Apparently everything really is bigger in Texas, even the hypocrites: The head of the biggest natural gas producer in the U.S. is suing to keep hydraulic fracturing (fracking) out of his own backyard.

When we imagine anti-hydraulic fracturing activists, a well-suited executive from the fossil fuel industry almost never enters the picture. That’s why many are reeling after the Wall Street Journal broke the news that Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil, had joined his neighbors in a lawsuit designed to halt nearby hydraulic fracturing operations.

Before we get all excited and start pointing fingers, it’s important to examine the details. Tillerson’s move isn’t motivated by fears of what hydraulic fracturing will do to the air, water, and soil, as some reports have implied. It’s aimed instead at blocking construction of a water tower that’s necessary for fracking operations to continue (hydraulic fracturing requires a huge amount of water). Viewed in this light, Tillerson’s move is more of a strange showing of solidarity between residents of what I can only imagine is a very well-manicured neighborhood in Bartonville, Texas.

As the Wall Street Journal reports: “[Tillerson] and his neighbors had filed suit to block the tower, saying it is illegal and would create ‘a noise nuisance and traffic hazards,’ in part because it would provide water for use in hydraulic fracturing.”

“Tillerson’s attorney told the Journal he had no concerns about fracking-related traffic and rather was simply opposed to a water tower hovering over the 83-acre horse ranch he and wife Renda, a former competitive barrel jumper, share,” explains The Dallas Morning News.

So, a rich guy is more concerned about preserving his view than protecting his water supply–so what? Well for one thing it’s a direct contradiction of rhetoric the fossil fuel industry has forced down the throat of communities from Pennsylvania to California: hydraulic fracturing is harmless, non-disruptive and healthy for everyone.

Unless you’re a wealthy oil baron with lots of clout in your small Texas town. Then it becomes unsightly, a nuisance, and a threat to property values. Whether or not Tillerson says it out loud or not, at the very least hydraulic fracturing disturbs the peace–of the environment, wildlife, and anyone else who happens to be living nearby. No one should be forced to acquiesce these things to the fossil fuel industry just because there’s profit to be made. Whether you’re a stay-at-home-mom or the CEO of ExxonMobil.

Related on Ecosalon

Knocking The Wind Out of T. Boone Pickens

3 Trendy Brands Embracing Clean Energy in a Big Way

China’s Synthetic Natural Gas: Is It Really Clean Energy?

Images: Wikimedia Commons, rifuture

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Sexy solar energy fields from around the world.

The need for smart energy is high on the list of global priorities–up there with water and our waste issues. Pumping fossil fuel has gone on for far too long. Around the world, countries are addressing the need for alternative energy sources, and using smart renewable alternatives like our sun, which produces a ton of energy if you are in the right place. It is estimated that over a 12-hour time period, useable, solar energy can amount to 438,000 watt-hours per square foot per year in one location.

Regions around the world are taking the initiative to shift from fossil fuel energy sources to solar. For example, recently Los Angeles launched the largest solar energy rooftop program in the world. Many of these solar field projects are a fusion of impeccable design aesthetic and sharp scientific consideration. Here’s a round up of beautiful and impressive solar energy fields from around the world. Who every said energy wasn’t sexy?

1. Olmedilla de Alarcón, Spain

2. Ivanpah, Dry Lake, California

3. Ocean Vodka Farm, Hawaii

4. Baltimore Solar Array, on GM plant rooftop, Baltimore

5. Les Mees Solar Field, France

6. Waldpolenz Solar Park, Germany

7. Kaohsiung Stadium, China

8. Gotham Greens, Brooklyn, New York

See Also:

10 Infographics on Energy 

3 Trendy Brands Embracing Clean Energy in a Big Way

5 Cool Gadgets that Help You Save Energy & Help You Create Your Own Electricity 

9 Clean Energy Infographics That Prove Solar & Wind are the Future

Image: brightsource, nobesol, Ivanpah, oceanvodka, General Motors, efinity, wikicommons, Gotham Greens

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We’re all eager to find a viable solution to reduce greenhouse emissions without ruining the economy, but coal probably ain’t it right now.

Clean coal is nothing but “a joke,” according to Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune. And the reasons to believe him are compelling, turning ex-coal hopefuls like me against this apparent fraud in the alternative-fuel biz. And despite ample buzz surrounding the idea of clean coal as a pristine energy source, prominent nature defenders such as Greenpeace shun the pursuit of coal as an answer to our climate-change problem. Looking beyond the hype, it’s pretty easy to see why coal’s squeaky-clean image is only a facade.

Here’s the theory behind clean coal: Coal is the dirtiest form of energy that exists, but by limiting emissions you can reduce the pollution. To achieve this, you can “scrub” away noxious impurities like sulfur, which causes acid rain when burned, and then build plants that capture greenhouse gasses as the coal burns in order to prevent them from entering the atmosphere. Another option is to avoid coal combustion altogether in favor of a gasification process that uses oxygen and steam, no burning required.

This all sounds pretty good, right? Unfortunately, environmental experts smell a wolf in sheep’s clothing. First of all, the technology for carbon capture and gasification simply isn’t there, despite billions of dollars worth of research. Brune notes that the capturing process we’re working on is too expensive, uses massive amounts of energy and requires the construction of new plants just to trap the emissions from existing ones—not exactly efficient. Plus, the very act of mining coal is highly destructive, often involving the removal of entire mountaintops. Not cool.

The truth is that coal has powerful lobbyists spending tens of millions of dollars to convince us and Congress that clean coal is the answer, says Greenpeace. Lobbyists run alluring ads on TV during prime viewing times, omitting the fact that coal burning produces mercury contamination in addition to air pollution, literally spewing carcinogens. Coal already produces about half of our electricity, which is the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the country.

The good news is that we don’t have to look far for better alternatives. Brune endorses natural gas as a “bridge fuel” until we find a better solution—which could even prove to be coal if we discover safe and effective extraction and burning options. As plentiful as natural gas is in the United States, this option makes sense until technology catches up with our needs.

Smaller-scale renewable options also work well for certain communities. The Natural Resources Defense Council pushes wind energy, solar energy, hydropower, geothermal energy and offshore tidal energy where they’re possible. Farmers can even produce energy using gases from animal waste—I assume they remove the smell.

With all the options out there, clean coal just doesn’t make sense right now. With luck, technology will find a way to make coal sustainable; but until that happens, we’re better off looking elsewhere to solve our energy needs.

image: gynti_46

The post The Dirt on Clean Coal: Looking Beyond the Alternative Fuel Hype appeared first on EcoSalon.

Your online shopping is costing more than you think.

Every year, more and more companies are shifting their business-critical systems and data online, into what has been nicknamed “the cloud” – and we’re just beginning to understand the real-world cost of doing that.

In an ideal world, the internet would be underpinned with technology running at peak efficiency. As a year-long study conducted by the New York Times has discovered, the world is far from ideal. The data centers (or servers) worldwide that are almost always kept running 24 hours a day – in line with the 24-hour nature of online business – consume some 30 billion watts of electricity – that’s 30 nuclear power plants, just to keep servers ticking over. In the United States, they account for an estimated 2% of the national electricity output.

There’s no doubt that this figure is going to rise. What’s appalling is that it really should be dropping.

The study found that up to 90% of the electricity reaching these servers was being wasted, mainly due to servers running flat-out around the clock and converting so much energy into excess heat. Furthermore, these servers require backups, usually running on diesel, and the study uncovered multiple examples of clean air regulation violations. Worse still, some of these servers will be doing nothing useful with the power they’re receiving – one sample of 333 servers in 2010 found more than half of them in a “comatose” state, while three-quarters of them were using less than 10% of their computational power.

And how’s this for a depressing summary?

In a typical data center, those losses combined with low utilization can mean that the energy wasted is as much as 30 times the amount of electricity used to carry out the basic purpose of the data center.

James Glanz, New York Times

In a world of business-critical redundancy hardware and the need to meet instantly scaled-up demand, does the world need to put up with such chronic inefficiency? Not so. The National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (which of course you’d expect to be championing computer efficiency) managed a 96.4% level of server utilization in July of this year, according to its director of operations. It did it by queuing tasks and making sure the servers were packed out with work throughout the day, rather than compensating for less efficient processor use with more energy-guzzling hardware.

The good news is that this is happening in an industry obsessed with innovation. Google, Facebook and Intel are extremely vocal about their efforts to streamline their power usage, improve server-cooling technology and a host of other features (for example, super-efficient cloud-based structures that would manage data for clients more efficiently than they could themselves) that would make a dent in their energy costs. If data center owners find that investing in efficiency can leads to greater running profits, this situation could be rectified in record time – but as one commenter notes, electricity is cheap, and wasting it to ensure uninterrupted service might be more profitable in the short term. If that’s the case, getting companies to clean up their act will get tricky.

For some people, though, it’s not the data centers that are the root of the problem:

“That’s what’s driving that massive growth — the end-user expectation of anything, anytime, anywhere,” said David Cappuccio, a managing vice president and chief of research at Gartner, the technology research firm. “We’re what’s causing the problem.”

Image: Server room at CERN – torkildr

All quotes: James Glanz, New York Times

The post Vampire Servers: The Energy Cost Of Business As Usual appeared first on EcoSalon.

Time vs. energy waster. 

Coffee and environment are inextricably linked, but to put your caffeine addiction into perspective, consider: one latte releases about the same amount of CO2 emissions as using Facebook for an entire year.

In 2011, Facebook says its “data centers and operations used 532 million kilowatt hours of energy, and emitted 285,000 metric tons of CO2 equivalent.” That’s the same amount of CO2 as about 52,000 passenger vehicles would emit in one year. Broken down per user per year and you get the latte comparison.

Not a coffee drinker? According to the company, one year of Facebook accounts for about the same amount of energy as two glasses of wine.

Pick your environmental poison.

Image: dusk-photography

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The frappuccino gets a major health revamp.

While it is high in calories, sodium, and cholesterol, it’s really the sugar content that blows one of Starbucks’s beloved beverages out of the water. Starbucks’s Caffe Vanilla Frappuccino Blended Smoothie contains 310 calories per 16-ounce serving, in addition to 3 grams of fat, 2 grams of saturated fat, 10 milligrams of cholesterol, 220 milligrams of sodium, and 67 grams of sugar.

Sugar will go straight to your head, give you a short-term high, and then leave you lethargic and glum. It spikes your blood sugar levels, leads to weight gain, is nutritionally empty, contributes to candida, and, to put simply, is actively bad for you. If you are going to consume sugar, get it from something a bit more decadent and lasting than a down-in-a-hot-second drink, regardless of how delicious it may be!

My version of a vanilla Frappuccino smoothie is sugar-free, save for the optional chocolate syrup glaze and whipped cream, using a few drops of zero-calorie, low-glycemic stevia instead. The recipe also goes a step further by replacing cow’s milk with almond milk. Almond milk is a mere 40 calories per 8-ounce serving and avoids the common issues that arise when ingesting dairy, such as hard-to-digest proteins, hormones, depletion of enzymes and vitamins through pasteurization, saturated fat, synthetic chemicals, and a boo-ing cow.

Cutting corners in so many other ways, it’s up to you whether you want to indulge with a topping of whipped cream and chocolate syrup. You can find vegan variations of both in your local health food store.

Enjoy!

Sugar-Free Vegan Vanilla Frappuccino

Ingredients:

• 1 cup coffee cooled
• 1 cup almond milk, soy milk, rice milk, or skim milk.
• 1 banana
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 handfuls of ice
• 1 tablespoon cocoa powder
• 4 drops of liquid stevia, or 2 packets of powdered stevia
• Whipped Cream (optional)
• Chocolate Syrup (optional)

Directions:

Combine all ingredients in a Vitamix and blend until smooth.

Bon Appetit!

Aylin Erman currently resides in Istanbul and is creator of plant-based recipe website GlowKitchen.

Image: Starbucks

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The global energy crisis for dummies.

It’s clear we have a global energy crisis on our hands, but few people know much beyond that. This series of infographics breaks it down, with important information about world energy supplies, global petroleum prices, and the cost savings of switching to alternative energy sources. Do your part and get informed.

Renewable Energy: A newbie’s guide filled with fun statistics.

An Illustrated History of Energy: How far we’ve come.

The Home That Makes You Money: See how switching to alternative energy can actually make you a profit.

The True Cost of Lighting: You’ll definitely switch to a more energy-efficient bulb after checking out this infographic.

World Energy Supply: A look at shifting energy supplies from 1971 to 2030.

Top Ten Cheapest World Petrol Prices: If this depresses you, just be thankful you’re not in Norway.

Renewable Energy Sources: Compare different renewable energy sources with this nifty interactive infographic from GOOD. [click for interaction]

9 Surprising Things About People Who Go Solar: Most are religious dudes who love cars and air conditioning.

Global Investment in Clean Energy: How the rest of the world is addressing this issue.

Energy Consumption Over a Lifetime: We generate about 215 elephants worth of carbon dioxide in our lifetime, and other fun facts.

ALSO CHECK OUT:

10 Earth Day Infographics

10 Food Infographics That Have Us Consciously Consuming

10 Travel Infographics To Spark Your Wanderlust

Check out more infographics here.

Image: Daniel X. O’Neil

The post 10 Infographics On Energy appeared first on EcoSalon.

Forget the oven, just mix and roll.

These Fig and Almond Energy Bites are quick, easy, and don’t involve any baking. They go just as well with an afternoon bike ride or post-run recovery snack as they do with a Sunday evening movie. This is cookie dough without the need for an excuse.

This recipe is adapted from an original recipe by Gimme Some Oven. If you’re up for experimenting, this is your recipe. Since you don’t have to bake them, you can switch out a number of ingredients depending on what you’re in the mood for. Peanut butter instead of almond butter? Sure. Dried cranberries instead of figs? Why not. Make a couple of different batches for the sake of “culinary research.”

Fig and Almond Energy Bites

Ingredients

• 1 cup oats (if you’re gluten-free, make sure they are gluten free certified)
• 1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
• 3/4 cup dried figs, cut into small pieces
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/2 cup ground flaxseed
• 1/2 cup almond butter
• 1/4 cup honey
• 1 tsp almond extract
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon sea salt

Directions

• Mix dry ingredients in a bowl, then add in almond butter and honey. Mix together and let sit in refrigerator for about 30 minutes.
• Roll into balls.
• Store in refrigerator.
• Eat.

Every month on Sunday Recipe, we bring you a new theme of recipes, perfect for whipping up on a Sunday. For February it’s all about easy things to make for a day with friends. Enjoy!

Images: Anna Brones

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Your home’s most banal object gets the iTouch.

Tony Fadell, the inventor of the iPod, left Apple last year to revolutionize the thermostat. Hot, huh? But not too.

Did you know that heating and cooling costs take up half of our monthly household energy bills? That’s as much as the refrigerator, lighting, TVs, computers, and stereos combined. Thermostats are in control of all that usage. In the United States, thermostats determine 10% of our consumed energy usage overall, which equals some 1.7 billion barrels of oil per year.

The thermostat is boxy and stout and not nearly as sleek as a brand new Energy Star icebox, but it is an essential tool in the fight against climate change. Nevertheless, need it look so plain and utilitarian?

Heck no, says Fadell who founded Nest Labs upon his departure from Apple. In October, they released their first product: the world’s sexiest thermostat.

At $249 it’s expensive and, by some accounts, a bit tricky to install. Nest however, is smarter than your average thermostat in that it literally learns to program itself according to your real-life habits.

We encourage programming your thermostat, which can save you 20% on your energy bill, but proper programming requires you to adhere to a strict schedule: lower it when you go to work in the morning, turn it up when you come home, lower it again at bedtime. But you, yourself, rarely adhere to a strict schedule. You go out, sometimes all night, occasionally not taking the walk of shame through your front door until two, three days later. It’s not your thermostat’s job to guilt you; the Nest encourages an active social life.

It builds a schedule around your habits, and can figure out when you’re not there. You can also control it from your laptop and phone.

The Nest uses the same wheel interface as the iPod nestled in a stainless steel frame.

When the little green leaf appears, that means the system is in energy-conserving mode.

If you live in a mega green home and require more than one thermostat, install extra Nests and they’ll communicate with one another.

Considering the thermostats we’re used to:

The Nest is elevating the mundane one degree at a time.

Images: Nest; Passive Aggressive Notes

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Did you know that women hold 39% of leadership positions in the sustainability sector?

Compare that statistic with research that shows women holding only 8% of general management positions in the United States and we’ve got plenty of reason to be excited about this constantly growing industry, not only because it’s providing sustainable solutions for our future, but because women are nearly equal players in terms of representation.

Ecomagination is celebrating some of the women of the clean tech industry by highlighting their efforts. From biofuels to efficiently storing energy, these women are leading the way for the industry as a whole.

But what is it like to be a female in this sector? What does it take to run a successful operation in the clean tech industry? As part of the series by Ecomagination, Solar Sister founder Katherine Lucey will answer community submitted questions on video next week.

Lucey does some inspiring work, empowering women in “remote African villages to become entrepreneurs, selling solar lamps to light the homes of their friends and families using their most plentiful natural resource: the sun.”

To make sure we get your questions for Lucey on Twitter, submit them to @ecosalon and @ecomagination and use the hashtag #ctwomen. You can also leave your question in the comments below by Thursday, October 27, 2011 and we’ll be sure to get it submitted.

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