Climate change visionary and creator of Energy Star, dies at 62

From The Washington Post: John S. Hoffman, a former federal environmental official whose innovative program to identify and reward energy-efficient practices became the Energy Star program, a voluntary international rating system for “green” products, died Sept. 24 at MedStar Washington Hospital Center. He was 62 and a Washington resident.

He had complications after surgery for a perforated peptic ulcer, said his wife, Lucinda McConathy.

Mr. Hoffman was a global warming crusader in the 1980s, before the terms “climate change” and “clean energy” were part of everyday life. People looked at him as if he were a modern-day Chicken Little when he discussed ozone depletion and climate change, said Maria Vargas, a former colleague of his at the Environmental Protection Agency and current director of the Better Buildings Challenge at the Department of Energy.

Mr. Hoffman’s brainchild, the Energy Star program, was originally intended to be just one of a series of voluntary programs to combat global warming and demonstrate the profit potential of developing ecologically sustainable products. He was one of the first officials at EPA, Vargas said, to recognize that voluntary programs could help the agency take preventive action against environmental problems instead of just responding to them.

In 1996, the EPA partnered with the Department of Energy to include major home appliances and home electronics in the Energy Star program. The label is now featured on houses, commercial and industrial buildings and more than 40,000 consumer products.

In the past two decades, according to the EPA, Energy Star has prevented more than 1.7 billion metric tons of carbon emissions and saved Americans nearly $230 billion in utility bills.

The program celebrates its 20th anniversary this year and has been adopted by the European Union.

Mr. Hoffman was also a driving force behind what became the 1987 Montreal Protocol, a landmark international treaty designed to reduce harmful chemical emissions. More.

And David Doninger of NRDC writes that Hoffman was a "brilliant leader of the EPA team that saved the ozone layer."

Germany's energy revolution in the hands of ordinary citizens

51% of the renewable energy on the German grid is put there by individuals (like us) and farmers. Individuals and private investors are contributing the equivalent generation capacity in renewables of20 nuclear power plants. None of it is state owned. More than one million Germans are involved as energy producers or investors in renewable energy production. According to Germany's environment ministry, "New ownership models such as citizens’ wind parks and energy cooperatives show that the Energiewende cannot only bring about environmental protection and economic growth, but also decentralized production structures in the hands of local initiatives."  

Stanford University energy research finds an answer blowing in the wind

New research from the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University delivers the first-ever quantitative analysis of  the offshore wind energy resource from Virginia to Maine. The Stanford researchers conclude that roughly one-third (34%)  of the United States carbon free electricity demand (from Florida to Maine) can be technically provided with interconnected offshore wind farms along the East Coast.  Moreover, the research concluded that hundreds of gigawatts of high-voltage direct current (HVDC) can be transmitted through the proposed Atlantic Wind Connection seabed transmission line from New York to Virginia.

The research team inserted 140,000 wind turbines (5 megawatts each) into their computer model along the Eastern Seaboard with many of the turbines installed so far offshore that they would not be seen from land.  In the long term, the research demonstrates that the deliberate shift to renewable energy including wind would offset pollution and wean our energy policy off dirty, dangerous and expensive power and move it into the carbon-free nuclear-free 21st Century.

Native Americans Endorse Feed-in Tariffs for Oregon

Writes Paul Gipe: "The Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians is encouraging Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber to include feed-in tariffs for renewable energy in his 10-year energy plan.

The move is significant in a region of North America where the indigenous people have long maintained they should have a say in how land is used and for what purpose. Tribes also directly control large amounts of land with resident populations that could use and profit from renewable energy development.

The Affiliated Tribes action is contained in a resolution passed at their mid-year convention 21-24 May 2012 in Newport, Oregon.

The resolution notes that feed-in tariffs are a highly effective policy mechanism that would lower barriers to the rapid development of renewable energy by tribal communities."

Would you rather store solar power overnight, or radioactive waste forevermore?!

"The people that are saying we need nuclear power and we have the technology to safely store nuclear waste for 250,000 years are the same ones who claim that we can't use solar because we have no way to store the electricity overnight! If we have the technology to do one, we ought to be able to figure out the other." ---Arnie Gundersen, Fairewinds Associates (pictured left)