Data centers -- those large, nondescript, windowless rooms full of humming black boxes -- are a critical component for nearly every sector of the U.S. economy, from financial services to manufacturing. They also use an enormous amount of energy.
How much is a lot? According to an EPA report released last summer, data centers used 61 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity in 2006, putting a peak load on the power grid of about 7 gigawatts -- or roughly the equivalent of 15 power plants. That's twice as much energy usage as 2000, a pace that would require an additional 10 power plants by 2011 solely to support data center operations.
Who knew keeping track of your credit card balance could be so inefficient?
Given the enormous strain on electricity grids and increasing operating costs for industry and government -- not too mention the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants -- we're glad the EPA and the Energy Department have made this an issue, announcing plans this week to work on greening data centers.
As part of the National Data Center Energy Efficiency Information Program, the two agencies will coordinate a variety of initiatives from the DOE Industrial Technologies Program’s Save Energy Now initiative, the DOE Federal Energy Management Program and EPA’s Energy Star program.
Not only are recreational and commercial fishermen in California, Washington and Oregon no longer allowed to sink their hooks into salmon, but now in Idaho, Washington and Oregon, even the fish's natural predators, sea lions, are being denied access to the fish. Just how does one go about keeping an animal from eating another animal? By killing it, of course.
While sea lions are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, they are allowed to be taken -- legal-speak for harassed, captured or killed -- if it is done to protect fish stocks. An adult sea lion can eat 5-7 salmon a day, and while the animals are suspected of eating about 5 percent of the country's entire salmon stock, they are blamed for consuming one-third of the endangered salmon in the West.
All sorts of measures have been implemented to protect the salmon as they scale the fish-ladder built on the Bonneville Dam -- where sea lions have easiest access to the fish -- including setting off fireworks to scare the mammals and shooting them with rubber bullets. Now, the National Marine Fisheries Service has decided that sea lions seen getting their eat on between Jan. 1 through May 31 can be killed.
Don't get too upset: The animals get a 48-hour window after capture during which officials try and find them a home in a no-kill shelter, like a zoo or aquarium. We still wouldn't want to be a sea lion captured on a Friday afternoon.
Andy Revkin of the New York Times said it best this morning in A Farewell to Ice: "Essentially, the mountain storehouses of frozen water that have shaped their history and culture, or that have provided a secure year-round source of water through modern times, are no longer secure."
It's a reference to a U.N. Environment Program report released early this week that found -- well, more like reiterated -- that glaciers are shrinking at record rates, and many could disappear within decades. The UN scientists studied 30 glaciers throughout the world and found that on average, each one shrank by 4.9 feet in 2006. Only one glacier, in Chile, experienced slight growth.
Most alarming is that the average rate of melting and thinning of the glacial ice almost tripled in 2006, up from 1.6 feet the year before. The report comes as countries prepare for the next round of UN meetings at the end of the month in Bangkok, where officials will work on a post-Kyoto treaty.
Now comes today's ice news, which unless you're in the oil exploration or marine shipping business, is equally disturbing. Federal scientists said that while the Arctic ice sheet experienced minor growth this winter, the recovery is something of an illusion. That's because not enough ice is freezing below sea level, which means we're likely to see a big summer melt similar to last year, when the fabled Northwest Passage connecting the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans became very much real.
Even most environmental groups praised the new rules, which will require that all diesel engines on new ships and locomotives produce 90 percent less soot and 80 percent less nitrogen oxide by 2015. The new standards will apply to all engines, regardless of age, by 2030.
Embattled EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said the new rules could help prevent 1,400 premature deaths and 120,000 lost workdays annually by 2030, saving as much as $12 billion.
Despite the, uh, lengthy timeline afforded to industry with these regs, we give the EPA a thumbs up for addressing a serious problem. These engines emit more than 1 million tons of nitrogen oxide and find particulate matter each year. EPA even accelerated its original proposed deadline for cutting the pollutants by two years.
We should note, however, that these new rules only apply to ships traveling on inland waterways and between U.S. ports, including ferries and tugboats. The agency is expected to propose emissions standards for oceangoing ships next year.
Solar energy: It's clean, abundant, cheaper than carbon sequestration, and the technology is evolving at a breakneck pace.
But as with so many things in this endlessly connected world, even the greenest tech can have a sickly brown underbelly. In this case, it's silicon tetrachloride, a highly toxic byproduct of the synthesis of polysilicon, the primary component of a solar panel. Chinese polysilicon plants have been documented dumping the noxious, bubbling white liquid on agricultural land and in nearby villages without treatment or remediation.
The waste can be recycled and detoxified, but of course that comes with a price - a price that would hamper the manufacturers' ability to sell the valuable commodity at the lowest possible price. And, of course, China's environmental agencies are looking the other way, as they are wont to do.
In other words, we now live in a world where the phrase "solar pollution" exists.
The Washington Post relates eyewitness testimony of plant workers driving into the middle of a village, dumping the toxic waste into a tract of land between a cornfield and a school playground, and driving away without explanation. Company officials deny the allegation and insist that the waste is treated before it is released. Given that no Chinese plant has invested in the necessary technology to treat the waste, we're not sure how that's possible.
Last week, the agency released the draft of its annual greenhouse gas emissions report, and of course it wants to hear your thoughts on the 453-page document.
Believe it or not, the draft report states that we as a nation emitted less greenhouse gases in 2006 than 2005. It was still equivalent to some 7.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, but hey, it’s a start.
This fits in nicely to the Bush administration’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas intensity by 18 percent by 2012 (though we’re pretty sure they won’t be administrating then). Just in case you’re not sure what greenhouse gas intensity is, the EPA defines it as “the ratio of greenhouse gas emissions to economic output.” Good to know they’re keeping things in perspective.
Maybe all this means the economy is on the rebound.
If you build it green, they will come. Even if it’s in Queens.
Last week, the New York Mets announced plans to green the construction of their new baseball stadium and employ sustainability practices once it’s open to the public next year. The Mets will consult with the EPA on the project, and plan to enroll in several of the agency’s voluntary programs like Energy Star and Waste Wise.
In building Citi Field, which is under construction in the old parking lot of the Mets’ current home, Shea Stadium, the Mets will also:
Use recycled steel for 95 percent of the stadium’s structure
Consider installing a green roof
Use some 65,000 square feet of porous pavement to help abate storm water runoff with another 25,000 square feet designed to stay unpaved
Use at least 2 million pounds of recycled coal ash in various construction methods
Install energy- and water-conserving devices throughout the stadium
The Mets aren’t the first sports team, or even baseball team to think green, though their efforts seem to be the most thorough we’ve seen to date. Here’s what some other teams have done:
The San Francisco Giants (baseball) host 590 solar panels capable of producing 122 kilowatts at AT&T Stadium
Branching out from now-blasé plastic bag bans, Seattle has banned city purchases of bottled water.
Officials in Seattle say they’re motivated by economic and environmental reasons - as well as regional pride in their water supplies. Seattle’s tap water comes mainly from rainfall and melting snowpack from two protected watersheds.
The city predicts it will save $58,000 of public money by asking (okay - telling) city employees to drink from the tap, which costs pennies on the dollar compared to eight bucks a gallon for bottled water. In addition, the city won’t be contributing to the massive fossil fuel use in transportation of or waste disposal problems associated with plastic water bottles.
City employees don't need to worry about the safety of tap water - municipal water supplies are continuously tested against at least one hundred federal EPA standards; but standards are merely suggested by the FDA for bottled water.
Last Tuesday -- one day before the release of new EPA ozone regulations setting a standard for ozone pollution -- you personally intervened in the agency's decision-making process and ordered that the standards be loosened in a key category. In so doing, you openly engaged in political interference in agency deliberations -- interference which directly contravenes the letter and spirit of the Clean Air Act. That interference, to our minds, constitutes an illegal and openly criminal act.
"This is not a weakening of regs or standards, but it was an effort to make the standards consistent," bleated Tony Fratto, your White House Press Secretary. Stephen Johnson, your EPA Administrator, ever willing to fall on his sword for the good of his king, attempted to jump in front of the bullet by taking responsibility for the decision on Friday. He claimed that, "Invoking of the executive order (from the White House) did not deal with the stringency" of the public welfare standard, only the form. "I made the decision on the stringency," he said.
How your heart must have swelled to see a formerly good man sacrificing the last shreds of his honor and credibility to protect the last shreds of yours. (If you don't remember what Johnson looks like, you're standing behind him in the above photo as he takes his oath of office.)
Never mind that consistency was never quite the point of the public health and public welfare standards, and that no executive order can or should contradict the recommendations of EPA scientists and staff.
Yeah, OK, we can be the change that we want to see in the world. But unless powerful people in powerful positions want to be that change as well, nothing's going to change.
So now, finally, there's a place where you can go for news and analysis of politics from an environmental perspective.
