The Greening Process

How “Green” can we get? The greening of our lives is an ongoing process that will continue to evolve and progress with the advent of new technologies and continued education on the sources and effects of Greenhouse Gas emissions. That critical first step is to get an accurate accounting of your building’s Carbon Footprint.

Your Carbon Footprint is the total carbon that is created during the daily use of your building. This requires a comprehensive audit of your building that can be achieved by the use of energy auditing software. This data will show clearly the areas that can be addressed in an effort to lower energy use and therefore carbon emissions. When the audit is complete there will be many changes that can be made from shifting fuel sources or upgrading facilities components to changes in worker habits that impact your carbon footprint. As the mindset of the company is changed and energy cost savings is realized; new ideas and technologies will continue to lead your company to a greener way of conducting business. Greening your business is one of the best public relations and marketing efforts that can be made in the growing global mindset of lowering carbon emissions.

How green can we get? The answer is Carbon Neutral. Companies that have made the necessary modifications and set up programs to offset their remaining carbon output have achieved a carbon neutral position. In the growing world of carbon trading many of these carbon neutral companies can now trade credits from their energy reductions on an open market for profits. How far is your operation from a Carbon Neutral position? Once this question is answered the next question is; how would your company profit by achieving such a position?

Think Wind

I just can’t see the problem. Why is it that we have the technology and the resources to build wind farms and yet we sit on our hands and watch countries all over Europe build a power infrastructure that will free them from the dependency on foreign oil? I understand all the arguments out there but none of them have convinced me that wind is a bad idea.

From every angle wind works. For a price cheaper than an oil refinery or a nuclear power plant or even a natural gas plant you could build a wind farm and get free, green, renewable, sustainable, non-polluting energy. For the price of one year of war in Iraq we could erect enough wind turbines to power Indiana. So money is not the issue.

I have heard that wind turbines make a whooshing sound; big deal. The whole idea of a wind farm is to place it where the wind blows consistently and free of obstruction so that means in the open spaces where there are no homes to hear the whooshing sound. There are places in the wind belt of this county where you could drive for hours and never see a man made dwelling. So it gets cold in the northern states; we can equip the turbines with on board heaters and heat the blades so they don’t ice up. The wind can get very strong in our mid-western states so we would need to use turbines that operate with clutch systems that would compensate for the excessive wind speed. I can’t see the problem.

The states of Nebraska, Kansas, Wyoming and the Dakotas could produce as much energy as Saudi Arabia and do it without the economic strong-arming or CO2 emissions that we get from the oil producing countries. I have heard that the oil companies don’t want wind farms because they would compete with oil profits. This is simply not true; Oil Companies are the biggest investors in wind technology. Wind farms make money. If you want to get rich just design a better battery system or a more efficient turbine and you will be rich beyond your dreams.

Wind is simply our best bet to affect change right now. Wind farms can be set up in a matter of months, whereas power plants that use most other types of fuel would take years to build. So now is the time for land owners to contact their local utilities and set up a meeting to explore the economical advantages of leasing out land for wind turbine use.

#1 Green Priority – Food

The global food situation is getting ridiculous. Our planet has the capacity to feed us very well and meet all our nutritional needs with plenty to spare. One of the side effects of global warming is the expansion of available cropland in the northern latitudes. The excess CO2 in the atmosphere is a plus for plant growth, so the only reason there can be for a shortage of available and affordable food is mismanagement of resources.

Locally grown food requires less transportation costs and therefore if we shop for our produce from the local farmers we can save on food costs. If the farmers markets charge similar prices to large chain grocery stores, that transport their produce from around the world, then they will be punishing us for our support of them and for our green efforts.

If every Church, Temple, Mosque and Synagogue were to set up and sponsor community gardens then our seniors and low income families would not have to make the choice of sacrificing their nutritional health for the sake of transportation or heating costs. These organizations have a non-profit status, not because of their religious views but because of their pledge to serve the community and this would serve one of our greatest needs.

On a much larger scale, developing countries still need the help of the global community to provide them with the types of crops that would be sustainable and inexpensively abundant in their climate regions. We have the science and the management skills to work this out. The large populations in India and China can feed themselves if they continue to look for new approaches the food production. Every large building in an urban center could use its rooftop for a garden. Hydroponics and other methods of crop growth are underused around the world. The water from all these melting glaciers is going somewhere; why not create lakes that could provide drinking and irrigation water as well as a place to farm cold water fish. You can grow crops under the windmills on a wind farm and get duel use of the land.

We all need to work together at all levels of this global community to think through this and remove hunger as an issue around the world.

Becoming Personally Neutral

I have calculated my personal carbon footprint to be about 3 tons per year. The national average is about 7.5 tons per year. In an effort to lower my footprint to neutral I have set forth a personal plan of action.

I will reduce my driving miles and start saving for a more fuel efficient or hybrid car. Changing the lighting in my house and office to compact fluorescent lighting and lowering my thermostats will make further reductions of my CO2 output. I am in the process of making arrangements for three trees a year to be planted to offset my carbon footprint; this move alone would greatly help make me carbon neutral since tress absorb 1 ton of carbon over their lifetime. I have a head start on outputting carbon but I will only live 30 more years or so and the trees will be able to keep absorbing my mess after I’m gone.

These steps are easy to do and will not effect my lifestyle to any great extent. There is nothing new about these steps either, which proves that we all know what we could do on a daily basis to contribute to the lowering of carbon emissions. The next step is to explore what new technologies or personal habits I could employ to become personally neutral.

Green Leadership from Gov. Sebelius

From the wind swept plains of Kansas, Governor Sebelius fights against the building of two new coal-fired power plants while strongly advocating the use of wind power to provide Kansas with clean renewable energy.

State Senate Bill 148 was set to allow the building of two plants by Sunflower Electric that would have produced about 11 million tons of CO2 annually. The Kansas legislators in favor of the bill pushed the idea that the project would bring jobs and low-cost energy to the region. Governor Sebelius vetoed the bill and the legislators brought it back but failed the post enough votes to override the veto.

After the rise and fall of corn based Ethanol as the “savior” of the global ecosystem, a movement that affected the Kansas farmers greatly, groups like “The Alliance for Sound Energy Policy” are now steering the people of Kansas into the pit of cheap energy at the cost of their health and the environment. Governor Sebelius is promoting wind as an obvious alternative power source, capitalizing on the abundance of wind available throughout the Great Plains region.

In today’s world, the people who we elect to represent us in State Government need to understand that the jobs on the line here are theirs, if they fail to lead in these issues.