FEATURES AND NEWS
Here’s the latest news on hirings, promotions and departures among environmental leaders. Marcus Hotels & Resorts: The hotel and resort owner/manager has named Ted Lorenzi (pictured) vice president of engineering and sustainability. Prior to joining Marcus Hotels & Resorts, Lorenzi served as senior director, engineering design and operations for Carlson ... Read more »
Phipps Conservatory & Botanical Gardens’ new Center for Sustainable Landscapes in Pittsburg received Net Zero Energy Building Certification, which it pursued in the Living Building Challenge issued by International Living Future Institute. The building features everything from geothermal, to solar, to wind, to a desiccant dehumidification wheel in order to ... Read more »
The Metropolitan Hotel at The 9 in Cleveland, Ohio, selected Telkonet’s EcoSmart system to manage energy use and Telkonet’s EthoStream high speed Internet access to provide wireless communication infrastructure for a project that incorporates existing office spaces, a landmark structure and new construction. The mixed-use facility requires a very flexible ... Read more »
Annual energy savings by an average of 16 percent have been achieved in a recommissioned building using a RetroWAL interior curtain retrofit system, Thermolite says. Thermolite installed supplemental windows onto the west-facing offices on the 20th floor of an office building in Chicago, which had already undergone retro-commissioning that addressed heating, ... Read more »
The municipality of Izamal, Mexico, hired Martifer Solar and Citelum, a provider of public lighting, to provide the city with solar energy and LED lighting. The Girasol project will be developed through a 15-year contract between Citelum and Izamal. Martifer Solar will serve as the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) ... Read more »
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Worldwide unit sales of solar home systems and 10W-or-below solar systems – sometimes known as “pico” systems – will grow from 8.2 million annually in 2014 to 64.3 million in 2024, according to a report from Navigant Research. The market’s sales value will rise from $550.5 million in 2014 to $2.4 ... Read more »
A Texas team that turns waste from hard drives into critical resources used in efficient wind turbines and electric motors won a recycling prize awarded to student innovators. REEcycle won the $100,000 First Place prize at the Third Annual First Look West (FLoW) Regional competition. An event was held at ... Read more »
CalCom Solar began installation of a 570 kW solar system to power a 300 HP irrigation pump for Pleasant Valley Pistachios farm in central California. CalCom Solar’s proprietary Solar AG Energy software was able to precisely analyze how solar would impact Pleasant Valley’s participation in energy mitigation programs and determined that ... Read more »
Cree says its new XLamp XP-L LED is the first commercially available single-die LED to achieve efficacy of up to 200 lumens per watt (LPW) at 350 mA. Delivering up to 1226 lumens in a 3.45 mm x 3.45 mm package, the LED enables a performance increase of 50 percent ... Read more »
Researchers at Bayer MaterialScience have developed thermally conductive polycarbonate to replace aluminum in heat sinks, thereby reducing assembly steps in the manufacture of LEDs, says the company. Thermally conductive polycarbonate can reduce cost per unit in applications such as multi-faceted reflector or parabolic aluminized reflector lamp configurations. Bayer MaterialScience says ... Read more »
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Rising energy prices are encouraging commercial building operators to invest in sustainable energy practices and related systems. Businesses and consumers alike are feeling the heat from rising utility costs, but commercial buildings in particular, such as hospitals, shopping centers and offices, have been taking a significant hit considering they account ... Read more »
As a consultant to private industry for more than 30 years, Tod Christenson partners with clients to develop and implement fit-for-purpose and innovative solutions to drive sustainability across the entire value chain. He has unique skills and expertise in the areas of strategic thinking and planning methods, sustainability, corporate social ... Read more »
McDonald’s will let its restaurants in different markets use region-specific standards for sustainable beef. The restaurant chain’s Jeffrey Hogue, senior director of global corporate social responsibility and sustainability, told Bloomberg BNA that McDonald’s plans to take a bottom-up approach to achieve its sustainable agriculture goal. In January, McDonald’s pledged to ... Read more »
Sustainability issues are increasingly relevant to investors as they seek to integrate environmental and corporate responsibility factors in both current and future investment practices, according to research by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Most investors anticipate considering sustainability concepts in at least some aspect of the investment decision-making process. In the last 12 months, ... Read more »
The UK logistics industry is on track to meet its target of reducing carbon emissions 8 percent by 2015 against a 2010 baseline a year early, according to the Freight Transport Association’s Logistics Carbon Review 2014. The Logistics Carbon Reduction Scheme (LCRS), which is managed by the Freight Transport Association ... Read more »
Smithfield Foods and its livestock production subsidiary, Murphy-Brown, are collaborating with Environmental Defense Fund to help farmers optimize fertilizer application to grain grown for animal feed. EDF estimates that the collaboration will reduce excess nitrogen fertilizer on more than 450,000 acres and reduce GHG emissions from agriculture by more than ... Read more »
Exelon Nuclear will use Locus Technologies’ EIM and ePortal software to improve its data gathering and management, monitoring and reporting at its nuclear sites, the cloud-based environmental compliance and information management software company says. Exelon Nuclear is a business unit of Exelon Generation with about 34,700MW of owned capacity. In ... Read more »
Ten New England educational, healthcare and other business institutions have become members of the EPA’s Food Recovery Challenge (FRC), a national initiative aimed at encouraging businesses, organizations and institutions to prevent food waste. The 10 new participants are: Boston Medical Center, (Boston, Mass.); Colby College, (Waterville, Maine); Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, ... Read more »
Organic farming practices could sequester more than 100 percent of our current carbon emissions, according to research from the Rodale Institute. Achieving these goals would require the wholesale adoption of the practice of “regenerative farming,” an organic farming technique that the study, Regenerative Organic Agriculture and Climate Change, describes as “widely available and inexpensive.” ... Read more »
Clariant, for its research on the adjuvants for crop protection chemicals market, has won the 2014 Global Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation Leadership. Clariant’s EcoTain products are designed to address strict regulatory requirements, as well as customer demand for safer and more eco-friendly products in the agrochemical ... Read more »
Ecodesk today launched KickStart, a sustainability program designed to help businesses and organizations implement supply chain sustainability initiatives for the first time. The cloud-based program can help public and private SMEs measure their entire supply chain for carbon emissions in just 72 hours, Ecodesk says. KickStart also provides each organization ... Read more »
The World Resources Institute’s online tool that can help businesses manage and benchmark their greenhouse gas emissions now stretches back to 1850. WRI’s Climate Analysis Indicators Tool (CAIT), which allows users to access, visualize, and compare greenhouse gas emissions data from 186 countries and 50 US states, now shows carbon ... Read more »
An Idaho couple is using the Internet to fund their Solar Roadways project that would convert roads and highways into photovoltaic arrays, which they say could produce enough energy to power the entire US. Scott and Julie Brusaw are using crowd-funding website Indiegogo in an attempt to raise $1 million to manufacture the ... Read more »
The US Senate recessed for Memorial weekend without voting on the Expire Act, which includes the production tax credit (PTC) for clean energy and the investment tax credit (ITC) election for wind. The PTC expired on Dec. 31, 2013, but if passed, the Expire bill would retroactively extend it to ... Read more »
Of the 94 energy efficiency-related bills proposed nationwide this year, to date, eight laws have been enacted and 13 bills remain active, according to the Center for the New Energy Economy (CNEE). Energy Efficiency Resource Standards (EERS) legislation was enacted in Indiana, where SB 340 repealed utility efficiency programs. In ... Read more »