A US solar power company, new to solar but not new as a company, is offering exactly the kind of deal that GallonDaily encourages and likes to promote. Under a Power Purchase Agreement approach pioneered by Vivint Solar, home owners can have a solar system installed on the roof of their home at no upfront cost. The Company retains ownership of the system, agreeing to design, install, and maintain the system at no cost to the homeowner. The homeowner agrees to purchase the power generated, at a cost of 20% to 30% less than is available from the local utility. The solar panels are sized to meet about 80% of the home’s electricity needs and the agreement has a 20 year term.

Unfortunately for Canadians, the scheme is apparently so far available only in New York, New Jersey, Utah and Hawaii, but Vivint says that it hopes to go nationwide (US) fairly soon. We Canadians might yet be lucky – the photovoltaic panels which Vivint is using are reported to come from Canadian Solar, a Kitchener, Ontario, based company which claims to be one of the world’s largest solar panel producers.

Information about Vivint and its Power Purchase Agreement is at http://www.vivintsolar.com/cost

Information about Canadian Solar, listed on the NASDAQ exchange is at http://www.canadian-solar.com/en/our-company/about-us/

GallonDaily takes no responsibility for information provided. We have not conducted any due diligence on companies mentioned in GallonDaily or in Gallon Environment Letter. Potential purchasers and investors are urged to conduct their own due diligence before finalizing any decisions.

Regular readers will know that GallonLetter has frequently been critical of PhDs who use their degree to promote views that are not supported by research within their own area of expertise. Now a court in the state of Baden-Württemberg  has upheld to right of a university to revoke a PhD for scientific misconduct subsequent to, and separate from, the work which led to the award of the PhD.

In this case, in 2004 the University of Konstanz asked a physicist to return the PhD he had been awarded in 1998. The physicist, employed by Bell Laboratories, had been found by his employer to have falsified the results of a string of experiments in the fields of organic and molecular electronics, in which he was employed. Several of the false experimental results had been published in the journals Nature and Science.

The physicist appealed the withdrawal of his PhD to the courts, claiming that the matters for which he had been fired had nothing to do with the quality of the research that had led to the award of his degree. The appeal court upheld revocation of the PhD, stating that “it is essential to protect the trust in indispensable scientific principles such as the authenticity and the documentation of original data and the reproducibility of experimental results.” The Court further ruled that the notion of unworthiness can also be interpreted in the scientific sense and that a doctoral degree holder is recognized as a member of the scientific community. This not only confirms his ability to independently conduct scientific work but is also met with an increased level of trust. The court emphasized that the doctorate degree can only be revoked in the case of serious misconduct, which is the case when research results are falsified.

Further information, in English, at http://www.aktuelles.uni-konstanz.de/en/presseinformationen/2011/99/  and, in German, in the press release from the Court at http://vghmannheim.de/servlet/PB/menu/1271322/index.html?ROOT=1153033

In the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill, a team of scientists from Natural Resources Defense Council, San Francisco, and the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, have published a critique of the Food and Drug Administration risk assessment of toxic contamination in seafood. The critique contends that the FDA risk assessment fails to account for the increased vulnerability of the developing fetus and child; utilize appropriate seafood consumption rates; include all relevant health endpoints; and incorporate health protective estimates of exposure duration and acceptable risk.

The authors claim that, for benzo(a)pyrene and naphthalene, levels of concern should be between 2-4 orders of magnitude below the level set by FDA and that up to 53% of Gulf shrimp samples are above these revised levels of concern for pregnant women who are high end seafood consumers. The study particularly emphasizes that levels set by FDA for seafood safety fail to take into account the risk to vulnerable populations who eat a lot of seafood.

FDA has responded to the article, defending its approach to risk assessment, and the authors of the first mentioned study have responded that the FDA response, is “arguably rooted more in
politics than in science, [and] ignores the long history of chemical assessments where new data and approaches have repeatedly demonstrated significantly greater risks than initially believed”.

Although the article focuses on seafood from the Gulf of Mexico, the debate over risk assessment practices has broad implications for assessment of risk in foodstuffs that have been exposed to toxic contamination. The article, the FDA response, and the response from the authors of the article, are all available online at http://ehp03.niehs.nih.gov/article/fetchArticle.action?articleURI=info%3Adoi%2F10.1289%2Fehp.1103695

According to environmental groups that monitor their meetings, the State of California’s Carcinogen Identification Committee voted last week to add Tris, Tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate or TDCPP, to the list of “chemicals known to the State of California to cause  cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm”, commonly known as the Proposition 65 list.

TDCPP is very widely used as a fire retardant in polyurethane foam in car seats and upholstered furniture. The chemical is detected in indoor air and dust, in surface waters, and in human milk and adipose tissue.

The designation of TDCPP to the Prop 65 list is likely to mean that the State of California will require hazard labeling of all products that contain the substance.  Although Prop 65 applies only in California, decisions of the California Carcinogen Identification Committee often have an impact on toxic substance considerations across the continent.

GallonDaily notes that some fire retardant experts are reported to have stated that TDCPP provides little or no benefit when used as a fire retardant in polyurethane foam products.

A summary of the case against TDCPP, prepared by an official of the
Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment of the State of California, is at  http://www.oehha.ca.gov/prop65/public_meetings/CIC101211/TDCPP_JFLMA101211.pdf

A press release from one of the environmental groups that have been working on the Tris issue is at http://www.toxicfreefiresafety.com/Tris.Prop65.10.11.11.php

According to an article from the highly respected Stockholm Environment Institute and an international team of experts, published in Nature, feeding a global population of 9 billion is achievable.

The article states that we can double, and potentially increase by nearly three times, global food supply by following four key strategies:

• halting agricultural expansion,
• closing ‘yield gaps’ on underperforming lands,
• increasing cropping efficiency,
• shifting diets and reducing waste.

In developing improved land use and agricultural practices, the paper recommends following these guidelines:

(1) Solutions should focus on critical biophysical and economic ‘leverage points’ in agricultural systems, where major improvements in food production or environmental performance may be achieved with the least effort and cost.

(2) New practices must also increase the resilience of the food system. High-efficiency, industrialized agriculture has many benefits, but it is vulnerable to disasters, including climatic disturbances, new diseases and economic calamities.

(3) Agricultural activities have many costs and benefits, but methods of evaluating the trade-offs are still poorly developed. We need better data and decision support tools to improve management decisions, productivity and environmental stewardship.

(4) The search for agricultural solutions should remain technology-neutral. There are multiple paths to improving the production, food security and environmental performance of agriculture, and we should not be locked into a single approach a priori, whether it be conventional agriculture, genetic modification or organic farming.

This is a reasonably detailed and level-headed look at the sustainable food production systems needed to feed the world’s growing population. GallonDaily commends it to all interested in food system planning.

The article can be found at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10452.html  A fee or subscription is required to move beyond the abstract.

A good synopsis of the article, including comments from McGill University professor Navin Ramankutty, a senior member of the study team, is at http://www.seeddaily.com/reports/Feeding_the_world_while_protecting_the_planet_999.html

There is an author, a cardiologist no less, who is doing the rounds of media telling all who will listen that one item in our food is killing us. GallonDaily will not mention his name or the title of his book because we don’t want you to buy it.

GallonDaily is fed up with supposed scientific experts using their credentials to spread nonsense and sell books or technology. It does not matter whether they are selling fear, as is our cardiologist, or unjustified safety, as the head of a pro-incineration industry group did when he recently told Canadians that “burning garbage in your backyard releases more dioxins in the air than an EFW plant would in a year”. This industry executive clearly does not know what he is talking about and he is, incidentally, bringing scientific discredit to the industry he represents.

Issues of environmental public health are so bad in Canada that, according to Statistics Canada, an agency that GallonDaily still regards as reasonably credible, life expectancy for Canadian men has increased from 59 years in 1920 to 68 in 1960 to 79 in 2006. Life expectancy increases are similar for women. Sure, we still have some very important environmental public health issues, including climate change and air pollution, but there is not much evidence that the food we eat or the air we breath are causing widespread premature death.

It is not too long ago that a CEO selected as an advisor to the federal government made it known that his company’s technology would reduce Canada’s GHG emissions by enough to cause this country to meet its Kyoto commitments. The fact is that if a promise sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Equally, if a risk sounds too bad to be true, that is probably the case as well!

An enormous database of green infrastructure projects that successfully and sustainably manage stormwater resources has been established by the American Society for Landscape Architects at the request of US Environmental Protection Agency.  The database of 465 projects in 43 states and Canada can be found at http://www.asla.org/ContentDetail.aspx?id=31301

The database includes projects in many sectors including industrial, commercial, multifamily and single family residential, institutional, open space and parks, mixed use, education, parks, and transportation corridors. Most of the projects have elements that could be reproduced anywhere in North America but it is pleasing to note that seven of the projects are located in Canada.

Stormwater and protection of ground and surface water resources are issues of rapidly increasing importance. GallonDaily commends this database to planners and engineers involved with projects that involve management of stormwater runoff.

An letter in the current issue of the journal Nature states that “Environmental contamination by pharmaceuticals is reaching alarming levels “. Professor Michael Depledge of the European Centre for Environment and Human Health, University of Exeter, in the UK, recommends that “new partnerships between drug companies, the public-health sector and those who deliver environmental sustainability are urgently needed to tackle the issue”. According to Depledge, the UK government’s Advisory Committee on Hazardous Substances will be conducting an investigation.

The full letter is available at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v478/n7367/full/478036a.html#/comments
A subscription or one time payment is required. A CV for Professor Depledge is at http://www.pcmd.ac.uk/profiles.php?id=mdepledge&tab=full

Chevrolet has announced a carbon reduction initiative with some interesting features.

First is the size and scope of the initiative: $40 million dollars with a target to reduce CO2 emissions by eight million tonnes by 2030. That’s big, compared to many other companies’ GHG emission reduction initiatives.

Second is the approach: the investment will be in greenhouse gas-reducing projects, like wind farms and solar and energy efficiency, in communities across the US (no word yet on Canada). This will be in addition to energy efficiency improvements at Chevrolet plants. The Company claims that, since 1990, its manufacturing and assembly plants have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by about 60%. It also claims that almost 50% of GM plants — many of which build Chevrolet vehicles — are landfill-free.

Third is the source of the money: Chevrolet states that it will not be increasing the price of its vehicles to pay for this program. Instead it is planning to spend $40 million less on consumer advertising.

Fourth: Chevrolet states that all of its Carbon Reduction Initiative projects will be third-party verified. That is a big step forward compared to claims made by many other companies.

Although the Carbon Reduction Initiative was announced last year, it is only recently that it is being featured, with project details, on the Chevrolet website at http://www.chevrolet.com/green-environment/carbon-reduction/. GallonDaily particularly recommends clicking on the Q & A tab where quite a few of the program details are explained. Chevrolet’s initiative is one that GallonDaily commends as a possible model for other large companies considering voluntary CO2 reduction initiatives.

Nat Goldhaber is Managing Director of Claremont Creek Ventures, a California-based venture capital firm investing in early stage information technology companies.  A few weeks ago AOL identified CCV as one of the leaders in investment in energy efficiency which AOL labelled as “the workhorse of cleantech”. CCV has about $300 million under management.

So it is more than of small interest to GallonDaily when Mr. Goldhaber talks about the competition in clean technology between the US and China. Goldhaber says ” the U.S. isn’t doing enough. China is much more aggressive than the United States in developing clean technology projects and could dominate clean technology development globally for many years to come.”

The good news, again according to Goldhaber, is that “the race for clean technology supremacy is not over. The United States is very entrepreneurial and has a fierce desire to create new and better technology, including clean technology. In addition, the United States actually benefits from low-cost Chinese solar panels, which allows it to more easily accomplish alternative energy goals.”

Nat Goldhaber is just one voice but GallonDaily is inclined to think he is on the right track. Give his views a more detailed look at http://claremontcreek.com/view.cfm/7/News and, if you are in the Cleantech financing field, as a venture capitalist or as a start-up company, take a look around the Claremont Creek site. There’s much that should be of interest to Canadian cleantech start ups.