Pricing Water For The Poor

Ideas & Opinions
Megha Bahree, 12.10.09, 10:40 AM EST
Forbes Magazine dated December 28, 2009

Asit Biswas says the global water crisis is a self-inflicted wound.

Asit Biswas loves to tell the story of the Phnom Penh Water Authority. It was 1993 and a new manager, Ek Sonn Chan, had been appointed to the then bankrupt utility. Of the water that it piped from its reservoirs, 72% disappeared without ever being paid for. Chan decided to chase down errant customers, among them all of Cambodia's government agencies and the Army. When asked to pay up, the officer in charge pulled out a gun. Chan retreated but went back the next day with a handful of journalists in tow. The general once again pulled out his gun. Chan cut off the water supply. The next day the Army paid its dues, and all the other agencies followed. Today the utility is flush with cash, and there is clean drinking water--the kind that can be had straight from the tap--available through the city, around the clock.

As governments across the world, and especially the developing world, worry about a looming water crisis, Biswas dismisses it as a self-inflicted wound. The problem we have, he says, is not scarcity but mismanagement. The solution to shortages is simple: "Water must have a price. Anything that is free won't be used prudently."

Biswas, 70, runs his own think tank, the Third World Center for Water Management, in Mexico City. The center gets its revenue from contracts to advise governments on water management as well as contributions from foundations and aid agencies. Given his blunt talk about water mismanagement, it's a wonder he has any paying clients at all, but he manages to pull in enough--out of fear of kidnapping threats, he won't say how much--to operate on a million dollars a year and support a full-time staff of six, adding researchers as projects require them.

Of the fresh water available today, 70% is used in agriculture, 16% in industry and 14% by households. A recent study by McKinsey predicts global demand for water will increase 40% in 20 years, and in the most rapidly developing countries it will go up by 50%. The areas that are heavily dependent on agriculture and have some of the poorest farmers, like India, sub-Saharan Africa and China, would likely be affected the most. By 2025, according to a World Economic Forum report, water scarcity could affect annual global crop yield so much that the equivalent of 30% of today's global cereal consumption would be lost, even as demand for food increases.

Calm down, says Biswas. "There is enough water until 2060," he says. "Water isn't like oil in that once you use it it breaks up and can't be reused." Water can be reused umpteen times. Improved technology has reduced the cost of desalinating seawater and treating brackish water. More efficient industrial processes--partly driven by a higher cost on usage--are also reducing water consumption in, for instance, steel plants. The main problem, he says, is that water management in most countries is abysmally poor. Governments, however, are not in the habit of attributing shortages to their own ineptitude. They are more likely to describe the problem in apocalyptic terms.

"There's a lobby that says water is a human right [and hence it should be free], and that's baloney," says Biswas. "Food has been declared a human right, and people still pay for it. So why shouldn't they pay for water?"

The poor do pay for water--pay dearly, in fact, for bad water. Where clean piped water isn't available, families in the Third World buy it from water vendors, sometimes a jar at a time. From Manila to Mexico City, they pay between 8 and 15 times as much per gallon as people in wealthy nations and get water of vastly inferior quality, Biswas says.

His solution: tiered pricing. Water should be priced based on monthly usage, with different rates set for different quantities used. A poor household would get a basic allotment at a low fixed rate but would get bumped up into the next higher rate category if it went over that amount even slightly. The next category would have a higher allotment of water usage, at a higher price. This kind of pricing would not only bring users from the gray market onto the meter at an affordable price, but would also give utilities enough cash to improve their supplies. In Phnom Penh, for instance, a household that consumes 2,000 gallons per month or less pays a subsidized rate. This water takes care of drinking, cooking and some hygienic needs. (An average household there has eight people.) Households in the next bracket up pay two times as much for all their gallons used.

While the global average for unaccounted-for water--that is, the difference between the amount of water that's pumped from the reservoir and the amount that is billed for--is about 30%, Phnom Penh has brought it down to 7%, much lower than, for example, London's 27%. New York City claims 6% is unbilled.

Biswas, who grew up in Orissa in southern India, graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology in 1961 with an M.A. in water resources engineering. With few job prospects in a then closed economy, he went to London with $12 in his pocket, the maximum allowed in foreign exchange. Within three days he'd found a job in Liverpool to design dams, but he had to take an advance on his salary to buy his train fare. A year later he joined Queen's University in Canada as a visiting professor. In 1968 he joined the Canadian Civil Service, at its request, to conduct water studies for the national department of natural resources. From the late 1970s he was an advisor to Mostafa Kemal Tolba, the executive director of the un Environmental Program, until founding the water management think tank in 1998.

Biswas blames part of the world's water problems on political interference. India, for instance, under the tutelage of the World Bank, instituted in the 1970s a policy of free electricity for farmers. This was a precondition for loans from the bank to develop the nation's agricultural sector. However, once the farmers got this electricity, the pumps were running nonstop, drilling deeper wells and depleting the water tables. Now, after decades of free electricity, farmers do not want to pay.

Rather than giving water or electricity away, Biswas says, the better way to help farmers is to help them get more crops per drop. This could be done by educating them on the ideal amount of water required for their crops, providing them with higher-yielding seeds and better fertilizers.

The other part of the solution is to improve roads, trains and storage bins so that less of the crop is wasted. India is the world's second-largest producer of cereals and vegetables, but half its output is lost before it gets onto the consumer's table. India processes (freezes, cans or dehydrates) only 2% of its fruits and vegetables, a tiny fraction in comparison with China (23%), the Philippines (78%) or the U.S. (65%).

Governments "should be thinking of increasing availability of food per person," Biswas says. "A country like India has very limited extra good land available, but let's look at other options and not be obsessed with the current trend that we need more water and land to produce more food." The world can keep up with its historical rate of increase in food production of about 2% per year, he thinks, through technological gains. For example, the International Rice Research Institute in Manila is working on rice strains that can stay in floodwaters for three to four weeks, while some companies are developing crops that will be drought- and pest-resistant, and even crops that can grow in saline water.

"Most of my clients realize they cannot continue business as usual," he says. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told him that one of the critical issues on his agenda was water security, especially for the poor, since agriculture contributes a significant 18% to the GDP. In the Indian state of Gujarat the chief minister has been gradually increasing the price of electricity for farmers, and the state utility is finally breaking even after years of running in the red. Singapore's former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew made water a priority, and today the city-state treats all wastewater and desalinates seawater.

Ideally, water, or any scarce good, should be priced at its marginal cost. If the last gallon supplied costs a penny to acquire and deliver, then every gallon should be priced at a penny, even if some of the supply can be had for free. That kind of pricing is, however, politically unrealistic. The next best thing, Biswas tells his clients, is to charge an amount that covers at least the operation and maintenance costs of the water utilities and over a period of time progresses toward marginal cost pricing. "The universal access to clean water will never be realized if water supply is free or heavily subsidized," he says.

By the Numbers: Unaccounted-For Water

City: Amount Lost (%)

Singapore: 5

Phnom Penh: 7

New York: 6

London: 27

The coming energy revolution

Smart-grid techwill bring huge savings to companies, but who foots the bill?
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By Rachael King

updated 9:50 a.m. ET, Thurs., Oct . 15, 2009

Food producer Cargill is taking a carving knife to its electricity bills. At a plant in Springdale, Ark., where the company handles about 50,000 turkeys a day, electricity bills run more than $2 million a year. But Cargill thinks it can cleave $680,000 from the total by using its own generators on high-demand days.

The secret behind this money-saving plan lies in what's known as the smart grid — a wholesale revamp of the system that distributes energy to homes and businesses around the country. Government bodies and utility providers are in the early stages of this multibillion-dollar upgrade to transform the existing grid into a two-way network where power and information flow in both directions between the utility and the customer, not just from the provider to the user.

Done right, the revamp will cut bills, reduce consumption, give users more say in the kinds of energy they use, and even let customers produce their own energy and sell it back to power providers. "What's going to happen with the smart grid is that we're going to create a network that's larger than the Internet," says Guido Jouret, chief technology officer for the emerging-technologies group at Cisco Systems (CSCO), one of the many companies working on the technology needed to modernize the electric grid.

A $20 billion market in five years

The Electric Power Research Institute, a nonprofit research and design group, estimates that it will cost $165 billion, or roughly $8 billion a year for 20 years, to create the smart grid. The market for the gear needed to overhaul smart-grid communications alone may reach $20 billion a year in five years, Cisco estimates. Other technology companies developing smart-grid software and hardware include IBM (IBM), Oracle (ORCL), Google (GOOG), and Siemens (SI).

The tech sector's interest is fitting considering the similarities between the energy-grid upgrade and the computing revolution of the 1980s that saw hulking, centralized mainframes give way to PCs. The existing U.S. power grid dispenses electricity but is limited in its ability to gather intelligence from end users—hence the monthly visit from a meter reader. Now utilities are replacing outmoded meters with so-called smart meters that foster a back-and-forth between customer and utility. In much the same way PCs opened the door to third-party software and services and use of the Internet, smart meters are paving the way for tools and services that make the system more responsive to shifts in energy demands.


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Cargill is counting on smart-grid tech to lower its bills. Many utility vendors set rates for industrial customers based on peak-use patterns. So in a common practice known as peak-shaving, Cargill taps its own generators to keep its 365,000-square-foot Springdale plant cool on summer's hottest days rather than use energy from its electricity vendor, PowerSecure (POWR). The challenge is determining when peaks occur. PowerSecure keeps close tabs on Cargill's generators, as well as fluctuating electricity prices, and when it can tell that rates are on course to pass certain preset thresholds, it fires up Cargill's generators remotely.

Easier to opt for solar or wind

In the future, Cargill may choose to run its generators more often and sell power back to the utility when prices are high, says PowerSecure CEO Sidney Hinton. While Cargill's utility provider doesn't currently purchase energy generated by customers, other utilities, including PG&E (PCG) in California, have begun buying solar energy generated by customers on corporate campuses and residential rooftops

Is shale an answer to the energy question?

New technology opens vast stores of natural gas, and the land rush is on
Floor hands and engineers adjust a motor used for directional drilling on a natural gas drilling platform on December 18 in the Barnett Shale in Fort Worth, Texas.

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By Steven Mufson

updated 7:01 a.m. ET, Thurs., Dec . 3, 2009
The first time Chesapeake Energy tried to buy mineral rights from Diana Whitmore, a 74-year-old retired real estate broker in southern New York, it offered her $125 for every acre of land plus a 12 percent royalty on whatever natural gas it extracts.

Nearly two years later, she's still holding out. Along with hundreds of other landowners, she has joined a coalition that is negotiating with nine oil and gas companies. The latest offers in the area are running as high as $5,500 an acre with 20 percent royalties.

"It's what's really going to turn this whole place around," said her son Daniel Fitzsimmons, who has since helped form the Binghamton Conklin Gas Lease Coalition.

This corner of the state is at the forefront of an old-fashioned land rush that has implications far beyond Conklin, N.Y. Oil and gas companies are vying to stake out territory where they can tap natural gas trapped in shale rock. Just a few years ago, the industry didn't have the technology to unlock these reserves. But thanks to advances in horizontal drilling and methods of fracturing rock with high-pressure blasts of water, sand and chemicals, vast gas reserves in the United States are suddenly within reach.

Half greenhouse gases of coal
As a result, said BP chief executive Tony Hayward, "the picture has changed dramatically."

"The United States is sitting on over 100 years of gas supply at the current rates of consumption," he said. Because natural gas emits half the greenhouse gases of coal, he added, that "provides the United States with a unique opportunity to address concerns about energy security and climate change."

Recoverable U.S. gas reserves could now be bigger than the immense gas reserves of Russia, some experts say. The Marcellus shale formation, stretching across swaths of Pennsylvania, New York and West Virginia, has enough gas to meet the entire nation's needs for at least 14 years, according to an estimate by two Pennsylvania State University experts. Just in Broome County, N.Y., where Fitzsimmons lives, shale gas development could create $15 billion in economic activity, according to consultants hired by the county.

The country is carpeted with shale gas plays, including the Barnett in Texas, Fayetteville in Arkansas and Haynesville in Louisiana. Since 2000, gas from shale has grown from less than 1 percent of the nation's production to about 10 percent, according to the consulting firm PFC Energy, and it's picking up fast.

That's changing the energy and economic landscape from Broome County to the Gulf of Mexico. It could mean lower prices and reassurance to homeowners who heat with gas, or towns and companies with vehicle fleets running on the fuel. As winter begins, the price of natural gas is about a third of the level it was 14 months ago. Storage facilities are bursting.


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With new supplies, the country will be less vulnerable to disruptions from Gulf Coast hurricanes and need to rely less on imports. Already, deliveries of liquefied natural gas from places such as Qatar, Nigeria and Trinidad are down 58 percent in 2008, idling costly U.S. terminals.

Transforming debate
The prospect of new gas supplies at stable prices is also transforming debates over climate change. It deals another blow to proposals for new coal plants. And because gas plants can be switched on and off quickly, unlike coal and nuclear, natural gas could supplement wind and solar power facilities, whose output varies with the weather.

"Natural gas can serve as a bridge fuel to a low-carbon, sustainable energy future," said former Colorado senator Timothy Wirth, now head of the U.N. Foundation. Indeed, this year, coal use is down about 13 percent, while electricity demand has fallen only 5 percent and natural gas use has remained about steady.

But the prospect of widespread shale gas drilling is also driving wedges in the environmental community. Many environmentalists have sounded alarms about the chemicals that drillers use to fracture the rock and the danger of natural gas or other substances contaminating water supplies. A video posted on the Web shows a man in Fort Lupton, Colo., lighting a fire with the tapwater in his kitchen sink -- although it isn't clear what caused that problem.

Residents of New York City, which draws drinking supplies from a large watershed that reaches up to the Catskill Mountains, have protested, and Chesapeake Energy has voluntarily announced that it would not drill in the watershed. Gov. David A. Paterson (D) has declared a moratorium on drilling until the state's Department of Environmental Conservation issues rules, which are open for public comment. A raucous meeting in Manhattan last month ended before even a third of the people who wanted to comment got a chance to speak.

"This is probably the biggest thing to happen to the state of New York since the initial clearing by settlers," said Wes Gillingham, executive director of the Catskill Mountainkeeper.

Steel town plans return to its green roots

University, high school students help out with renovation, river projects
Vandergrift, Pa., has few streets with right angles, as per the designer's vision.
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updated 4:21 p.m. ET, Sat., Nov . 28, 2009
VANDERGRIFT, Pa. - Imagine: It's 1895. A steel baron hires New York's Central Park designer Frederick Law Olmsted to build a town in western Pennsylvania where mill workers can live, work and play. By the turn of the century, Vandergrift's rounded buildings and roads flow along the contours of the Kiskiminetas River.

Reality: Pretty much all that's left of that town is in the imagination.

So 114 years later, Vandergrift residents — from baby boomers who grew up during the town's heyday to students as young as their grandchildren — are reviving Olmsted's vision and making the community environmentally sustainable for the 21st century and beyond.

Their goal is to attract people to live or shop in the boutiques of the quaint town of just 5,000 people — which lost residents, jobs and allure along with steel.

From bringing back green spaces paved-over for parking to seeking how to harness electrical energy for the town from the fast-flowing river, Vandergrift is investing millions toward environmentally sustainable revitalization — a concept gaining popularity in Rust Belt towns that have few viable options for renewal.

"This community is such a wonderful template for demonstrating (sustainability) not just for themselves, but, I think, way outside of Vandergrift," said University of Pittsburgh professor Lisa Mauck Weiland, looking over the skeletal wooden remains of what was once a JCPenney. The building is now the object of a "green" renovation with the input of students from Pitt and a local high school.

While many communities are embracing sustainable revitalization, Vandergrift's strategy is all-encompassing: to create an energy independent, ecologically low-impact, economically viable town from the ashes of its postindustrial wasteland. It aims to renovate buildings with sustainable materials, from carpet textiles to solar roof panels. A farmers market has been expanded. Trees are being planted and green spaces recovered.

Perhaps the most ambitious is the river energy project. With Weiland's guidance and a grant from the National Science Foundation, University of Pittsburgh students are seeking to exploit the hydrokinetic forces of the Kiski River to offset energy costs downtown, without building dams or coal-burning electrical facilities.

Sustainability fits Vandergrift well. Olmsted, known as the father of American landscape architecture, made the town's design one with nature — the philosophy he used when planning the U.S. Capital grounds, the lush green campuses of Boston and Stanford universities, Central Park's 843 acres of woodlands, lawns and ponds — as well as distinctive parks in Boston, Detroit, Milwaukee, Chicago, Atlanta, Louisville, Ky., and Buffalo, N.Y.

Olmsted's theory was that every urbanite, regardless of status, needed a sanctuary. He designed Vandergrift, 35 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, with no right angles, instead following the curves of the river. He also used curving paths to blur movement among pedestrians and hedges to buffer commercialism. Street corners and the buildings on them were rounded. Parks dotted the hilly landscape, and the town was walkable.

"The town is set up and has the same layout as Olmsted designed it," said Ashley Bistline, a 17-year-old senior at Kiski Area High School, who is participating in the JCPenney renovation. "That in itself is enough of an attraction."

The decrepit former department store is not unusual. Many original buildings are in disrepair. Urban islands of grass and flowers are now concrete parking lots. Vacant storefronts and boarded-up buildings dot a main street that is just a whiff of the packed sidewalks, restaurants and boutiques of yesteryear.

Like most other Pittsburgh-area Rust Belt towns, Vandergrift's fortunes dissolved along with the steel industry. In 28 years, the town's population dropped from more than 6,800 in 1980 to barely 5,000 in 2008. By 2000, a quarter of the residents were over 65 and almost 16 percent lived in poverty — about 4 percent higher than the national average.

Memory runs deep in a town with a high elderly population. In the late 1980s a group formed to oppose demolition of the Casino Theater, built in 1900 to feature vaudeville shows. Volunteering labor and funding, they renovated the Greek Revival-style building where school shows and occasionally movies are now featured as the lobby is redone.

Since then, a flower shop has filled a fully restored main street facade, other construction is under way, and the idea of creating downtown residences is being explored.

Meade Jack, president of the Vandergrift Improvement Program, wants sustainable concepts throughout downtown, beginning with the JCPenney — a building the size of four NBA basketball courts — that will get a nearly $2 million, five-year "sustainable" renovation.

"I think a lot of people have forgotten about it. They've written it out of their lives," Bistline said. "That's why we're doing the project, to bring people back to the town."

Ford Fusion Hybrid - Car and Driver Evaluation

2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid
Click to enlarge picture

Ford Fusion Hybrid

It's an unlikely claim, but the Ford Fusion hybrid is in fact the most advanced car on this list. Through the body of this unpretentious family sedan runs the sturdiest bridge between the tech of the 20th century and that of the 21st.

The Fusion's hybrid powertrain is so refined and compact that it's almost not there, but the driver-selectable, power-tracking gauge display gives the game away: It is Donkey Kong addictive, challenging its driver to run on electric power all the way up to a possible 47 mph. This is a boon to both car guys and the unafflicted — you can drive it for fun (a hybrid first) or for mileage (a class-leading 41 city/36 highway), which is also fun.

On the subject of in-car entertainment, Ford's Sync system offers Sirius Travel Link, featuring weather, sports, traffic info, even movie times. This is the car as home computer, only voice controlled, organizing data for the driver and keeping distractions to a minimum.

That both of these elements function so seamlessly is the essence of the Fusion hybrid experience. It undersells itself in a decidedly un-Prius-like way, but its modesty can't obscure its greatness. Fuel-economy numbers, handling, ride, interfaces — there is only virtue, no vice, making the Fusion hybrid the most mainstream and thus the most important alt-fuel vehicle on the road. It decouples fuel economy from economy-car ennui. We admire it as much for what it isn't (polarizing, showy, cramped) as for what it is. And it is both fun to drive and interesting to drive, offering up new definitions of performance and entertainment.

VEHICLE TYPE: front-engine, front-wheel-drive, 5-passenger, 4-door sedan
BASE PRICE: $28,350
ENGINE TYPE: DOHC 16-valve 2.5-liter inline-4,156 hp, 136 lb-ft; AC permanent-magnet synchronous electric motor, 106 hp, 166 lb-ft; combined system, 191 hp
TRANSMISSION: continuously variable automatic
DIMENSIONS: Wheelbase: 107.4 in, Length: 190.6 in, Width: 72.2 in, Height: 56.9 in, Curb weight: 3800 lb
FUEL ECONOMY: EPA city/highway driving: 41/36 mpg

A uranium shortage could derail plans to go nuclear to cut carbon emissions

Green.view

Fuelling fears
Nov 30th 2009
From Economist.com

A uranium shortage could derail plans to go nuclear to cut carbon emissions

THERE is an awesome amount of energy tied up in an atom of uranium. Because of that, projections of the price of nuclear power tend to focus on the cost of building the plant rather than that of fuelling it. But proponents of nuclear energy—who argue, correctly, that such plants emit little carbon dioxide—would do well to remember that, like coal and oil, uranium is a finite resource.

Some 60% of the 66,500 tonnes of uranium needed to fuel the world’s existing nuclear power plants is dug fresh from the ground each year. The remaining 40% comes from so-called secondary sources, in the form of recycled fuel or redundant nuclear warheads. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which is a United Nations body, and the Nuclear Energy Agency, which was formed by the rich countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, both reckon that, at present rates, these secondary sources will be exhausted within the next decade or so.

Once every two years the two agencies publish what is considered the best estimate of global uranium stocks, “Uranium: Resources, Production and Demand”, colloquially known as the Red Book. It estimates that there is enough unmined uranium to supply today’s nuclear power stations for at least 85 years for less than $130 per kilogram. But Michael Dittmar, a researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, thinks they are mistaken. He has studied the uranium supply and argues, in a recent series of papers, that shortages will drive the nuclear renaissance to an untimely end.

Dr Dittmar has unpicked the most recent Red Book numbers on primary production and asserts that they are founded on an alarmingly weak basis. The Red Book is compiled from questionnaires, each of which is handled differently in the countries to which it is sent. The forms might be completed by any number of different government agencies, with added input from mining companies. All, of course, will have their own agenda about the matter. He concludes, “The accuracy of the presented data is certainly not assured.” Dr Dittmar goes on to speculate about the accuracy of a great many figures, both of the amount of uranium that is known to exist, and estimates of how much more might be available. He predicts that shortages of uranium could begin as early as 2013.

For its part, the World Nuclear Association, a nuclear-industry body, argues that if uranium becomes more expensive, mining companies will devise cleverer ways of extracting it—from rock, other elements or even from seawater. Its estimates put the demand in 2030 at anywhere between 42,000 and 140,000 tonnes.

Although your correspondent suspects that Dr Dittmar is probably being overly pessimistic, he is inclined to agree with him that the Red Book’s precise assessments of what will be economically sensible over 85 years are far from accurate. But there are two other factors that could come into play. One is that there may eventually be enough economic incentive for the countries with weapons stockpiles of uranium to release much of it for warmth and peace.

The other is that the International Energy Agency thinks that nuclear power could more easily weather a storm in fuel markets. A 50% increase in the price of uranium would, the agency predicts, cause only a 3% rise in the cost of the electricity it generates, compared with 20% for coal and 38% for gas.

Either way, none of the figures take into account nuclear “new-build”. Where there is an economic incentive to extract more of a resource, industry has a long history of developing technology to do it. Just do not bet on electricity from nuclear power ever becoming too cheap to meter.

Nissan hatches plan to boost battery cars

CEO Ghosn stresses coolness factor, tries new model to bring down price

Nissan Motor Co. CEO Carlos Ghosn says electric vehicles like the automaker's Leaf, shown here, need to be “affordable, … cool, attractive and fun to drive.”

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The evolution of the electric car

The electric car is poised to become a mainstream transportation option for everyday drivers. Click on the ‘launch’ button above to read about the evolution of the electric car.

By Paul A. Eisenstein
msnbc.com contributor
updated 7:38 a.m. ET, Wed., Nov . 25, 2009

President Barack Obama has set an ambitious goal of putting at least 1 million battery-powered cars on the road by the middle of the coming decade.

Many in the auto industry have charitably called that target ambitious. Others are less polite. But while it may be a difficult goal, Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn is among those who believe the public may get charged up by the switch to electric power.

To get there, however, he stresses that some of the industry’s basic business models may have to be rethought to reflect the new world of electric propulsion.

Ghosn was in Los Angeles recently for the start of Nissan’s “Zero Emissions Tour,” a 22-city road show that will lead up to the launch next year of the first of four battery-electric vehicles, or BEVs, the Japanese maker plans to launch in the next few years.

The Leaf is a 5-seat sedan similar in size to the subcompact Versa, but it replaces the current model’s gasoline engine with an 80 kilowatt electric motor with about 110 horsepower that draws its power from a lithium-ion battery pack.

While Ghosn is quick to proclaim that battery propulsion “will change the industry,” he also acknowledges that to win over buyers, tomorrow’s BEVs will need to be “affordable, … cool, attractive and fun to drive.”

On the positive side, electric motors develop maximum tire-spinning torque the moment they start to turn, and a prototype Leaf launched fast enough to throw a passenger back deep into the seat. The design of Nissan’s first battery car is as distinctive as Toyota’s gas-electric hybrid Prius, though Leaf program manager Hideaki Watanabe said Nissan opted against a “spaceship-style design” to avoid alienating more traditional buyers who might otherwise want an emissions-free car.

Nissan is betting there is a core group of buyers who will opt for a vehicle like the Leaf to assuage their “environmental guilt.”

But to make the technology sustainable as a business will require reaching into the mainstream. That’s not easy. Even conventional hybrids, such as the Prius, Honda’s Insight and the Ford Fusion Hybrid, are struggling to garner more than 2 to 3 percent of the U.S. automotive market.

There is no hard data, but it's estimated that there are only a few thousand BEVs on the road now, not including hybrids, which also have a gasoline engine. Hybrids have had some initial success in part because they don’t have some of the limitations of the pure battery car, such as limited range, long charging times and high costs, mostly for their batteries.

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Because of pricey lithium-ion, or LIon, technology, General Motors is expected to charge more than $40,000 for its extended-range electric vehicle, the 2011 Chevrolet Volt. A special $7,500 federal tax credit will bring the price down to the mid-$30,000 range, still a sizable chunk for a compact sedan.

Ghosn suggests the Leaf will be priced no more than “2 to 3 percent” more than a comparable gasoline vehicle, which would mean $25,000 or less, depending on final equipment levels.

How can Nissan afford to make such a deal without going deeply in debt on each vehicle? The sticker price will cover just the vehicle itself, and not the battery, which will be leased separately, Ghosn said. The monthly fee will be based on what it would cost to fuel up a comparable, gasoline-powered vehicle to run about 15,000 miles annually which, depending upon your assumptions about future oil prices, could run $200 to $400.

In its initial incarnation, the Leaf is expected to deliver up to 100 miles on a charge. Actual mileage may vary, depending on driving style and driving conditions. That may not sound like much but research shows that up to 70 percent of American drivers drive less each day than the 40-mile battery range of Volt and more than 80 percent never reach 100 miles in a day.

That doesn’t completely resolve so-called “range anxiety,” the fear of needing a little bit more in an emergency. To help address that, Nissan has been forming a variety of partnerships with the likes of Project Better Place, which is setting up a network of quick charging stations in Israel, and even special facilities that can swap a discharged battery for a fresh one in no more time than it normally takes to gas up.

Here in the States, Nissan recently inked a partnership with Texas-based Reliant Energy, which will provide fast 220-volt chargers to Leaf buyers and set up quick-charge facilities that could be used at offices or on the road. Nissan says one system under development would give an 80 percent charge in less than 10 minutes.

Such joint ventures are critical to making battery power a reality, most automakers have recognized. Many energy providers see a similar payoff, since the goal is to promote charging at night, when the power grid is underutilized and steep discounts can be offered. BMW, for one, has even been working with New York City parking garages to set up chargers for residents who might want an urban commuter car — like its Mini-e — but would otherwise have no place to recharge.

These partnerships, said Nissan’s Watanabe, could also provide a place for batteries once they’re no longer fit for use on the road. They likely would still have plenty of life and could be put out to pasture on load farms designed to stabilize the grid during times of peak demand. They also could serve to collect power from renewable sources like wind, solar or wave during peak production and keep the juice flowing at night or when winds die down.

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Nissan is not only looking for new business models but also updating old ones. Traditionally, there’s been a big profit in providing bigger engines to those who want better performance. As LIon battery chemistry improves, experts anticipate battery packs will get smaller, lighter and cheaper. But for those who might want more range, Nissan is considering the idea of offering optional, longer-range packs —for a premium, of course.

It may also be possible to offer higher-power batteries and more powerful motors for those who might like the idea of a green muscle car.

There’s little doubt the battery car will change the way the auto industry does business. The companies that can adopt their business case to the new technology could lead the charge.

Top 10 Jobs in Green Technologies

Top 10 Jobs in Green Technologies
By Selena Dehne, JIST Publishing

Advanced Search >> The nation's movement to become a more productive and competitive economic force in the global marketplace is bringing a wealth of hope and job opportunities to recession-weary Americans.

"In order to succeed in the 21st century, we are working to improve education, expand health care, fix the infrastructure, overhaul our manufacturing industries, adopt green technologies and continue our leadership in high-tech innovation," says Laurence Shatkin, Ph.D., one of the nation's leading occupational experts and author of the recently released book "200 Best Jobs for Renewing America."

In his book, Shatkin discusses the six industries at the center of America's shift toward a forward-looking economy: education, infrastructure, health care, information and telecommunication technologies, green technologies and advanced manufacturing.

Of these industries, green technologies, in particular, has gained a great deal of interest among individuals hoping to secure a solid job as the economy continues to reinvent itself and become more competitive in the upcoming decades.

According to Shatkin's research, the following list outlines the best jobs overall in green technologies.

1. Construction managers
Annual earnings: $76,230
Percent growth: 15.7 percent

2. Industrial engineers
Annual earnings: $71,430
Percent growth: 20.3 percent

3. First-line supervisors/managers of construction trades and extraction workers
Annual earnings: $55,950
Percent growth: 9.1 percent

4. Environmental scientists and specialists
Annual earnings: $58,380
Percent growth: 25.1 percent

5. Construction and building inspectors
Annual earnings: $48,330
Percent growth: 18.2 percent

6. Environmental engineers
Annual earnings: $72,350
Percent growth: 25.4 percent

7. Plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters
Annual earnings: $44,090
Percent growth: 10.6 percent

8.Geoscientists, except hydrologists and geographers
Annual earnings: $75,800
Percent growth: 21.9 percent

9. Carpenters
Annual earnings: $37,660
Percent growth: 10.3 percent

10. Electricians
Annual earnings: $44,780
Percent growth: 7.4 percent

*Percent growth between 2006 and 2016.

Toxic Waters

As Sewers Fill, Waste Poisons Waterways

By CHARLES DUHIGG
Published: November 22, 2009

It was drizzling lightly in late October when the midnight shift started at the Owls Head Water Pollution Control Plant, where much of Brooklyn’s sewage is treated.

Damon Winter/The New York Times
A worker maintaining a tank at a Brooklyn wastewater treatment plant. Half the rainstorms in New York overwhelm the system.

When It Rains, It Pollutes
Systems on the Brink
Articles in this series are examining the worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators’ response.

Search data on more than 200,000 facilities around the nation permitted to discharge pollutants.

Clean Water Act Violations: The Enforcement Record
The New York Times surveyed violations of the Clean Water Act in every state, and the response by state regulators.

Damon Winter/The New York Times

William Grandner, superintendent of Owls Head Water Pollution Control Plant in Brooklyn, kept an eye on multiple monitors that track the flow of sewage.

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A few miles away, people were walking home without umbrellas from late dinners. But at Owls Head, a swimming pool’s worth of sewage and wastewater was soon rushing in every second. Warning horns began to blare. A little after 1 a.m., with a harder rain falling, Owls Head reached its capacity and workers started shutting the intake gates.

That caused a rising tide throughout Brooklyn’s sewers, and untreated feces and industrial waste started spilling from emergency relief valves into the Upper New York Bay and Gowanus Canal.

“It happens anytime you get a hard rainfall,” said Bob Connaughton, one the plant’s engineers. “Sometimes all it takes is 20 minutes of rain, and you’ve got overflows across Brooklyn.”

One goal of the Clean Water Act of 1972 was to upgrade the nation’s sewer systems, many of them built more than a century ago, to handle growing populations and increasing runoff of rainwater and waste. During the 1970s and 1980s, Congress distributed more than $60 billion to cities to make sure that what goes into toilets, industrial drains and street grates would not endanger human health.

But despite those upgrades, many sewer systems are still frequently overwhelmed, according to a New York Times analysis of environmental data. As a result, sewage is spilling into waterways.

In the last three years alone, more than 9,400 of the nation’s 25,000 sewage systems — including those in major cities — have reported violating the law by dumping untreated or partly treated human waste, chemicals and other hazardous materials into rivers and lakes and elsewhere, according to data from state environmental agencies and the Environmental Protection Agency.

But fewer than one in five sewage systems that broke the law were ever fined or otherwise sanctioned by state or federal regulators, the Times analysis shows.

It is not clear whether the sewage systems that have not reported such dumping are doing any better, because data on overflows and spillage are often incomplete.

As cities have grown rapidly across the nation, many have neglected infrastructure projects and paved over green spaces that once absorbed rainwater. That has contributed to sewage backups into more than 400,000 basements and spills into thousands of streets, according to data collected by state and federal officials. Sometimes, waste has overflowed just upstream from drinking water intake points or near public beaches.

There is no national record-keeping of how many illnesses are caused by sewage spills. But academic research suggests that as many as 20 million people each year become ill from drinking water containing bacteria and other pathogens that are often spread by untreated waste.

A 2007 study published in the journal Pediatrics, focusing on one Milwaukee hospital, indicated that the number of children suffering from serious diarrhea rose whenever local sewers overflowed. Another study, published in 2008 in the Archives of Environmental and Occupational Health, estimated that as many as four million people become sick each year in California from swimming in waters containing the kind of pollution often linked to untreated sewage.

Around New York City, samples collected at dozens of beaches or piers have detected the types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Though the city’s drinking water comes from upstate reservoirs, environmentalists say untreated excrement and other waste in the city’s waterways pose serious health risks.

A Deluge of Sewage

“After the storm, the sewage flowed down the street faster than we could move out of the way and filled my house with over a foot of muck,” said Laura Serrano, whose Bay Shore, N.Y., home was damaged in 2005 by a sewer overflow.

Ms. Serrano, who says she contracted viral meningitis because of exposure to the sewage, has filed suit against Suffolk County, which operates the sewer system. The county’s lawyer disputes responsibility for the damage and injuries.

“I had to move out, and no one will buy my house because the sewage was absorbed into the walls,” Ms. Serrano said. “I can still smell it sometimes.”

When a sewage system overflows or a treatment plant dumps untreated waste, it is often breaking the law. Today, sewage systems are the nation’s most frequent violators of the Clean Water Act. More than a third of all sewer systems — including those in San Diego, Houston, Phoenix, San Antonio, Philadelphia, San Jose and San Francisco — have violated environmental laws since 2006, according to a Times analysis of E.P.A. data.

Thousands of other sewage systems operated by smaller cities, colleges, mobile home parks and companies have also broken the law. But few of the violators are ever punished.

As Sewers Fill, Waste Poisons Waterways

Published: November 22, 2009
(Page 2 of 3)

The E.P.A., in a statement, said that officials agreed that overflows posed a “significant environmental and human health problem, and significantly reducing or eliminating such overflows has been a priority for E.P.A. enforcement since the mid-1990s.”

Damon Winter/The New York Times
Rainwater and sewage are treated at Owls Head.

When It Rains, It Pollutes
Toxic Waters
Systems on the Brink
Articles in this series are examining the worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators’ response.

All Articles in the Series »

Find Water Polluters Near You

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Search data on more than 200,000 facilities around the nation permitted to discharge pollutants.

Clean Water Act Violations: The Enforcement Record
The New York Times surveyed violations of the Clean Water Act in every state, and the response by state regulators.

In the last year, E.P.A. settlements with sewer systems in Hampton Roads, Va., and the east San Francisco Bay have led to more than $200 million spent on new systems to reduce pollution, the agency said. In October, the E.P.A. administrator, Lisa P. Jackson, said she was overhauling how the Clean Water Act is enforced.

But widespread problems still remain.

“The E.P.A. would rather look the other way than crack down on cities, since punishing municipalities can cause political problems,” said Craig Michaels of Riverkeeper, an environmental advocacy group. “But without enforcement and fines, this problem will never end.”

Plant operators and regulators, for their part, say that fines would simply divert money from stretched budgets and that they are doing the best they can with aging systems and overwhelmed pipes.

New York, for example, was one of the first major cities to build a large sewer system, starting construction in 1849. Many of those pipes — constructed of hand-laid brick and ceramic tiles — are still used. Today, the city’s 7,400 miles of sewer pipes operate almost entirely by gravity, unlike in other cities that use large pumps.

New York City’s 14 wastewater treatment plants, which handle 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater a day, have been flooded with thousands of pickles (after a factory dumped its stock), vast flows of discarded chicken heads and large pieces of lumber.

When a toilet flushes in the West Village in Manhattan, the waste runs north six miles through gradually descending pipes to a plant at 137th Street, where it is mixed with so-called biological digesters that consume dangerous pathogens. The wastewater is then mixed with chlorine and sent into the Hudson River.

Fragile System

But New York’s system — like those in hundreds of others cities — combines rainwater runoff with sewage. Over the last three decades, as thousands of acres of trees, bushes and other vegetation in New York have been paved over, the land’s ability to absorb rain has declined significantly. When treatment plants are swamped, the excess spills from 490 overflow pipes throughout the city’s five boroughs.

When the sky is clear, Owls Head can handle the sewage from more than 750,000 people. But the balance is so delicate that Mr. Connaughton and his colleagues must be constantly ready for rain.

They choose cable television packages for their homes based on which company offers the best local weather forecasts. They know meteorologists by the sound of their voices. When the leaves begin to fall each autumn, clogging sewer grates and pipes, Mr. Connaughton sometimes has trouble sleeping.

“I went to Hawaii with my wife, and the whole time I was flipping to the Weather Channel, seeing if it was raining in New York,” he said.

New York’s sewage system overflows essentially every other time it rains.

Reducing such overflows is a priority, city officials say. But eradicating the problem would cost billions.

Officials have spent approximately $35 billion over three decades improving the quality of the waters surrounding the city and have improved systems to capture and store rainwater and sewage, bringing down the frequency and volume of overflows, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection wrote in a statement.

“Water quality in New York City has improved dramatically in the last century, and particularly in the last two decades,” officials wrote.

Several years ago, city officials estimated that it would cost at least $58 billion to prevent all overflows. “Even an expenditure of that magnitude would not result in every part of a river or bay surrounding the city achieving water quality that is suitable for swimming,” the department wrote. “It would, however, increase the average N.Y.C. water and sewer bill by 80 percent.”

The E.P.A., concerned about the risks of overflowing sewers, issued a national framework in 1994 to control overflows, including making sure that pipes are designed so they do not easily become plugged by debris and warning the public when overflows occur. In 2000, Congress amended the Clean Water Act to crack down on overflows.

(Page 3 of 3)

But in hundreds of places, sewer systems remain out of compliance with that framework or the Clean Water Act, which regulates most pollution discharges to waterways. And the burdens on sewer systems are growing as cities become larger and, in some areas, rainstorms become more frequent and fierce.

Damon Winter/The New York Times
The Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, is the largest of New York City’s 14 treatment plants.

When It Rains, It Pollutes
Toxic Waters
Systems on the Brink
Articles in this series are examining the worsening pollution in American waters, and regulators’ response.

Clean Water Act Violations: The Enforcement Record
The New York Times surveyed violations of the Clean Water Act in every state, and the response by state regulators.

New York’s system, for instance, was designed to accommodate a so-called five-year storm — a rainfall so extreme that it is expected to occur, on average, only twice a decade. But in 2007 alone, the city experienced three 25-year storms, according to city officials — storms so strong they would be expected only four times each century.

“When you get five inches of rain in 30 minutes, it’s like Thanksgiving Day traffic on a two-lane bridge in the sewer pipes,” said James Roberts, deputy commissioner of the city’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Government’s Response

To combat these shifts, some cities are encouraging sewer-friendly development. New York, for instance, has instituted zoning laws requiring new parking lots to include landscaped areas to absorb rainwater, established a tax credit for roofs with absorbent vegetation and begun to use millions of dollars for environmentally friendly infrastructure projects.

Philadelphia has announced it will spend $1.6 billion over 20 years to build rain gardens and sidewalks of porous pavement and to plant thousands of trees.

But unless cities require private developers to build in ways that minimize runoff, the volume of rain flowing into sewers is likely to grow, environmentalists say.

The only real solution, say many lawmakers and water advocates, is extensive new spending on sewer systems largely ignored for decades. As much as $400 billion in extra spending is needed over the next decade to fix the nation’s sewer infrastructure, according to estimates by the E.P.A. and the Government Accountability Office.

Legislation under consideration on Capitol Hill contains millions in water infrastructure grants, and the stimulus bill passed this year set aside $6 billion to improve sewers and other water systems.

But that money is only a small fraction of what is needed, officials say. And over the last two decades, federal money for such programs has fallen by 70 percent, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which estimates that a quarter of the state’s sewage and wastewater treatment plants are “using outmoded, inadequate technology.”

“The public has no clue how important these sewage plants are,” said Mr. Connaughton of the Brooklyn site. “Waterborne disease was the scourge of mankind for centuries. These plants stopped that. We’re doing everything we can to clean as much sewage as possible, but sometimes, that isn’t enough.”

Comment

I am sure we have similar problems here in Miami. New or repaired sewers are needed, as well as wastewater plants to process the wastewater and return it to the Earth.

South District Wastewater Treatment Plant

The raw wastewater that comes into the South District Wastewater Treatment Plant first goes through conventional treatment, which consists of the following steps:

Heavy solids are separated from the wastewater stream.
Biological matter is progressively converted into a solid mass by using indigenous, water-borne micro-organisms.

Finally, the biological solids are neutralized and either disposed of or reused. The treated water may be disinfected chemically or physically.
In the case of Miami-Dade County's project, the water will go from secondary treatment through the High-Level Disinfection plant that is under construction.

How water reclamation works:

The first step is microfiltration or ultra-filtration -- a filtration process that removes contaminants from a fluid (liquid and gas) by passage through a micro-porous membrane. A typical microfiltration membrane pore size range is 0.1 to 10 micrometres (µm). (A micrometer is one millionth of a meter. For comparison, a strand of human hair is about 100 µm wide.)

Next, the water goes through reverse osmosis -- basically, a filtration process. It works by using pressure to force a solution through a membrane, retaining the solute on one side and allowing the pure solvent to pass to the other side. This is the reverse of the normal osmosis process, which is the natural movement of solvent from an area of low solute concentration, through a membrane, to an area of high solute concentration when no external pressure is applied.

Hydrogen peroxide is now added. It is commonly used to remove pollutants from wastewater and from air. It contests bacterial growth through oxygen addition. It can also be used to treat pollutants that can be easily oxidized such as iron and sulphides and pollutants that are difficult to oxidize such as dissolved solids, gasoline and pesticides.

Ultraviolet disinfection, a common treatment of drinking water that uses ultraviolet radiations to inactivate microorganisms, is then added. Ultraviolet disinfection of water consists of a purely physical, chemical-free process. The radiation initiates a photochemical reaction that destroys the genetic information contained in the DNA. The bacteria lose their reproductive capability and are destroyed. Even parasites such as Cryptosporidia or Giardia, which are extremely resistant to chemical disinfectants, are efficiently reduced. UV can also be used to remove chlorine and chloramines. This process, called photolysis, requires a higher dose than normal disinfection. The sterilized microorganisms are not removed from the water. UV disinfection does not remove dissolved organics, inorganic compounds or particles in the water. However, UV-oxidation processes can be used to simultaneously destroy trace chemical contaminants and provide high-level disinfection. It is currently in use at the reuse plant in Orange County.

When the full-scale reclaimed water plant is complete and operational it will pump 21 million gallons a day of this purified, highly treated water to the moat at Miami Metrozoo, where it will recharge our groundwater. The result will be very pure water whose quality will be near that of distilled water.

Comment

That is 21 million gallons per day that can be saved for drinking water. Apparently there is only a pilot plant open at this time.

Typically, 50% of the water used residentially is used outdoors. If residents install a submeter they will not be charged for that use, whether its for washing the car, the dog, watering the grass, or refilling the pool. A 50% reduction would be significant for most people and the savings could pay for the cost of installing the submeter. Visit www.miamidade.gov/wasd/save_wup.asp or www.miamidade.gov/wasd/save_submeter.asp for more information.

Reclaimed Water

Reclaimed Water

As Miami-Dade County’s population continues to increase, so does our demand for drinking water. Like all natural resources, the Biscayne Aquifer, Miami-Dade County’s current source of drinking water, is not limitless. The use of reclaimed water in Miami-Dade County helps preserve the Biscayne Aquifer.

Reclaimed water is highly treated, filtered and disinfected wastewater that is beneficially reused. Reclaimed water can replace or supplement groundwater supplies. Common uses for reclaimed water include irrigation, wetlands restoration, aquifer recharge, vehicle washing, air conditioning cooling towers, and other industrial uses. The use of reclaimed water is often referred to as wastewater reuse.

Miami-Dade County is currently expanding its water reclamation program and is currently evaluating several water reclamation projects, including the ambitious High-Level Disinfection project and the South Dade Wastewater Treatment Plant. For more information, read the Reuse Feasbility Study Update Report.

To assess large scale use of reclaimed water, the Miami-Dade Water & Sewer Department is designing two pilot projects. The Aquifer Recharge Pilot Project will evaluate the treatment techniques necessary for recharging the Biscayne Aquifer through the rapid infiltration of highly treated wastewater.The Coastal Wetlands Rehydration Project will investigate the applicability of using highly treated wastewater effluent to replace the historic freshwater flows that once were discharged into the coastal wetlands of Biscayne Bay.

By using reclaimed water, the Miami-Dade Water & Sewer Department is working to provide a sustainable water resource for our environment and our future.

Starbucks: Multinational, multimillion dollar green corporation?

Starbucks: Multinational, multimillion dollar green corporation?
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19 comments

2009 marked a significant change for Starbucks. It's not just because of their net profit loss this year or the fact that they closed hundreds of stores. Starbucks has taken the initiative to build greener and more individualistic chains.

Environmental Controversies

While Starbucks has not been the center of many environmental debates, there are two notable cases where environmental advocates voiced their discontent. The first case was in regards to their cups. The hot cups are made out of 10% post-consumer waste, the plastic lining around the cup actually makes them non-recyclable. Where do all these cups go then? Into the landfill. In fact 2 billion Starbucks cups land in trash [Source: GreenDaily]. Even the plastic cups, which were modified in 2008, are not practical. Sure, they are made of polypropylene (PP), which uses 15 percent less plastic than the average PET cups and emit 45 percent less greenhouse gasses during their production. These PP cups are labeled with a No. 5 symbol at the bottom (recyclable) [Source: Starbucks], but many Starbucks don't even offer recycling.

The second major environmental issue includes the enormous amount of water that Starbucks uses. While the regular appliances like dishwashers and sinks use a large amount of water, the biggest waster is the use of the dipper well method. The method uses a continuous stream of fresh running water to rinse away food residue, to keep utensils clean and prevent bacterial growth [Source: Starbucks], however this method wastes about 6 million gallons of water a day [Source: ABC News].

Starbucks' Initiative

Earlier in 2009, Starbucks responded to these concerns. Partnered with EarthWatch, Starbucks is looking to make all of their cups completely recyclable and actually offer recycling in store [Source: Starbucks]. While it won't be until 2015 that all Starbucks offer these cups, many are taking the initiative to reduce the amount of paper and plastic waste. In fact, in Manhattan, seven stores took part in a cup recycling pilot program offered by the Green Global USA’s Coalition for Resource Recovery (CoRR). The paper cups will be collected and and combined with old corrugated cardboard for recycling [Source: Earth911]. For those planning to stay at Starbucks, the company plans on reintroducing "for here" ceramic cups in stores by 2010, and they also offer $0.10 to people who bring in their own mugs [Source: GreenBiz].

Starbucks has also addressed their water usage and in 2009 they plan to have a complete water footrpint audit to see how much water they are actually using. At the moment, while many stores are still using the dipper well method, many have converted to high pressure dishwashers that use a fraction of the water (less than one gallon per cycle) and train their employees to to keep the refrigeration coils on ice machines clean. This reduces the amount of latent heat that would make ice melt faster [Source: Starbucks]. The company has actually reduced their water usage from 26 gallons/SF in 2006 to 24 in 2008 [Source: Environmental Leader].

But Starbucks is going above and beyond the call of duty and has an entire environmental initiative to make their stores even more environmentally friendly. Earlier this year, three flagship stores, two in Seattle and one in Paris, set the standard for the store. Rather than demolishing and throwing out materials from the previous tenants, Starbucks is actually reusing these items to create chains that have individuality and reflect their respective neighborhoods. But it's not just about reclaiming the materials, Starbucks is seeking LEED certification for all new company-owned stores beginning next year and, in conjunction with 3Degrees, also buys wind renewable energy certificates for more than 211 million kilowatt hours. This actually makes Starbucks one of the largest purchasers of green energy in the US [Source: Environmental Leader]. But they don't stop there. In November of 2009 Starbucks announced that they would switch over standard bulbs to LEDs in over 8,000 locations, allowing them to consume 10% less electricity. This is part of a larger goal to cut energy consumption by 25% by the end of 2010 [Source: Treehugger].

While many consumers and environmentalists have denounced Starbucks in the past, it appears that they have answered almost all of their customers' concerns. It remains to be seen if all of they meet all of these goals, but Starbucks has definitely moved beyond their greenwashing methods of the past.

Read more: starbucks, environment & wildlife, starbucks green initiative, starbucks eco-friendly

Otto V. says
Nov 22, 2009 9:04 AM
If the service would improve, coffee sales would improve especially in the South Bay areas of California.

Natasha S. says
Nov 22, 2009 8:30 AM
Every little bit helps in restoring health to the planet. I especially like the $.10 discount for bringing one's own cup - for many that will be a savings of $.50/week - $2.00 per month - $24.00 per year - or more and 300 paper cups saved. "Pas mal", as the french say. So, I guess I can be thankful for the little things.
Could Starbucks do more? Sure. Will they? That would be very nice. At least they are taking steps in the right direction. Now, if they would pay their baristas more and accept lower corporate profits, that would be even better.
It's the old battle of finding a balance between money and humanity. Which one do we value more? And I say we, because where each of us spend our money determines which side of the balance carries more weight/importance/influence.

Freya The Wanderer says
Nov 22, 2009 8:20 AM
We need to thank Starbucks with our bucks. As long as they continue to go green, we should buy lattes, or at least cups of tea, there.

Wowsux S. says
Nov 22, 2009 7:25 AM
This is the same Starbucks that refused to donate coffee to our troops?

No, after having to read their political sayings on the sides of the cups, I have purchased my last Starbucks anything. They should have stuck to selling coffee and kept their politics off the product.

There are other places to get a cup of coffee, my kitchen for instance.

Jo Fuller says
Nov 22, 2009 7:19 AM
At least this is a start!! More companies should take heed.

PL T. says
Nov 22, 2009 7:07 AM
It's a good start, and I applaud their current and future efforts, especially the Fair Trade coffees. But until Starbucks expedites and actually manifests their green mission, my family and I will choose an independent coffee shop 8x/10.

I say this because we are not all that enamored with their service. It's too variable! Some baristas (and I use the term loosely, since they really don't pull the shots any more) are refreshingly cordial, while others are sullen and condescending - definitely not the OTC personality that belongs in the service industry. Generation X'er's may not care, but we Boomer's prefer a pleasant and polite affect with our expensive coffee.

And while we're on the topic of service - ENOUGH WITH THE UP$ELL! It's a transparent ploy to $ell $omething el$e, and it's obvious that we are not being informed about anything special, only being leaned on to buy more,more,more. So unless the customer is blind, the pastries, etc, are right there in plain view - if we wanted something other than what we ordered, we're capable of saying so.

I realize this annoying practice is not limited to Starbucks, but ditching the 'upsell' sure would be a great improvement there, because good service that backs up a good 'green' product will influence the decision as to where I buy my coffee - and anything else, for that matter.

Marthe B. says
Nov 22, 2009 5:44 AM
starbucks is my favorite place for having a fresh delicious coffee,workers there are nice and friendly and i really would participate more if they'd ask people to bring their own mug,tissues are now made from recycable paper,i wish more details on the coffee packs about fair trade,all their coffee should be from fair trade,i hope they'll do more and more,for peace too:)in palestine and israel

Chad M. says
Nov 22, 2009 5:36 AM
This a start, I guess. But why didn't they start this sooner? Yet another corporate company that is only concerned about profits and nothing else. Yes, profits are needed to stay in business but there are other concerns, as well. The environment is everything and companies like Starbucks need to pay more attention to this. Like most big companies, they'll just enough to shut people up. Sorry, Starbucks, but you haven't done enough to pull me away from my locally owned, much smaller, and much, much greener, coffee shop.

Vladimir Kotenev says
Nov 22, 2009 5:35 AM
Starbuch green strategies claims are fake since I know Starbucks corporate people. It is fishy!

Christoph Wuth says
Nov 22, 2009 5:23 AM
$tarbucks should offer an attractive discount to patrons who pour their coffee in their own cup, and clean up afterwards.

Comment

My local starbucks does allow me to have their old coffee grounds to put in my garden and on my lawn from time to time, but there is a LOT more they could be doing. All of their drink cups could, and should, be recycled. I have spoken to them and they say they really cant do any recycling until corporate okays it. Thats hard to understand because other Starbucks stores 5 miles away recycle regularly. The folks at Starbucks seem to be willing, as they say they have a lot of cardboard and plastic milk cartons that could be recycled, but arent.

Daimler Brings Car-Sharing to the Lone Star State

Daimler Brings Car-Sharing to the Lone Star State
By Tony Borroz November 18, 2009 | 3:20 pm | Categories: Infrastructure, Mass Transit

Swing by Austin, Texas next year, and you’ll see people driving Smart cars they don’t even own. Daimler’s finalized a deal to bring car-sharing to the Texas capital, something we told you was in the works back in March.

Austin will be the American showcase for car2go and an experiment to see how car sharing plays out here in the states. Yes, we know about Zipcar, but car2go is aimed more at a business-to-business model. Or more accurately it’s a business-to-government model, since car2go will be in a partnership with the City of Austin aimed at providing personal, on-demand mobility for more than 13,000 city employees.

This first phase starts with 200 smart fortwo vehicles and a defined group of users, namely, city employees. Car2go aims to increase the number of vehicles at some point in 2010 and make them accessible to everyone. The goal is to make city driving as easy as using a mobile phone, planning for the system to be easy, flexible, reasonably priced and work as a progressive solution to growing challenges of urban mobility.

The car sharing system is fairly uncomplicated. The fortwos are available 24/7 to all members. Members can grab any available vehicle on the street, or, if you’re one of those plan ahead sorts, you can reserve a car online ahead of time.

Being able to use a “car on demand” is a significant difference from traditional car-sharing programs like Zipcar, and another big difference is that car2go allows you to use the vehicle for as long as you like without committing to a specific return time. Also, car2go allows users to make one way trips. Charges are not based on distance, but on time, with rates starting by the minute.

“Car2go is an innovative answer to current and future mobility needs in urban areas. We are pleased with the success we achieved in Ulm, Germany – the first car2go city - and we are ready for the next logical step on our way to an international rollout,” says Daimler board member Dr. Thomas Weber.

Let’s see if Austin can do as well as Ulm, when car2go Smarts are rented as many as 500 to 1,000 times a day and used by 15,000 customers — the equivalent of more than 15 percent of city residents with a drivers license.

Electric Smart Rolling Down the Line

Electric Smart Rolling Down the Line
By Tony Borroz November 19, 2009 | 3:15 pm | Categories: EVs and Hybrids

Drum roll please! The electric Smart ForTwo is officially underway at Daimler’s factory in Hambach, France.

From an urban mobility standpoint, there’s been a lot to love about the Smart from the get go. Although small, it’s built like a tank, it offers the comfort and convenience you’d expect and and it gets great mileage. But if you’re of a green bent and you want to get even better “mileage,” so to speak, the car for you arrives soon.

We’ve been following the Smart for awhile, from the new car-sharing program in Austin, Texas, to those crazy Dutch treating them like cows and taking Daimler to task for not offering the diesel Smart or hybrid version on this side of the Atlantic. Yeah, you can say we’re fans.

Like a lot of you, we’ve wanted to see the EV version of the fortwo as well. It makes total sense – because, let’s face it, the fortwo isn’t exactly a road trip kind of car. Around the city though, it makes total sense. So here comes the EV version — Tesla Motors helped with the drivetrain — off the assembly lines.

The first 1,000 customers to receive their Smart EVs, or Smart electric drive as they are officially called, will be participants in a variety of mobility projects in major cities in both Europe and the United States. Daimler is taking a page from BMW, which is doing the same thing with the Mini E. After Daimler gets feedback on electric driving under everyday conditions for the fortwo electric drive, it will be available to the general public in 2012.

“With the start of the series production of the smart fortwo electric drive, the Hambach plant enters a new era – at the same time, the smart fortwo emphasizes its pioneering role on the way to individual mobility with local zero-emissions in cities and urban areas,” said Marc Langenbrinck, managing director of Smart. “Its innovative battery-electric drive makes the smart fortwo electric drive the ideal vehicle for the city: it combines responsibility to the environment with driving fun and joie de vivre in a virtually perfect manner.”

This is the second-gen fortwo EV, but the first that isn’t strictly an R&D project. By the time 2012 rolls around and Daimler’s gotten feedback on how the little car performs in the real world, the Smart EV will be offered alongside other models in showrooms. Getting a practical, sorted city EV will be as hard as checking an option box on a sales form

Sugar Cane-Fueled Airliner On the Way

Sugar Cane-Fueled Airliner On the Way
By Jason Paur November 19, 2009 | 5:09 pm | Categories: Air Travel, Alt Fuel

Brazilian aircraft maker Embraer and General Electric are working with renewable fuel company Amyris to develop sugar cane-based jet fuel for airliners. They say a test flight by Brazilian airline Azul Linhas Aereas could come in early 2012.

It’s no surprise such an experiment would come in Brazil, which leads the world in the use of ethanol. The country’s sugar cane crop has led to widespread use of ethanol-powered vehicles, and Embraer produces an ethanol-powered crop duster. Sugar-based ethanol provides a better energy return than the much-debated corn ethanol common in the United States. This is the first effort to produce a sugar cane-based jet fuel for widespread use by the airlines.

Air New Zealand, Virgin, Continental and Japan Airlines have tested biofuels in Boeing aircraft. Airbus and JetBlue also are working together on alt fuels, and the Air Force wants alt-fuel too. Most biofuels have faced stiff criticism as the environmental costs of growing and producing the crops have been shown to offset some of the gains. But with airlines struggling with rising fuel costs and increased pressure on emissions, many are eager to find alternatives to petroleum.

Amyris’ synthetically derived biofuel doesn’t avoid the land use issues facing many biofuels, but it claims its technique of bioengineering microorganisms like yeast allows it to transform Brazil’s sugar cane into several renewable fuels including diesel and jet fuels.

Welcome to Iowa. Please Plug In Your Car.

Welcome to Iowa. Please Plug In Your Car.
By Chuck Squatriglia November 20, 2009 | 1:44 pm | Categories: EVs and Hybrids, Infrastructure

California is the birthplace of the coming EV invasion, but a tiny town in Iowa wants to be the birthplace of a “Pony Express” of charging stations that will keep those cars going.

Businessman Mike Howard has erected four charging stations in Elk Horn, a town of 650people about an hour east of Omaha. He has plans to install four more soon. No, that’s not many at all, and they’re in the middle of nowhere. But Howard says you’ve got to start somewhere, especially if you envision a network of charging stations stretching from Denver to Chicago along Interstate 80. He likens his network to the Pony Express.

“They had to have stations to continue on to deliver the mail,” Howard told the Associated Press. “This is a modern-day Pony Express.”

Many automakers are developing electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, and cars like the Chevrolet Volt and Nissan Leaf are expected by the end of next year. The big question has been where people are supposed to plug them in when they aren’t home. We’ve seen campaigns to create “charging corridors” spring up in California and Arizona, and of course Better Place has an ambitious plan for a charging infrastructure people would subscribe to. The Obama Administration is providing $3.4 billion in grants this year to spur development of EVs and bolster the grid.

But Howard wants to bring chargers to the heartland, even though there are, according to the AP, just 96 electric cars in Iowa and only one in Elk Horn.

“He’s definitely being progressive, but you know, somebody’s got to be first,” Pat Davis, program manager for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Vehicle Technologies, told the Associated Press.

Amen

UK Government Soliciting Bids for £30M for Charging Points

UK Government Soliciting Bids for £30M for Charging Points; New Office for Low Emission Vehicles
19 November 2009

The UK Government is soliciting bids for £30 million (US$50 million) in funding to support the installation of plug-in vehicle charging points on streets, car parks and in commercial, retail and leisure facilities. This initiative—called Plugged-In Places—will support the development of between three and six electric car cities and regions across the UK which will act as trailblazers for electric car technology. The experiences of these locations will inform the future development of a national charging infrastructure.

Funding will be made available to consortia in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland made up of local authorities, businesses, electricity distributors and suppliers and other organizations like the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs). The funds will be made available in two phases.

Winning consortia will need to show how their plans fit in with other Government objectives, like improving local air quality, and create local incentives to further encourage the uptake of electric vehicles.

Up to £10 million (US$16.6 million) of the funding is provided from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), through the Strategic Investment Fund, as announced in the Low Carbon Industrial Strategy in July 2009.

Overall, the Government is investing around £400 million ($665 million) to encourage the development, manufacture and use of next-generation ultra-low carbon vehicles. Delivered by the Office for Low Emission Vehicles, this support is being targeted to create new jobs in a low carbon automotive sector and to cut carbon from UK road transport.

The UK can be a world leader in electric and low carbon cars which is why the Government has already committed around £400 million of support to encourage development and uptake of ultra-low emission vehicles. Our aim is for electric and low carbon cars to be an everyday feature of life on UK’s roads in less than five years. There is still a lot of work to be done, however Plugged-In Places is one very significant step putting us firmly on the path to a low carbon future.

—Transport Secretary Andrew Adonis


The total number and location of charging infrastructure supported by this initiative will depend on local plans and requirements. The intention is that successful applicants will match the Government’s investment.

These plans build on existing measures to support alternative fuels. The UK Government also announced the seven schemes that will benefit from £500,000 (US$831,000) of funding through the Alternative Fuels Infrastructure Grant Program. These schemes will see the provision of 72 electric charging points and four gas refuelling stations in areas across England.

=
The Office for Low Emission Vehicles. The Office for Low Emission Vehicles (OLEV), which will deliver the Plugged-In Places Infrastructure Framework, is a new cross- Government team, bringing together existing policy and funding streams to drive policy delivery. Located within the Department for Transport, it incorporates policies, people and funding from DfT, BIS and DECC.

OLEV’s priorities will be accelerating the uptake and delivering ultra low carbon vehicles into the UK transport mix, with a focus on the opportunities that this will have for UK business

Comment

UK seems to be taking the lead in providing the infrastructure for plug-in vehicles.

Calif. to require greener TVs

Reality show: Calif. to require greener TVs
Goal to reduce energy use is opposed by retailers, some manufacturers

High-definition debate
Nov. 16: NBC's Lee Cowan reports on the debate in California ahead of the decision to require greener HDTVs.

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updated 3:29 p.m. ET, Wed., Nov . 18, 2009
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Most power-hungry TVs will be banned from store shelves in California after state regulators adopted a first-in-the nation mandate to lower electricity demand. Given how large the California market is, the regulation could end up as a de facto national standard.

On a unanimous vote, the California Energy Commission on Wednesday required all new televisions up to 58 inches to be more energy efficient beginning in 2011. The requirement will be tougher in 2013, and only a quarter of all TVs on the market currently meet that standard.

The California Energy Commission estimates that TVs account for about 10 percent of a home's electricity use. The concern is that the energy draw will rise by as much as 8 percent a year as consumers buy larger televisions, add more to their homes and watch them more often.

Commissioners say energy efficiency standards are the cheapest and easiest way to save electricity.

"We have every confidence this industry will be able to meet the rule and then some," Energy Commissioner Julia Levin said. "It will save consumers money, it will help protect public health, and it will spark innovation."

Utilities and environmental groups say the TV standards, which mirror the federal standards for TVs awarded the Energy Star label, should head off steep increases in home electricity use and rising electric bills.

TV maker OK with rule
Nov. 16: Kenneth Lowe, co-founder of TV maker Vizio, says his company can meet the rule.

"This is a really big deal, because once standards are in effect it will cut California's power bill by $1 billion a year and avoid the need to build a large, 500megawatt power plant," said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist at the Natural Resources Defense Council. "We hope in the long term, every TV sold in America will be just as efficient as those sold in California."

Televisions account for about 2 percent of California's overall electricity use. Requiring them to be more energy efficient would save enough electricity to power 864,000 single-family homes a year in California by 2023. That's enough for Anaheim, Burbank, Glendale and Palo Alto combined.

An energy-efficient TV would save a household roughly $30 a year per set in lowered electricity costs. If all 35 million TVs watched in the state were replaced with more efficient sets, Californians would save $8.1 billion over 10 years, according to the Energy Commission report.

The electricity savings could also help California meet the goals of its 2006 global warming law, which calls for the state to cut greenhouse gases 25 percent by 2020.

State retailers feel threatened
Some manufacturers say implementing a power standard will cripple innovation, limit consumer choice and harm California retailers because consumers could simply buy TVs out of state or order them online.

The standards would apply to all TVs up to 58 inches, allowing increasing power use for larger TVs.

For example, all new 42-inch television sets must use less than 183 watts by 2011 and less than 116 watts by 2013. That's considerably more efficient than flat-screen TVs placed on the market in recent years.

Retailer against
Nov. 16: Steve Caldero, a TV retail store executive, weighs in on the debate.
Nightly News

A 42-inch Hitachi plasma TV sold in 2007 uses 313 watts while a 42-inch Sharp Liquid-crystal display, or LCD, TV draws 232 watts, according to Energy Commission research.

LCDs now account for about 90 percent of the 4 million TVs sold in California annually.

Some televisions already meet the early standards imposed under the rule approved Wednesday. About three-quarters of the TVs — more than 1,050 models — sold today comply with the 2011 California standards, and more than 300 comply with the 2013 standard, according to the Energy Commission.


Industry representatives have said the standards would force manufacturers to make televisions that have poorer picture quality and fewer features than those sold elsewhere in the U.S.

TVs larger than 58 inches would not be covered under the rule, a concession to independent retailers that sell high-end home-theater TVs. Those sets account for no more than 3 percent of the market.

Commissioners are expected to regulate them in the future.

California has previously led the nation in setting efficiency requirements for dishwashers, washing machines and other household appliances as a way to address the state's growing electricity demand.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger praised the commission’s action as another signal of California’s leadership on environmental matters. He noted that the state’s per-capita electricity consumption has remained flat over the last three decades while energy consumption nationwide has increased.

“I applaud the commission for its hard work to enact these and other cost-effective energy efficiency standards that are not only great for the environment, but also good for consumers,” the governor said in a statement.

GREEN Scam

allamericanpatriots.com :: Business
SEC Charges "Green" Investment Promoters With Operating Ponzi Scheme
Energy Environment Labor Obama Education ARRA By state more...


Posted on November 17th, 2009
Tagged: Business • Colorado • Crime • Denver • Finance • Fraud • Investing • Ponzi scheme • SEC

Washington, D.C., Nov. 16, 2009 — The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged four individuals and two companies involved in perpetrating a $30 million Ponzi scheme in which they persuaded more than 300 investors nationwide to participate in purported environmentally-friendly investment opportunities.

The SEC alleges that Wayde and Donna McKelvy, who were previously married and living in the Denver area, particularly targeted elderly investors or those approaching retirement age to finance such "green" initiatives of Pennsylvania-based Mantria Corporation as a supposed "carbon negative" housing community in rural Tennessee and a "biochar" charcoal substitute made from organic waste.

The McKelvys promoted Mantria investment opportunities through their Denver-based company Speed of Wealth LLC. With the help of two other promoters who are Mantria executives — Troy Wragg and Amanda Knorr of Philadelphia — they convinced investors attending seminars or participating in Internet "webinars" to liquidate their traditional investments such as retirement plans and home equity to instead invest in Mantria.

The SEC alleges that the "green" representations were laced with bogus claims, and investors were falsely promised enormous returns on their investments ranging from 17 percent to "hundreds of percent" annually. In fact, Mantria's environmental initiatives have not generated any significant cash, and any returns paid to investors have been funded almost exclusively from other investors' contributions.

"These promoters fraudulently exaggerated Mantria's green initiatives and used high-pressure tactics to convince investors to chase the promise of lucrative returns," said Don Hoerl, Director of the SEC's Denver Regional Office. "In reality, the only green these promoters seemed interested in was investors' money."

The SEC's complaint, filed in federal court in Denver, charges Mantria and Speed of Wealth as well as the McKelvys, Wragg and Knorr, and seeks an emergency court order to freeze their assets. The SEC alleges that they overstated the scope and success of Mantria's operations in several ways to solicit investors. For instance, they claimed that Mantria was the world's leading manufacturer and distributor of biochar and had multiple facilities producing it at a rate of 25 tons per day. In fact, Mantria has never sold any biochar and has just one facility engaged in testing biochar for possible future commercial production. Furthermore, Mantria's only source of revenue has been from its resale of vacant lots for its purported residential communities in rural Tennessee, but those did not generate cash with which to pay investor returns because Mantria provided 100 percent financing for almost all of its vacant lot sales to buyers using other investors' funds.

According to the SEC's complaint, Speed of Wealth has frequently advertised its events through television, radio and print advertising as well as Internet marketing. At seminars and webinars sponsored by Speed of Wealth, Wayde McKelvy along with Wragg or Knorr generally conduct a two-part presentation in which they urge investors to liquidate all of their traditional investments, including individual retirement accounts, employer-sponsored 401(k) plans, mutual funds, stocks, bonds, and savings accounts. McKelvy also encourages investors to borrow as much as possible against home equity, parents' home equity, and business lines of credit. He then recommends that investors use all of their funds to invest in what he describes as the "consistent and safe" high-yield securities offered by Speed of Wealth and Mantria.

The SEC's complaint alleges that after Wragg or Knorr describe Mantria's purported operations and corresponding securities being offered, they market Speed of Wealth and Mantria securities with high-pressure tactics. They frequently offer short-term incentives and bonuses in various programs to induce investors to "pledge" their investments, or to induce those who have pledged to send in their money immediately. In seminars, webinars, and conference calls, Wayde McKelvy often calls upon past investors to provide "testimonials" about their receipt of high returns from past programs. McKelvy and Wragg also tout the safety and security of Mantria's securities based on collateral consisting of deeds of trust given to investors on Mantria's Tennessee rural land holdings. Wragg even tells potential investors that because of the valuable collateral, investors may make more money on their investments if Mantria defaults than if Mantria makes the promised payments. The promoters frequently allude to Mantria's imminent closing of sales worth hundreds of millions of dollars, initial public offerings of securities that are "sure to come" and "sure to be a very huge Wall Street hit", or upcoming investments by "Wall Street."

The SEC alleges that Mantria and Speed of Wealth used investor funds to pay returns to other investors in typical Ponzi scheme fashion. Mantria and Speed of Wealth also did not tell investors that they kept a significant amount of their funds to generously pay commissions of 12.5 percent to the McKelvys.

The SEC's complaint charges each of the defendants with violating the antifraud and offering registration provisions of the securities laws. The SEC also charged all of the defendants except for Mantria with violating broker-dealer registration requirements. The SEC seeks injunctions, disgorgement, and financial penalties from the defendants.

The Commission acknowledges the assistance of the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies, Division of Securities, with which the Commission has coordinated its investigation. The SEC's investigation is continuing.

Source: SEC

Comment

Scammers come in all colors, I guess.

GE and China Ministry of Railways Sign Strategic Agreement

GE and China Ministry of Railways Sign Strategic MOU to Advance High-Speed Rail Opportunities in the US
17 November 2009

GE and China’s Ministry of Railways signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) to jointly advance high-speed rail (HSR) opportunities in the United States. This collaboration will allow GE Transportation to be the first US locomotive manufacturer to more effectively compete for high-speed rail projects against global competitors.

While GE currently is the world leader in locomotive diesel-electric and electronic control systems technology, China currently is a leader in high-speed rail technology for speeds of 220 miles per hour. Working together, both parties could develop the best solutions faster to serve America’s high-speed rail needs for many years to come.

—Tim Schweikert, President of GE Transportation China

More than $13 billion will be spent over the next five years to support higher- and high-speed rail infrastructure development in the United States. Over the next three years, China will invest about $300 billion into its railways infrastructure, expanding its network by more than 20,000 kilometers (12,427 miles), including 13,000kilometers (8,077 miles) of track designed for high-speed trains capable of traveling up to 220 miles per hour.

GE currently is working with China’s largest diesel locomotive manufacturing company, CSR Qishuyan Locomotive Co., Ltd., to provide China’s Ministry of Railways with the most technologically advanced, fuel-efficient and low-emissions diesel-electric, heavy-haul locomotive available to date. More than 100 of these locomotives already have been placed in revenue service by the MOR.