ECOShift

Two things are certain for the future: electric cars will become more popular and solar power will continue to grow as a viable source of energy. Because of this, the world is looking to industry leaders not only in the energy business, but to other major corporations that can have a major impact [...]
Posted in: Industry, Solar Power, Transportation

This impressive footprint is Nike's Considered Air Jordan XX3, their first basketball shoe designed using the Considered Ethos.

Lorrie Vogel is the general manager of Nike Considered, Nike’s in-house sustainability think tank. She holds a degree in Industrial Design from Syracuse, and numerous patents. Her work in innovating around sustainability has helped put Nike on Fast Company’s Fast 50 list multiple times. Considering how aggressive Nike’s sustainability goals have been, it’s even more impressive that they are on track to meet their targets.

Sustainability is second only to performance when ranking the critical factors of a product. Nike is committed to making their entire collection as environmentally responsible as possible. Lorrie Vogel spoke at the Opportunity Green conference in Los Angeles, explaining some of the ways Nike is meeting these targets. In this phone interview, Lorrie expands on some of the points she touched on in her presentation. The conversation is split into two articles, in order to go deeper into the many changes that need to happen to increase use of recycled and organic materials in apparel and footwear. We begin with a discussion about materials, and conclude with the human element needed to ensure these changes occur in a timely manner.

From Nike: The long-term vision for Considered is to design products that are fully closed loop: produced using the fewest possible materials, designed for easy disassembly while allowing them to be recycled into new product or safely returned to nature at the end of their life. By 2011, 100 percent of footwear will meet baseline Considered standards, apparel by 2015 and equipment by 2020 – creating better performing products while minimizing environmental impact by reducing waste, using environmentally preferred materials and eliminate toxins.

A Call to Action for Innovation

Think of this as a call to action in the clean tech community- to recognize the need for technology that facilitates recycling. While Nike would love to make their entire line from recycled polyester and organic cotton, their customers would rather not pay the 20-30 percent premium for these materials, nor would their shareholders like to absorb that cost. This is a quandary that faces every company that would like to use recycled fibers. The fiber manufacturing process is simpler, yet the end product is more expensive simply because there’s not enough demand.

In our conversation, we discussed the need for legislation around materials to create a level playing field. If all brands are asked to use a minimum of 5 percent organic cotton or recycled polyester, then the price premium won’t be an issue, and demand will be strong enough to ensure high volume.

Having worked in apparel product development for over a decade, I was deeply impressed by Lorrie’s presentation. Her visionary, systems-based thinking gave me faith that there is hope for at least one major apparel brand, even as the majority of the industry continues to wreak environmental havoc. So I invited her to continue the dialogue here on CleanTechnica.

Environmentally Preferred Materials

SS: This chart depicts how Nike defines Environmentally Preferred Materials, and how each factor is weighted. This shows far more depth and breadth of impact than any other apparel company’s responsible sourcing practices, as far as I know.

LV: We focus on green materials because over 60 percent of our impact is in our materials! Transportation is a blip on the radar in comparison. Extrapolate that ~800,000 tons of CO2 per year out to the whole world, the whole apparel industry, and you can see how massive the impact is.

SS: At the conference, I asked: What consumer incentives have been the most useful for making the take-back program, Reuse-A-Shoe, work?

LV: Reuse-A-Shoe has been a great pilot, but it needs to happen for all consumer products, not just shoes. For example, we need to increase recycling of plastics like PET bottles, to use them for polyester fiber instead of raw crude. Just changing a shoe into a shoe isn’t enough. We need to create an ecosystem.

SS: An ecosystem?

LV: If we know we’re going to add 30 percent more people by 2050, recycling should be a no-brainer! Yet, a product goes through multiple types of sorting to determine what it’s made of, at least seven different processes, making it extremely complicated to recycle a shoe, even if it contains only a few different materials. I don’t know why products don't have DNA markers or something like that to make it easier to get the materials into pure waste streams. We need more environmentally responsible materials, but if other brands don't adopt them as well, it's harder to keep the momentum going, to ensure there’s a demand for recycled textiles.

So we’re doing this open source Green Lab in partnership with PopTech. Through the lab, we’ll work together with other participants to map the space, to find the most viable ideas. We want more manufacturers to get on board. We also want to encourage more designers to use fewer materials in any product and design products that are easier to recycle.

SS: Tell me more about how you define Nike’s success in a transaction-based economy.

LV: Ultimately, we want our entire line to be sustainable, not just a few eco pieces here and there. Reducing consumption is important, but it won't get us to a green economy. So at Nike, we’re striving to close the loop. While it would be nice to be able to plant a used shoe in the ground, a biodegradable shoe still uses same amount of resources as any other shoe. The problem is, we won’t be allowed to use as much of these resources in future, as they become increasingly scarce, so we are focused on developing our products for reuse.

A case in point- France is considering an end-of-life tax for products.I would rather they reclassify waste, to define waste as a product that ends up in landfill.

But if a product can be recycled, it’s not waste. For example, why not legislation requiring DNA markers on materials, to make it easier to recycle them? The problem with the end-of-life tax is that there’s no incentive for companies to recycle or make easily recyclable products, it’s the same cost to them no matter what.

Recycling is subsidized, it needs to become a viable business on its own. It is the future, as resources are declining too fast to cover the growth rate in consumption. However, recycled materials commands a 20-30 percent higher price! Yet they require less materials, energy, and water, and create less waste than raw crude polyester, so should be cheaper.

There needs to be more attention around this, around innovating the entire supply chain. Nike does not manufacture textiles and their raw materials, we depend on suppliers for this. So I can’t control all ends of the cycles, my job is to identify key areas for improvement and find the necessary partners. Nobody is looking at this space, we need to increase awareness of the need to facilitate reclaiming materials. Cotton uses way too much water and land, while polyester is connected to oil, a dwindling and polluting resource. We want to lower our impact, to close the loop. So we need help from various sources, it will happen faster through collaboration.

SS: How significantly does legislation increase the potential to make this happen?

LV: Two things can influence adoption of sustainable materials. Either legislation levels the playing field, or consumers care enough. However, it’s hard to monitor buying habits. Consumers often state they’ll choose green, but sales numbers show otherwise. The great thing about legislation is that it moves faster than consumer influence, and legislation levels the playing field. If the government requires say, 30 percent to be recycled content, then everyone will do it. So we pay more, but everyone pays more.

Our goal is to blend a minimum of 5 percent organic cotton into all of our cotton-containing apparel materials by 2010, while steadily expanding our offering of 100 percent certified organic cotton products. -Nike

I hate to see organic cotton being 20-30 percent more expensive than conventional cotton, and hate having to charge more for it. The higher price decreases sales volume, but the goal is to sell more organic products. So it’s not creating the desired effect, because consumers aren’t willing to pay more. If there was legislation, it could keep everyone in the game. Because we use 5 percent organic cotton in our entire line, we’re one of the top two retail users worldwide, according to Organic Exchange.

SS: Tomorrow the conversation continues, discussing how Nike employees are trained and rewarded for sustainable innovation, as well as other stakeholder issues.

Images Courtesy Nike

Kharagpur, India-based team of researchers looks to increase electricity output from a new battery technology that they say can also clean sewage water.

As part of developing new energy resources that don't emit carbon dioxide, the DOE is funding 9 trials that use supercritical CO₂ to extract more geothermal energy.

The idea started in 2000 at Los Alamos National Laboratory; when physicist Donald Brown thought of pumping geothermal fluid using supercritical CO₂ - a pressurized form that is part gas, part liquid; instead of water.  Theoretically this should flow more freely through rock than water, because it is less viscous than water.

Then, six years later; in modeling the technology Lawrence Berkeley hydro-geologist Karsten Pruess projected that not only should it perform as expected but that it would also yield a 50% hotter geothermal resource.

Now the DOE is funding this promising research with $16 million in nine trials to see if this will work in the real world.

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Canada’s Real Tech is one of 10 new companies the Cleantech Group spotted in the past week looking to raise money. Details in the Pitch o’ the week.

Saltworks Technologies reported that they can produce 1 cubic meter of fresh water using just 1kWh compared to 3.7kWh per cubic meter achievable using reverse osmosis.

Paul O'Callaghan is CEO of Cleantech consultancy firm, O2 Environmental Inc. and author of Water Technology Markets.

Canadian firm, Saltworks Technologies, just came out of stealth in relation to their desalination technology, which they claim reduce the electrical energy required for desalination by over 70%. They report they can produce 1m3 of water with 1kW hour of electrical energy, compared to the 3.7kWhr per m3, which is what is currently achievable using reverse osmosis with the use of energy recovery devices.

So how to they do it? Well its novel. It appears to be a new approach. And novel and new are two things scarce as hens teeth in relation to desalination technologies.

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Nanowires have been the center of attention for the past few years. By enabling scientists to produce devices that were never thought to be possible, the nanowires made investments flow into this area and bring even more discoveries of their potential.

A team of U.S. researchers have developed a new way to generate alternative fuel from bacteria. They have genetically modified bacteria to eat CO2 and produce isobutyraldehyde, which can further be used to produce isobutanol.

POINT ROBERTS, WA and DELTA, BC - November 16, 2009 - www.RenewableEnergyStocks.com, a leading global investor and industry portal for the renewable energy sector within www.Investorideas.com, features a sector close-up on solar stocks trading for November 16th.

ROCHESTER, NY - November 13, 2009 - WindTamer Corporation (OTCBB: WNDT), a developer and manufacturer of a patented new wind turbine technology, anticipates that its common stock will begin trading on the OTC Bulletin Board Monday, November 16, 2009 under the trading symbol WNDT.

DELTA, BC - November 16, 2009 - www.InvestorIdeas.com has expanded its tools and services for investors, public companies and entrepreneurs with recently created newswires and newsfeeds in mining, water in addition to the well- known Investor Ideas Newswire and the Renewable and Greentech Business RSS News Feed.

BEIJING - November 16 2009 - From the U.S. China Green Tech Summit today, Suntech Power Holdings Co., Ltd. (NYSE: STP), announced that its first U.S. manufacturing plant for the growing North American market would be located in the Greater Phoenix, Arizona area.

When we think about going solar we make a mental picture of large heavy panels adorning one’s rooftop. But researchers are trying to get rid of bulky solar panels. They are aiming to achieve this feat with the help of zinc oxide nanostructures grown on optical fibers and coated with dye-sensitized solar cell materials. [...]
Posted in: Inventions, PhotoVoltaics, Solar Power

What with the Vice President promoting the PACE super affordable model of city financing for solar and the econo-apocalypse-related drop in solar panel prices, you'd think that solar was in the bag by now, but group buying on top of all that will still buy the cheapest solar for your roof.

One Block off the Grid's completely unique model of group buying combined with the financing of their partnering banker  SunRun (which offers one of the few solar financing options to remain viable in the downturn) has made this the cheapest way for going solar ever.

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Back in October, there was quite a bit of controversy surrounding NASA's project of crashing a LCROSS satellite into the moon to determine if there is in fact water on the moon. While it was initially believed by spectators and researchers alike that the mission was a big failure, since there was no visible lunar dust or any other substances that resulted immediately from the cash; NASA says today that it actually was a success, indicating that the moon has a substantial water supply.

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The company inks a $14.5M deal in Sydney, as its software aims to improve water availability in Japan, and manage resources and services in Texas.

Oil on the Brain by Lisa Margonelli was recommended by Paul Sankey at the 2009 Energy Information Administration Conference as a book that provided great insight into the oil industry. I have had it on my list of books to read, and recently picked it up to read during my travels. I have been traveling a lot lately, and I like to read while I travel, so I knocked it out over the past couple of trips I have taken.

The premise of the book is that a person who doesn't know much about the oil industry sets out to find out what it is really like on the inside. It reminded me in some ways of Crude World by Peter Maass (which I reviewed here). The biggest difference is that Margonelli was approaching the subject from a pretty basic starting point, and Maass had written quite a bit about the industry when he tackled Crude World.

I guess I never cease to be amazed by what people think the oil industry is like, and what it is really like. People seem to think that the oil industry is a bunch of guys in a smoke-filled room who conspire to set prices. To be honest, that's probably the way I viewed the industry when I was growing up. And still, my first reaction to my cable bill going up is "Those greedy cable companies are ripping me off." The big difference with the cable companies, though, is that their profits aren't thrust in everyone's faces at the end of every quarter. Every time oil prices do spike up and oil companies show nice profits, people do feel like they have been taken advantage of. But I digress a bit.

For this book, Margonelli embedded herself within various sectors of the oil industry. She spent time throughout the supply chain, hanging out at a gas station in California where she found that the owners made more money on candy and soda than they did on gasoline. She spent a day with a tanker truck driver and his dispatcher, and spent time in a refinery and on an oil rig. She even got inside the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which is typically off limits to visitors. She traveled abroad to Chad, Venezuela, Nigeria, and even Iran to understand the world of oil and what is has meant to these regions.

Here were what I thought were some of Margonelli's more interesting observations. She spoke a lot about the indirect costs of using oil. In talking about oil spills, she mentioned that her view of an oil spill had always been dominated by the Exxon Valdez. She had never connected these spills to her own fuel usage, but learned that drivers and boaters spill more oil every year than did the Exxon Valdez. The number she cited was 19 million gallons of oil products spilled each year in our waterways by boaters and auto drivers.

She wrote about the notion that oil companies are in a conspiracy to set prices. A jobber she spoke with - someone who has to buy fuel from the oil companies - said "There are eleven studies which show there isn't a conspiracy. Chevron, Shell, Exxon - they hate each other. It's like war daily. For them to collude is insanity, but people believe what they want to believe."

On that topic, she noted an episode of hypocrisy displayed by Nancy Pelosi. One day in 2006 Pelosi told a group of school children that we hadn't done enough to reduce our dependence on gasoline, and so demand was high and that's why the price was high. Then she got in front of the cameras and she cited the conspiracy of big oil and the Republicans working for their interests. But as Margonelli noted, "the myth of conspiracy overwhelms reason, particularly when pump prices and oil company profits are high." I think the lesson there is "If the talking point is working, keep pushing it."

She met an old-time wildcatter named Michel Halbouty (now deceased) who complained that the country has not had a coherent energy policy in 30 years. He advocated more promotion of domestic energy exploration, and fears a slow slide into deindustrialization. He noted that the main problem is that "People. Don't. Care." As long as they can pull in and fill up, they just don't care about energy policy.

In China, she met with someone within the government who was involved with energy policy. He noted that it would be a disaster for China to move toward an American way of life, but he says that cars are clearly there to stay in China. On GDP, Margonelli wrote that China requires 4 or 5 times as much energy as Japan per point of GDP. Finally, the minister commented that China needs "a bigger space to survive under U.S. hegemony." On that point, she also spoke with a European analyst who said that U.S. hegemony is a part of China's strategy; that if they can get the U.S. to bear the expense of maintaining the energy status quo, they will have the time and resources to retool their economy.

In the epilogue, Margonelli comments that there is no such thing as cheap gas; that there are hidden costs throughout the supply chain. But the population has come to expect cheap gas as a "grand bargain" with the government and the oil companies. When the price goes high, they look to the government to punish the oil companies so prices will come back down.

One weakness in the book is that it really didn't address the question of depletion. It seemed to take at face value that oil will continue to be available and business will continue as normal for decades. However, I note that Margonelli was at the ASPO Conference this year (along with Peter Maas; I am sorry I missed that) so she got a heavy dose of peak oil information. Some very interesting comments by her can be found at this story covering the conference.

As one might expect, Margonelli emerged from her experience with a radically different view of how the oil industry works. I have to agree with Paul Sankey's assessment that it does provide great insight into the industry, from a very basic starting point and with a balanced view. As one reviewer pointed out, it could have been titled "The Petro-economy for Dummies", which is to say it is a book that is easily understood by those with zero knowledge of the industry. This book would be on my short list of books to recommend to people who want to know what the industry is really like.

India’s largest wind turbine manufacturer is riding high on news of two consecutive wind farm projects being completed ahead of schedule.