The Kona Coffee Bean

If you are anything like me, most mornings can be neatly split into two categories: before, and after, coffee. College put me on this path and graduate school cemented its course: I am an AM caffeine junkie (aside: if I drink it after noon, I am up all night).

I’ll admit that it is not the most sustainable habit – coffee requires a significant amount of energy to produce and ship, and of course there are significant water, chemical, and land impacts (such as deforestation) associated with it – but damn, it tastes so good. Not that I ignore these inconvenient truths. More than the next man, I’ve done my best to balance the impacts of my habit: I’ve bought organic coffee; I’ve bought fair trade. But do they taste as good? Are they even organic?

While I have enjoyed the taste of coffee over the years and have even advanced my own preparation rituals and techniques (I make a mean cappuccino and latté – ask any former roommate), I’ve never been what one might consider a “purist.” To be honest, I wasn’t quite sure what being a coffee purist even entailed. That is until I paid a visit to the Mountain Thunder Coffee Plantation in Kona, Hawaii.

I love coffee

Last week I toured Mountain Thunder, sampled their exquisite brew, and made some purchases. I now know what the best coffee in the world tastes like, and can proudly say that it is indeed organic. Good luck finding it locally produced though, unless of course you live in a coffee-producing region. But even then chances are the very best stuff is shipped out for export and is not kept for local consumption, as is the case in much of Africa, Central America and Southeast Asia, where locals are usually left with the lower quality grade beans. Which is a shame in my opinion. Not in Kona though, and not at Mountain Thunder, they keep the best stuff for the locals. As well they should.

TOP: hand picked coffee bean, right from the tree; MIDDLE: top of the line, high quality "green" coffee bean (before roasting); BOTTOM: lower quality "green" coffee beans, what is found in most Kona "blends"

The Mountain Thunder Coffee Plantation is one of the premiere coffee producers in Kona. Which in turn makes it one of the world’s best, as Kona is an area known for its exquisite coffee beans – a unique blend of climate, farming, meticulous care and precision production techniques. Just like the only real champagne comes from Champagne, France, (the rest is merely sparkling wine), only coffee grown in the small stretch along the western shore of the big island of Hawaii is actually Kona Coffee. Most Kona coffee sold in the market is a blend, with roughly 10% of the beans coming from Kona, and often the lower grade beans. Only in Hawaii are coffee producers actually required to report how much of their blend is actually Kona coffee. Not that you can’t taste the difference, but I thought you could use the heads up.

So what makes it organic? Okay, so it is not all organic, but at least Mountain Thunder has phased out the use of pesticides to control weed growth for its premiere crop. Instead of synthetic fertilizers they use a combination of pig, donkey, and goose manure and composted remains of the coffee bean that are stripped away in the production process.

Not that they wouldn’t scale up. Organic farming is hard work, and the considerable paperwork and testing that is required to certify products as organic makes it all but cost prohibitive for a lot of farmers. Funny how pumping pesticides and synthetic fertilizers into your crops requires less “hoop jumping” than employing natural farming techniques and producing an organic product. I suppose we just pay for that elsewhere, like with rising cancer rates and health care costs, or with the global warming pollution attributed to the production of synthetic chemicals, or…

An organic farmer after a long, hard day

So why is it worth bucking up and buying the best from the best, the most local and organic coffee you can find? Take this little back of the envelope calculation into consideration: as an estimate, each cup of coffee you drink is equivalent to roughly 59 grams of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere. If you drink 2 cups of coffee a day every day of the year, that is roughly 43 kilograms (1000 grams = 1 kilogram) of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere just because you are trying to wake up (or stay awake). And that is not even scratching the surface of the water used. Organic coffee and environmentally responsible coffee plantations cut these impacts down. Or you could give it up, but I’m not there yet.

So although you may not be “paying” for it, coffee is a luxury good. Have some culture, have some class, buy the good stuff.

Green products are on the rise, but what does that necessarily look like? This quick video from Scientific American offers a brief glimpse at some of the electronics products that were on display at the recent Greener Gadgets Conference 2010.

One of the largest issues with electronics appliances has to do with the waste they generate. While energy use is certainly a concern as well, as is packaging waste, waste from electronic appliances has risen dramatically in recent years due in part to our increasing use of computers, cell phones, and other personal devices. The life-cycle of these products, cell phones and computers in particular, is often only a few years at best, and they have been accumulating in warehouses and junkyards everywhere. More often than not, electronics are made with materials that contain heavy metals which can be toxic if exposed to the elements.

The exportation of waste overseas to countries in Africa and Asia (see video below), where they are stripped and scrapped for their metals, has arisen as an enormous environmental justice issue as the disposal of parts once the valuable components are retrieved is hazardous to workers and exposes people highly toxic contaminants. A number of organizations have sprung up in recent years to more closely regulate this hazardous trade.

You can ensure that you are not contributing to the growing stockpiles of e-waste by recycling your electronics responsibly after their useful life, and purchasing products with more environmentally sound components.

The Greener Gadgets Guide provides a Greener Electronics Guide that you can browse to find resources that will help you make smarter consumer decisions around the electronic products you use, and dispose of.

To learn more about E-Waste, watch the video from the Asia Society below.

The other night on “60 Minutes”, Leslie Stahl profiled Bloom Energy, a silicon valley energy firm that is today unveiled the Bloom Box. In the 60 Minutes segment, the Bloom Box (AKA Bloom’s Energy Server) was touted as a “holy grail” of energy – a clean, cheap, and distributed energy source that you could set in your backyard.

The Bloom Box

So what is it? The Bloom Box is a 100 kW fuel cell that uses natural gas, biogas, or waste landfill gas as a fuel input. Combine that with oxygen (normal air) on a proprietary thin wafer with 2 ink-esque coatings on each side and voila! electricity (in reality more complicated than this description, but for the purposes of this discussion, it will do). For the past few months, Bloom Boxes have been powering facilities at Google, eBay, and Fedex.

What makes this idea so appealing is the prospect of distributed electricity generation. The model for the US (and most of the world) since electrification began was centralized generation and distribution – large power plants transmitting electricity great distances to power homes and businesses. With a distributed source like the Bloom Box, all of the traditional infrastructure goes away – there is no need to build power lines or massive power plants. Hook one of these boxes up to a home or neighborhood and all of the power you need is right there.

While these are some of the exiting benefits of distributed fuel cell generation, a fuel cell is not an energy source in and of itself. They need a source of methane to function. Whether this means hooking them up to a natural gas line or a methane capture landfill, this will still need to worked out.

The CEO of Bloom, K.R. Sridhar, sees his invention as a revolution in energy. Imagine taking his box and dropping it into a village in the 3rd world. Hook it up to an anaerobic digester with cow manure as a feedstock and you have a reliable renewable energy source.

K.R. Sridhar, inventor of the Bloom Box. Source: CNET

Right now these boxes cost between $700,000-800,000.

Bloom Energy has some serious backers, including Kleiner-Perkins (the venture capital firm that funded Google and Amazon, among others) and Colin Powell.

From a macro-energy/climate change standpoint, these boxes could be a great asset in generating clean energy from renewable sources (so long as they are using landfill gas or biogas). They have rated efficiencies (>50%) greater than most conventional thermal power stations (33-48%), minus all of the massive energy distribution infrastructure and inefficiencies. If the price of these drops enough, they could also be an excellent way of meeting the energy demands of the developing world.

Bottom line: a company and product to watch very closely.

World’s Largest Corporations Caused $2.2 Trillion in Environmental Damages, UN Report Finds
A new UN report shows that if the environmental degradation caused by the world’s 3,000 largest companies was accounted for in their balance sheets, it could cut those companies’ profits by nearly a third. The amount was estimated to be about $2.2 trillion – more than half of which was a price on carbon released into the atmosphere. Some would argue that it is paradoxical to put a price on the environment, as it risks treating the environment as a commodity, rather than an essential component which our civilization depends.

How Green are the Vancouver Winter Olympics?
This article in Popular Science discusses some of the efforts of the Vancouver Olympic Games, such as using recycled metal for the medals, state of the art green building techniques, and lumber from trees destroyed by the the pine beetle epidemic.

Fact Checking the IPCC Controversy Hoopla
As always, the scientists at RealClimate have an excellent post separating the real, the overblown, and the fallacies in the ongoing media frenzy surrounding the IPCC. The gist: yes there are few errors, but these do not undermine the general conclusion of the report. Ongoing observations and studies show that if anything, predictions on impacts caused by accelerating warming by the IPCC AR4 were too conservative, and that the planet is trending along the upper trajectories of the emissions scenarios.

Obama’s Support for Expansion of Nuclear Power and Green Politics
President Obama has made clear that he feels that nuclear energy expansion is key to meeting future energy demands and curbing global warming. Will his support of nuclear power win him republican support of a climate bill? Time Magazine has the analysis.

Wyoming Governor Proposes Tax on Wind Energy Producers
A debate is brewing in Wyoming about taxing the wind energy industry. Governor Dave Freudenthal has proposed an excise tax of $1 per megawatt-hour of energy generated to compensate taxpayers with the environmental and socioeconomic costs of wind energy. Wind energy proponents say that the proposed tax would stifle wind power development and make it less competitive for developers as compared with other states.

Brazil Approves Huge Dam in the Amazon
The Brazilian government has given approval for the construction of a massive dam in the Amazon state of Para. This controversial project would devastate 500 sq km of the rainforest, and affect the livelihoods of over 12,000 indigenous people. The Belo Monte dam would be the third largest in the world at 11,000 MW, and provide electricity to 23 million homes to help meet Brazil’s growing energy demands. Reported by the BBC.

EU to Classify Palm Oil Plantations as Forests
Palm oil plantation expansion across Southeast Asia has led to massive amounts of rainforest destruction over the past few decades. Palm oil, an important cash crop for the region, is used as a cooking oil, in cosmetics products, and as a biofuel. According to a leaked document from the European Commission at Mongabay. the EU may allow the classification of palm oil plantations that were converted from rainforest as “forest”, thereby meeting their sustainability criteria. Should this be approved, it could lead to further destruction of the forests of the region – exacerbating climate change and destroying biodiversity.

New Wind Turbine Design Based on Jet Engines Could Boost Efficiency by 4X
Flodesign, a Massachusetts-based wind turbine company has just received over $35 million in venture capital and $8 million in grants from the DOE to bring their revolutionary design to market. Should its performance claims be true, it could reduce the cost of generating wind energy by half. Read more and watch a video of the design at Treehugger.

China has been rapidly building up its renewable energy production and investing in sustainable energy while the U.S. continues to stall and take small incremental steps. Failing to assess the stakes of the global sustainable energy race could be a costly missed opportunity for the U.S. economy.

Residents walk pass a group of solar power panels in Shenyang (Source: AFP & Google News)

It is easy to be impressed by the pace and robustness with which the Chinese are developing clean energy technologies. Given its economic ascent, it should be no surprise that the nation is outpacing expectations in its efforts to increase energy efficiency, boost the production of renewable energy, and advance other 21st century opportunities like smarter electricity grids, electric cars, and high speed rail. They have the largest and fastest growing market for these goods, and they have the active political and economic support of the government in securing the resources to advance these industries. It is also increasingly apparent that it is in China’s interest for the U.S. to continue lagging behind.

In his recent State of the Union address, President Obama alluded to this:

Nations like China “aren’t playing for second place,” Obama said.  “They’re putting more emphasis on math and science.  They’re rebuilding their infrastructure.  They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.”

The President is right to draw attention to this point. While America continues to dawdle, China is racing ahead. They do want those jobs; in fact, they want to dominate all of the industries that support them. Why wouldn’t they? Clean and sustainable energy offers great promise for economic growth and development, and China wants the world to buy their wind turbines, solar panels, and electric cars.

The U.S. has been caught largely flat footed in even acknowledging that there is a global sustainable energy race, much less taking notice that it is falling behind. But while U.S. politicians and pundits debate and dilute energy action, and deny the legitimacy of the overwhelming scientific evidence behind global warming and dangerous climate change, the Chinese have been steadily out maneuvering U.S. interests.

At last December’s climate negotiations in Copenhagen, China held firm to its position that it would not commit to strong and specific targets for GHG reductions, and it actively avoided efforts to increase the transparency and verification of the carbon accounting that enables any meaningful international agreement to carry legitimacy. It was no secret heading into COP-15 that China’s participation in an international climate change treaty was a key condition for domestic climate legislation.

An international climate agreement aside, China’s domestic priorities reflect a very strong move toward sustainable energy production. China’s recent announcement of the formation of a National Energy Commission, chaired by the Premier Wen Jiaboa, is the latest example of the support such efforts are receiving.

China is certainly aware and concerned about the potential instability that would accompany disastrous climate change impacts, but it is doubtful the Chinese are as eager for the U.S. to get its act together on energy and climate. The status-quo diminishes the prospect of U.S. firms’ competing with sustainable energy industries in China. Their behavior at Copenhagen was likely influenced at some level by this understanding.

The growth in China's sustainable energy industries has been accompanied by increasing control of rare earth metals.

It may be difficult to understand the inner workings of the Chinese Communist Party, but it is quite clear that they are moving as fast as they can to enable China’s dominance in the sustainable energy race. And there are some troublesome indications about how the game will be played. China’s efforts to secure rare earth metals, is one very important example.

As Grist points out:

“China is responsible for 97 percent of the world’s production of rare earth elements or metals, vital for many cleantech products from wind turbines to hybrid-car batteries, fiber optics to low-energy light bulbs. But over the last seven years, it has reduced the quantity of them available for export by 40 percent, and before long may be using all of its production to feed domestic demand.”

China’s control of these 17 elements is something to take note of. As is their approach to securing access to natural resources in Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. Recent disagreements between the two global economic superpowers should serve as an important reminder that Chinese and American political interests are often at odds. Not recognizing those differences and divergent interests is a costly mistake.

President Obama discussing clean energy during the state of the union. Source: whitehouse.gov

Going into his first State of the Union address to Congress, I was curious to see if Obama would scale back initiatives that he has placed at the center of his agenda in the face of the US’ fiscal problems. I wanted to highlight and provide commentary of his points relevant to Project Groundswell – namely energy, climate change, and transportation.

Obama’s words are in italics. My comments are in plain text. His first mention has to do with infrastructure and transportation:

Next, we can put Americans to work today building the infrastructure of tomorrow. From the first railroads to the Interstate Highway System, our nation has always been built to compete.  There’s no reason Europe or China should have the fastest trains, or the new factories that manufacture clean energy products.

For anyone who has travelled in Europe or East Asia, the convenience of high-speed rail is without question. The US has eschewed rail as a viable form of transportation (except the northeast corridor) in favor of automobile and air travel. Rail travel has numerous benefits including: comfort, direct access to the center of cities, less of a hassle compared with air travel (security checkpoints, baggage claim), not to mention the environmental benefits. Those that argue that investing in rail travel will involve massive government subsidies fail to mention that air travel and roadways receive massive subsidies.

Tomorrow, I’ll visit Tampa, Florida, where workers will soon break ground on a new high-speed railroad funded by the Recovery Act. There are projects like that all across this country that will create jobs and help move our nation’s goods, services, and information.

The Florida high speed rail network is a start (watch Obama and Biden in Florida announcing this yesterday)– however the fact that high speed rail is such a miniscule part of our national transportation system is unlikely to change very rapidly in the near future. The California high-speed rail plan, linking Sacramento, San Francisco/San Jose, Los Angeles, and San Diego is expected to cost upwards of $40 billion and take decades to build. This initiative was just awarded $2.25 billion in stimulus funds, out of a total of $8 billion just announced.I support these efforts, and wish that larger, more concrete plans were underway nationwide.

We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities — and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which supports clean energy jobs.

Yes. Investing in clean energy and energy efficiency will: create jobs, meet our growing energy needs, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and help mitigate global warming and other forms of pollution.

From the day I took office, I’ve been told that addressing our larger challenges is too ambitious; such an effort would be too contentious.  I’ve been told that our political system is too gridlocked, and that we should just put things on hold for a while. For those who make these claims, I have one simple question: How long should we wait?  How long should America put its future on hold?

You see, Washington has been telling us to wait for decades, even as the problems have grown worse.  Meanwhile, China is not waiting to revamp its economy.  Germany is not waiting.  India is not waiting.  These nations — they’re not standing still.  These nations aren’t playing for second place.  They’re putting more emphasis on math and science.  They’re rebuilding their infrastructure.  They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs.  Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America.

Clean energy investment in Asia surpassed that in the Americas for the first time. China is rapidly changing its image from that of a polluting, industrial behemoth to the leader in green technology. Government support and investment in this type of research and infrastructure should be advanced.

Next, we need to encourage American innovation.  Last year, we made the largest investment in basic research funding in history — an investment that could lead to the world’s cheapest solar cells or treatment that kills cancer cells but leaves healthy ones untouched.  And no area is more ripe for such innovation than energy.  You can see the results of last year’s investments in clean energy -– in the North Carolina company that will create 1,200 jobs nationwide helping to make advanced batteries; or in the California business that will put a thousand people to work making solar panels.

Yes success stories, but a drop in the bucket when looking at the 10% unemployment we are facing. We need more stories like these.

But to create more of these clean energy jobs, we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives.  And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country. It means making tough decisions about opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development. It means continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies. And, yes, it means passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.

I was surprised that Obama led with nuclear power in this list. Ditto with offshore drilling. Not only a smart political move, as most republicans support expansion of nuclear power (and drill baby drill), but necessary. The new (and next) generation of nuclear power stations will provide us with a low-carbon energy source to help us meet our growing energy demands.

I am grateful to the House for passing such a bill last year. And this year I’m eager to help advance the bipartisan effort in the Senate.

I know there have been questions about whether we can afford such changes in a tough economy.  I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change.  But here’s the thing — even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future -– because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy.  And America must be that nation.

This is a great way to frame the debate, in my opinion. Even if you are not convinced (despite the overwhelming amount of evidence) that climate change is a large threat to the planet, what do you have against clean energy sources and improving energy efficiency? Not to mention the growing worldwide demand for these products – why not support private businesses in America that can design and manufacture green tech?

Interested in understanding more about what climate solutions are out there? Need a quick primer on Cap-and-Trade? This short video from Clean Energy Works offers an overview of some of the major goals and objectives associated with the legislation. Passing energy and climate legislation is essential if there is going to be any sort of comprehensive international agreement to address global warming and climate change.

Story of Cap-and-Trade from Clean Energy Works on Vimeo.

Is cap-and-trade our best option? (See arguments for cap-and-trade vs. a carbon tax.) Proponents of the approach make the case that it leverages market based mechanisms to curtail emissions, and is more effective in limiting emissions to a specific threshold than a flat carbon tax, which is even more politically unpopular. However, in a recent op-ed to the NY Times, James Hansen, the famous climatologist, argues against it, while Paul Krugman, the Nobel laureate in economics, defends cap-and-trade in a response on his blog. For an in-depth review, see this 2009 assessment of U.S. cap-and-trade proposals by researchers at MIT. For a very brief overview of some of the pros and cons, see below.

Some of the other advantages of cap-and-trade include:

Source: wikipedia

• Leverages economic instruments and incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• Would stimulate innovation toward less carbon intensive technologies.
• Would stimulate carbon trading and allow an entire industry based on the reduction of carbon emissions to take root.
• Would allow for US polluters to purchase forestry offsets and tap into other international projects to reduce emissions.

Some potential disadvantages:

• Depending on the “cap” limit on emissions that is set, the extent to which a price on carbon stimulates trading and actually reduces emissions may fluctuate (eg, if the cap is too high it might hurt businesses, and if is too low there won’t be an incentive to comply.)
• In the view of some, it may not be as effective as a flat carbon tax in terms of actually reducing emissions — the ultimate goal. A flat carbon tax applied on a economy-wide scale is much less politically viable, however.
• If large emitters are still permitted to emit (by purchasing forestry offsets, for example), and the penalties for doing so are not stringent enough, actual emission reductions will not be significant enough to avoid dangerous climatic changes.

There are a number of factors that would impact the domestic success of cap-and-trade, including the stringency of foreign programs, how well U.S. policies would mesh with these foreign programs, and the availability of alternatives to current technologies and energy sources as firms look away from conventional carbon intensive options. Regardless, if we are to avoid dangerous rises in global temperature, we must take steps toward reducing emissions, and cap-and-trade appears to be the most palatable political option that is on the table here in the United States.