Green A City

Hurricane Dean May Menace Energy Supply

Hurricane Dean will enter the Gulf of Mexico is some form next week, which doesn't bode well for the nation's energy supply or for Texas Gulf Coast cities bailing out from record rain and flooding.

The now Category 3 storm is likely to be fast-moving, powerful and devastating, especially if it hooks north of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, which the latest tracking estimates forecast. The more the storm remains over the warm open waters of the Gulf, the greater likelihood of continued strength.

For those in the Brownsville-Galveston, Texas region, close attention should be paid to hurricane forecasts. New Orleans, Houston and inland areas should be on alert as well.

Monday futures markets will begin to speculate on Dean's impact on the national energy prices and supply. The true impact not be known mid-week, when Dean comes ashore on the northeast mainland of Mexico or on the the US Gulf Coast. Oil and natural gas production facilities in the Gulf, in refineries lining the coast, or in Houston, where petrochemical centers are based, may suffer damages that would either be difficult to quickly access or assess.

Besides filling up that car this weekend, if you hang your hat with state or local government agencies, consider the impacts of fossil fuel scarcity on the budgets and operations of state and local government agencies.

Hopefully, next week won't prove to be a baseline event akin to Katrina and Rita in 2005, but it may prove to be a very real energy risk model.

Rocky Mountain Institute Turns 25: or The Distributed Generation of Amory Lovins' Brainpower

We repost Warren's August 15th article from WorldChanging this week. -Editor

One of the world's leading energy and environment think (and do) tanks celebrated its 25^th anniversary in characteristic style this past week. With numerous references to the looming risks of global climate change, peak oil and energy disruption, combined with developing nation social-political and national security challenges, the event took on the air of urgent practicality.

 

Besides the Rocky Mountain Institute'€™s stellar staff and its fearless founder/leader, Amory Lovins, the Aspen-based event attracted a jaw-dropping line-up. On stage were former President Bill Clinton, past CIA director R. James Woolsey, former New York Governor George Pataki, Sustainable South Bronx'€™s Majora Carter, Wal-Mart Chairman Rob Walton, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, technology luminary Bill Joy, Patagonia Founder Yvon Chouinard, and British Sky Broadcasting CEO James Murdoch.

 

Off stage things were no less dull, with a brain-pummeling cast of physicists, business leaders, authors and technologists mixing it up in perpetual reminiscing, scheming and celebrating. "€œYou can bet I will be so on your ass,"€ said a longtime corporate dematerialization expert to a clean tech incubation strategist he had just met, after they plotted how the United States can capture various sectors of global innovation markets.

 

What was extraordinary at the two-day session of panels and parties was how much RMI'€™s iconic founder has altered the consciousness of those present. It was as if little bits of his brain were implanted into the words, plans and outlook of those at the dias and congregating in the beaux arts hallways of the venerable Hotel Jerome.

 

Lovins has developed many world-changing concepts over his 35-year career including "negawatts"--€”reducing the need to produce energy through conservation--and its economic cousin, "the soft path."€ An Oxford-educated physicist, Lovins uses hard data as the basis for making the world'€™s economy radically more energy efficient through better planning, design and day-to-day use in both buildings and industry. More recently RMI has presented ideas on leapfrogging comatose American automotive innovation with superlight materials and hyper-efficient engine and drive train functionality.

"The demand side of energy efficiency is not as sexy as solar or wind energy, but it is much more effective,"€ said Joy. Working with venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers, Joy is working on "€œlooking for something in green technology advances to make a factor-twenty change on a long-term basis."€

Minneapolis Responds Quickly to Bridge Tragedy

Our hearts go out to Minnesotans in wake of the I-35W bridge collapse that occurred yesterday in the city center of Minneapolis.

We received an email this morning from the city describing how it is encouraging people to bike and walk in the downtown area, as many of the major roads in and around the accident site are closed today.

Minneapolis had the second-highest bike-to-work rate in the 2006 SustainLane US city rankings, with 2.3 percent of city residents biking to work. In last night's news coverage of the tragedy, it was apparent how many people used bikes as a way of navigating around the gridlock that seized area roads. 

The city also announced in today's email that "Stone Arch Bridge and Bridge #9 are also closed until further notice.  Bicyclists and pedestrians who need to cross the river must do so at either the Washington Avenue bridge at the University of Minnesota campus or at the 3rd Ave Bridge in Downtown.  Downtown bicycle commuters who regularly use West River Parkway are encouraged to use the LRT trail to and from Downtown."

May Minneapolis, neighboring St. Paul and all those injured have a speedy recovery.