Our planet offers us some protection against dangerous and devastatingly deadly things in the universe. If the sun’s radiation could penetrate at full strength, our planet would be completely uninhabitable. It would heat up above 700 degrees in direct sunlight, and cool to minus 400 degrees without the sun, a temperature that is called absolute zero. By having an atmosphere, the Earth is protected from this phenomenon and essentially, it acts like an oven keeping a relatively consistent temperature.Half the energy that passes through our atmosphere from the sun is absorbed by the Earth’s surface. The energy that is not absorbed by the surface is then reflected back into the atmosphere where it is absorbed by a blanket of gases. The heat absorbing gases there are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrogen dioxide. These gases are called Greenhouse Gases, and though they occur naturally in the Earth’s atmosphere, they are also produced by humans. The more gases present in our solar system results in the more heat that can be absorbed. The result is our planets temperature rising. This is called the greenhouse effect, or more commonly, Global Warming.

Global warming is affecting our planet in many dangerous ways. The ice caps are melting and causing water levels to rise. This is known as thermal expansion. When the water heats up, it begins to swell. Warmer waters are forcing some animals out of their natural habitat. Marine life is very precise. It has evolved over billions of years to live in a specific climate and the majority of creatures cannot just readapt to changes as humans can. A few degrees does not affect us, we’re used to changing climates. However, it does affect many other species that are forced to move, or forced into extinction. The rearranging of these species is just one of the dangerous things taking place. This affects much of our ocean, and will eventually start to affect humans. The great coral reefs of the world’s oceans are already starting to see the adverse effects of global warming.

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I was sent a link today to an article on Business Green that “Study raises concerns over Chicago Climate Exchange offsets”.  While i have no problem with critical analysis, this article starts with author James Murray writing:

“Firms looking to offsets their carbon emissions have today been advised to steer clear of three high profile emissions reduction schemes after a study claimed that while they are delivering environmental benefits they should not be treated as a source of offset credits”

This is clearly a conclusion that would be troubling to 4Offsets, given our status as a participant on the Chicago Climate Exchange, if such a claim was justified.  In fact after making a statement containing much hyperbole about “steering clear” from CCX offsets, he supports the statement with the following quote:

“The study from environmental publisher Environmental Data Services (ENDS) claims that offset buyers should avoid credits emanating from the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), the New South Wales Greenhouse Gas Abatement Scheme (NGACs) and Renewable Energy Credit projects, on the grounds that they were not developed specifically as offset schemes and as such do not adhere to the most robust offset criteria.

Tejas Ewing, author of The ENDS Guide to Carbon Offsets, said that while each of these initiatives were created for “worthy purposes” and are delivering environmental benefits the credits they offer should not be mistaken for offsets.”

Yes after the scathing claim that the CCX offsets are not upto CDM standards, he provides that statement as the evidence.  I don’t find Mr. Ewing’s statement as indicting the CCX projects, in fact he confirms they provide environmental benefits. Mr. Ewing is discussing whether these projects meet a stricter standard of CDM.  What the  critic (business green, not Mr. Ewing) fails to tell the audience is:

1. CCX offsets sell for $6 per ton, certified credits from projects meeting CDM standards sell for $38 (24.44 euros) per ton.
2. CDM projects are more expensive to verify and gain certification
3. UN Certification currently takes more than 2 years from filing till certification.

Most importantly, the CCX is “the only game in town” for the US market, it may not be perfect, but it’s a market with a significant number of CO2 emitters participating and agreeing to offset their emissions.  Since we are mainly a US focused business, we feel it’s important to participate in the US market and buy these voluntary offsets.  If we chose to only work with Certified offsets and pay $38 a ton, it wouldn’t affect the US market, Detroit Edison and Intel would still need to pay $6 a ton for their CCX obligations, not the $38 per ton i paid for certified offsets. 

More importantly, if we buy the CCX offsets, we have the potential to force the price emitters on the CCX past $6.  If you look at the CCX pricing, it’s gone up by over 100% since Super Tuesday (feb 5th) and Mitt Romney’s pull out, this has increased the cost of an offset and therefore increases the attractiveness to emitters of actually reducing emissions, rather than just offsetting them.

This article’s main complaint is ”they’re not as good”.  Wethink that is ok.  From my understanding, CDM and UN certifications are expensive and impractical for small projects. Worst of all it takes 2 or more years for getting your verified CDM project certified.  While i’m not arguing this is bad, it is expensive. If and when the US adopts a carbon cap, they will legislate what an offset credit is and the CCX will comply and enforce those regulations. Meanwhile i think anything that gets the US involved in the fight against global warming is good and that those companies on the CCX should be supported for leading the way.

4Offsets continues to support the CCX and the US market and is proud to be part of the private sector’s leadership in the America fight against global warming

Southern California Edison (SCE) announced the launch of a project to place 250 megawatts of solar panel capacity on company buildings in Riverside and San Bernardino counties.  The project hopes to add 1 megawatts of capacity each week of the 5 year project. The project is expected to cost nearly $900 million dollars, based on current estimates.  SCE points out that by scattering the installations throughout their service area and connecting directly to local sub stations, this project will reduce transmission related power loss and reduce stress on the regional grid. 

“Not only does this project bring carbon free energy, it also is likely to generate several million dollars a year in CO2 offset credits for SCE”, 4Offsets CEO Fred Weiss noted when interviewed on this news.  Assuming that these panels generate full power for 10 hours a day 300 days a year, which is likely in this desert location, the project will generate approximately 300,000 tons of offsets each year.  “When you add it up, it’s about $2 million worth of US voluntary credits or $12 million if credits are sold in Europe. This is a great example of how offsets can cause real change by providing investors with a better return”, Mr. Weiss added.

Scientists estimate that the Earth has been around for more than 4-billion years. In that relatively short timeframe by universe standards, our planet has witnessed more changes take place than any other body in our solar system. Once a desolate place, the Earth was uninhabitable, nothing thrived here but water and ice which almost covered the entire planet. Eventually, climate changes and some geological events produced an environment in which life slowly started to grow and adapt.Over the course of 4-billion years, life of all types has roamed our planet. From the dinosaurs before us to our hairy ancestors, the apes, Earth has been the home of many species. Of all the steps among the evolutionary scale, humans are without a doubt the most deadly to our loving mother. Apes walked upright and became men before the tectonic shifting of the plates moved continents to where we now know them to be on our globe. We were all in one relatively small area as humans. Our species evolved with a few key characteristics and dispositions. We needed to eat, be safe, and procreate. They were early mans only concerns.

As the years passed, the Earth slowly started to fill up with people. As the thinking-man became king of the evolutionary chart, humans started to divide, conquer, and inhabit all the continents in the world. From humble beginnings to over 6-billion people on today’s planet, we’ve caused more than our share of harm to the Earth’s natural resources. People produce waste; it’s just a byproduct of living. Both human waste which occurs naturally through the ingestion and digesting of food, and man-made waste like plastics and chemicals that we dump into the oceans.

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With the serious threat of global warming increasing, people are mixed on how to feel. Some rush to save the planet; doing everything they can to stop their usage of fossil fuel consumption. And some dismiss global warming as nothing but a theory, refusing to admit its existence. Regardless of your personal feelings about the potential crisis, energy costs are still at an all time high, with no high-water mark set yet. Every day across the globe, people are doing more to save energy in their homes. They’re drastically cutting back on energy consumption, both for the planet, and for their pockets.

Many people consider making these changes while their home is being constructed. More and more people are building energy-efficient homes across the globe. The demand for energy efficiency is surging due to the rapid rise of energy costs. Consumers understand this and are turning to home builders and architects for advisement.

How to incorporate energy efficiencies into your new homes construction:

Make sure you get solar panels for your home. This will be your homes main energy source. There’s no more paying your town or city’s outrageous bill. The sunlight on your solar panels will provide all the energy you will need to run all of your appliances.

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Our Earth is a very fascinating place. The atmosphere that surrounds our Earth acts as a shield from the Sun’s massive amounts of radiant energy and heat. It is a filter of sorts, it keeps the Earth’s temperate at an approximate area, which helped spawn and sustain life. Half of the Sun’s energy is absorbed by the Earth’s surface. The rest is reflected back into the atmosphere where it is then absorbed by the gases which are present there. Nitrogen oxide, carbon dioxide and methane gases absorb the heat, these are called Greenhouse Gases.

Though these greenhouse gases occur naturally in our atmosphere, the human race has added much more to the equation. The more fossil fuels and wood we burn, the more greenhouse gas we produce. This means that our atmosphere can retain much more heat. And in turn, our planet’s temperature begins to rise. This “Greenhouse Effect” is commonly known as Global Warming.

Global Warming has always been a dangerous prospect. Though it is happening, the pace at which it increases isn’t enough to deter people from their dangerous consumption of woods and fossil fuels. In 1900, the average temperature of our planet was 59.8 degrees F. Scientists have predicted that over the next hundreds years, this temperature will increase by 3.6 - 6.3 degrees F. This is the highest rate of global warming our planet has seen in 10,000 years.

Our planet is completely stabilized. Scientists predict that it took upwards of millions of years for the ice caps to set, creating a consistent weather pattern and livable temperature. Unfortunately for mankind, global warming is melting these polar ice caps, and many aspects of life on this planet are already suffering their adverse effects. The ice caps melting are forcing the sea level to rise. This is known as Thermal Expansion.

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Urban wind power systems aren’t new. Way back in the mid-70’s, the first rooftop windmill was installed on top of a NY City co-op building. The wind turbine generated enough electricity monthly - 200 kilowatt-hours - to power the building with enough electricity left over to deliver some to the Northeast power grid. So why didn’t urban wind generation catch on? For one thing, the technology was primitive compared to today’s. The early models were noisy and vibrated enough to be felt throughout the buildings. They looked like propellers on sticks to some people and weren’t aesthetically pleasing at all.

Things have certainly changed. When Chicago turned to Bil Becker, of Aerotecture International, http://www.aerotecture.com, he was able to provide the city with vertical-axis wind turbines that are almost beautiful. More like modern sculptures, these new rooftop turbines are able to generate electricity no matter the wind direction. Unlike horizontal-axis turbines, they can do that even when the wind is blowing with 100 mph gusts! Their price — under $4,000 and falling –make them accessible to the residential market also. Thanks to new design technology, vertical-axis turbines are almost no hazard to wildlife, they don’t vibrate at all and produce very little noise.

With very little fanfare, these rooftop arrays have multiplied at an increasing rate over the last decade, according to the American Wind Energy Association, and the industry is expanding exponentially. Phillipa Rogers, a spokesperson for Quiet Revolution, says, “We can’t make the turbines fast enough.” Company president, Phil Watkins, sees more than 40,000 turbines distributed by next fall. (http://www.plentymag.com/features/2007/09/a_mighty_wind.php)

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In 1970 at Odeillo, France, a solar furnace was built. Focusing the sun’s light, thousands of mirrors combine to produce temperatures up to 5,400 F. The furnace has applications in scientific research, can fire ceramics, and could even generate hydrogen. It was also in France, much earlier in 1949, that the first known modern solar furnace was built by Professor Felix Trombe. It was also built in the Pyrenees due to the almost 300 days of sunshine. Over fifty years old, it is back online and attracts 30,000 visitors annually. It is a dual reflection solar furnace with an array of 1,420 mirrors.Solar furnaces produce extremely high temperatures by using mirrors to parabolically reflect light onto a relatively small area of focus. This effect is similar, only on a larger scale, to the effect of focusing the sun’s rays through a magnifying glass to set fire to a piece of paper. (It’s also reputed to be the method that Archimedes used to burn Roman ships at the Siege of Syracuse.  (source: MIT)
While the heat of a solar furnace can melt steel, whether or not Archimedes’s Death Ray actually worked is unknown.

While some solar furnaces are used to refine metals, coat building materials, incinerate hazardous waste and fire ceramics, others are used for power generation. A type of solar furnace that generates electricity transfers the collected or focused energy of the sun and stores it in a substance for later use. Although water was originally used for a storage medium, liquid sodium is now used due to its higher capacity for heat retention. The stored energy can be used to boil water into steam to power turbines that generate electricity and can also be accessed even during darkness or cloudy days. Spain’s 15 MW Solar Tres Power Tower and 11 MW PS10 Solar Power Tower are based on this design. Other countries, including South Africa, have solar furnace based Solar Power Towers in the planning stages.

The PS10 tower is 40 stories high and is surrounded by an array of 600 heliostats or mirrors which are focused on water-filled plastic tubing at the top of the tower. Because of the reflected light, dust and water vapor in the air are illuminated into a pale fog which surrounds the tower. The tower is projected one day to provide enough power for the 600,000 inhabitants of the city of Seville, but is currently not up to that capacity at 11 Megawatts. Heliostats are being added and as they come online, capacity will increase. Abengoa, the company which owns the tower facility, and Solucar, the operator, report that the cost of generation is three times the cost of conventional power generation, but the tower produces no greenhouse gases, a fact that must be figured into the cost/benefit ratio. And as gas and oil prices rise and more solar furnace technology is adopted, construction and generating costs will no-doubt come more into line with conventional power plant costs. The subject of intense interest, PS10 is Europe’s first commercial Solar Power Tower operation. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6616651.stm)

In the US, two Solar Power Tower projects were funded by the Department of Energy. Solar One and Solar Two, sited in the Mojave Desert in the Southwestern US, were limited successes and resulted in research which proved that liquid sodium is a much better medium for heat storage than water and that the Power Tower design was feasible. Spain’s Solar Tres was based on these projects and used Solar Two as a partial model for its tower design.