Photo credit: Switch Lighting
Switch Lighting’s LED bulbs have similar technical specs to its competitors, but the startup is counting on clever design and good looks to stand out in a crowded field. The company plans to make its first three general-purpose light bulbs available this summer to lighting distributors and today is expected to introduce a three-way bulb and a 240-volt bulb for markets outside the U.S.
To learn more about LED bulbs, click here.
All branches of the US military are on the pursuit for energy-conscious technologies.
“Militaries that fail to innovate lose strategic advantage. Nations that fail to innovate lose economic edge. Clean energy innovation is an essential strategy for making the United States and its service men and women safer, stronger and more successful,” wrote the authors of the Pew report.
Below are 5 examples of technologies that are employed by the U.S. military that officials hope will turn out to be both environmentally sound and strategically advantageous in the long run.
Carbon Trust launches new footprinting guide
One of the ways to understand your business’s environmental impact is to uncover its carbon footprint. Carbon Trust recently released a free guide to help you do just that. The guide shares how to perform two different kinds of eco-footprinting. The first helps businesses determine the carbon footprint of a particular product’s life cycle. The second helps businesses determine the footprint of the whole organization.
The guide gives clear, step-by-step instructions for calculating these footprints – a great value for free. You will need to register (for free) with Carbon Trust, and the end of the guide is devoted to outlining the ways Carbon Trust can help your business. If you’re looking to turn (or keep) your business green, check out sustainability planning, or consider attending a green conference in your industry.
On the surface, Boulder, Colorado seems to be an environmentally-conscious city. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, “it was the first to levy a tax to protect open space” and approved “the nation’s first ‘carbon tax’ to fund energy-conservation programs.” But despite the city’s efforts to promote these programs and subsidize efforts like energy audits, Boulder’s residents don’t seem to be taking as much action as the city would have hoped for. The energy audits provide homeowners and business owners with recommendations for how to be more energy-efficient, yet the city has discovered that very few people are implementing the suggestions.
As a result, Boulder is planning to take its efforts one step further and actually do the work for residents through programs like “Two Techs in a Truck”. Boulder “plans to spend about $1.5 million in city funds and $370,000 in federal stimulus money to hire contractors to do basic upgrades for residents”. The city has chosen to promote these efforts by showing residents the financial benefits of saving energy. But not everyone appreciates the city pushing conservation on them.
For the full story on the challenges of a city ‘s sustainability, see http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704320104575015920992845334.html
Have you hit some green roadblocks?
First there was the tech boom. Then the housing bubble.
Now, new profits and investment opportunities are emerging from the surge in U.S. gas and oil production. Innovations in drilling techniques—such as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, and horizontal drilling—have made it easier to extract oil and natural gas from shale and other rock formations. That has boosted production and led to billions of dollars of profits for some early pioneers and investors.
“America stands on the verge of a major change that puts it on a course to near self-sufficiency” in energy, says Tobias Levkovich, Citigroup’s chief U.S. equity strategist, who says the energy surge is a key reason to be upbeat on the market and U.S. economy.
“The implications are simply stunning on America’s current account figures, trade balances and even potentially the positioning [and cost] of U.S. military forces around the world,” he says. “The increase in production of shale gas could also add millions of new jobs.”
Investors are eager for an energy boost in a market that has only very recently shown some strength. The broad Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is up more than 6% so far in 2012, after ending 2011 pretty much where it began. The S&P Energy Index is up 4.25% this year.
Much as in previous booms, however, investors risk jumping in after some of the best gains have been reaped. Indeed, the energy patch can be a tricky place to invest. Surging gas production has been a boon to consumers and companies that use natural gas for heating or to make various products. But all that added supply, along with an unusually warm winter, have sent gas prices down nearly 50% in the past year.
That drop has pressured companies like Chesapeake Energy, the second-largest natural-gas producer, which has seen its stock price fall by more than a quarter in the past year, even as it meets success extracting more gas through new techniques. Cabot Oil & Gas was the top-performing stock in the S&P 500 last year, with a gain of 100%. But so far this year, the stock has dropped about 15%, another sign of the challenges for investors playing this new wave.
It’s also true that environmental scrutiny of this drilling is on the rise. And shale extraction is relatively new, so there remains uncertainty about how long wells will produce.
Natural-gas prices may rebound from current low levels, at least over the long term, as more uses are found for this low-cost energy. But for now, analysts recommend that investors focus on companies seeing growing oil production from innovative drilling methods, rather than those sticking with gas. Two larger independent drillers that some investors recommend: EOG Resources and Continental Resources.
Other attractive stocks: Chemical companies and others benefiting from tumbling natural-gas prices. Analysts recommend companies including CF Industries Holdings and LyondellBasell Industries.
As recently as 2005, few held out much hope for any boom in U.S. energy production. Most experts said producers would see a gradual slowdown of domestic oil and gas production, and billions of dollars were invested in ways to import natural gas from abroad.
But in just the last few years, the new drilling techniques have created a new gusher. Among the innovations: drilling down in the ground and turning horizontally to capture more of the gas and oil trapped in underground shale deposits, and using a mix of water, sand and chemicals to break apart porous rock and release oil and gas.
The new drilling methods are “a completely disruptive technology” allowing companies to double and triple growth in energy production in just a few years, says Dan Rice, manager of the BlackRock Energy & Resources Fund .
Some of the most attractive companies are those that have been able to shift from natural-gas exploration to oil extraction. As recently as 2006, EOG saw 79% of its revenues come from natural gas, and just 21% from so-called liquids, which include crude oil. But the company became worried about future oversupply of natural gas and began to focus on oil. This year, EOG says, it expects to see about 75% of revenues come from liquids, and just 25% from natural gas.
Mr. Rice says shares of both EOG and Continental, which has become a major driller for oil in areas like North Dakota, are inexpensive.
He also is a fan of Range Resources and EQT, companies active in the booming Marcellus Shale region, which ranges through states including New York and West Virginia. Others recommend smaller energy producers, such as Houston-based Oasis Petroleum which could be takeover targets.
Some analysts are most excited about chemical companies like CF Industries. Nitrogen production accounts for about 80% of the company’s sales, according to analysts at Citigroup. And natural gas accounts for about 85% of the cash production costs for CF’s nitrogen production, the analysts said, a reason for optimism on the company.
Dow Chemical, meanwhile, is benefiting from falling natural-gas prices because it lowers the price for ethane, “a key material” for Dow’s ethylene production, the Citigroup analysts say.
A riskier stock with potential upside: Cheniere Energy , which once aimed to be a big importer of natural gas. A glut of U.S. gas forced the company to scrap those plans, but it now is hoping to be the nation’s first exporter of liquefied natural gas.
As natural gas drops, and consumers and power companies depending on natural gas benefit, the chemical industry will as well, Citigroup says, because “the chemical industry consumes about 10% of natural gas” in the U.S.
BY MICHAEL HOWARD SAUL
A widespread effort to install solar panels on city schools’ rooftops could save taxpayers millions of dollars in energy costs and create more than 5,000 green jobs, according to Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer and a report to be released by his office Thursday.
Mr. Stringer, who wants his office to be viewed as an incubator for creative policy proposals as he contemplates a mayoral bid in 2013, accused Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his administration of adopting a sluggish and narrow approach to solar power in the five boroughs.
To read more visit WSJ.com
BATON ROUGE, La., Nov. 15, 2011 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ –
Albemarle Corporation (NYSE: ALB), a global developer, manufacturer and marketer of highly engineered specialty chemicals, announces the opening of a new Research & Development Microbiology lab in Baton Rouge at the Louisiana Business & Technology Center on the LSU South Campus Research Park. The lab is a partnership between Albemarle Corporation and Southern Microbiological Services, a company founded by LSU Professor Dr. William Doerrler.
The opening of this new lab demonstrates Albemarle’s dedication to serving the industry by providing a platform for the development of new food safety solutions to help meet customer needs. “As we aggressively expand the presence of our Food Safety business globally, we will strengthen our presence in the Food Safety industry by providing timely solutions to assist producers and processors in controlling food borne pathogens,” stated Tina Craft, Global Business Manager, Specialty Bromides.
This state of the art facility, fully staffed with food scientists, specializes in microbiology testing and is equipped to test all food-borne pathogens. As the FDA expands enforcement of the Food Safety Modernization Act to include imported food and as other international regulatory agencies introduce new stricter food safety regulations, Albemarle is positioned to provide food safety solutions around the globe to meet the stringent guidelines proposed to ensure compliance with the new standards.
Albemarle’s Food Safety business is a part of the Company’s Fine Chemistry Global Business Unit and offers a premium line of bromine-based antimicrobials as a unique solution for the food processing industry. Albemarle’s food safety products are some of the fastest growing products used in processing today, proven effective against many pathogenic bacteria such as Salmonella,Campylobacter, Listeria and E. coli.
Source: Albemarle Corporation
Jobs opportunities may seem slim, but positions tied to sustainability are on the rise. Companies are creating job titles such as chief sustainability executive or VP of earth stewardship. These new roles have responsibilities that include: finding better ways to protect the planet, save energy, minimize the carbon foot-print, maintaining an environmentally friendly work place and overseeing their sustainability efforts and communications with an annual green report.
The number of online job postings containing the keyword ‘sustainability’ quadrupled, which aggregates online job postings.
What new positions is your company adding that contain sustainable keywords? If so, we’d love to know.
Need a good reference for eco-employment? Check out: Greenjobs, a guide to eco friendly employment.
Read more about the sustainability job market as covered in the Wall Street Journal, click here.
Carbon Lottery is the first lottery that helps combat climate change. Set up by Sterling Waterford and Splinter Media, the Malta-based lottery not only offers a EUR 4 million cash jackpot, but also functions as a new way of incentivising businesses and members of the public to offset their carbon footprint.
To read more about Carbon Lottery, click here.
Green Week is the biggest annual conference on European environmental policy and took place from May 24th to the 27th in Brussels and around Europe. This year’s theme: “Resource Efficiency – Using less, living better”.
The conference addressed the problem of resource depletion and scarcity, as well as the challenges and opportunities presented by constraints on resources. Albemarle’s European Advocacy Departmentsustainable growth. Over the past decade, the conference has established itself as ‘the event not to miss’ for anyone involved with protecting Europe’s environment. attended this conference that aimed to encourage a shift towards a resource-efficient, low-carbon, low-waste economy to achieve
Sustainability topics ran the gamut of industries and markets. Presentations and discussions focused on phosphorous depletion (focus on agricultural/food use), green chemistry, sustainable consumption and production (SCP), as well as Green Public Procurement (GPP).
Some of the Presentations/discussion panels included:
If you missed the event and want to learn more about Europe’s sustainability progress, visit the Green Week 2011 site.
For more on Albemarle’s sustainability initiatives, visit the Albemarle and the Earthwise sites.
