green energy

Imagine a future where you can heat your home with what comes out of your toilet.

Well, in Vancouver, B.C., they started doing it. Yesterday.

It's North America's first renewable heating system, which will turn sewage into heat for 16,00o homes. The system cost $30 million, and is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the area it serves by 50 percent. The Tyee reports that it will also keep 2,800 athletes warm in the Olympic Village.

Says Mayor Gregor Robertson:

“It reflects the steps we are taking to make Vancouver the greenest city on the earth.”

Wow.

How can we slow down global warming – or even take steps to reverse it?  

Where is ecosystem restoration taking off in a big way?

How is environmental journalism faring in the news media meltdown that spawned InvestigateWest?

We plan to delve into those questions and many more -- we're eager to explore the tradeoffs of "green" energy, for instance -- when Dateline Earth and the InvestigateWest team return after the holidays.

In the meantime, we’re taking time off. So you won’t see anything new in this space for a little while. (Unless we’re just dying to tell you about something. Sometimes we can’t contain ourselves.)

Readers, please come back in early January to see what we’re up to in the new year. That will include beginning to publish some full-blown in-depth stories by InvestigateWest staffers, as well as continuing to produce Dateline Earth and our other two blogs, Western Exposure and From the Field.

In the meantime, it's incredibly important that you donate to InvestigateWest. Become a member. Give us your ideas. Give us your energy. But first, give us a little bit of money. A membership costs just $5 a month. It's what has to happen to sustain the independent journalism so crucial to our self-governing democracy.  We’re trying to keep body and soul together while building this ambitious new project to preserve and modernize in-depth reporting on the environment, public health and social-justice issues in western North America.

Will it work? It’s up to you. As a body requires oxygen, we must have support from citizens who care about what’s happening in the society around them.

By Alexander Kelly and Blair Kelly

COPENHAGEN -- Even while dealing with international climate change negotiations here, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire is thinking about the recession back home. She admits it will hold back environmental progress but says she intends to move foward as best Washington can:

By Alexander Kelly and Blair Kelly

COPENHAGEN -- In this second of three segments in her interview with InvestigateWest, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire argues that the way to revive the economy is through green jobs needed to fight climate change:

By Alexander Kelly and Blair Kelly

COPENHAGEN -- Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire says she is negotating at the United Nations talks on climate change here with two foreign firms considering launching green-energy ventures in Washington:

This is as much a trade mission for me, an economic development, as it is to represent Washington state and the United States to the rest of the world to show that we are accepting our role and we are leading.

More in this, the first of three segments of InvestigateWest's interview with Gregoire:

In California, green energy enthusiasts are finding themselves pitted against endangered species advocates as environmental hurdles get in the way of the state’s renewable energy goals. It's happened elswhere in the West as well, and expect more of the same, as pressure builds to produce to produce more alternative energy.

The Los Angeles Times reports that as companies race to finalize permits and break ground by the end of next year on solar energy projects, the presence of sensitive habitat, rare plants and endangered creatures threatens to  slow or stop  some of the projects closest to securing permits.

"The development of solar-power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation's dependence on fossil fuels and curb global warming. In addition, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has urged that the state meet one-third of its electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020.

Companies are racing to finalize their permits and break ground by the end of next year, which would qualify them to obtain some of the $15 billion in federal stimulus funds designated for renewable energy projects.

How fast can California go green? Struggling to pass a law to require all utilities to get a third of their power from green sources by 2020, lawmakers in Sacramento are hung up on the slow pace utilities have made meeting the existing goal of  obtaining 20 percent of their power from green sources by 2010, spelled out in a law passed in 2006, reports the Los Angeles Times. Until they have that figured out, it's difficult to find a way to hit the more ambitious target.

"On one side of the sharp debate are environmentalists, labor unions, Democratic legislators and consumer advocates. Electric utilities and business lobbies are on the other, while the governor appears to have a foot in each camp.

The main argument is over how much of the new green power must be generated within California's borders. Another point of contention is which is more expensive: in-state renewable energy or wind and solar power from facilities elsewhere in the West.

The complex, many-sided negotiations could have a big effect in the decade ahead on consumers' electric bills, the quality of the air they breathe and the effect of global warming on their communities.

With two weeks to go in the legislative session, lawmakers have their work cut out for them. But Democratic lawmakers made the commitment to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who has been a leader in the fight for green power, arguing that not only does it turn the tide on global warming, but that it provides an economic boon as well.

-- Rita Hibbard

The need to protect the marbled murrelet, a seabird that nests in old-growth forests, is standing in the way of building a wind-power project in Pacific County, Washington, the Longview Daily News reports. The story by Don Jenkins highlights the most negative aspect of wind power -- the turbines' tendency to act like a Cuisinart for migrating birds. The seabirds have to fly right past where the wind farm is planned.