The Cleantech Group LLC and WWF have partnered to produce a Global Cleantech Innovation Index. The report defines cleantech as embracing a wide range of innovative products and services that contribute both financial returns and positive environmental impacts and outcomes and notes that the term is sometimes used interchangeably with greentech, sustainable technologies, and environmental technologies.

The research places Denmark as having the best business environment for cleantech, followed in order by Israel, Sweden, Finland, USA, Germany, Canada, South Korea, Ireland, and UK as the top ten. At least Canada makes the top ten, but the commentary on Canada is not so encouraging:

Canada scores in the top 10 for both general innovation drivers and commercialised cleantech innovation, but falls below average on cleantech specific drivers. The country has very strong general innovation inputs but lacks strong government policies as well as public R&D funding in support of cleantech innovation. The country has seen strong VC investment, along with a good number of private equity and M&A deals, coupled with good density of public cleantech companies. On the downside, the country’s commercialised cleantech score is held back by below average renewable energy consumption. Canada scores below its immediate neighbour the US.

That is a pretty fair assessment, in GallonDaily’s opinion.

For more details of how Canada and 37 other countries around the world are doing on cleantech, as well as both commentary, examples, and details of the indicators used in the Index visit http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?uNewsID=203662 and download the full report.

When CFC and HCFC refrigerants were tackled by the Montreal Protocol to address stratospheric ozone depletion many users of refrigeration, air conditioning and foaming equipment switched to hydrofluorocarbons, known as HFCs. Now a Nobel Laureate chemist is proposing that the Montreal Protocol should be used to control HFCs because they are making a major contribution to climate change.

In an article in The Hill, a newspaper aimed at the Washington DC Congressional community, Nobel Laureate Mario Molina and Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development in Washington DC, have proposed that by focussing on reducing emissions of black carbon and HFCs, the world can reduce the rate of global warming in half. Black carbon emissions can be controlled through existing national and state laws while HFC use and emissions can be controlled with the Montreal Protocol. Response of the climate system to reductions in emissions of these two substances would, according to these two scientists, happen very quickly.

Some countries that are at serious risk from climate change are already proposing that the next Conference of the Parties to the Montreal Convention on Ozone Depleting Substances address the HFC problem. While action is unlikely to have immediate effect, GallonDaily suggests that current users of HFCs and companies that want to demonstrate their environmental leadership should begin to plan a path away from these very high global warming potential chemicals.

For more information visit http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/energy-a-environment/210599-how-to-cut-climate-change-in-half

A scientific article on the same topic appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2009 and can be read at http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2009/10/09/0902568106.full.pdf%2Bhtml

The Heat is Power Association is a new US industry coalition formed by almost two dozen companies that are in the business of converting waste heat from industry into electricity. While the concept is not new, the forming of an association is expected to encourage recovery of waste heat, an activity that is generally considered to be as valuable as installing renewable energy systems.  The Association claims that recovery of power from waste heat could produce as much as $3 billion in annual savings for American industry, create 160,000 new American jobs, and generate a significant amount of previously unrealized emission-free electricity.

The Association brings together two aspects that GallonDaily especially commends:

• an association of companies promoting more sustainable technologies, rather than waiting for government to promote the technology or competing in a way that reduces the effectiveness of each other’s messages [the members of Heat is Power Association are still competitors but are working together on a common theme that energy from waste power is environmentally sustainable and economically worthwhile].
• industry taking the lead on research and on development of an element of US energy policy that promises to provide jobs and environmental benefits.

Members of the Association include GE Energy, Alliance Pipeline, Guardian, The Smardt Chiller Group, Gulf Coast Green Energy, Hyundai Ideal Electric Co., and more.  Maybe this is an initiative that can be followed by other clean technology industry sectors in both the US and Canada.

 Many more details, including case studies and a complete list of member companies, at http://www.heatispower.org/

A new UN Environment Programme report,  21 Issues for the 21st Century, is gaining greatly increased profile because conservative organizations in the United States, including Fox News, have accused the report, which is only 47 pages long, of being a blueprint for global governance. GallonDaily has reviewed the report and can find nothing in it, except a description of 21 global environmental issues, which can possibly be interpreted in this way. In GallonDaily’s opinion the report’s main value is in helping to organize some of the key environmental issues facing the world today.

The 21 issues were compiled by a panel of 22 scientists with input from 428 scientists from around the world. The issues identified, and briefly described in the report, are, as ranked through scores given by more than 400 scientists worldwide:

• Aligning Governance to the Challenges of Global Sustainability
• Transforming Human Capabilities for the 21st Century: Meeting Global Environmental Challenges and Moving Towards a Green Economy
• New Challenges for Ensuring Food Safety and Food Security for 9 Billion People
• Broken Bridges: Reconnecting Science and Policy
• Social Tipping Points? Catalyzing Rapid and Transformative Changes in Human Behaviour towards the Environment
• New Insights on Water-Land Interactions: Shift in the Management Paradigm?
• Beyond Conservation: Integrating Biodiversity Across the Environmental and Economic Agendas
• New Challenges for Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation: Managing the Unintended Consequences
• Accelerating the Implementation of Environmentally-Friendly Renewable Energy Systems
• Greater Risk than Necessary? The Need for a New Approach for Minimizing Risks of Novel Technologies and Chemicals
• Boosting Urban Sustainability and Resilience
• The New Rush for Land: Responding to New National and International Pressures
• Potential Collapse of Oceanic Systems Requires Integrated Ocean Governance
• Changing the Face of Waste: Solving the Impending Scarcity of Strategic Minerals and Avoiding Electronic Waste
• Shortcutting the Degradation of Inland Waters in Developing Countries
• Acting on the Signal of Climate Change in the Changing Frequency of Extreme Events
• The Environmental Consequences of Decommissioning Nuclear Reactors
• New Concepts for Coping with Creeping Changes and Imminent Thresholds
• Coastal Ecosystems: Addressing Increasing Pressures with Adaptive Governance
• Coping with Migration Caused by New Aspects of Environmental Change
• Managing the Impacts of Glacier Retreat

The report can be found at http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/foresightreport/Portals/24175/pdfs/Foresight_Report-21_Issues_for_the_21st_Century.pdf

Last August  heads of 17 federal agencies and White House offices took an important step in the Administration’s effort to support environmental justice by signing a Memorandum of Understanding on environmental justice.  The EJ MOU renews an Executive Order on environmental justice first signed in 1994. Federal departmental environmental justice strategies required by the MOU were released earlier this week.

The new environmental justice MOU is likely to be much more effective than the original Executive Order,  not only raising the effectiveness of federal agency action but also defining US governmental expectations for industry’s relationship with environmental justice issues. While not binding outside of the US, GallonDaily expects that the US effort is likely to scope expectations of sustainability initiatives such as the Global Reporting Initiative and ISO 26000, an international standard for corporate social responsibility, with respect to expectations for corporate social justice activities in both developed and developing countries.

Gallon Environment Letter will be preparing a summary of the environmental justice plans of the US administration and their significance for business. We will be announcing its availability in Gallon Environment Letter later this year. Strategies with business impacts include:

• Protecting health in communities already over-burdened by pollution.
• Empowering communities to take action to improve their health and environment.
• Protecting and significantly improving the lives of workers from health and safety hazards associated with mining.
• Addressing the impacts of climate change on transportation systems across the country, with a particular emphasis on coastal areas, many of which have low-income and minority populations.

Issued this week, a press release apparently issued by Health Canada via Marketwire under the headline Harmful Chemicals: How You Can Protect Yourself, seems to GallonDaily to simply add more confusion and little or no useful information to the public’s understanding of toxic substance issues. GallonDaily does wish to make it clear that this government press release could be a fake, though we consider this unlikely, because it seems to appear only on Marketwire and not on the Health Canada website.

The release states:

• Chemicals are all around you – in your environment, food, clothes and even your body. While many of them help to improve your quality of life, some chemicals may cause harm to your health and the environment.

While that statement is true, the use of the term “chemicals” is very confusing. Everything, from oxygen to water to salt to dioxin, is a chemical. People are most often concerned about toxic chemicals, not about the rest. Such a basic understanding should not have escaped Health Canada’s wizards.

The press release continues:

• The Government of Canada is taking action to help protect Canadians from harmful chemicals. The Chemicals Management Plan (CMP) is the primary tool used to assess and regulate chemicals.

It is true that a limited number of chemicals are being assessed under the Chemicals Management Plan but none (ZERO) have yet been regulated or restricted using this approach. In contrast, a number of chemicals have been regulated under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which is not mentioned in this press release.

Finally, the release states:

• While the CMP provides a number of measures to manage chemicals, there are actions you can take to protect your health and environment:
  Always follow label directions when using products, and store products according to package directions.
  Use proper disposal methods for products that may contain hazardous material.
  Make your home and car smoke-free.
  Use a wet cloth to remove dust.
  Open windows whenever possible to increase ventilation, especially when you are painting, varnishing or installing new carpets.
  Choose low emission paints, varnishes and glues.

Not bad advice but hardly sufficient to have much impact on the chemicals in household products that are frequently, correctly or incorrectly, described as toxic in the media and that are of concern to many consumers.

It seems that Canada’s Chemicals Management Plan is being supplanted by a strategy that makes consumers responsible for chemicals in household products. Given that human exposure to many of the chemicals which are of concern to consumers will not be reduced by any of the strategies listed in the press release, GallonDaily can only assume that Health Canada is replacing a strategy of reducing or eliminating household pollutants through regulation with a strategy of blaming the consumer for chemicals in products over which the consumer cannot possibly have any control or, in many cases, knowledge of their presence.

Government press releases should, in our opinion, be scientifically accurate and addressed to the problems that people are experiencing. GallonDaily suggests to Health Canada that if it has nothing useful to say about actions to eliminate toxic substances from household products then it is better to say nothing than to put out a release which further confuses an already confused situation.

The full release can be found at http://www.marketwatch.com/story/harmful-chemicals-how-you-can-protect-yourself-2012-02-28

Many of us think of industry being the polluter while offices are relatively environmentally clean but 10 years ago the Singapore Environment Council, a non-governmental organization, teamed with a developer, City Developments Limited, to establish an Eco-Office certification program.

Among the criteria required to be addressed for an office to qualify for the Eco-Office logo are ones addressing:

• Purchasing Practice
• Paper Use
• Printer, Photocopier, Fax & Cartridges
• Waste Reduction Measures
• Recycling
• Office Kitchen
• Office Furniture
• Energy Conservation
• Water Conservation
• Indoor Air Quality
• Signs
• Travel

To date, 110 Singapore office locations have received the Eco-Office certification. The SEC plans to add 100 more this year. The program involves an environmental self-assessment, on which an office must achieve at least a Good rating to qualify for certification, followed by an independent third-party audit.

The Eco-Office workbook can be found at http://www.ecooffice.com.sg/templates/madeyourweb/pdf/Step_by_step_guide_How_to_green_your_office.pdf

The press release describing the program on its 10th anniversary is at http://www.ecooffice.com.sg/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=71&Itemid=127

Mosaic Company, a major phosphate and potash producer, was granted federal wetlands permits to expand its South Fort Meade underground phosphate mine in Florida but Sierra Club and a group of environmental organizations challenged the permits in court based on claims regarding the environmental impact of the mine expansion.

Now the parties have settled the court challenge using the well-established process of offsets.  Mosaic has agreed to:

• Preservation of approximately 130 acres of land otherwise eligible to be mined by Mosaic.
• Donation of a 4,171 acre parcel of ranch land to the State of Florida or, alternatively, a not-for-profit organization for permanent conservation. In addition, , Mosaic will provide up to $2 million for startup and recurring expenses to operate the land as a state park in accordance with the State’s Florida Forever program plans. Its conservation will expand wildlife corridors and preserve vital habitats and floodplain, while protecting a vital water resource from approaching development.
• Certain mitigation, monitoring and site enhancements.
• Additional efforts to obtain permanent conservation easements along the Peace River in Florida.

The environmental group litigants have accepted Mosaic’s proposal, which is still subject to court approval.

GallonDaily commends the Company and the groups for reaching this kind of settlement and commends the offset approach as worthy of consideration by other companies that are proposing major developments such as mines and pipelines.

More details of the planned settlement can be found at http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=70455&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1663421&highlight=

The well-respected Washington DC based Institute for Local Self-Reliance has just published an excellent review of Ontario’s green energy feed-in tariff program. The detailed report explains the history of the program and how it works. It also analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the FIT program in the context of its objective to build a green energy industry and create jobs in a province that is suffering through a current serious decline in manufacturing industries.

The conclusions of the report include:

• Ontario’s feed-in tariff policy provides a robust regime for encouraging renewable electricity generation while maximizing the local economic benefits of this new power generation.
• The domestic content provision ensures that projects will have significantly higher local value-added than would otherwise happen, encouraging more renewable energy industries to locate and hire in Ontario.
• The community project price adders will also increase the jobs and economic impact of the renewable energy industry, by encouraging the development of projects that provide more jobs and more economic impact per MW than absentee owned projects.
• The feed-in tariff distributed generation policy makes it easier for small scale projects to get on the grid and contribute to clean energy and economic goals swiftly.
• The province’s policy seems to be an effective job strategy, with a cost per job comparable or lower than seen in American job subsidy programs. Ontario is getting both high wage jobs and an abundant supply of clean energy, not just subsidizing job creation.
• Ontario’s feed-in tariff program is doubly robust, because even in the absence of the domestic content provisions, the local ownership price adders will result in greater than usual economic impact from renewable energy development than with absentee owned projects.
• Ontario’s FIT Program has brought a surge of jobs and economic development. And given the uncertainty of the international trade dispute (Japan – joined by the United States and European Union – has brought a complaint against the Ontario FIT Program in the World Trade Organization (WTO) arguing that the domestic content provision is an unfair discrimination against overseas-made products), it’s unlikely that development will slow in the foreseeable future.

The full report can be found at http://www.newrules.org/energy/publications/maximizing-jobs-clean-energy-ontario-s-buy-local-policy

PFOA is an environmentally persistent synthetic chemical most commonly associated with non-stick coatings on kitchenware and textiles as well as microwave popcorn bags.

The results of research published in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that ingestion of PFOA may inhibit the effectiveness of vaccines against tetanus and diphtheria. The researchers found that the presence of perfluorinated compounds in the bloodstream was negatively associated with decreased antibody levels, in some cases with the antibody level being so low as to be ineffective in prevention of disease. The authors suggest that tetanus and diphtheria are likely to be markers for the behaviour of other antibodies and that the perfluorinated compounds may be reducing or negating the effectiveness of many childhood vaccinations.

Further research on the health effects of perfluorinated compounds is underway and results can be expected in the coming months. An abstract of the current paper (free) and links to the full paper (buy) can be found at http://jama.ama-assn.org/content/307/4/391.abstract?sid=73df54d6-e5f8-4e5c-9c45-ee37ebdec59d