surface water of hydraulic fracturing (aka "fracking"), as well as the effects of drilling on air quality, traffic, forests and land use.  They were to render a report by 2013, with the study underwritten by a $10 fee paid on every acre of western Maryland land for which energy companies have leased the mineral rights - a total of $1.2 million to $1.5 million, by one estimate.

Talks have been going on between legislative leaders, the gas industry, environmental advocates and the O'Malley administration in an attempt to address continuing industry issues with the bill.

The chief hangup, according to those involved in the talks, is over allowing "exploratory" drilling before the study is concluded.  Under revisions to be proposed to the Senate panel, state regulators would have to submit an interim report by July 2012, with a final evaluation and recommendations due a year later. 

Industry officials reportedly want to be able to move ahead with producing gas as soon as possible after the interim report, while regulators and others want to limit drilling activity until all the impacts have been thoroughly analyzed.

Continue reading "Fracking study bill sinking?" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Legislation aimed at boosting offshore wind development in Maryland has been tabled for further study amid lawmakers' concerns about the cost to consumers, according to Shaun Adamec, Gov. Martin O'Malley's press secretary.

O'Malley's spokesman said the setback was "not unexpected," given the debate and persistent questions being raised about the governor's bill, HB1054/SB861, which would have required Maryland utilities sign long-term contracts to buy power from offshore wind projects.

With just five days to go, the measure had yet to clear committees in either chamber of the General Assembly. The House Economic Matters committee had been scheduled to vote on it today, and the Senate Finance Committee just recently formed a work group to study the bill.

Adamec said the governor realized when he introduced the bill that offshore wind energy is such a new and complicated concept that it may take more than one year for legislators to endorse subsidizing it. The governor is committed to working with lawmakers on the study, his spokesman said.

This is the second major environmental initiative of the governor's to get sidetracked. Legislation he requested to limit rural development based on septic systems also was set aside for summer study. But O'Malley kept pressing for the offshore wind measure, offering an amendment just last week to cap the potential cost to Maryland households at no more than $2 per month.

Legislative leaders had welcomed the proposed price cap, but some lawmakers remained unsurre, and Republicans continued to attack the legislation, arguing that Maryland consumers could be forced to pay much higher electric bills to cover the costs of the turbines. 

The governor and wind supporters stressed the potential for construction and manufacturing jobs associated with building huge industrial-scale wind turbines 12 miles or more off Ocean City, and he repeatedly pointed to similar clean-energy efforts under way in other Atlantic coast states.

"The hope was that we could pass it this year to be a leader in this race for innovation off our coast," Adamec said. "There very well may be other states that beat us to that, but we will continue to lead this effort and hopefully next year can begin the process of getting those windmills spinning."

(Offshore turbines, China, AP photo)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

A crucial element of Gov. Martin O'Malley's push to build wind turbines off Maryland's coast gets a hearing in Annapolis today (March 3), as the House Economic Matters Committee takes up an administration bill that would subsidize their construction by raising nearly every resident's electric bill, at least in the near term.

The administration has proposed legislation, HB1054, that would require utilities in the state to enter into long-term contracts with wind energy developers to buy the electricity the turbines would generate. Wind industry officials say such power purchase agreements are needed to securing the financing needed to go forward.

The bill has the backing of environmentalists eager to see the development of more clean, renewable energy in Maryland, and of unions anticipating the massive turbine projects will yield a bonanza of construction and even manufacturing jobs. But as The Washington Post points out in a story today, a key question for lawmakers is just how much electricity rates have to go up to underwrite this push to put Maryland in the vanguard of developing some of the nation's first offshore wind energy projects.

Producing electricity from wind energy is likely to be more expensive than power from conventional coal- or gas-burning plants at the start, advocates say, because of the high costs of building the turbines off shore and getting their power to land. But they argue that the renewable source will become relatively cheaper over time as the costs of extracting and burning (and offsetting the pollution from) fossil fuels goes up.

If the power deals inked in Maryland are anything like the one struck in neighboring Delaware for an offshore project pursued by NRG Bluewater Wind, legislative analysts say residents could be paying an extra $2 a month, or $24 a year, on their electric bills in 2016, with the surcharge anticipated to gradually decline to half that over the next 20 years.

But the Post story notes that the US Energy Information Administration recently projected the costs of electricity generated by conventional fossil-fuel power plants over the next 20 years actually would drop, at least partly as a result of an anticipated boost in natural gas production from vast reserves in Marcellus shale deposits underlying Appalachia, including western Maryland, and from elsewhere in the US. Based on the federal energy cost forecasts, legislative analysts note that the wind surcharge could be more like $3.61 a month, or $43.35 a year by 2016 and would still be $2 a month or more 20 years later.

Advocates would say even the higher cost projections are small price to pay for getting clean power that won't worsen climate change. But Maryland lawmakers are wary of raising their constituents' power bills after the uproar that ensued when electric deregulation sent rates skyrocketing several years ago.   The question of what wind will cost, and who pays, could be key.

(Wind turbines off England, AFP/Getty images)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

The push to tap natural gas reserves locked in Marcellus shale formations beneath western Maryland and the rest of Appalachia is generating lots of debate over the risks to drinking water and streams posed by the extraction method, known as hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking."

Now comes a new criticism: Some researchers say all the shale gas wells being drilled may do more harm to the earth's warming climate than a comparable amount of coal mined via mountaintop removal.

That's a big switch if so, as natural gas generally emits half the climate-warming carbon dioxide coal does when burned.  Many have touted gas as a clean alternative to coal, and a suitable "transition" fossil fuel until more renewable energy sources can be developed.  Even those Maryland lawmakers most worried about the environmental and health impacts of "fracking" seem to accept that tapping shale gas is preferable to mining more coal or drilling for more oil offshore.

But researchers at Cornell University have projected that greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas production over the next 20 years could actually be higher than from surface-mined coal, possibly even twice as high. The researchers say they've submitted their findings for publication in a scientific journal, but have posted a summary here. 

The reason shale gas is worse for the climate, they say, is that methane in the gas is getting into the atmosphere from vents and leaks during hydraulic fracturing - and afterward, as the gas is being pumped out. Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas, with 25 times more warming impact, pound for pound, than carbon dioxide. 

The Cornell scientists estimate that 3.6 to 7.9 percent of the methane in shale gas is leaking into the air, up to twice what escapes from conventional gas production.  Buttressing their findings is a November 2010 report from the Environmental Protection Agency, which reviewed the greenhouse gas emissions of various fuels and determined that natural gas, particularly shale gas, is higher than previously believed.

"Compared to coal, the footprint of shale gas is 1.2- to 2.1-fold greater on the 20-year time frame and is comparable when compared over 100 years," concludes Robert W. Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology.

Jeffrey McManus with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network warned lawmakers about this new evidence that shale gas is a "serious threat" to the climate during a hearing Wednesday in Annapolis on bills that would require tighter regulation or a two-year study of "fracking."   No one asked him any questions, or even seemed to pay much heed.

(Well being drilled near Pittsburgh.  2005 Baltimore Sun photo by Doug Kapustin)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

The University of Maryland is going solar, installing more than 2,600 photovoltaic panels on one of its buildings near the College Park campus.

The 631-kilowatt system is to be placed on the roof of the Severn building, a multi-purpose structure less than a mile from the campus.  It will be installed by Standard Solar Inc. of Rockville, and owned and operated by Washington Gas Energy Services. UM has agreed to buy the electricity generated by the solar panels - about 792 megawatt-hours annually - under a 20-year contract.

University officials say it will be one of the biggest solar installations in the state, though it's dwarfed by the 2.1-megawatt solar "farm" being built at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.  Spice maker McCormick & Co. already has 1 megawatts' worth of solar panels on two of its buildings in Hunt Valley, and poultry producer Perdue announced recently it was putting 5,000 solar panels capable of generating up to 1.1 megawatts of electricity at its Salisbury headquarters.

Even if it's not so huge after all, the solar panels at College Park should reduce the campus carbon footprint by more than 600 tons a year, university officials estimate, or about as many greenhouse gas emissions as you'd get from burning 64,000 gallons of gasoline annually.

The College Park project was made possible by a grant from the Maryland Energy Administration. Under Project Sunburst, MEA provided grants to subsidize 18 different solar installations on school, university and government buildings. Funding for the grants, which provide rebates of $1,000 per kilowatt-DC of photovoltaic capacity installed, came from federal stimulus funds.

State officials said when announcing the grants last year that the 9.9 megawatts' capacity from those projects would roughly triple the solar generating capacity on Maryland's electric grid. Other big Sunburst projects to come include 750-kilowatt systems atop Baltimore's Convention Center and at Anne Arundel Community College.

(Solar panels atop McCormick manufacturing plant in Hunt Valley, 2010. Baltimore Sun photo by Lloyd Fox)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Green may be the new black in pro football, at least for the next year, with the Green Bay Packers winning the Super Bowl Sunday. But even before the team from Wisconsin prevailed in Dallas, sports venues across the country have been trying to green themselves up - to save some money, of course, but maybe a little bit as well to burnish the image of excess that surrounds professional sports events.

Super Bowl XLV was played in the spanking new $650 million Cowboys Stadium, which by one account is one of the "top 10 green stadiums" in the country. Hard to imagine how such a mammoth place could be green, but according to SunRun, a home solar service company that rated the stadiums, the Dallas Cowboys' home is aiming to reduce its solid waste by 25 percent, its energy use by 20 percent and its water consumption by a million gallons annually.

M&T Bank Stadium, the home of our Baltimore Ravens, didn't make the cut for SunRun's top 10 green stadiums.   It doesn't have solar panels, like Seattle's Qwest Field, nor was it built to meet LEED energy and environmental standards, as was the Nationals' newish baseball stadium in Washington.

But M&T's working to reduce its environmental footprint nonetheless. Jeff Provenzano, director of football facilities for the Maryland Stadium Authority, says he's aiming to green up Baltimore's gridiron enough to earn LEED certification for energy-efficient and environmentally sensitive operations and management of an existing building - something he says no other existing NFL stadium has done to date.

"Green is the new buzzword in all aspects of what we do," Provenzano said. 

It's not easy to go green, when you're packing 70,000 people - about the population of Towson - into a stadium.  But working in partnership with the Ravens and the stadium's food and housekeeping vendors, Provenzano said they've managed to make major inroads in recycling the mountains of trash generated by every event, and to trim the facility's eye-popping electric bills.

"We do a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that most people don't realize or probably care about at the end of the day," he said.

Continue reading "Going green on the gridiron" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

President Obama heartened environmentalists when he set a new national goal last night of Americans getting 80 percent of their electricity from "clean energy" by 2035, but he then dismayed some by including nuclear power and coal in his definition of what's clean. 

And interestingly, Obama didn't even mention climate change as a reason to wean the country from its addiction to fossil fuels. Instead, government incentives to develop clean energy will yield "green" jobs and help America regain its technological edge in the world economy, he argued.

"Some folks want wind and solar," he said during his State of the Union address to Congress. "Others want nuclear, clean coal and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all -- and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen."

A bevy of environmental groups praised the president's speech afterward, reiterating his argument that government incentives to develop renewable energy could generate needed jobs.  They also applauded his vow to end federal tax breaks for the oil industry.

"A true clean energy standard will foster more renewable electricity and energy efficiency and encourage us to leave behind old, dirty technologies we've proppsed up for too long already," Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote in her blog.

But others voiced their displeasure at Obama's insistence that nuclear and coal are part of the nation's energy future.

"Coal, nuclear power, biofuels and natural gas are inherently dirty," said Erich Pica, president of the Friends of the Earth. "Telling Americans anything else is misleading."

Conservatives, meanwhile, disparaged the president's pledge to promote clean energy as more government waste that'll only drive up energy prices and create jobs abroad.

Obama didn't bring up climate change this year, a switch from last year's State of the Union address.  Obama similarly emphasized clean energy then, but linked it with the need for the nation to address climate change and called for a comprehensive energy and climate bill to get passed.  The Senate failed to act, however, amid deep divisions over the issue, and intense lobbying from industry that had coal-state Democrats vowing to oppose it.

The president did defend environmental regulation last night as he spoke about plans to  eliminate burdensome government rules and red tape.  

"It's why our food is safe to eat, our water is safe to drink, and our air is safe to breathe," Obama said. 

Unmentioned again, though, is the move by his Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases as a way of combatting climate change - a move Republicans and some Democrats in Congress vow to block.  

(President Obama delivering the State of the Union to a joint session of Congress, Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

Hundreds of environmental activists rallied in Annapolis yesterday evening to show their support for green legislative action in the General Assembly.  There'll be plenty of bills to keep them busy, from boosting offshore wind to clamping down on lawn fertilizer, banning arsenic in chicken feed and taxing plastic shopping bags. But a key legislative leader suggested out of activists' hearing that the "big ticket" - and most contentious - measures likely will have to wait until next year.

Enhancing offshore wind energy prospects, requiring communities to address polluted runoff and protecting state environmental programs from budget cuts are the top priorities of the state's green groups.  Buoyed by yesterday's turnout - and the presence of green-leaning elected leaders in the governor's office and General Assembly - activists vowed to make their voices heard.

"We are the faces no longer of tomorrow. We are the faces of today," Chesapeake Bay Foundation President Will Baker said.  Politicians who ignore envirionmentalists "do so at their peril,"  he concluded, to applause.

Adding to the greens' sense of optimism was the appearance before them of Howard County Executive Ken Ulman, who's promoted recycling, renewable energy and other environmental programs in his affluent, suburban county.  Ulman is  president this year of the Maryland Association of Counties, a group that's often opposed environmentalists  in Annapolis, especially in their push for tougher "smart growth" legislation to curb suburban sprawl.  Ulman told the group he personally supports their goals, though he can't guarantee that most other county officials will go along with him.

"You have a friend," he told the activists. But he cautioned, "you don't have a miracle worker."  

Continue reading "Green hopes in Annapolis ride on offshore wind" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Ever thought you'd like to have solar panels on your house but been put off by sticker shock?  Well, that may be about to change.  A California company that specializes in leasing pricey solar energy systems to homeowners and businesses is expanding to Maryland.

SolarCity, which claims to be the largest solar service provider in the country, announced Monday it has acquired the solar installation unit of Clean Currents, the Rockville-based independent energy company that has been marketing wind and solar power across the mid-Atlantic region.  It has a Baltimore-area office in Catonsville.

SolarCity sells and installs photovoltaic systems on homes and businesses, just as about 100 other contractors do in Maryland. But the San Mateo-based company also peddles a zero-down 20-year lease, where the homeowner pays nothing up front, and instead pays rent for the use of the system.  SolarCity says the savings customers realize from the electricity generated by its panels more than offsets the lease payments.  Homeowners typically realize a 10 percent savings per kilowatt-hour consumed, company officials say.

"Given a choice, homeowners will buy clean power as long as it doesn't cost them an arm and a leg," says SolarCity's CEO, Lyndon Rive.

The company plans to start offering its zero-down, 20-year leases sometime in February.  It now operates in more than 1,500 communities in five states - Arizona, California, Colorado, Oregon and Texas.  Maryland and the District of Columbia would be its first East Coast venture.  The firm has about 1,000 employees and expects to add 30 in Maryland in the first year, according to Rive.

SolarCity also is investing in Clean Currents, which says it has more than 6,000 residential and 500 commercial customers in Maryland, DC, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

If the lease idea catches on, it could significantly boost the spread of solar energy among homes.  The high upfront cost of purchasing and installing photovoltaic panels - $30,000 or more for a typical home system - is a major hurdle to broader adoption of the technology.  

Homeowners can get grants from the state to help with the cost - $500 per kilowatt, up to $10,000 - and Maryland Energy Administration officials say the agency has given out more than 1,200 such grants in the past year and a half.  Homeowners leasing solar panels can still take advantage of the state grants, at least indirectly, according to MEA's Kevin Lucas.  The company installing them has to apply and would get the grant, but can factor that into the rental payment.

(Solar panels covering roof of Fells Point house, 2003 Baltimore Sun photo by Doug Kapustin)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

Today's the opening day of Maryland's General Assembly, and supporters of developing offshore wind power plan to "swarm" the State House to press legislators to make it a priority, even as they are preoccupied with closing a massive budget gap.   Lawmakers gather at noon to launch the 90-day session.

Environmental activists and union leaders have joined forces this year to seek legislation that would require power companies to sign long-term contracts with developers of offshore wind projects. They contend that's needed to overcome the financing hurdles the fledgling industry faces.

Winds off the Atlantic coast are much stronger and more reliable than they are over land, where all industrial wind turbines have been placed so far.   Not everyone agrees, though, that offshore wind deserves another push from government.

Professor Benjamin F. Hobbs, director of the Environment, Energy, Sustainability & Health Institute at Johns Hopkins University, contends that mandating development of offshore wind in that way would do little for the environment while boosting energy costs consumers must pay.   Better, he says, to let the market decide which forms of renewable energy are the most economical.

"Offshore wind power plants are slightly more productive than onshore wind plants but not enough to make up for the much greater construction and transmission costs (as much as double onshore costs)," Hobbs wrote in a letter published last week in The Baltimore Sun. He said he'd concluded that after conducting a study comparing the costs of offshore wind development versus onshore in Great Britain.

(Wind turbines off Germany, AFP/Getty 2010)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

As we start a new year, it's worth looking back at the big news of the past year - if only because many of those developments will resonate through 2011 and for years to come.

So here's my list of the top 10 green stories of 2010:

1)  Gulf oil spill: The catastrophic explosion, fire and blowout of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig off Louisiana's coast took 11 lives and earned a spot in history as the nation's worst oil spill, gushing from April 20 until mid-July. Short-term, the impacts were not as bad as many had feared, as much of the oil dispersed, but the long-term ecological effects won't be known for some time. The disaster also prompted the Obama administration to reverse course and drop plans to expand offshore oil drilling in the Gulf and elsewhere - something that's likely to be challenged with the Republican takeover of the House in Congress.

2) Congress shuns climate action, EPA steps in:  While inaction rarely gets the same headlines, the decision last summer by the Senate's leaders to pull the plug on climate and energy legislation ranks, if not outranks, the Gulf oil spill in significance.  Where politicians feared to tread, however, the Environmental Protection Agency plunged ahead.  EPA at year's end announced initial requirements for limiting emissions from power plants.  Efforts are brewing in Congress, though, from Republicans and some Democrats to strip EPA of its authority - or funding - to follow through.

3) Bay gets pollution diet, crabs rebound:  The Environmental Protection Agency finished the year by putting the Chesapeake Bay on a "pollution diet," requiring 20 to 25 percent reductions in the amounts of phosphorus, nitrogen and sediment getting into the estuary from its 64,000-square-mile watershed.  It remains to be seen, though, how much state and local governments will do in the coming year, as they struggle with budget gaps and sluggish economies.  Meanwhile, the bay's iconic crustaceans staged a second straight year of strong recovery from near collapse, with the annual winter survey showing a 60 percent increase in the crab population over the previous year, to a level not seen since the late 1990s. 

4) Wind gets a push offshore, and lawsuits on land:  The prospects for giant turbines eventually catching the sea breezes off the US East Coast grew last year, with pushes from the Obama administration and from states like Maryland.  The Interior Department set up a "fast track" approval for offshore wind leases, and in November invited bids for placing turbines a dozen or more miles off Ocean City.  The state's first two industrial wind projects got built on Backbone Mountain in Garrett County, but conservationists filed suit alleging the turbines would harm endangered bats.

5) Baltimore greens up, slowly:  The city took steps last year - however haltingly - to make itself a greener, more sustainable place.  After years of debate over plastic shopping bags, City Council acted to curb their littering by imposing a "partial ban" - allowing supermarkets and other stores to keep using the flimsy throwaway sacks as long as they encouraged their customers to recycle or shop with re-usable bags.  The city got its first food "czar," Holly Freishtat, to encourage more healthful eating among city dwellers.   And municipal officials also quietly issued green building standards last summer, after sitting on them for a year to mull over developers' concerns that they'd stifle urban revitalization.  Stuart Kaplow, president of the local chapter of the US Green Building Council, calls the city's 2007 green building law, nor fully in effect, a "game changer." 

Continue reading "Looking back - and ahead" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The frigid weather this winter will bring higher utility bills to many Maryland households, but residents can now apply for low-cost loans to beef up their homes' insulation and heating systems.

The Maryland Clean Energy Center this week launched the Maryland Home Energy Loan Program, under which qualified applicants can borrow up to $20,000 to plug air leaks, seal ducts and replace aging furnaces, among other things.

To qualify, a resident first must get a home energy audit. The loans need not be secured by the applicant's home. The interest rate is 6.99 percent - which the center says is half what commercial banks charge on most unsecured loans.

The loan program, offered in partnership with the Maryland Energy Administration, is underwritten with federal stimulus funds. It's aimed at helping the state achieve its twin goals of reducing energy use 15 percent by 2015 and of cutting carbon-dioxide emissions 25 percent by 2020.

To apply or learn more, go here.  Or call 301-738-6280 or email loans@mdcleanenergy.org

(Energy auditor checking for drafts in Lauraville home.  Baltimore Sun photo by Amy Davis)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
        

In a bid to make Bmore greener, the city is expanding its tryout of locally produced, cleaner-burning biofuels to heat municipal buildings.

The Board of Estimates has approved an agreement to spend up to $1.3 million over the next year to test 440,000 gallons of vegetable-based fuel in the boilers of three city facilities - the Back River wastewater treatment plant, Eastern health center and the Pimlico fire and training complex.  The fuel is to be supplied by New Generation Biofuels, which has a production plant in South Baltimore. 

"Today, Baltimore took a great step twoards becoming a more energy efficient and sustainable city," Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said in a press release announcing the deal.

The city's been testing biofuel from New Generation for the past year, and found it burned much more cleanly than heating oil.   Ted Atwood, director of the city Department of General Services, said the alternative fuel produced far less air pollutiion  - no sulfur or particulate emissions, and greatly reduced nitrogen oxide emissions - an important consideration in a metropolitan area that still suffers bouts of unhealthful smog every spring and summer.

The biofuel, made from vegetable and soybean oil, is no more expensive than heating oil, according to Michael P. Cook, energy chief for the city's general services department.  The biofuel provides just 70 percent of the heat value when burned as does fuel oil, but it's also priced 30 percent less.

Continue reading "City warms to cleaner heating fuel" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 1:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

As giant wind turbines start generating power atop the highest ridge in western Maryland, they raise questions anew about what price we're paying, environmentally, for our energy choices.

The towering windmills, visible for miles around, represent "green," renewable energy of the future to many.  But they've become lightning rods for debate about their impact on wildlife and on scenic mountain vistas.

Increasingly visible, too, is the extraction of coal, one of Appalachia's oldest energy sources. We get half or more of our electricity from coal-burning power plants, but the fossil fuel is a major contributor to climate change, and the ash left over from burning it poses disposal challenges.  Though mining is down from historic levels in western Maryland, surface mines have grown in the past decade and crept closer to towns such as Frostburg.   A new underground mine near Grantsville also prepares to tunnel under the Casselman River, home to such remarkable but rare species as the hellbender salamander.  Many of the region's streams still suffer from acidic water draining from old abandoned mines.

The biggest buzz these days, though, is coming over prospects for tapping previously unexploited natural gas reserves locked in Marcellus shale deposits underlying Garrett and western Allegany counties.  Hoping to cash in on a boom that's already under way in neighboring Pennsylvania and West Virginia, landowners in Garrett have leased or sold rights to drill beneath 124,000 acres, more than a quarter of the county.

But the extraction method, called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," has proven controversial, with critics saying it's responsible for gas leaking into nearby residents' wells and for contaminating streams and ground water. Industry officials say problems have been overblown but they've tightened up operations anyway.

Regulators say they're seeing to it that current mining operations aren't adding to the region's water quality woes, and they vow to require "state of the art" environmental controls on drilling for for gas in Maryland's Marcellus shale - if any at all is permitted. 

That's not enough for some, who want legislation to ban any shale gas drilling until the state overhauls its regulations to impose safeguards.  Some also want to put a hold on any more utility-scale wind projects in Garrett - a third is in planning - until the county establishes some requirements there for buffering them from homes and decommissioning them when they're shut down. 

Read more about the state's conflicted energy frontier in The Baltimore Sun.  And check out the video of the wind turbines, some of them already spinning.

(Constellation Energy's Criterion wind project in Garrett County, Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston; aerial photo western Maryland surface mine by Jim Dougherty for Chesapeake Climate Action Network)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

A St. Mary's County grade school's getting a high-tech, green present this month - solar energy panels to help light up the classrooms and inspire young minds.

School and county officials are to hold a "groundbreaking" Dec. 13 for installation of the 500 kilowatt system at George Washington Carver Elementary School in Great Mills.  The 2,200 photovoltaic panels are expected to generate 667,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in the first year - which is about 80 percent of the power the school uses, according to a release from Standard Solar, the Rockville-based company involved in the project.

Solar energy's got a reputation for being pricey up front, and this system's worth an estimated $2.5 million, according to a release from the county school system.  It's costing the county virtually nothing to install, though, thanks to a $500,000 grant from the Maryland Energy Administration and a power purchase agreement under which the capital costs are paid back over 15 years.   School officials say they'll be paying below current market rates for the electricity generated by the panels, so overall it'll save county taxpayers money.  The state grant, by the way, is part of MEA's Project Sunburst, which is using federal stimulus funds to put solar energy systems on public buildings.

It's another pioneering step from a school system that's getting comfortable with going green.   Last year, St. Mary's opened a new school in California appropriately dubbed Evergreen Elementary, which features photovoltaic panels, a small wind turbine, a green roof and two large cisterns for capturing rain water to flush the toilets.  Building the school to Gold LEED standards wasn't just for show, either - school officials said they would use the green features as teaching tools throughout the curriculum.

In like educational fashion, there'll be a real-time monitoring system put in the lobby of Carver so students, teachers, parents and staff can track the school's energy use and see how the solar system is performing.  What a bright idea!

(Solar array atop Rockville Arena, installed by Standard Solar; photo courtesy Standard Solar)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Cap & trade may be a dead letter in Congress, but the carbon-dioxide emission auction set up by Maryland and other northeastern states to combat climate change has yielded millions of dollars for cleaner and more efficient energy - all without destroying the region's economy, as critics have claimed it would if applied nationwide.

I'm reminded of that by today's announcement from the Maryland Energy Administration that it's awarding another $2 million in grants to local governments and nonprofits for improving energy efficiency in low- and moderate-income households. The agency's doling out 41 grants across the state for everything from home energy upgrades in Caroline County to weatherization in Montgomery County.

The money comes from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Inititiative, in which Maryland and other states have imposed caps on carbon dioxide emissions from their power plants and regularly auction off credits or permits for emissions of the climate-warming gas.

It's a market-based pollution control, giving power companies flexibility to buy and sell carbon credits so they can find the most cost-effective way of reducing their emissions. And the revenues from the auction have been plowed back into energy efficiency and renewable energy projects, though some also has been diverted to help the poor pay their utility bills.

Critics of cap & trade call it a tax scheme that'll ruin the nation's economy by raising the cost of energy, since most of our heat, light and fuel comes from burning carbon-emitting coal, oil and gas. But the auction's impact on energy costs in the northeast has been negligible. That's no doubt because the carbon-dioxide emission caps imposed by the states have been very loose and auction prices for emission credits relatively low as a result.

But the regional auction was originally set up in expection and hope that it would serve as a model for national action - which now seems unlikely, at least in the near term, with skeptics of climate change gaining seats in the November congressional elections.  As Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said last week while attending an offshore wind announcement in Baltimore, prospects for climate legislation emerging from Congress are "going going gone."

(Civic Works members install energy-saving lightbulbs, faucet aerators and water heater blanket in 91-year-old resident's home, 2010 Baltiimore Sun photo by Algerina Perna)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
        

Maryland's environment secretary, Shari T. Wilson, has announced she is leaving after just shy of four years leading the agency. She said in a brief interview that the decision to depart was her own and that she'd been mulling stepping down for the past year.

It's been a bruising year, filled with controversies over the Maryland Department of the Environment's enforcement diligence, particularly with regard to farm pollution, and over the agency's moves to strengthen controls on polluted runoff from new development.

About this time last year, the Waterkeeper Alliance, a network of water-quality watchdogs, petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency to strip her agency of its authority to regulate water pollution, contending that MDE was lax. Barely a month later, the alliance also publicly accused an Eastern Shore poultry farm of polluting a tributary of the Pocomoke River and got into a testy back-and-forth with MDE over its handling of the case.

As if that wasn't enough, builders and local officials revolted against new regulations MDE had issued earlier in the year that required them to do more to curb polluted runoff from new development and redevelopment projects. With lawmakers threatening to delay or roll back the rules, MDE forged a compromise with opponents that pleased some environmentalists but outraged others.

Wilson's agency also was a target of scorn in the past year from former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who vowed to make MDE more helpful to business in his unsuccessful Republican bid to recapture the State House from Democrat Martin O'Malley. 

Still, Wilson said yesterday she thought her tenure at MDE had been productive as well as eventful.  She pointed to the Chesapeake Bay cleanup plan that she and other O'Malley administration officials crafted this fall that EPA officials deemed the most thorough and realistic of any of the bay state's efforts.

Earlier, her agency also clamped down on disposal of coal ash from power plants after the waste was found to have contaminated drinking-water wells and streams - taking action in that case ahead of the nationwide furor over coal ash. 

And she was instrumental in getting Maryland to take action to fight global climate change by limiting carbon dioxide emissions in the state.  Maryland joined with other Northeast states in a regional auction of carbon emission permits for power plants, and state lawmakers in 2009 also enacted legislation requiring reductions in other carbon-dioxide emissions over time.

Though criticized by some environmentalists as not tough enough, the storm-water regulations are widely seen as more stringent in many aspects than what had been on the books before. 

And though hamstrung by lack of staff and funds that limited its ability to check up on potential polluters, MDE did step up overall enforcement of environmental laws from what it had been in the more business-favorable Ehrlich administration.  The news release announcing Wilson's departure pointed to a $1 million penalty for water pollution resulting from Constellation Energy's fly ash disposal in Gambrills and a $4 million penalty against Exxon for the 2006 spill in Jacksonville, Maryland.

Wilson's own take on the controversies: 

“The best compliment would be to have been judged to be a fair regulator,” she said, but added that “when you’re successful at it, no one’s happy.”

Continue reading "Changing of the guard" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

As sailors will tell you, you can't be in a hurry if you're relying on the wind to get you places.  The same is true with developing offshore wind energy.  Don't expect to see tiny turbines spinning far out to sea when you're at Ocean City next summer, or for several more years at least.

There was a predictable hurrah (which this newspaper helped fan, because it was news, after all) when the federal government announced Monday that it is opening up the Atlantic Ocean off Maryland's coast for bids from potential developers of offshore wind power projects. 

Gov. Martin O'Malley, who's made offshore wind a centerpiece of his administration's energy policy, issued a statement calling the federal announcement "another step forward for Maryland's new economy."  He'll no doubt tout offshore wind again when he speaks later today at Towson University about his vision for creating a "new economy" in Maryland that relies heavily on "green" jobs like building, running and maintaining wind turbines.

To be sure, there are likely to be jobs created in Maryland when - or if - wind takes off in a big way.  The O'Malley administration cites a recent projection that 4,000 manufacturing and construction jobs would be created during the development of a one-gigawatt "wind farm" off Ocean City, with another 800 permanent jobs dedicated to running and maintaining the more than 300 massive turbines that would need to be erected.

But though we could certainly use them in the current slump, those jobs are not just around the corner.  Unless the regulatory process picks up speed, it will be a few years yet before any offshore wind project gains all the necessary approvals to move forward in Maryland, much less breaks ground, or water, or whatever.  NRG Bluewater Wind, the company proposing to put wind turbines off Delaware's coast, said in August that the shakeup in the federal Minerals Management Service since the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has delayed the permits it needs to move ahead, and postponed that project by two years.   It's now not expecting to start generating any electricity from offshore breezes until 2016.  And Maryland's offshore development is trailing Delaware's. 

Continue reading "Get set to wait on offshore wind" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Environmental activists are celebrating election returns indicating they still have clout in Annapolis (and California), but the outlook in Washington isn't so green.

The Maryland League of Conservation Voters says that 88 percent of the candidates it endorsed, 119 out of 138, won their races on Tuesday, with two races still too close to call as of mid-day Wednesday.  The most prominent of those, of course, was the reelection of Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley, whom the league had endorsed way back in January, even before it was clear Republican former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. would challenge him. 

League executive director Cindy Schwartz said the results show Marylanders are passionate about the Chesapeake Bay and are "growing increasingly concerned about over-development and traffic, and recognize the need to create new clean energy jobs." 

She also claimed the returns confirm that "environmental issues always are top of mind when voters go to the polls."

Hard to dispute the first assertion, as I've not seen any recent poll results on growth and green jobs.  But the second contention about environmental issues being a priority with Maryland voters seems a tad optimistic.  A long series of independent public opinion polls through multiple elections, including this year's, have always found the environment, even the bay, taking a back seat in voters' minds to the economy, education and crime.   Voters care about the environment here, to be sure, but still not as much as other issues.

Perhaps another key to the league's high electoral batting average this year was its teaming up with labor (teachers and service workers) and with another environmental groups, Sierra Club and Environment Maryland, to pool efforts in making phone calls, sending out emails and producing campaign videos.

Overall, Republicans picked up a half-dozen seats in Maryland's House of Delegates, reports The Sun's Julie Bykowicz, while possibly losing two seats in the Senate, depending on the final outcome of close counts.

Locally, Baltimore city voters overwhelmingly approved a charter amendment (Question B) setting up one or more funds to promote sustainability, maintain city parks and improve the urban environment.  That could come in handy for ensuring that revenues can be raised through fees or other means to clean up litter in the harbor or retrofit storm drains.  Anne Arundel voters also put a dedicated environmentalist, West-Rhode Riverkeeper Chris Trumbauer, on the County Council.

California remains firmly green as well, it seems. There, voters defeated a ballot proposition to stall that state's climate-change law.  Proposition 23 had been heavily underwritten by industries opposed to the impending regulations. 

In Washington, though, it appears voters in Maryland and across the nation have made it much tougher for Congress to pass the Chesapeake Bay cleanup or climate-change legislation that have languished on Capitol Hill the past year.

Continue reading "Greens do well in MD, but face 'uphill battle' in DC " »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Air Pollution, Chesapeake Bay, Climate change, News
        

Some rare beetles and some homes may have to go on Calvert County's eroding Chesapeake Bay cliffs, a government panel has suggested.

A "steering committee" made up of federal, state and local agencies has proposed letting some cliffside homeowners shore up their patch of the crumbling bluffs, even if it means killing some legally protected Puritan tiger beetles.  But the plan also calls for moving or buying those homes in imminent danger of falling into the bay, using a combination of federal and state funds.

This Solomonic proposal comes after eight months of talks about how to resolve conflicting concerns over the safety of Calvert's clifftop homeowners and the survival of the tiny beetles, which dwell in the cliffs below the human abodes.  Brownish-bronze on top and blue on their bellies, Puritan tiger beetles are deemed threatened under the federal Endangered Species Act and endangered under Maryland's similar species law - meaning they're so close to becoming extinct it's illegal to kill or disrupt them.

It's not clear yet how many homes might be targeted for possible relocation or buyout, or what it would cost taxpayers.   The plan urges Calvert County to seek federal emergency-management funds to complete a risk assessment.   It also talks about tapping Maryland's Program Open Space fund to buy the houses or substitute beetle habitat.  That may concern some, since that fund was originally set up to buy parkland and recreation spaces for Marylanders, and the real estate slump has shrunk the property transfer tax revenues available for preserving land. 

A total of 234 homes are within 100 feet of the cliffs lining the bay in Calvert, and 83 are within 20 feet of the edge.  The cliffs are losing a foot or two feet a year, but 10- to 15-foot chunks have fallen in following a recent storm.   Twenty homes are within 10 feet, 19 within five feet and one house actually is hanging over already.

The plan was presented to the Calvert County commissioners this week.  The Washington Post reported that many homeowners aren't satisfied.  Those closest to the edge fear there won't be time for the county to secure the funds needed to move their homes, since the grant application is to go in by year's end.

Continue reading "State eyes buying homes, killing beetles on eroding Calvert cliffs" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

The poignant tale I reported over the weekend of the last house on Holland Island collapsing into a rising Chesapeake Bay has hit a nerve with some readers, it seems.

Michael F. Young, a friend of Rob Fitzgerald, the Virginia venture capitalist whose foundation recently acquired the island, flew over it this summer and took some aerial pictures - a couple of which you see here.  Young, of McLean, VA., thinks they are among the last images captured of this iconic structure before it collapsed.  

You can see in them how water washes around and under the house at high tide, and how fragmented the island is now.  The image below is looking north to the house, with the broad expanse of green at the bottom the marshy southern portion of the island.

To see all of Young's photos, go here. 

David Fahrenthold of The Washington Post provided another take today on the quixotic struggleto save the house by retired minister Stephen White. More haunting pictures, too.

 And for those who want to see where the island and house are, you can do so via Google maps.  The orange rectangle to the northwest is the barge sunk offshore as a kind of breakwater.  Thanks for this suggestion from Wally Coberg at the Cinema Group in Baltimore.

Richard Scher with the Maryland Port Administration wrote that he wished I'd said a little about the restoration of Poplar Island, an exception to the litany of bay islands vanishing under relentless assault by waves and ice.  Poplar, farther up the bay, also had a colorful history, hosting a cat "fur farm" at one time and as many as 85 residents at one time.  By the 1990s, it was long abandoned and practically washed away altogether, with only a few acres left of the 1,500 that existed when English settlers first landed there in the 17th century. 

But Poplar has been spared by a decision to place there the muck dredged from shipping channels approaching Baltimore harbor.  Today, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the island has been restored to its 1850s size and contour, and plans are to expand it another 500 or so acres.  Though the bay's fading maritime culture won't be restored to the island, it has become a haven for shorebirds and waterfowl, which also have been getting squeezed out by the sprawling development of the bay's eastern and western shores.

The port and Corps are looking to do similar restorations of a couple other vanishing islands, Barren and James.  But like Poplar, they're unlikely to stem the loss of bay fishing communities that began a century ago.  

Smith and Tangier islands, the two still-inhabited isles in the middle of the bay, also are under watery assault, and authorities are working on pricey plans to protect them for at least a while longer. 

But the islands' culture may vanish before their physical abodes do.  As Pete Lesher of the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum points out, both islands have been losing population, as young people leave for school and jobs elsewhere.  Fishing has been an increasingly hard way to make a living in recent years.

(Top two photos, aerial views of Holland Island summer 2010, courtesy Michael F. Young; bottom, Holland Island house in water, Oct. 21, 2010, Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 4:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Building commercial wind turbines off Maryland's Atlantic coast could well produce enough electricity to meet the state's goals for generating renewable energy - but significant hurdles must be overcome to realize that potential, a new study says. 

So says a new study by the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research.

"Offshore wind is not a slam dunk for Maryland, but the potential remains very strong," says Matthias Ruth, the study's principal investigator and director of the UM center. "It's economically feasible and environmentally advantageous, but will require some tough trade-offs, compromise and collaboration between public and private sectors."

Offshore turbines are increasingly common in Europe and elsewhere, but have yet to be built in the United States.  Various economic, political and technical issues must be resolved the study says.

The recent pullback by Constellation Energy from seeking to build a third nuclear reactor at Calvert Cliffs may boost the momentum for offshore wind, the report says. 

Also helping was the recent announcement by a Google-led investment group of its plans to underwrite development of an offshore wind transmission grid along the East Coast.  Maryland has joined with neighboring Mid-Atlantic states in seeking to coordinate its wind development.

Getting electricity from wind turbines off Maryland appears to be much less costly if the transmission lines come ashore on the Delaware coast - an estimated $20 million at Bethany Beach versus $200 million near Ocean City, the report says.

There's also potential for turbines off Maryland's coast to interfere with radar operations at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, and with radar on military ships and planes in the area, the report notes.

To read the full report, go here.

(Thanet offshore wind project southeast coast of England.  Photo via AFP/Getty, supplied by Vattenfall, Swedish state-owned utility operating the turbines.)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The state's first industrial wind project is almost ready to begin generating electricity, the Cumberland Times-News reports.

Construction is nearly complete on the 28 turbines that Constellation Energy has been erecting along an eight-mile stretch of Backbone Mountain south of Oakland in Garrett County, the paper reports.  Crews working since March have broken down the tall cranes used to put up the towering turbines, which stand 415 feet high from the ground to the tip of their rotor.  (The photo above is of one being assembled in July.)

Employees for Clipper Windpower, which made the turbines, are checking each one over and have cleared more than half to begin generating power, the paper reports.  At least some should be ready to start operating within the next week.

(Baltimore Sun photo by Barbara Haddock Taylor)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

While most energy-saving measures involve spending up-front (insulation) or doing without (turning thermostat down), there's one way to save energy that's cost-free and relatively painless - stop throwing away so much food.

A pair of scientists at the University of Texas at Austin estimate that Americans waste the equivalent of 350 million barrels of oil a year - or about 2 percent of the nation's annual energy needs - by discarding uneaten food or letting it spoil.

Michael Webber and Amanda Cuellar of UT's Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy figure it takes up to 1.4 billion barrels of oil to produce, package, prepare preserve and distribute a year's worth of food consumed in the United States.  Somewhere between 8 and 16 percent of the energy consumed in this country went into food production, it's estimated. 

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that about 27 percent of that food gets wasted, or thrown away.  Webber and Cuellar note that their estimates of food waste are conservative because the information they relied upon is incomplete and outdated.  Besides saving energy, cutting down on food waste might save us a little money, too.

According to their study, published in Environmental Science and Technology, these are the most wasted food categories, by percent:

(Volunteers glean leftover spinach from farmer's field in Sudlersville, 2001 Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

The record heat we experienced this summer carried over into the nights as well, it seems. Environmentalists are pointing to that as a harbinger of what they call the "dark side" of impending climate change.

In Maryland, 12 of 16 weather stations in the Historical Climatology Network reported their nighttime low temperatures this summer were the highest ever recorded, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. And the other four stations in the state reported their average lows after dark were among their five warmest.   To see the Maryland data, go here.

The hot summer nighlts weren't limited to Maryland or the mid-Atlanatic, either.  NRDC says nearly one out of four weather stations in the lower 48 states recorded hotter average night-time lows than at any time since 1895.  The phenomenon extended across the East and Midwest.

One summer does not global warming make, of course, but this one comes on the heels of the hottest decade on record.  Why do enviros call hot summer nights the "dark side" of climate change?  The NRDC's Kim Knowlton says the nights are particularly bad for the elderly and those unable to afford air conditioning, since they can't get relief from the heat even after dark.

BTW, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that this has been the hottest year on record globally so far.  The first eight months have been as hot as the same period in 1998, the hottest year to date, the agency says.  And this summer, at least the three months from June through August, has been the second warmest.  For more, go here.

(People playing in Inner Harbor's Sondheim Fountain, July 2010, photo by Colleen McCloskey) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Clean Air Act, a sweeping environmental law that's widely credited with helping millions of Americans breathe easier - and even saving lives - but is still the focus of fierce debates. 

The Baltimore area once had such bad summertime smog that its air ranked among the nation's unhealthiest, second or third only to Los Angeles'.   The air quality has improved in both places since then, with ground-level ozone pollution concentrations declining.  Acid rain, once blamed for killing lakes and streams in the Northeast, has also abated.

Those gains didn't come without conflict, as industries warned they'd be ruined by requirements for now widely accepted pollution controls like putting catalytic converters on cars and scrubbers on coal-burning power plants, and removing lead from gasoline.  Nationally, chronic ozone levels were 14 percent lower in 2008  than in 1990, the year Congress made its last major revision of the law.  Other pollutants were down even more. (Smog, though, is heavily influenced by weather, and this summer's extreme temperatures have pushed ozone levels back up this year - though still not to the extremes seen in decades past.)

Even so, the law remains a battleground, as air-quality standards have been repeatedly tightened in response to new research indicating some segments of the population still suffer health problems from chronic exposure to lower levels of ozone and fine particulates.   There's a fight now over a new move to lower ozone limits again.  

The biggest struggle, though, is over the EPA's use of the Clean Air Act to regulate climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.  With climate-change legislation stalled in Congress, the Obama administration has moved ahead with moves to track and ultimately limit carbon dioxide emissions, relying on a Bush-era Supreme Court decision upholding the law's use to deal with climate change.  Lawmakers, some of them representing oil and coal-producing regions, have introduced bills to block further action. arguing carbono-dioxide emission regulations would hurt the economy.   

Amid tug of war in Washington over federal action, states like Maryland, meanwhile, have adopted their own laws clamping down on pollutants (Health Air Act) and are proceeding under state legislation to do the same with greenhouse gas emissions within their borders. 

Clean air, as ever, is a hot topic.  For more on the law, go here.

(Constellation Energy's Brandon Shores power plant, 2010 Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Three companies and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation have teamed up to offer mid-Atlantic natural gas consumers a way to offset the climate impacts of their energy use while reducing truck traffic and also helping the bay.

The effort, dubbed CleanSteps Carbon Offsets, offers offsets to new and renewing natural gas customers of Washington Gas Energy Services.  The venture, involving Washington Gas Energy Services, Arkansas-based freight shipping firm J.B. Hunt, and Sterling Planet, a Georgia-based clean energy company.

Under the deal announced this morning (Sept. 13) at the bay foundation's Annapolis headquarters, all WGES residential and small business gas customers automatically get 5 percent offsets when they sign up or renew. But they'll also have the option of purchasing up to 100 percent offsets - something that WGES President Harry Warrent estimates would cost $12 per month for the average residential household.

The carbon offsets are to come from "clean air projects that result in greenhouse gas reductions, as well as other local and regional benefits," according to a news release.  Initially, though, the offsets will come via J.B. Hunt. Senior vice president Gary Whicker said the company would switch shipments from tractor-trailers to rail, which he said would reduce the amount of energy consumed and greenhouse gases released for ever ton shipped that way.

As WGES customers get enrolled in the new offset program, the Washington-based energy company and Sterling Planet will contribute to a new Carbon Reduction Fund, which would be managed and used by the bay foundation to plant trees along water ways and help farmers reduce runoff of fertilizer into the bay.  Those contributions are expected to grow to $200,000 a year.

Bay Foundation President William C. Baker called the partnership "exciting and innovative" and said it presents a way to help clean up the air and water regionally while also doing something about global climate change.  Baker predicted that projects underwritten by the fund should reduce the amount of water-fouling nitrogen getting into the bay by 40-60,000 pounds a year.  He had no comparable estimates on carbon reductions, saying "we're going to learn as we go along," but suggested they'd likely be on the order of thousands of tons a year.

For more, go here.  Or to see a streaming video of the annoucement, go here.

(2005 AP photo traffic congestion on Interstate 95 near Aberdeen)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
        

An Annapolis-based home builder broke ground today (9/8) in Frederick on what it touts as Maryland's first community of "net zero," carbon-neutral homes.

NEXUS Energy Homes Inc. is building 59 market-rate homes in the historic downtown to meet LEED platinum standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council. The homes, featuring rooftop solar panels and buried geothermal loop along with high-efficiency systems and appliances, are designed to generate as much electricity as they use - ergo, the "net zero" label.

The Frederick homes also are planned to be more affordable than you might imagine. Prices have been held down with federal and state incentives. The project, known as the Residences at North Pointe, is sponsored by the Housing Authority of the City of Frederick under its HOPE VI program. The development is actually a mixed redevelopment of one of Frederick's former housing projects. The market-rate homes are to go in among subsidized apartments already built.  That's the developer's artist's conception of the finished community above.

For more, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

No surprise to anyone who's been in Baltimore this summer, but we've had a record number of days with the temperature reaching 90 degrees or more. That coming on the heels of last winter's record snowfall.

As my colleague Frank Roylance reports in The Baltimore Sun today, "Since last winter's blizzards and record accumulations, 2010 has brought drought, crop losses, rising numbers of heat-related deaths and the hottest summer on record for Baltimore."

Just natural variability in weather, or did climate change have a hand in the extreme conditions we've experienced this year? Climate experts always caution that you can't attribute any particular storm or weather event to climate change.  Nor do weather patterns in one place necessarily represent what is a global phenomenon.  

But Kevin Trenberth, head of the climate analysis section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. told Roylance that what we've experienced could well have been influenced by the planet's shifting climate.

"Global warming is not the major factor, but it is a nontrivial factor," Trenberth said. "We can say that these [extreme] events very likely would not have happened without global warming."

(Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

It looks like all the cars tearing around the Inner Harbor next Labor Day weekend won't be racing just for the checkered flag - some at least will be trying to outdo each other in hybrid and alternative-fueled road rockets.

The American LeMans Series plans to stage a race here the day before Charm City hosts its first IndyCar Grand Prix race, Don Markus reports today in The Baltimore Sun.

An official announcement is planned on Wednesday, but a spokesman for the racing organization confirmed it would be bringing its act here.

Some may wonder how a bunch of cars burning rubber and fuel can be all that "green." But the American LeMans Series, or ALMS, pits race teams against each other not just for speed, but for fuel efficiency.  Cars use one of five alternative fuels or energy sources, and compete for points on fuel efficiency.  As I reported last year, the US import of European Le Mans style racing went "green" in 2008, meeting criteria set by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department.

Of course, that'll be small comfort to those put out by the disruption of downtown traffic for the racing - or, for that matter, the yearlong street repairs already under way to prepare for the three-day event.   But hey, it's another excuse to give B'more's underused public transportation system a try, right?

(American Le Mans Series' 12 Hours of Sebring race March 20 in Sebring, Fla. Photo by Steve Nesius/Associated Press)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Maryland health officials are warning people to take precautions if they swim or fish in the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, saying that the summer's heat and the bay's pollution have made water conditions ripe for growth of dangerous vibrio bacteria.

Naturally occurring, vibrio can cause gastrointestinal distress and nasty skin infections — and they can be deadly for people with compromised immune systems, including those with cancer or diabetes.  The bacteria thrive in warmer waters, which we've had with this record-hot summer, and in waters enriched by nutrients, as the Bay is.

There've been 24 cases of vibrio reported in Maryland so far this year. close to the average annual count of 30.  Though none of the cases this year has been fatal, there have been eight hospitalizations, and there've been seven deaths attributed to vibrio since 2007.  Officials note that the season this year is far from over and many cases likely go unreported.

The state health alert was issued this week after the Patuxent Riverkeeper, Fred Tutman, drew media attention to a handfull of cases in Calvert County.  Those cases were first reported by Rona Kobell, a former Sun reporter, on a new blog produced by The Bay Journal.  (Quite a splash for a  new blog!)  The county health officer, who initially pooh-poohed the number of cases there, now apparently plans to post warnings at local beaches.

Continue reading "Heat, pollution make Bay ripe for dangerous bacteria" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Tired of your gas-hog lawn mower? If you move fast, you can trade it in next weekend at Camden Yards for a battery-powered electric grass cutter.

In a "special arrangement" with the Maryland Department of the Environment and Clean Air Partners, Marylanders can buy a deeply discounted Neuton lawn mower.  You could save up to $324 on a 19-inch bagger-mulcher job that lists for $499.

If you bite, you'll do your small bit to reduce summer smog, as the old mowers get scrapped and recycled.  Gas mowers account for 5 percent of all air pollution in the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates.  And an hour of mowing with one produces as much smog-forming pollution as driving 350 miles. 

This green mower may not appeal to all lawn lickers, though.  The Neuton CE 6.4 got a so-so review from Consumer Reports.  Ease of use and handling were pluses, but bagging and mulching "only fair."  CR also found the battery on its tested model only lasted 45 minutes - not suitable for a big yard.  There are other cordless electric mowers CR rated more highly, made by the usual major mower manufacturers.  But then again, you probably won't be able to find one new at the prices offered under this deal.

To get in on the "great mower exchange," participants need to register online, then bring their old gas mower (and the $$) to Camden Yards Lot C on Saturday, Aug. 14 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.  The company's only selling 1,000 of its mowers, so it's first come first served. 

(Neuton photo) 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
        

Last year it was a wandering manatee playing peekaboo in the Chesapeake Bay. This year, a Baltimore teen-ager hooks a caiman in the Patapsco. I know it's been hot enough lately to make a Floridian feel right at home, but really, is this weird, or what?

Erick Hammack Jr., 16, of Pumphrey, told the Sun's Frank Roylance he snagged the 2 1/2 to 3 foot caiman - a cousin of the alligator - on a line baited with chicken wing. The critter turned up in a pond off Belle Grove Road in Patapsco Valley State Park.

Climate scientists have predicted Maryland could eventually warm up enough to rival Daytona for hosting spring break. But this wayward tropical reptile has a more mundane reason for showing up here, most likely. Even though alligators and caimans are illegal to have as pets in Maryland, people bring them in anyway, it seems.  Authorities say they find one or two in the wild practically every year, released (also illegally) after the owner decides the it's grown too big or nasty to keep.

At least it wasn't another snakehead, the toothy Asian fish that sparked a media frenzy several summers ago.

(Photo by Thea Hammack)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Supporters and opponents of a refuse-burning power plant in south Baltimore squared off Monday night, with residents of Brooklyn and Curtis Bay saying they need the jobs the nearly $1 billion project would bring, while environmentalists warned it would emit health-threatening air pollution.

About two dozen people turned out for the public hearing called by the Maryland Public Service Commission, which must decide whether to approve the 120-megawatt "renewable energy" plant in Fairfield.  Only about a third spoke during the brief hearing at the Polish Home Hall in Curtis Bay, but the majority favored the project proposed by Energy Answers International of Albany, NY. 

Kurt Kramer, project manager, said the company aims to build the facility (artist's rendering above) to gold LEED standards on a capped portion of the contaminated old FMC chemical plant (pictured below) on Patapsco Avenue.  The project would employ boiler technology used in coal-burning power plants to generate electricity and steam from shredded municipal trash, tires, auto parts and wood waste.  It would be more efficient and cleaner than standard waste-to-energy incinerators, Kramer said, exceeding federal pollution-control requirements for emissions of particulates, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury and lead, among other things.

The project manager also contended the facility would pump more than $40 million a year into the local economy, employing 300 to 400 people on a daily basis in its construction.   Company officials have said the plant's operation would employ about 200.

Environmentalists, though, warned that the plant would still be a significant polluter in an area long besieged by industrial emissions and wastes.  Lisa Lincoln of the Chesapeake Climate Action Network contended that it would be one of the state's largest emitters of mercury if built. She said regulators need to limit the types of waste the plant could burn to safeguard the community, and impose tighter pollution limits.  

Kimberly Wilson of the Environmental Integrity Project noted that the plant would be near two schools in an area "already overburdened" with industrial pollution and hazardous waste dumping, and with one of the state's highest death rates for chronic respiratory disease.  She also warned that the plant would run afoul of permitting and enforcement requirements in the federal Clean Air Act if approved by the PSC.

But Andy Dize, president of the Community of Curtis Bay Association, said residents were not as concerned with air pollution as they were with getting jobs in a community struggling with crime and poverty.

"Air pollution used to be a big issue decades ago," said Dize.  But with the gradual closure of factories in the area over the years, emissions have declined.  Community leaders have been talking with Energy Answers for nearly two years, he said, and are confident that the plant can be operated with proper oversight from the state so that pollution will not be a problem.  "Energy Answers provides a bright spot for the community," he said.

Continue reading "A burning debate in south Baltimore" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
        

Environmental activists plan to link up -  literally, by joining hands - in protests against offshore oil drilling Saturday in Annapolis, Ocean City, Salisbury and Deal Island.

The "Hands Across the Sand" demonstrations are among hundreds being organized in the US and abroad to pressure elected officials against any expansion of offshore drilling and to promote "clean" energy and renewables.   In the U.S., nearly 700 rallies have been called in all 50 states. 

Protesters gathered on or near a shoreline plan to join hands for 15 minutes around noon - except for one protest set at 3:30 p.m. at Annapolis City Dock - and form lines, in that way symbolically "drawing a line in the sand" against oil and for alternative energy.  This type of protest against offshore drilling began in Florida earlier this year, even before the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig blowout in April, according to organizers.

For info on the Maryland demonstrations, go here.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 7:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
        

The state is giving a $1 million jump-start to the fledgling electric-vehicle industry.  The Maryland Energy Administration announced plans today (6/24) to build 65 charging stations in Baltimore and the rest of the state to support a hoped-for influx of battery powered cars and trucks in the near future.

(Update: Read the full story here.)

Using federal economic stimulus funds, the MEA awarded three grants to install charging stations at parking garages in Baltimore and at other sites around the state, particularly along Interstate 95.  Funds also will go to wiring truck stops in Baltimore, Elkton and Jessup so truckers won't have to idle their vehicles as much.

With GM's Volt, Nissan's Leaf and other electric vehicles expected on the market in coming months, state officials say today's grants are meant to begin developing the network of charging stations that will be needed to support the new technology.

"With the average Marylander driving less than 40 miles per day, electric vehicles will offer meaningful solutions to saving money and protecting our environment," state energy administrator Malcolm Woolf said in a press release announcing the grants. (In good political protocol, especially for an election year, the release from MEA credited Woolf's boss, Gov. Martin O'Malley with making the announcement.)

The grants are part of a boost the state is trying to give to the EV industry.  The General Assembly this year approved a tax credit for buying a battery-powered car or truck, and authorized them to use express commuter lanes otherwise reserved for high-occupancy vehicles.   

About half of the $1 million will go to Shore Power to install "truck-stop electrification stations," essentially wiring travel plazas so truckers can run their air-conditioning, watch TV or browse the Internet while stopped without having to idle their diesel engines.

Baltimore city and Baltimore Gas & Electric will get $134.500 to install between 9 and 16 charging stations in parking garages around town.

Another $367,500 goes to the Baltimore Electric Vehicle Inititative - the same folks who stationed electric "alt-cars" for ride-sharing at the Maryland Science Center last year (shown at right).  That group is to put another 55 charging stations at various sites around the state, including in Cecil, Harford, Baltimore, Anne Arundel, Prince George's, Montgomery, Charles and Frederick counties.

(EV charging station at 2010 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, Bloomberg photo; 2009 'Alt-car' debut at Inner Harbor, Baltimore Sun photo by Barbara Haddock)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (13)
        

The number of people who believe global warming is a problem is ticking back up, according to a set of recent polls.

This news comes as the Senate voted down a measure by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gases from power plants and other polluters under the Clean Air Act.

The rules will now go into effect in January, and some observers say is an indication of how energy legislation may tip.

As for the polls, one from the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University found that three out of four Americans believe that the Earth is gradually warming from human activity and want the government to do something about it.

Funding came from the National Science Foundation, and results were based on telephone interviews conducted from June 1-7 with 1,000 randomly selected American adults.

"Several national surveys released during the last eight months have been interpreted as showing that fewer and fewer Americans believe that climate change is real, human-caused and threatening to people," Krosnick said. "But our new survey shows just the opposite."

About three quarters said the Earth's temperature probably had been heating up over the last 100 years, and 75 percent said that human behavior was substantially responsible for any warming that has occurred. The poll has been taken for the last four years and the decline in people who believe global warming has been happening is dropping, researchers said.

Skeptics who don't trust scientists often cite the weather -- 2008 was the coldest year since 2000 -- but researchers say year to year fluctuations are "uninformative." Other point to "climategate," where in late 2009 hacked emails from climate scientists at the University of East Anglia in Britain showed some appeared to be colluding to silence unconvinced colleagues. But trust in the scientists also appears to have remained high, with almost three-quarters trusting them, researchers said.

Continue reading "The majority of Americans believe in global warming" »

Posted by Meredith Cohn at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Climate change
        

Acidity levels in some parts of the Chesapeake Bay are increasing faster than in the ocean, scientists have found, and that could spell trouble for rebuilding oyster populations in those areas.

Looking at 23 years of water quality readings, researchers found acidity levels increasing in the saltier waters of the bay, while decreasing in the fresher portions. The study, conducted at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, appears in the online journal Estuaries and Coasts.

Acidity levels have been rising in the oceans, which scientists have attributed to increasing carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. But the study's authors suggest increasing the acidity levels are a byproduct of the decomposition of algae blooms in the upper Bay - blooms that are fed by an influx of nutrients from sewage treatment plants, farm runoff and other sources.

Laboratory studies show that acidity levels akin to what are being measured in some parts of the bay can lead to thinner shells for oysters, making them more vulnerable to crabs and other predators.

"With oyster populations at historically low levels, increasingly acidic waters are yet another stressor limiting the recover of the bay's oyster populations," marine biologist Roger Newell said in a news release about the study.

George Waldbusser of Oregon State University, the study's lead author, said lower acidity in some bay rivers that once supported large oyster populations could help them come back. But increasing acidity levels in other areas may exacerbate their recovery from disease, habitat loss and historic overfishing.

For more on the study, go here.

(Oysters at Horn Point Laboratory, 2006 Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, Climate change, News
        

National media are reporting that the Obama administration plans to extend a six-month moratorium on drilling new deepwater wells, and that it will cancel lease sales off Alaska and Virginia. There are reports, citing unnamed White House aides, by the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post and others.

The president, who plans to return to the Gulf coast Friday for the second time since BP's Deepwater Horizon well blew out, is scheduled to have a press conference this afternoon at the White House. The moratorium - and even the cancellations - are hardly surprising, as public support for offshore oil drilling has declined and criticism mounted in the four weeks since the explosion at the rig killed 11 workers and began releasing millions of gallons of oil.

Even Obama's most loyal political allies, such as Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, have dropped any attempt to be polite about the president's plan to expand offshore drilling along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, which was announced just a few weeks before the Deepwater Horizon calamity.

While environmentalists and other Democrats like Maryland Sens. Benjamin Cardin and Barbara Mikulski, promptly decried drilling anywhere near the Chesapeake Bay or Maryland, O'Malley originally had deferred to the president.  When the administration's drilling plan was first unveiled, O'Malley had said through an aide that while opposed to any drilling off Maryland's coast, he was sure the Obama admnistration would be "guided by the science" in deciding whether to proceed with any exploration off the mid-Atlantic coast.

In the past week, though, O'Malley has taken a harder public line.   Questioned about the Gulf oil spill during an announcement Friday of his new oyster restoration plan, O'Malley said he "can't imagine anybody" wanting to drill off the bay or near Maryland, given what's happened in the Gulf - at least until an investigation determines what went wrong and how to ensure it won't happen again. 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

A new study finds that the upper layer of the world's oceans has warmed since 1993, which researchers say is a strong signal that the planet's climate is changing.

"We are seeing the global ocean store more heat than it gives off,” John Lyman, an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Joint Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research and lead author of the study, said in a news release.  The study's findings are being published in the journal Nature today (May 20).

The international team of scientists looked at multiple estimates of the heat content of the oceans' upper layer and drew on data from more than 3,200 Argo floating monitors deployed around the globe and from other devices dropped earlier from ships to take the water's temperature.  Though there are some uncertainties about the data - the ship-deployed bathythermographs are not as accurate as the Argo floats - the researchers concluded that on average the heat content of the oceans' upper 2,000 feet has been increasing the past 16 years.

“The ocean is the biggest reservoir for heat in the climate system,” according to Josh Willis, an oceanographer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who contributed to the study. “So as the planet warms, we’re finding that 80 to 90 percent of the increased heat ends up in the ocean.” 

Warming oceans cause sea level to rise, because water expands and takes up more space as its temperature increases.  Estimates are that this thermal  expansion accounts for one-third to one-half of the rise in sea level.

As the oceans warm, so do bays and inland waters.  The mean temperature in the Patuxent River has risen 3 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1930s, according to University of Maryland scientists.  Sea level in the Chesapeake Bay has risen about one foot in the past century.

For more on the finding that oceans are warming, read this piece in Time by Michael Lemonick. 

(NOAA photo)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

With the nation's attention fixed on the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Sens. John Kerry and Joe Leiberman thought today would be a good time introduced a new climate/energy bill.

They hope that the can capitalize on the public's disgust with pollution to push the measure through before the mid-term elections, according to a story in the Washington Post.

It doesn't have the cap and trade set-up that's in the House bill and has brought so much resistence from Republicans, but it has limits for certain industries. It has incentives for nuclear energy and new technology to trap emmission from coal. And it has money for transportation infrastructure and efficiency improvements.

Kerry says on his website, "The American Power Act will transform our economy, set us on the path toward energy independence and improve the quality of the air we breathe. It will create millions of good jobs that cannot be shipped abroad and it will launch America into a position of leadership in the global clean energy economy."

He also said the bill will reduce carbon pollution by 17 percent in 2020 and by more than 80 percent in 2050.

He provides a section by section summary of the bill.

Reactions from industry aren't totally good. But environmentalists are, not surprisingly, more enthusiastic.

Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, says, for example, “The growing oil catastrophe in the Gulf and the Massey mine disaster have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that we must start now to end our dangerous dependence on dirty energy, move toward safe and clean energy, and steadily cut carbon pollution. The bill released today by Senators Kerry and Lieberman marks an important step toward passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation by the Senate."
 
But she and other environmentalist have some problems with the bill. They don't think it goes far enough to control pollution, for one. And they don't all like nuclear energy, and they certainly don't like any incentives for states to approve more offshore drilling, which this bill offers. Though, it also allows for some veto power.

So, anyone think the bill has a chance this year, with an election coming and other issues still left unattended, including a Supreme Court nominee, an immigration bill?

Baltimore Sun file photo

Posted by Meredith Cohn at 5:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Climate change
        

It almost goes without saying these days that climate change can be a divisive issue.  Even among people who think it's a problem, they can't necessarily agree on the solutions, or on working together to reach them. 

Climate Lab, a Washington nonprofit group, has launched a new online network aimed at using the Internet to bridge this "collaboration gap," as one of the group's leaders calls it.  Climate Lab Networks aims to provide the lab's "partners" with "customized streaming access" to information generated on the lab's year-old wiki.  It's a new-tech way of saying there's going to be a whole lot of sharing going on.

"There's broad agreement on the need to find and implement solutions," Adam Tapley, the lab's managing director, said in an interview.  "Also, that sharing is good on information related to climate change."  Yet for a variety of reasons, Tapley says, even like-minded environmental groups have not been able to get past their own individual missions to collaborate more closely.  The network hopes to do that with a "bottoms-up" approach, putting information out for all to use as they see fit.

It's a new venture by the lab, which a year ago launched a website and wiki aimed largely at what Tapley calls the climate "professionals."  So far it has attracted about 350 registered users, who collaboratively author and collectively edit articles on climate change.  Now, with the network's debut, the lab hopes to broaden the community to engage schools, academics, students, activists and others.

"It's not who you are, it's what you do," Tapley says. "If you have good information and follow the guidelines on the website so that ... everyone's contributions fit together in a productive and valuable way, then you're certainly welcome to be part of the community."

Continue reading "New online network aims to bridge climate "collaboration gap"" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Offshore wind in Maryland could get a boost from the Obama administration's approval of the controversial Cape Wind project in Nantucket Sound, proponents seem to think.

While wind may be looking up, prospects for drilling for oil and gas off the Atlantic and Gulf coasts aren't helped by news that the oil leak off Louisiana's coast from the destroyed Deepwater Horizon platform is five times worse than previously thought.  The Coast Guard says 5,000 barrels of oil may be escaping daily into the water, and it's looking to try to burn off the fuel before it can reach the sensitive wetlands along the coast.

The Interior Department's Minerals Management Service is still a ways from being prepared to invite developers to show interest in placing wind turbines off Ocean City or Assateague Island.  But Maryland's Department of Natural Resources is busily scouting out where the best spots are to catch the wind -- also,  where there might be conflicts with birds and other marine life, with fishermen and ships.  

DNR held open houses earlier this month to lay out what it's found out already and to seek comment.  If you missed them, you can still see what was presented.  The posters are viewable online, just click here and scroll down.  Of particular interest are the maps, slides 17 through 20. DNR hopes to post all its information in an online coastal atlas in June.

One of the natural features to be avoided likely would be cold-water corals such as sea whip that grow on the bottom off OC.  Charter fishing Capt. Monty Hawkins first told me about them, and he has narrated a video essay describing the bottom features and their value as fish habitat, which you can see below. 

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

The Obama administration's approval today of the nation's first offshore wind farm off Cape Cod in Massachusetts gives impetus to efforts to put turbines off Ocean City and elsewhere along the Atlantic coast, proponents say.  But the controversial Cape Wind project, hotly debated for nine years, is likely to face court challenges from opponents.

Read my story in The Baltimore Sun tomorrow for more.

(AP photo of turbines off southeast England coast)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 3:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, Climate change, News
        

With prospects for a Senate climate bill under a cloud, the Obama administration has turned up the heat.  The Environmental Protection Agency says in a new report that there is "clear evidence" that human activities are altering the Earth's atmosphere and that climate is changing.

The EPA report lays out 24 "indicators" showing that climate is already shifting, most of them spotting trends in the United States.  Greenhouse gas emissions have increased 14 percent in the United States from 1990 to 2008.

Among the highlights: 

- Seven of the 10 warmest years on record in the continental US have occurred since 1990;

- Sea level rise has doubled its pace over the long term average since 1993;

- Six of the 10 most active hurricane seasons have occurred since the mid-1990s.

- Eight of the top 10 years for "extreme one-day precipitation events" (aka deluges or blizzards) have occurrred since 1990.

- The sea surface temperature has increased, with average temperatures in the past three decades higher than at any time since large-scale measurements began over a century ago.

- The average length of the growing season in the lower 48 states has grown by about two weeks since the beginning of the last century; much of the increase has occurred in the last 30 years.

- Birds in North America (like these brown pelicans at Barren Island in the Chesapeake Bay) have shifted their wintering grounds northward by about 35 miles since 1966, with a few moving hundreds of miles.  Birds also have shifted inland from the coasts, another indication of warming interior temperatures. 

- Though snow varies from year to year, the amount of North America covered by white stuff any given year was significantly lower, on average, from 2000 to 2008, than it was during the 1970s.

Continue reading "EPA turns up climate heat as Senate dithers" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
        

If you haven't heard, the globe is warming. And if you haven't heard, there will be a big rally in support of climate legislation in Washington Sunday from 11 a.m.-7 p.m. on the National Mall.

Sponsors at the Earth Day Network are aiming for a rally like the one on the first Earth Day 40 years ago when 20 million people came out in support of a cleaner and healthier planet.

This year, there will be speakers including Rev. Jesse Jackson, the film director James Cameron, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, Olympic gold medalist Billy Demong, producer Trudie Styler, author Margaret Atwood, NFL player and television personality Dhani Jones and environmental photographer Sebastian Copeland.

There will also be live music from Sting, John Legend, The Roots, Jimmy Cliff, Passion Pit, Bob Weir, Willie Colón, Joss Stone, Robert Randolph, Patrick Stump, Mavis Staples, Booker T, Honor Society and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger.

The sponsors would like you to RSVP (right side of page). And if you can't go, you can watch a live stream at www.EarthDay.org. There are also some free buses, including one from Baltimore, if you need. They will go to RFK Stadium and you can take the Metro or a shuttle from there. If you drive, they'd like you to park at RFK.

If you want to volunteer, email volunteer@earthday.org to sign up.

So anyone going? Please report back here about what it was like. Send pictures and we can post them.

Posted by Meredith Cohn at 3:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Categories: Climate change
        

A Glen Burnie man with a passion for solar has found there are limits to where he can catch the sun's rays.

As I reported today in The Baltimore Sun, the Maryland Department of the Environment has rejected Robert Bruninga's application for a wetland permit so he can build a floating pier in Marley Creek and lay photovoltaic panels on it.

Bruninga, a self-described "born-again solar junkie," intended to deploy 8 kilowatts' worth of panels on the pier and on a boat he planned to build and tie up there. He figures that would be enough - when the sun is shining - to offset the electricity his household uses.   He wants to put them on a pier because the tall trees on his lot shade his roof and almost all of his  yard, undermining the potential for generating power on land.

But the state said nope, citing regulations that require all structures built out over the water to be "water-dependent."  MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said that state officials are reviewing the regulations to see if any changes might be warranted to allow the kinds of project Bruninga wants to build, but for now they have to enforce the rules as they are.  They're meant to protect the state's waters from landside encroachment - building houses, restaurants and the like out over the water.

Bruninga, senior engineer in the satellite laboratory at the Naval Academy, doesn't blame the bureaucrats for turning down his bright idea.  He says he understands the need to limit what goes on piers, but he's hoping they'll find a way to make an exception for it in the future. 

Meanwhile, he'll keep driving his solar-enhanced plug-in Prius and touting the benefits of solar to all who'll listen.  He's put together a Web site detailing his solar "conversion" and his pier plan, which you can see here.

(Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
        

Despite a head start on the rest of Maryland's utilities, Baltimore Gas & Electric is falling short in promoting energy efficiency among its customers, says a new report.

The Maryland PIRG Foundation says BGE is likely to achieve only 52 percent of the energy savings it needs to by 2011 under the state's EmPOWER Maryland law.  The 2008 law calls for a 15 percent reduction in energy use statewide by 2015, with utilities responsible for two-thirds of the savings and the state on the hook for the other 5 percent cutback.

“The good news is that BGE’s energy efficiency programs are up and running,” Maryland PIRG State Director Johanna Neumann said in a statement. “The bad news is that BGE was slow to get started and its plans fall far short of the energy savings Marylanders desperately need.”

BGE's actually begun promoting energy efficiency ahead of the state's other utilities, but MaryPIRG's analysis suggests those efforts are not enough to get to the goal.  By 2015, BGE is likely to have achieved only 63 percent of the savings it needs, the report says.  Other utilities, though behind BGE in ramping up their efforts, appear to have plans that would achieve more savings - but MaryPIRG says none are currently planning to do enough to get to the goal.

BGE thinks MaryPIRG is being a tad harsh.  Mark Case, a senior vice president of the utiility, says the company deserves credit for launching its energy-efficiency programs within weeks of when the state Public Service Commission approved them.  Residential customers have been flocking to them since, he says, particularly those aimed at curbing air conditioning bills in summer. Businesses were slow last year to jump in because of the grim economy, he says, but there's signs of more interest now.

Case does agree that the state's energy-saving goal won't be reached without some radical boost in effort.  That "game changer," he contends, is BGE's Smart Grid plan, which would enable the utility to give its customers real-time information on their energy consumption.  A pilot program the utility tried shows customers are likely to cut back if they're more aware of how much energy they're using and what it's costing them.  The PSC is still studying the proposal.

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 8:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Water temperatures are increasing in streams and rivers around the country and that is having a huge impact on the dependent ecosystems, according to new research from ecologists and hydrologists from the University of Maryland and elsewhere.  

The research, published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, documents the statistically significant long-term rise in 20 major U.S. streams and rivers, including the Potomac in Maryland and others such as  the Colorado, Delaware and Hudson.

The annual mean rise was .02-.14°F a year. The water temperature increases also correlated to air temperature increases. And increases were more rapid in urban areas. There was a 3°F increase since 1939 in the Patuxent River, said David Secor of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science's Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.

“Warming waters can impact the basic ecological processes taking place in our nation’s rivers and streams,” said Sujay Kaushal of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and lead author of the study. “Long-term temperature increases can impact aquatic biodiversity, biological productivity, and the cycling of contaminants through the ecosystem.”

The researchers believe development and global warming are a "one-two punch" particularly in the urban areas and are having a huge impact on ecosystem health. In the city there are "urban heat island effects” from all the buildings, roads, concrete and asphalt. 

The waterways could be helped by conserving riparian forests, reducing impervious surfaces, adopting “green” infrastructure practices and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they researchers said.

Associated Press photo of the Potomac River

Posted by Meredith Cohn at 3:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Climate change
        

Earth Hour is upon us again. At 8:30 p.m. local time on Saturday (March 27), people around the world will be turning off their lights for an hour as a show of support for taking action on climate change.  Will you be one of them?

Begun in 2007 in Australia, the global demonstration is organized by the World Wildlife Fund, which says nearly a billion people joined in last year.  Iconic structures like the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Sydney’s Opera House, the Great Pyramids of Gaza and New York’s Empire State Building go dark for an hour.  As the time-lapse footage above of Shanghai shows, lights even get turned out in China, which now emits more climate-altering carbon dioxide than the United States.

Here in Baltimore, the lights will go out at City Hall and six nearby municipal buildings for an hour.  Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake issued a press release encouraging residents and businesses to join the effort, noting that energy conservation is a money saver as well as a help for the climate. The average Baltimore home could save $250 a year by trimming its energy consumption 15 percent, she points out.

Is anyone else turning out their lights for Earth Hour?  Videos of the event are being uploaded here on YouTube.   And for the Twitterati, the hashtag is '#earthhour'

Continue reading "Switching it off for the Earth" »

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (10)
        

West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller said he would introduce legislation today to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases for two years from power plants. He's trying to protect home interests -- the coal industry.

Rockefeller said the bill would give Congress time to work out its own energy rules.

“Today, we took important action to safeguard jobs, the coal industry, and the entire economy as we move toward clean coal technology,” he said. “This legislation will issue a two year suspension on EPA regulation of greenhouse gases from stationary sources—giving Congress the time it needs to address an issue as complicated and expansive as our energy future.  Congress, not the EPA, must be the ideal decision-maker on such a challenging issue."
 
He said he sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson challenging potential regulations and she responded in a letter that she could delay until the end of 2010, but Rockefeller said this was a "positive" move but wasn't enough time for a comprehensive energy bill to pass and clean coal technology to be pursued.

There is a house bill being introduced by Rep. Nick Rahall, Democrat of West Virginia.

The bills would protect the power plants from having to seek permits to meet a New Source Performance Standard under the Clean Air Act for carbon dioxide or methane. They would allow for the new EPA rules to apply to the auto industry, however. The Obama administration negotiated a deal for new emissions standards.

The Supreme Court gave the EPA authority in 2007 to regulate greenhouse gasses under the Clean Air Act. SO, legislation is necessary if Congress wants to stop or delay regulations -- something Rockefeller says is needed to protect jobs and local economies.

So, given that energy legislation is no less controversial than heath care legislation and likely to face major hurdles in Congress, do you think the EPA should go ahead and regulate power plant emissions now? Or is this really not something EPA should be stepping into on its own without Congressional input given the dicey jobs situation?

Baltimore Sun file photo of the Brandon Shores power plant, on which a pollution control scrubber was recently installed per Maryland's 2006 Healthy Air Act/Kenneth K. Lam

Posted by Meredith Cohn at 2:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Climate change
        

Which is worse for the nation's environment - animal manure or chemical fertilizer? 

According to a story today in the Washington Post, the waste generated by farms raising cattle, hogs, chickens and turkeys is getting into the water (and air) in increasing quantities, even as environmental laws are cracking down on other pollutants. 

Farm animal manure (like the chicken manure being cleaned out of an Eastern Shore poultry house in the above photo) is responsible for roughly a quarter of the nitrogen helping to create a massive dead zone in the heart of the Chesapeake Bay, David Farenthold points out.  It's also a factor in more than 200 other coastal dead zones around the country.  Modern industrial-scale animal farming simply generates too much manure to safely spread on crop fields - the excess washes off into nearby water ways.

But fertilizing farm fields with chemical or synthetic nitrogen (aka "artificial manure") doesn't seem any better for the environment, according to an ongoing series in Grist, the Seattle-based online publication of green news and commentary.   The latest installment, which you can read here, reports on research finding that synthetic nitrogen winds up damaging the soil and destroying its ability to absorb climate-warming carbon dioxide.

What's a farmer to do?  Correction, what are we all to do, since we're the ultimate consumers of those crops the farmers raise?  Is there more that can and should be done to control fertilizer use to protect our streams, rivers and bays?  Can we cut back on fertilizer use without harming food production?  Food for thought.

(2008 Baltimore Sun file photo by Doug Kapustin)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Chesapeake Bay, Climate change, Food, News
        

Constellation Energy plans a celebration today of the startup of its new emissions scrubber system at the Brandon Shores power plant near the mouth of the Patapsco River.  The Baltimore-based power company has invited politicians and others this morning (3/1) to come see the system recently completed at a cost of $875 million.

The scrubber technology is expected to remove at least 95 percent of the 1,300 megawatt coal plant's sulfur dioxide emissions and 90 percent of its mercury emissions.  As I reported in a recent article in The Sun, there's a lot to remove - Brandon Shores and the nearby H.A. Wagner power plant together have been the nation's largest emitter of hazardous air pollutants.

Now, Constellation is saying, the scrubbers should make Brandon Shores one of the cleanest coal-burning plants of its size in the country.

One pollutant the scrubbers won't remove, though, is carbon dioxide.  A byproduct of burning coal, CO2 is the main "greenhouse" gas produced by human activities that scientific authorities say is gradually changing the earth's climate.  Though you can't see it, it's pouring out of the scrubber stack seen at left, along with the billowing white water vapor.  Brandon Shores emitted 7.8 million tons of the gas in 2008, according to government figures supplied by Constellation's John Quinn.

The scrubbers weren't supposed to deal with carbon dioxide.  They're meant to bring Constellation's plants into compliance with Maryland's Healthy Air Act, a 2006 law targeting power plant emissions that contribute to the Baltimore region's summer ozone and year-round particle air pollution problems.  The law also aims to curb releases of mercury, which can get into the food chain through fish and can cause nerve and brain damage, especially in young children.  If Constellation's scrubbers work as well as the company believes, the plant will meet or exceed the law's required reductions - for those pollutants

But the scrubbers will actually cause the plant's emissions of carbon dioxide to increase about 2.5 percent, company spokesmen say.  That's because the plant will be using some of the electricity it produces to run its scrubber equipment, and will need to burn more coal to make up for the diverted power.  Reducing the plant's contributions to climate change likely will require "carbon capture and storage," a technology that is still being tested at several power plants around the country.  Congress has yet to act on federal legislation that might require carbon dioxide reductions nationwide, but under a 2009 state law, power plants and other industrial sources of greenhouse gases in Maryland will have to reduce their emissions 25 percent by 2020.

(Thanks to Roger A. Pielke Sr., senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institutes for Research in Environmental Sciences in Boulder, CO for pointing out in his blog that I didn't mention carbon dioxide in my Sun article.)

(Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth K. Lam)

Posted by Tim Wheeler at 6:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
        

Painting roofs of buildings white can cool off cities and help mitigate global warming, new research finds, but it would work better in cities with densely packed roofs and in warm climates where sunlight is strong year-round.

In a study accepted for publication in Geophysical Research Letters, scie