GE says it has reduced greenhouse emissions

WASHINGTON – Industrial conglomerate General Electric Co. says it has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions and is making a growing amount of money from its environmentally conscious business plan launched in 2005.

In the annual report of GE's "ecomagination" program, GE said its emissions of greenhouse gases from company operations were 13 percent lower than in 2005, reductions that came from initiatives like using alternative energy sources.

The Fairfield, Conn.-based company, one of the largest industrial producers in the world, acknowledged that some of the reason for fewer emissions was linked to the economic downturn, which has sapped factory production globally. But the company said that it still met its goal of reducing greenhouse gases even when economic conditions were factored in.

GE attributed $17 billion in revenue last year to the ecomagination program, composed largely of business lines that it deems to be environmentally conscious. That includes energy-efficient light bulbs, more fuel-efficient train locomotives and wind power turbines. Those results were 21 percent higher than when the program began. GE has now expanded ecomagination to include about 80 products and services.

That revenue is still a small share of the $183 billion the company took in overall last year. But GE has made a push recently to tap environmental markets, including what it estimates is about $400 billion worth of stimulus spending devoted to environmental projects worldwide.

Print Email Font Resize Visitors bureau launches carbon offset program

Green-minded visitors, whatever their political hue, can now fly or drive to Salt Lake City without worrying about their carbon footprints.

The Salt Lake Convention and Visitors Bureau has started a carbon offset program on its Web site, www.visitsaltlake.com, for travelers to gauge the number of tons of carbon dioxide that will get belched into the atmosphere on their trips to and from Salt Lake City.

The site asks if the traveler wants to offset the CO2 emissions by purchasing tree seedlings that its partner, TreeUtah, will plant in the Salt Lake Valley. The month-old effort is in conjunction with Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon's One Million Trees for One Million People program aimed at planting a million trees by 2017.

Over its life, each $5 seedling purchased by a conventioneer or tourist should grow into a tree that scrubs a half-ton of carbon dioxide from the air. Trees take in CO2 through their leaves and convert the greenhouse gas to oxygen and water vapor.

“It's one of those things where oftentimes in our industry we are sort of led there by our clients,” said Scott Beck, president and CEO of the convention and visitors bureau.

In this case, the client was the Outdoor Retailer show staged twice a year in Salt Lake City by Nielsen Business Media and sponsored by the Outdoor Retailers Association. The show has offered a carbon-neutral travel program for several years.

“They started theirs quite a while ago. (Ours) was launched through discussions about how can we localize it here where their (Outdoor Retailer) convention is held,” Beck said.

The true test will be on whether anyone buys seedlings. Beck said the Universal Unitarian Church, which will stage its annual general assembly in Salt Lake City next month, is promoting the carbon offset program on its Web site. So is Meetings Professionals International. Its convention will be in Utah in July.

Convention and visitors bureaus in the West are increasingly embracing green programs as good business. In Portland, the Oregon Convention Center is participating in a program to offset natural gas consumption in its million-square-foot building by investing in projects in other parts of the state that reduce greenhouse emissions.

“We are auditing this year how much traveling our staff does, and we are going to try a pilot (carbon offset) program first to see how that would work to offset our emissions,” spokeswoman Veronique Meunier said.

The Washington State Convention and Trade Center provides convention clients compostable water bottles, drinking cups and coffee cups, as well as bamboo plates and birch or bamboo cutlery.

Denver's Visitor and Convention Bureau touts the region as one of the premier places in the nation for a green learning vacation. On the bureau's Web site are links to the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder and the National Energy Renewal Laboratory in Golden.

“There is more of an emphasis on resources, so for the visitors that's their interest,” said Teresa Stephenson, spokeswoman for the Western Association of Convention and Visitors Bureaus.

The quantities of carbon released to the atmosphere by tourists and conventioneers traveling to Utah can be staggering. Someone driving an SUV 1,600 miles to and from Salt Lake City will put a ton of CO2 into the air, according to the bureau's carbon footprint calculator. A round trip flight of 2,000 miles will emit a half-ton of the greenhouse gas per passenger.

To practice what it preaches, the bureau started the program with itself. Bureau officials estimated the staff will travel 1 million miles this year and emit 212 tons of carbon emissions. The bureau then bought 424 seedlings to offset its impact on the environment.

Energy Sec. announces $193M for energy research

GOLDEN, Colo. – The primary U.S. lab for renewable energy will receive $110 million in federal stimulus funds and another $83 million will go toward wind energy and other alternative power and efficiency projects, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Wednesday.

"Wind energy will be one of the most important contributors to meeting President Obama's target of generating 10 percent of our electricity from renewable sources by 2012," Chu said.

Also on the administration's priorty list is making buildings more energy efficient.

NREL, in Golden, will get $68 million for an energy-efficient office building, with the goal of creating a design process for use on other construction projects. NREL will also receive $19.2 million for solar, geothermal and fuel cell equipment to produce electricity for its labs and $13.5 million for upgrades to its biorefinery research facility.

NREL will get another $10 million for testing and evaluation of wind technology at the Energy Department's Wind Technology Center in Colorado.

The wind energy research money will be administered by DOE's office in Golden and includes $45 million to research and test drive-train systems for wind turbines, $14 million to encourage private industry in the development of lighter, more advanced materials for wind turbine components and $24 million to develop up to three partnerships between universities and industry to focus on critical technological improvements for wind energy.

Obama's goal, Chu said, is to prepare the country to compete economically decades down the road, as well as meet the immediate challenges of climate change and energy demand.

"Because of those things, you want to get head of the curve," Chu said. "This is the president's vision, knowing what's going to happen 10, 20, 30 years from now. And we want to go where that is rather than fight a rearguard action."

Chu's visit to the lab was his first as energy secretary. He is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist and former director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, Calif.

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter said Chu is moving the U.S. toward "the next place that we need to go as a country."

The Energy Department is managing $39 billion in grants, tax breaks and loan guarantees under the stimulus package, with much of it going to renewable energy and conservation programs.

NY wants offshore wind projects in Great Lakes

BUFFALO, N.Y. – A New York state utility is exploring whether it is possible to put electricity-generating wind turbines in the Great Lakes, rather than inland or along the shoreline.

The state-owned New York Power Authority on Wednesday began asking potential developers how they would go about constructing an offshore wind project in Lake Erie or Lake Ontario and what the environmental, technical and other hurdles might be.

"The goal here is to develop within the next five years an offshore wind project in the Great Lakes that will produce a minimum of 120 megawatts of clean, renewable energy," said NYPA President and Chief Executive Richard Kessel, who announced the plans Wednesday on the windy Lake Erie shore in Buffalo.

Several similar projects are being considered in Canada, on the northern side of Lake Erie, as well as off the Toronto shoreline of Lake Ontario, but nothing has been built so far, said Terry Yonker, chairman of the Great Lakes Wind Collaborative Steering Committee, a binational group pursuing wind development in the United States and Canada.

President Barack Obama has made wind energy a key part of his energy plan, estimating that it could generate as much as 20 percent of the U.S. electricity demand by 2030. The Interior Department issued long-awaited regulations Wednesday governing offshore renewable energy projects that would tap wind, ocean currents and waves to produce electricity.

In New York, Gov. David Paterson has set a goal for New York to meet 45 percent of its electricity needs through renewable power by 2015.

"Harnessing the power of wind is critical to achieving that goal, and the Great Lakes offshore wind project will help us reach it," Paterson said.

Several environmental groups have signed on as early supporters of the Great Lakes project, including the Audubon Society, Citizens Campaign for the Environment and Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper.

The wind turbines would be more than a mile offshore, in depths of 60 to 180 feet of water.

Kessel estimated the project would cost $700 million to $1 billion, which the developer could make back in power sales.

"It is more costly to place turbines in the lake," Yonker said, "but on the other hand, the more you get away from land the better the wind resource becomes."

NYPA's request for comments, issued Wednesday, will be followed as early as next week by a similar request for technical information on the potential impact on the water, fish and birds.

One issue that must be addressed is the thick sheet of ice that often forms across much of Lake Erie in the winter and the potential impact on the turbines as the ice shifts and breaks. The deeper Lake Ontario does not freeze over.

If the project proves feasible, the authority would select a developer by the end of this year or early next year, Kessel said.

"There's no reason why we can't see a major offshore wind project operating here within five years," he said.

Video:Bad economy forces married couple to live in different states NY wants offshore wind projects in Great Lakes

BUFFALO, N.Y. – A New York state utility is exploring whether it is possible to put electricity-generating wind turbines in the Great Lakes, rather than inland or along the shoreline.

The state-owned New York Power Authority on Wednesday began asking potential developers how they would go about constructing an offshore wind project in Lake Erie or Lake Ontario and what the environmental, technical and other hurdles might be.

"The goal here is to develop within the next five years an offshore wind project in the Great Lakes that will produce a minimum of 120 megawatts of clean, renewable energy," said NYPA President and Chief Executive Richard Kessel, who announced the plans Wednesday on the windy Lake Erie shore in Buffalo.

Several similar projects are being considered in Canada, on the northern side of Lake Erie, as well as off the Toronto shoreline of Lake Ontario, but nothing has been built so far, said Terry Yonker, chairman of the Great Lakes Wind Collaborative Steering Committee, a binational group pursuing wind development in the United States and Canada.

President Barack Obama has made wind energy a key part of his energy plan, estimating that it could generate as much as 20 percent of the U.S. electricity demand by 2030. The Interior Department issued long-awaited regulations Wednesday governing offshore renewable energy projects that would tap wind, ocean currents and waves to produce electricity.

In New York, Gov. David Paterson has set a goal for New York to meet 45 percent of its electricity needs through renewable power by 2015.

"Harnessing the power of wind is critical to achieving that goal, and the Great Lakes offshore wind project will help us reach it," Paterson said.

Several environmental groups have signed on as early supporters of the Great Lakes project, including the Audubon Society, Citizens Campaign for the Environment and Buffalo Niagara Riverkeeper.

The wind turbines would be more than a mile offshore, in depths of 60 to 180 feet of water.

Kessel estimated the project would cost $700 million to $1 billion, which the developer could make back in power sales.

"It is more costly to place turbines in the lake," Yonker said, "but on the other hand, the more you get away from land the better the wind resource becomes."

NYPA's request for comments, issued Wednesday, will be followed as early as next week by a similar request for technical information on the potential impact on the water, fish and birds.

One issue that must be addressed is the thick sheet of ice that often forms across much of Lake Erie in the winter and the potential impact on the turbines as the ice shifts and breaks. The deeper Lake Ontario does not freeze over.

If the project proves feasible, the authority would select a developer by the end of this year or early next year, Kessel said.

"There's no reason why we can't see a major offshore wind project operating here within five years," he said.