EnvironmentLA - The City's official site for information about projects and programs that are making Los Angeles more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power - LADWP offers environmental Green LA programs, including Trees for a Green LA, Energy Efficiency for a Green LA, Solar Energy for a Green LA, Electric Vehicles for a Green LA, Green Power for a Green LA, Recycling for a Green LA and Educational Services for a Green LA.
Green LA Action Plan - The City's official plan to improve energy conservation, transition to renewable power sources, and change the ways citizens commute to work and school.
US Green Building Council-LA - A resource for agencies, municipalities, professionals and companies interested in sustainable, green buildings.
[caption id="attachment_4876" align="alignright" width="113" caption="Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, (Photo: Ford Motor Co.)"][/caption]
Not every abandoned automobile manufacturing plant is doomed to a future of dust, rust and general obsolescence. Thanks to a creative deal between Ford Motor Co., the state of Michigan, and a pair of energy concerns, a shuttered facility near Detroit soon will be cranking out renewable energy and creating new jobs for the region.
Xtreme Power of Austin,Texas and Clairvoyant Energy of Santa Barbara, Calif., reportedly will pay $725 million for the former auto plant in Wixom, Mich. The plan is to use about half of the 4.7 million square feet to manufacture battery-based energy storage systems and high efficiency solar panels. The new owners hope to find other green companies to fill the remaining space.
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, CA (KGO) — Green technology is sparking hope that could help pull California out of a recession. On Friday, the governor visited a synthetic biology company in South San Francisco. But will the so-called “green jobs” really drive the economy? >> Read the full story
At first, I was confused about the resignation of Van Jones, a man so well-suited to his post as the White House Special Advisor on Green Jobs that his tenure should have been long and fruitful. Here was a man who’d founded a human rights organization championing the underprivileged, and then another group, Green for All, that pioneered the idea of re-engaging the working class in progressive new fields of employment like green building and alternative energy. He literally wrote the book on green-collar jobs, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Solve Our Two Biggest Problems (Harper One 2008) before most people had heard the phrase green collar jobs.
Hearing the news of his resignation over the weekend, I consulted the website of Green for All, the Oakland-based project he co-founded and ran before accepting the White House appointment. GFA expressed sadness and obliquely referred to “the buzz and speculation surrounding this news.”
Clearly, this was a murky issue, and Green For All wanted to avoid the mud.
The New York Botanical Garden, historically green by nature, is helping New Yorkers cultivate ever greener ways. This summer it is featuring “edible evenings,” a celebration of home-grown food with tips from chefs and help for getting kids involved in gardening.
There’s a new wind whirly-gig on the block. You may not recognize him. Unlike those tall towers with outstretched airplane-style propellers, this new guy has a compact stance, a whole new look. Arms tucked in, he whirs more slowly and congregates with just a few others to power a building at time.
This wind power generator, called a vertical axis wind turbine, can be puzzling. Looking at one, it’s difficult to fathom how it works, though it simply uses a different aerodynamic concept than its propeller cousins, catching up winds that come from different directions bouncing along closer to the ground. The idea has actually been around for at least 2,000 years “but it’s just never been made to work very well,” says Michael Hess, CEO of Mariah Power.
Last week, the Obama Administration announced a new youth-jobs program designed to simultaneously boost the country’s economy and ecology: a promising, if labyrinthine, new agency called the Office of Youth in Natural Resources (OYNR), which falls under the Department of the Interior. The OYNR debuts with a program, the 21st Century Youth Conservation Corps, patterned after the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930’s (but not expected to create the 3 million jobs CCC did).
The timing couldn’t be better. The White House has been increasingly criticized for the slowness with which ‘Stimulus Act’ money has resulted in actual shovel-ready jobs. Putting kids to work is a great way to counter the criticism.
Massachusetts has been pledged $25 million in federal stimulus money to move ahead on the state’s Wind Technology Testing Center, according to an announcement today by U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu and Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
The infusion of cash is expected to create hundreds of new jobs in the Charlestown area, the site of the planned testing center, which will test commercial wind turbine blades to try to reduce their cost, improve efficiency and get the next generation of blades to market quickly. The Autoport facility will be able to study the longest wind turbine blades, a capability currently only available in Europe.
Michael Caruso, co-owner of Amerisweep, LLC, metro Atlanta area
What I do:
Our company specializes in cleaning parking decks and surface lots using a pressure washing system that reclaims and reuses about 95 percent of the water. The ride-on pressure washer isn’t hooked up to a water source.
How it helps:
A typical pressure washer will use 2,500 to 5,000 gallons of water during a four-hour job and all that water will pour down the drains of the parking decks with dirt and oil.
The Cyclone System we use captures all of these pollutants, keeps them from going down the drains and saves a tremendous amount of precious water in the whole process. Cleaning one parking deck might take 40 hours, so, when you do the math, our company is using about 2,400 gallons while other companies might have to use as much as 40,000 gallons.
I am a solutions specialist for the automotive dealer industry. Our company sells and services most “means of entry” on commercial buildings in Northern Illinois.
The first full day of hearings on that proposed law known as Waxman-Markey, which would promote clean energy, foster green jobs and set up a system to curb greenhouse gas emissions, began today, fittingly, on Earth Day.
But how do we make sense of this sweeping piece of legislation that affects everything from the air you breathe to the refrigerator you use? You could watch the hearings on C-Span over the next few weeks. (If you are unemployed, have all day long to plop in front of the tube and can remain alert for extended periods while people discuss abstractions like “carbon allowances” and “international offsets” this might be for you!)
I manage environmental strategy for NextEra Energy Resources, the largest producer of wind and solar energy in the US. I work with experts in all different parts of the company, as well as outside the company, to develop strategies to keep our projects green, in every way, every day. One of my biggest projects right now is working with Oxford and Texas Christian University to address some of the most critical environmental issues related to renewables.
Chet Shank, age 38, owner of Thinking Green Systems, LLC, Shippensburg, Penn.
What I do:
I’ve been building houses for 20 years and began Thinking Green Systems a little over a year ago. The company is a dealer and installer of “BioBased 501″, a spray-in soybean oil-based polyurethane foam insulation, which does not contain formaldehyde and does not emit CFCs or HFCs.
How it helps:
This insulation is made without petroleum products which are fossil fuels. BioBased 501 is made from soybeans, an annually renewable resource.
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