By John DeFore

The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, a sixty-plus-year-old lab complex near Chicago, needs an enormous amount of juice to run all its number-crunching computers. But its ratio of computing power to electrical usage just made a leap, thanks to the Blue Gene/P, a supercomputer designed for the Department by IBM.

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By John DeFore

Despite efforts to increase recycling, landfills aren’t going away any time soon. But a process called “phytocapping” might drastically reduce their impact on the environment, according to a paper published in the first 2009 issue of the International Journal of Environmental Technology and Management. (The full paper can only be seen if purchased, but it is summarized here.)

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Green Right Now

California this week honored 21 companies and organizations with the Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards, the state’s highest prize for contributions to environmental issues.

The Governor’s Environmental and Economic Leadership Awards program was established in 1993. Recipients are selected by a large panel of evaluators and the Secretaries of Cal/EPA, the Resources Agency, Business, Transportation and Housing Agency, the Department of Food and Agriculture, the State and Consumer Services Agency, and the Governor’s Office. It honors projects in nine categories.

Here are the 2008 award winners in each category with comments from the California EPA:

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From the Environmental Protection Agency

The 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards were presented in conjunction with the National Renewable Energy Marketing Conference, held October 26-29 in Denver, Colorado.

Green Power Pioneer Award

Over the past 30 years, Dr. Jan Hamrin has created a legacy of environmental and economic success. As founder of the nonprofit Center for Resource Solutions, Jan created the nationally known Green-e brand and certification programs for renewable energy, which provide consumer protection in evolving markets. The Green-e logo has become a premium mark of distinction among both buyers and sellers of renewable energy products because it builds upon a stringent set of standards to ensure that consumers who choose to pay a premium price for renewable energy are, in fact, getting a premium product.

Jan managed solar programs for the California Energy Commission in the late 1970s and later founded and led the Independent Energy Producers Association, pulling together renewable power and clean energy interests to affect policy and establish markets for non-utility power in the 1980s and 1990s.

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By Harriet Blake

Rick Hunter, a St. Louis homebuilder, says he’s always been interested in green construction, but in the past decade has become a true believer that green is the future of building. For him and his three-year-old company, Sage Homebuilders, a green collar job is the whole package.

“We’re small and growing quickly,” says Hunter, a co-founder of the 12-employee company. “It’s fun to see how many people want to be part of this movement. People are getting excited about green collar jobs. They’re meaningful. They make people happier in their jobs and make people feel better about what they’re doing. And you can earn a living.”

In St. Louis, Hunter says, green collar jobs are “absolutely the trend, particularly in green construction.” Sage Homebuilders uses green products in new construction and renovation projects, focusing on upgraded energy systems (like the solar panels pictured on this “Near Zero” energy-saving home).

As the country struggles with an economic downturn and job uncertainty, talk of green collar jobs is becoming a larger part of the national dialogue. Late last month, a national rally Green Jobs Now: A Day to Build the New Economy prompted events in 48 states. The rally, sponsored by Green for All, 1Sky and Al Gore’s WE campaign, focused on the dual cause of social justice and a green economy with events ranging from block parties to solution fairs.

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By John DeFore

While automakers and garage-based inventors work on replacing the car as we know it, a scientist at Temple University claims to have found a way of squeezing more out of the ones we already own with a process tongue-twistingly dubbed electrorheology.

A team led by professor Rongjia Tao implemented the principle for a small device that creates a strong electric field to make auto fuel less viscous; that allows much smaller fuel droplets to be injected into the engine for combustion. As the authors explain in the introduction to their paper: “Because combustion starts at the interface between fuel and air and most harmful emissions are coming from incomplete burning, reducing the size of fuel droplets would increase the total surface area to start burning, leading to a cleaner and more efficient engine.”

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By John DeFore

Americans who’ve seen Pedro Almodóvar’s celebrated film Volver may not be surprised to hear that, on some days, Spain gets a third of its energy from wind power: A number of that film’s scenes feature star Penélope Cruz driving through vast fields of white turbines driven by an East wind that plays a crucial part in the story.

Now a researcher at Spain’s Public University of Navarre has patented two new approaches to a problem plaguing wind generators: voltage dips.

As a news release here puts it, the kind of temporary power disruptions that can cause your living room lights to flicker can do a lot more to the mechanisms in a wind turbine. “In fact,” it says, “an interruption of half a second in a productive process can cause the whole process to block and it may have to be reinitiated.” For wind generators, “the electronic part of the unit can burn out or otherwise be destroyed, unless a protection system is installed.”

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By Harriet Blake

Other than the intoxicating smell of new text books and notebooks, the familiar scents of back-to-school may be changing. Ammonia-scented hallways, newly sealed and fuming gym floors, odorously painted classrooms as well as lawns with the subtle scents of pesticide treatments, may be a thing of the past.

In today’s more environmentally conscious world, public and private schools are rethinking how they maintain their buildings. Reducing toxic chemicals in schools – as in our homes — is not only good for the environment, but for those who use these buildings.

In Maryland’s Montgomery County outside of Washington D.C., the public schools have long taken a pro-active approach in using non-toxic cleaners.

“We want our buildings to be clean and at the same time healthy for our students, faculty and the person doing the cleaning,” says Larry Hurd, building services trainer for the school district.

Ten years ago, the district, which oversees 200 schools, changed from an oil-based sealer for their wood gym floors to a water-based sealer. It works well, says Mr. Hurd, and toxins are no longer an issue. “The oil-based sealer was bad for the students and other visitors to our schools, but it was real, real bad for the person applying the sealer.” That person was exposed to the sealer fumes for as much as four hours.

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By John DeFore

With the locavore ideal so much in the media these days and produce of vague origin sparking so many health scares, you’d think the last thing a city would go out of its way to do would be discourage local growers. Especially if those growers are adorable little girls.

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By Barbara Kessler

Hazardous chemicals are on hiatus, bottled water is out and bikes are in at the Democratic Convention in Denver, where organizers are seizing the opportunity to green the festivities this week.

As some 10,000 delegates, volunteers, politicos and media people converge on the Mile High city, they’ll be quenching their thirst at “hydration stations” or water fountains serving Denver tap water (inside and outside the Pepsi Center) instead of grabbing the once ubiquitous and landfill-clogging plastic water bottles that have been the norm at big gatherings.

Yes, what’s old is new again, and conventioneers have already been drinking from the well, so to speak, at weekend events where the non-profit water utility Denver Water provided a truck of chilled agua to refill water bottles. The new approach has been “incredibly well received” by those attending the pre-Convention activities, said Donna Pacetti, the local government conservation coordinator with Denver Water. “They love it. It’s cold water. We keep it chilled so it comes out at about 38-40 degrees.”

Convention goers also will find themselves with another back-to-basics choice, with 1,000 bicycles available free-of-charge for short carbon-free hops around top, courtesy of Humana and the Bikes Belong Coalition.

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By Barbara Kessler
In the race for top carbon emissions polluter, the United States is still Number One, but China is sprinting forward and could soon edge into the lead. The current Olympics host nation accounted for a “staggering 57 percent of the growth of emissions” worldwide this century, and will likely surpass the U.S. [...]

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Weather experts are predicting that some 17 Atlantic storms — about seven more than average — will pack enough strength they’ll reach tropical storm strength in 2008, earning the right to be named and carrying the potential to reach hurricane status.
The best guess for the number of hurricanes, according to weather forecasters at the Colorado [...]

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