Green Building and Manufacturing Articles
New Army Corps Policy Forces Project Designers to Consider Rising Seas
The Army Corps of Engineers must consider the effects of climate change as it draws up plans for flood control, navigation and other water projects under a new agency policy.
The idea is to keep rising seas from swamping major federal investments.
"You don't want to make stupid large investments that are difficult or impossible to undo," said Jeffrey Gebert, the Army Corps' chief of coastal planning in the Philadelphia district and a member of the team that drafted the policy.
In some cases, extra up-front investment could armor projects against worst-case scenarios, the policy's authors say. In others, the corps could leave room for future adjustments.
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USGBC jobs finds "Green building to support nearly 8 million U.S. jobs over next 4 years"
USGBC/Booz Allen Hamilton Report Shows Green Construction to Contribute $554 Billion to U.S. GDP Between 2009 and 2013.
The U.S. Green Building Council is having its huge annual conference now - you can watch live streams and archived videos of the leading experts on clean energy and energy efficiency here. And they just released a major new "Green Jobs Study" done by Booz Allen, which concluded:
The results of this study show that the economic impact from green building construction is significant and will continue to grow as the demand for green buildings rises. Green construction spending currently supports over 2 million jobs and generates over 100 billion dollars in gross domestic product and wages. By the year 2013, this study estimates that green buildings will support nearly 8 million jobs across occupations ranging from construction managers and carpenters to truck drivers and cost estimators.
The study is well worth reading - or grab some PowerPoint slides. Here's more from the press release:
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Are U.S. solar jobs here to stay? Senators fight for a yes.
A trio of U.S. senators this week introduced a bill to spur solar manufacturing jobs in the United States.
Through additional tax credits, the legislation aims to encourage more U.S. companies to make solar equipment, creating jobs and building up the country's clean energy economy.
Many - from politicians and environmentalists to investors - have pinned great hopes on green jobs. Clean energy could create 850,000 manufacturing jobs in the United States, according to recent research Reuters reported this week.
The latest proposal could create 315,000 U.S. jobs along, according to Solar Energy Industries Association, which is pushing for the bill.
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Green is not turning into American red, white and blue.
Despite recent advances, the U.S. lags far behind other major countries when it comes to clean energy investment and experts say it may never compete on equal terms, let alone lead.
And that's after some $836 million in green technology deals in 2009-the most ever, according to Greentech Media, and another $8 billion in renewable energy loans budgeted under the Obama administration's stimulus package.
"We stand to fall farther and farther behind other countries like China and India unless there are fundamental shifts," says Susan MacCormac, chair of the venture capital and cleantech practices at international tech law firm Morrison & Foerster. "The U.S. should catch up, but odds are low that it will."
A recent report from Deutsche Bank ranks the U.S. and Canada as two of the worst countries for investing in renewable energy, with Germany, France and China listed as among the best. The report cites a lack of long term and transparent energy polices in the U.S. that would translate into any kind of certainty for investments.
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Oak Ridge 'Jaguar' Supercomputer Is World's Fastest
ScienceDaily (Nov. 17, 2009) - An upgrade to a Cray XT5 high-performance computing system deployed by the Department of Energy has made the "Jaguar" supercomputer the world's fastest. Located at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Jaguar is the scientific research community's most powerful computational tool for exploring solutions to some of today's most difficult problems. The upgrade, funded with $19.9 million under the Recovery Act, will enable scientific simulations for exploring solutions to climate change and the development of new energy technologies.
"Supercomputer modeling and simulation is changing the face of science and sharpening America's competitive edge," said Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. "Oak Ridge and other DOE national laboratories are helping address major energy and climate challenges and lead America toward a clean energy future."
To net the number-one spot on the TOP500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers, Jaguar's Cray XT5 component was upgraded this fall from four-core to six-core processors and ran a benchmark program called High-Performance Linpack (HPL) at a speed of 1.759 petaflop/s (quadrillion floating point operations, or calculations, per second). The rankings were announced today in Portland at SC09, an international supercomputing conference.
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U.K. Leads the Way in Banning Toxic Ingredients in Cosmetics and Personal Care Products
Cancer Prevention Coalition CHICAGO, IL, November 17, 2009 --/WORLD-WIRE/-- The Cancer Prevention Coalition commends the UK's largest nationwide chain of health food shops, Holland & Barrett, for its recently announced ban on beauty products containing some toxic ingredients, but warns that products containing a wide range other toxic ingredients remain on the shelves.
On October 6th, Holland & Barrett announced that it would "ban hundreds of leading beauty products over claims they contain toxic ingredients" in their 525 stores nationwide.
Holland & Barrett announced that they have been working over the past year behind the scenes with suppliers to eliminate the use of these chemicals. As a result, they decided to reject certain well-known brands from their stores and reformulate all their own label products.
The main ingredients of concern to Holland & Barrett in this ban are a group of hormonal preservatives known as parabens, and an unrelated harsh detergent known as sodium lauryl sulfate.
Holland & Barrett has additional stores in the Republic of Ireland, in South Africa and in The Netherlands, where they use the trade name "De Tuinen."
Holland & Barrett is the first UK company to take this action, but it is not alone.
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