Coal is Dead: Coal Ash Spill Yet Another Reason to Switch to Renewable Energy

Written on 12/26 at 12:51 AM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: environment Renewable Energy News

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Image Credit: J. Miles Carey/Knoxville News Sentinel, via Associated Press

Coal Is An Awful Energy Source
For all the efforts of the coal industry to make it seem like it’s possible for there to be such a thing as “clean coal” (Al Gore’s Alliance for Climate Protection has been running some great ads dispelling that myth), yesterday’s disaster in Tennessee has demonstrated yet another way in which coal is a nasty, dirty, awful source of energy. What happened was the following, as described by the New York Times: a “breach occurred when an earthen dike, the only thing separating millions of cubic yards of ash from the river, gave way, releasing a glossy sea of muck, four to six feet thick, dotted with icebergs of ash across the landscape.” The ash is actually fly ash, “a byproduct of the burning of coal to produce electricity” that “contain[s] significant amounts of carcinogens and retains the heavy metal present in coal in far higher concentrations.” This isn’t the first time such a breach has occurred, though it is probably the worst, having destroyed 15 homes and released 2.6 million cubic yards of toxic heavy metals.  So add toxic sludge to air pollution, climate change, danger to miners, and mountaintop removal to the dangers posed by coal mining and the burning of coal to generate electricity.  Isn’t that enough to convince America to switch to renewable energy?

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Considering All the Benefits of Residential Renewable Energy is Critical

Written on 12/14 at 04:05 PM by Andy Posner 4 comments

Filed under: Huffington Post environment Renewable Energy

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post. It can be found in its original context here.

Ask most people about the benefits of residential renewable energy--geothermal, rooftop solar photovoltaic and solar thermal, and backyard wind turbines, primarily--and the response is usually the same: they are good for the environment, raise property value and lower or eliminate utility bills.  While undoubtedly true, these responses present an incomplete picture of the benefits of distributed renewable energy.  In certain instances, such as last week when a single ice storm left over 1 million homes and businesses in New England without power, a residential energy system can mean the difference between seeking shelter and being able to shelter others.  Other times, particularly during peak demand, renewables stabilize the grid and lower costs for all utility customers.

The Grid Can Fail, and It’s Expensive When It Does
America’s electricity grid is an engineering marvel, but it is also old, outdated, overstrained and susceptible to failure from storms, terrorism, accidents and high energy demand.  And when the grid fails, not only is the loss of power inconvenient, it is also dangerous and costly.  For example, the 2003 blackout that stretched from Canada to New York was estimated to have an economic cost of “between $7 and $10 billion. . .due to food spoilage, lost production and overtime wages” as well as the cost of repairing and upgrading the affected parts of the grid.  While the 2003 grid failure was one of the most extraordinary outages to hit the United States, smaller scale blackouts, particularly from storms and natural disasters, are rather common.

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A Financing Mechanism Powerful Enough to Catalyze the Green Economy

Written on 12/07 at 09:02 PM by Andy Posner 1 comments

Filed under: Huffington Post Business environment Renewable Energy

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post.  It can be seen in its original context here.

Despite the recent (and undoubtedly temporary) drop in energy prices, the fact remains that because of the economic downturn and an aging housing stock, many families will struggle to heat their homes this winter.  At the same time, the need to create jobs, stimulate the economy, create sound investment opportunities and drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions has never been greater.  There is no silver bullet for solving all these challenges, but an innovative financing mechanism for renewable energy and energy efficiency could go a long way toward putting the country on the right track.  Here’s how it works.

Homeowners Need Efficiency Upgrades--But Can’t Afford Them
Imagine you are a low-income homeowner in Providence, Rhode Island. Chances are your home is 100 years old: the walls are barely insulated, the windows single-paned, and the boiler a relic of the 1950s.  In the winter your heating bills are such that you can hardly afford to run the heat, often leaving your family shivering.  And even though a $10,000 investment would dramatically lower those heating costs and pay for itself within 5 years, you can hardly pay for the mortgage--let alone $10,000 in efficiency upgrades.

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Too Big To Fail, Too Powerful to Regulate

Written on 12/06 at 01:49 PM by Andy Posner 2 comments

Filed under: Business environment

The Big Three Dama
I’ve been watching the Big Three bailout drama with increasing dismay.  First, the executives from GM, Ford and Chrysler flew in private jets to Washington for a hearing, and then proceeded to beg for $25 billion--without offering a plan as to how the money would help them get out of their present mess.  Congress told them to come back with a plan, and suggested that next time they find a more plebeian mode of transportation. So back the executives came this week, humbly carpooling in the poorly made cars their companies produce, with more detailed plans for restructuring.  The CEOs magnanimously offered to work for $1 a year if they received the bailout money (nevermind that the bulk of their salary comes from stock options and bonuses, not salary).  They presented a plan for laying off workers, closing plants, focusing on core brands, and lowering health care and other costs.  Congress wasn’t exactly impressed, and polls show Americans are not in favor of yet another bailout for yet another mismanaged corporation.

But here’s the problem: the Big Three are just too big to fail.  They directly employ roughly 100,000 people in the United States, but their suppliers across the country employ hundreds of thousands more, and the ripple effect would send our already reeling economy into a tailspin.  It now looks like the auto companies will get their money, albeit only half of what they were originally seeking.  The same “too big to fail” logic was used to justify the bailout of AIG and several other financial institutions.  And, like it or not, in a “centralized” economy, the logic is quite sound.  What concerns me is that “too big to fail” usually means “too powerful to regulate.”

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Don’t Forget the Green Collar Entrepreneurs

Written on 11/23 at 04:49 PM by Andy Posner 0 comments

Filed under: Huffington Post environment

I wrote this article for the Huffington Post.  It can be seen in its original context here.

Van Jones and others have so successfully argued for green collar jobs--defined by Green for All as a job that does something for the planet, pays family wages and provides opportunities for upward mobility--that the term has become ubiquitous among politicians, environmentalists and social activists.  This should come as no surprise, particularly in the current economic climate: after all, who can argue against creating more jobs for American families, jobs that also enhance our infrastructure, national security and environment?  In fact, President-elect Obama recently announced a plan to create 2.5 million jobs over the next two years, and many of those will certainly be green collar.

But lost in all the talk of green collar jobs is the fact that there is a significant portion of the target population--low-income, people of color, the unemployed and underemployed--who want to be green collar entrepreneurs.  For example, roughly 25% of the people that graduate from a green job training program in my hometown of Providence, Rhode Island want to start their own business.  According to Mark Kravatz, who runs the program, the enthusiasm among these entrepreneurs is inspiring; they see how green can be good for them, their family and their community, and they want to get in on the game. So what’s the problem? Simply put, they have little to no options for accessing the capital they would need to make their idea a reality. 

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Green Microfinance: Advancing Social Equality and Environmental Sustainability in the United States

Click here to download a PDF of my complete thesis. Questions and comments are much appreciated!

My masters thesis in Environmental Studies at Brown University looks at how microfinance--the provision of small…

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A Solution to the Limited Success of Micro-Credit in the United States?

Micro-credit has undoubtedly been a runaway success in developing countries as a tool of both poverty alleviation and economic development.  To date, some 100 million people have been reached by micro-loans, and Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank…

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Tonight, the Oneness of Things

It is late and my mind should be drifting through the colorful abyss of deep sleep, yet instead i find that tonight sleep will not come.  I am like a hungry flower who dreams of bees so ardently that all…

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