Current Savers Blog

Consensus among sustainability experts at a Toronto conference this week was that world leaders in the Group of  20 nations face a fecund opportunity to make gains integrating environmental concerns with all other levels of economic development.

“Finance ministers are the real environment ministers. Environment ministers have weak, minor voices at the table at which economic decisions are made,” said chair Maurice Strong, President of the Council of the United Nations University for Peace, former Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, and former president of Power Corporation, head of Petro Canada and Ontario Hydro.

“Environmentalists cannot run the economy,” Strong said.

Economist Sylvia Ostry, former Chief Statistician at Statistics Canada and a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body the Group of Thirty says the best contribution the G20 could make to sustainable development is to strike a new institution with experts from a variety of backgrounds.

“The WTO has a number of ways of dealing with this integration,” she said, pointing to the Integrated Framework which is comprised of the WTO and the World Bank and other institutions. “So it’s perfectly possible in my view for the G8 and the G20 to … establish an eminent persons group of experts in this. Let them be invited, it would be easy, to the WTO and begin to do the basic research on this and then begin a policy debate.”

She says full integration is vital.

“This is much more than the environment. This is a whole range of economic and social policy issues and the only institution that I know of that covers it is the WTO. The IMF doesn’t, the World Bank yes, and the WTO and the NGOs, I think you need civil society. You’d have to set up the thing and have the experts and then produce the stuff for debate.”

Ostry, Strong and about 20 other panelists spoke to a Toronto conference on sustainable development hosted by Corporate Knights Magazine for Responsible Business and the International Institute for Sustainable Development.

John Kirton, Director of G8 Research Group and Co-director of G20 Reseach Group with University of Toronto’s School of Global Affairs, says he wants to see G20 leaders living up to commitments made by all 20 nations at the September 2009 summit in Pittsburgh to eliminate “inefficient” fossil fuel subsidies worth $500 billion in taxpayers’ money.

“If they can do that, take the next step here at Toronto, they will save their taxpayers the debt burden and the deficit burden of half a trillion dollars at the same time help control carbon emissions into the atmosphere and create a level playing field so the green businesses of the future trying to develop, pioneer, sell the new clean green technologies can have an equal shot at the marketplace.”

Kirton wants President Barack Obama to take back a message to Congress. “Look, every country in the world agrees we need to do this, both to help the environment but also to help reduce the United States’ unsustainable deficit and fiscal burden and at the same time give business a chance to actually innovate and sell what member of the Congress would be opposed to that?” he added.

It can’t be a one-time discussion either, argues Maria Ivanova, director of the Global Enviornmental Governance Project at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy

“What I would like to urge leaders of the world to do is have the meetings of those groups regularly address environmental issues, that the environment is the fundamental upon which the economy, upon which our life is built and without serious consideration at every single G8 and G20 meeting it would be difficult to then resolve these issues outside of these forums,” she said.

“The leaders of the world would pay significant attention to these issues while the citizens are also organizing and rallying around these issues I think then we will have that convergence between leadership from the top and leadership from activism at the bottom that I think is absolutely critical.”

The G20 summit takes place in Toronto on Saturday and Sunday. The group of global leaders includes the world’s biggest economies and covers two-thirds of the world’s population.

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Photo shows Oxfam activists pose as G8 leaders during a photo opportunity ahead of the G8/G20 summits in Huntsville, Ontario June 24, 2010.  REUTERS/Carlo Allegri

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Much has been written about how solar power could help to
solve the energy crisis facing mankind. Ideas range from
harnessing the Sahara’s heat through parabolic mirrors to
transmitting solar energy from space to earth.

The Desertec solar project, for example, aims to supply 15
percent of Europe’s energy needs by 2050. Yet according to
Brussels-based EPIA, the world’s biggest solar industry
association, more could be achieved some 30 years earlier.

Technically, Europe’s roofs could meet 40 percent of the
EU’s electricity demand in ten years from now — at least in
theory.

“With a total ground floor area over 22,000 km2, 40 percent
of all building roofs and 15 percent of all facades in (the EU’s
27 member states) are suited for PV (photovoltaic)
applications,” EPIA wrote.

“This means that over 1,500 GWp (gigawatt peak) of PV could
technically be installed in Europe which would generate annually
about 1,400 TWh (terawatt hours), representing 40 percent of the
total electricity demand by 2020.”

Got some space left on your roof?

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Maryland Public Service Commission highlighted the political resistance smart-metering advocates must overcome when it shot down proposals for compulsory smart metering submitted by Baltimore Gas and Electric Company (BGE).

Smart grids are essential for the Obama administration’s and power industry’s plan to meet rising electricity demand while integrating more renewable generation into the grid.

Creating flexibility on the demand side to match increased intermittency in supply is the only way to maintain reliability without having to build enormous amounts of expensive back-up gas-fired generating capacity and disfigure the landscape by installing thousands of miles of transmission lines.

BGE’s initiative has already been approved by the U.S. Department of Energy to receive $200 million of federal funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the centrepiece of the Obama administration’s stimulus package. It is one of the largest grants for electricity infrastructure made under the act. Of the total, $136 million would be spent on rolling out “advanced metering infrastructure” (AMI).

SEMI-SMART GRID
But BGE still needs approval from the state public service commission (PSC) for key elements of the system. The company’s proposals, as submitted to the commission, consist of three major components:

(1) Universal deployment of smart meters throughout BGE’s service territory, replacing or upgrading all existing customer electric and gas meters.

(2) Installing a related two-way communication network between the power utility, the smart meter and the premise.

(3) Implementing a mandatory “Smart Energy Pricing” (SEP) schedule for all residential electric customers. The SEP schedule would vary electricity rates during the peak months from June to September based on the time of day and time of week.

BGE asked for permission to go ahead with compulsory meter deployment and switch customers onto the mandatory smart schedule. It also asked for permission to impose a surcharge on residential customers to recover the costs of deploying the system in advance.

BGE wants to use time-of-use (TOU) rates at certain times of year rather than more radical real-time pricing (RTP) or critical peak pricing (CPP), which would tie bills directly to prices in the wholesale power market or charge customers very high prices for a few hours each year to deter all but essential consumption during those peak periods. TOU tariffs are already used for some residential and many industrial customers across the United States.

Crucially, BGE’s meters would communicate with the utility to enable TOU charging, but they would not necessarily communicate with household appliances or provide in-home displays to automatically reduce consumption during expensive periods, or at least make customers aware they are now on a penalty rate.

For these reasons, BGE’s proposals are only for a “semi-smart” grid. But they are important because this type of semi-smart approach is the one most likely to be adopted by other utilities in the United States and in other countries such as the United Kingdom, where the utilities have been ordered to ensure every home has a smart meter by 2020.

So the public service commission’s decision to reject them on June 21 marks a setback for the industry’s hopes for a metering revolution. It may not be fatal, but it does underscore the enormous scepticism from customers and politicians smart grid advocates will have to overcome if they want widespread rollout.

PSC OBJECTIONS

The PSC was careful not to close the door to all smart metering. “We share BGE’s (and others’) hopes, and even enthusiasm, for the long-run potential and importance of the infrastructure upgrades known colloquially as the smart grid”, the commission wrote. But “we find the business case for this Proposal untenable”. The commission invited BGE to come back with a better one.

The commission’s objections were predictable, and indeed have been foreshadowed in most of the debates about smart metering.

First, the commission and company could not agree on how to share the costs and risks of rolling out smart meters, who should capture any benefits, and how the tariff should be structured.

The commission strongly criticised BGE for trying to recover costs through a surcharge that would appear on customer bills almost immediately, before any infrastructure or benefits are realised, rather than including them in its general rate case and passing them to customers through ordinary per unit electricity charges.

It blasted the company for seeking “to collect a return on the Company’s net investment under the Proposal, as well as to collect Company “incentives” tied to anticipated wholesale capacity revenue, wholesale energy revenue, and wholesale capacity price mitigation resulting from anticipated changes in its customers’ energy use”. It went on: “With the proposed tracker [surcharge] in place, the Proposal is a “no-lose proposition” for the Company”.

The PSC was particularly concerned about where the programme’s benefits would really come from. “Nearly 80 percent of the anticipated benefits of this Proposal arise not from operational savings, such as those expected to be realised from remote meter-reading capabilities, but from supply-side benefits, such as the energy and capacity price mitigation, and monetising in the PJM markets the value of projected energy and capacity reductions”.

Sharing costs and benefits associated with maintaining spare capacity, and avoiding it through smart pricing, between utility investors and customers was always going to be a stumbling block for the smart metering programme.
The other problem is how to ensure customers capture potential benefits from load-shifting (moving use from peak to off-peak periods), and how to protect vulnerable customers who cannot easily shift their time of use.

In its authoritative survey of “Household Response to Dynamic Pricing of Electricity”, the Brattle Group concluded time-of-use tariffs with two bands (peak, off-peak) or three (peak, shoulder, off-peak) cut residential demand at peak times just 3-6 percent. More stringent strategies such as critical peak pricing cut peak demand by 13-20 percent.

But the biggest reductions came from CPP tariffs coupled with “enabling technologies” such as cycling switches on airconditioning units, which cut peak use by as much as 27-44 percent. The problem is that this requires much smarter meters capable of three-way communication between the utility, the meter and key household appliances.

At the very least, for even TOU and CPP systems to affect customer behaviour, customers need to be able to see how their bills are adding up in real time, and displays need to be prominent and visible.

The PSC criticised BGE’s proposal because it “contains no concrete, detailed customer education plans, includes no orbs or other in-home displays, and provides grossly inadequate messaging, in our view, to trigger the behaviour changes” it contemplates.

The commission also expressed predictable concerns that the TOU did not adequately protect the company’s “most vulnerable customers, such as low-income households, elderly customers, customers with medical needs for electricity that cannot be shifted to off-peak hours, or other customers who are stay-at-home”.

All this was foreseeable. The questions of how to make load shifting as easy as possible for customers, and protect households who cannot easily change time of use, were identified early on as crucial issues if smart metering was to win widespread acceptance.

BGE’s failure to develop a system that could win PSC approval suggests the industry still needs to do more work if it is to get official backing for a compulsory roll out. The metering revolution is still coming, but not in Baltimore just yet.

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The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico strikes close to home for Chevron as it faces a $27 billion lawsuit brought on by the indigenous people in the Amazon region of Ecuador for water pollution, and a fresh Chevron oil spill in Utah, a bi-weekly analysis of companies in the news by ASSET4 data providers shows.

Company selections were made by Christopher Greenwald, director of data content at ASSET4, a Thomson Reuters business that provides investment research on the environmental, social and governance performance of major global corporations. These ratings are not recommendations to buy or sell.

Here is a breakdown of the companies that made headlines June 5 to June 18 for winning or losing credibility based on environment-related activity.

Chevron Corporation

The recent news surrounding the creation of a $20 billion escrow fund to pay for claims in the Gulf of Mexico has led to renewed attention in the past weeks to the $27 billion case against Chevron brought by indigenous people in the Amazon region of Ecuador.

The lawsuit which has stretched on for nearly 17 years seeks reparations for environmental- and health-related damages caused by the dumping of over 18 billion gallons of polluted water in Ecuador by Texaco between 1964 and 1990.  Last week two protesters were arrested during a House Energy Committee meeting after attempting to give a bottle of contaminated water from the Amazon region to Chevron’s Chairman John Watson.

Chevron last week also faced an embarrassing oil spill of 500 barrels of oil from a leaking pipe, which devastated a lake at a local park in Salt Lake City, Utah.

BP Plc

The loss of $90 billion in market capitalization of BP’s stock since the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon has caused not only significant financial pain, but also considerable reputational damage to the many Responsible Investment funds and indexes that held the stock.  Earlier this month, both the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and the NASDAQ OMX CRD Global Sustainability 50 Index dropped BP from the list of its constituents.   Several environmental groups in the UK, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth are now putting pressure on FTSE to remove BP from the FTSE4Good Index.  The BP incidents underscore the need for close monitoring of environmental and social controversies in evaluating company performance, and it has pointed to the need to re-examine the basis for evaluating sustainability performance, as outlined in a recent article by Simon Propper.

RWE and E.On

RWE and E.On were the two largest CO2 emitters in 2009, emitting 141 million and 94 tons of CO2 respectively according to a recent report by Carbon Market Data.  Emissions levels for RWE and E.On were 52 million and 18 million tons above free EU allocation levels, meaning that the companies needed to purchase CO2 permits worth €695 million ($854 million) and €253 million ($311 million) respectively at the average 2009 CO2 price of €13.32 ($13.36).  The emissions of the two companies alone exceeded the combined emissions of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland.  A copy of the press release of the report is available here.

Monsanto

The Environmental Protection Agency has requested Monsanto to clean water discharges from a phosphate mine from a creek flowing into the Blackfoot River in Idaho, in a region near Yellowstone National Park.  While Monsanto built the dam to contain selenium and metal emissions after being warned by the EPA in 2007, the current dam has cut off sufficient clean water flow from the area.

Honda Motor, General Electric, Canon

Honda Motor received the highest number of clean energy patents (30) in the first quarter of 2010 and has led all companies with over 500 clean tech patents granted during the period 2002-2009 according to the Clean Energy Patent Index published by the Cleantech Group.  While the auto industry leads the Index due to the high number of fuel cell patents, General Electric is the all time leader of patents for wind power with 119 patents and Canon is the all time leader of patents for solar power with 93 patents granted between 2002-2009.  The results of the Index are available here.

Wartsila

Wartsila has become the first non-oil producing company to join the World Bank-led Global Gas Flaring Reduction partnership (GGFR). The Finnish company provides a dual-fuel technology that allows companies to convert gas to be used as an energy source for power generation rather than being flared in the oil drilling process.  The GGFR has estimated that gas flaring is responsible for approximately 400 million tons of CO2 emissions annually.

Procter & Gamble

Procter & Gamble has recently launched its “Supplier Environmental Sustainability Scorecard” in order to measure the environmental impacts and to encourage environmental improvements among its suppliers.  The company has also made the scorecard publicly available on its website in order to encourage the development of industry-wide initiatives to benchmark the environmental performance of suppliers.  The scorecard is available here.

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Photo shows Ecuadorean workers cleaning up an oil waste pit owned by state petroleum company Petroecuador in Shushufindi, some 410 km (254 mi) east of Quito December 8, 2009. Residents in the country´s Amazon region are suing Chevron, accusing the U.S. company of doing environmental damage while it operated in a consortium with Petroecuadro in the 1970s and 1980s.  REUTERS/Guillermo Granja

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The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is unquestionably the biggest spill in U.S. history, far surpassing the Exxon Valdez accident in Alaska in 1989.

 But is it the worst environmental disaster inflicted on America? 

(PHOTO: An oil-coated Brown Pelican stands on Queen Bess in Bay Barataria near Grand Isle, Louisiana June 14, 2010. . REUTERS/Sean Gardner)

That is a question that some have been weighing in on. The New York Times last week posed the question to a number of environmental historians. It said several of them pointed to the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s as the mother of all U.S. environmental catastrophes.

Poor farming techniques leading to soil erosion on a vast scale and drought combined with other factors to produce the 1930s Dust Bowl that scorched tens of millions of acres of farmland in the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma as well as Kansas and other states. Dust storms were whipped up that fouled the air as far away as New York.

 Over 45 million acres of crops failed on the Great Plains in 1935 and the unfolding disaster dispossessed hundreds of thousands. It led to the creation of federal agencies such as the Soil Conservation Service which is now the Natural Resources Conservation Service. 

For some historical context, here are a few of America’s biggest ecological calamities. 

     
BISON SLAUGHTER 

Bison once thundered across America in the tens of millions with a range that extended from Alaska to Mexico. 

But commercial hunting and habitat loss virtually wiped them off the face of the plains. The bison extermination was also part of a deliberate government policy of genocide against native Americans, some historians say. 

 (PHOTO: Wild bison eye a visitor at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge outside Denver August 6, 2009. REUTERS/U.S. Forest Service)

 By 1889, according to the New York-based Wildlife Conservation Society, there were fewer than 1,100 of the animals left. Today there are about 400,000 bison in the United States but the vast majority are effectively livestock on private ranches. Only around 20,000 are considered wild. 

 In many places the bison and their grassland habitat have been replaced by cattle or cultivated crops such as corn, leaving the American landscape and previously wild ecosystems altered in profound and lasting ways.  The loss of native grasses among other things contributed to the Dust Bowl.
     
EXTINCTION OF THE PASSENGER PIGEON

The passenger pigeon was believed to have once been the most abundant bird species in North America but it has been extinct for over a century.

 Flocks were said to extend for hundreds of miles (kms) and darken the sky. But their forest food supply was removed as trees were cleared for farmland and they were hunted en masse in what has been described as an “avicide.” 

 WESTERN WATER WOES

America’s west is facing increasing droughts which will be exacerbated by climate change as fast-growing cities compete with agriculture for scarce water supplies in arid regions.

THE MARCH OF THE PINE AND SPRUCE BEETLES

Western pine and spruce forests are under siege from twin beetle infestations that have been linked to climate change. 

 In Colorado, aerial surveys show that from 1996 to 2008 Colorado lost almost 2.5 million acres (1 million hectares) of pine forest to the pine beetle outbreak, Wyoming 677,000 acres and South Dakota 354,000 acres. 

(PHOTO: Beetle-killed pine trees stand with some still living trees near the Continental Divide in central Colorado April 8, 2010.  REUTERS/Rick Wilking)

 Over the same period of time, the spruce beetle, which has also ravaged forests as far north as Alaska, took out 374,000 acres of spruce trees in Colorado and 340,000 in Wyoming. 

 The cumulative total is over 6 million acres (2.5 million hectares), an area larger than Israel or South Africa’s famed Kruger National Park. 

Farther north in Canada, the pine beetle has attacked trees over an area of about 39 million acres (14.5 million hectares) in British Columbia since the 1990s. 

 The loss to the forestry industry and property values is in the billions of dollars and the tree die-off has implications for climate change as forest growth in the United States currently sucks up about 12 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.

These are just a few that come to mind. What do you think is the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history and where would you rank the Gulf spill? Or is to too soon to assign it a ranking, since its ultimate consequences are clearly unknown at this point? And what would you add to the list?
   

(Sources: Reuters, The New York Times, Wildlife Conservation Society, National Audubon Society, National Geographic Field Guide to the Birds of North America, USDA, Economic History Services)

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Rona Fried is the CEO of SustainableBusiness.com, a news, networking, and investment site for green businesses. The following opinions expressed are her own.

We are in a dire situation. One that our president recognized in his oval office address on Tuesday night: America has postponed overcoming our oil addiction for decades. The first call to wean ourselves from oil came more than three decades ago by President Carter in the late 1970s. Had we done it then, the job would have been completed in 1985. It is beyond time to end our dependence on oil. And Americans are finally ready to do it.

Recent polls say Americans want the government to prioritize renewable energy. One conducted by Benenson Strategy Group found that 63% of voters support an energy bill that limits pollution and encourages companies to use and develop clean energy.

Why, then, is the energy bill languishing in the Senate? The House approved a bill a year ago, and versions have passed in Senate committees. It’s time for a Senate vote. But like every single bill since Obama has entered office, Republicans have filibustered it, forcing 60 votes for passage instead of a simple majority.

Those 60 votes are nowhere to be found because conservative Democrats and all Republicans are against the bill. How can that be if the majority of Americans are in favor of it?

The climate and energy bill, known as the American Power Act, will boost our economy, create jobs and reduce costs for American families and businesses. Typical criticisms of the bill — it will destroy jobs, destroy our economy and increase taxes — simply are not true.

Passing the Act, according to the EPA, would create 440,000 jobs a year through 2020 and 540,000 jobs a year through 2030 while saving families $35 a year on utility bills. And it would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 45%.

The most controversial part of the bill is the cap on carbon emissions. But it is that very cap that is pivotal in reaping the rewards of industry and job growth.

A carbon cap would trigger the transition to energy efficiency and clean energy by making fossil fuels more expensive. It is the very investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy that would spark economic activity. The cap drives job gains in many sectors, including manufacturing, construction, services, and trade.

Comprehensive energy and climate legislation would shift energy investments and expenditures over the coming decades to new technologies, such as efficient appliances, green and healthy building materials and systems, and wind, solar, geothermal and tidal energy. Clean technologies would comprise a much larger share of the energy economy — the direction we want to go in.

Electricity and natural gas prices would rise because of carbon prices, but those increases would be more than offset by reduced energy consumption and utility rebates. Efficiency investments would lead to immediate employment increases because the work is labor intensive, and it would also lead to long term increases in GDP from energy savings and lower carbon prices. The EPA projects the legislation would save $312 billion in the economy through 2030, a third from industrial efficiency and the remainder from building retrofits.

In a report released on Wednesday, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy shows that if the energy bill enhanced efficiency provisions even more, we would triple the number of jobs created, get four times the energy savings, and save families more than $200 a year.

Passing the energy bill doesn’t mean an end to oil drilling, coal mining and nuclear. Those industries continue to get support through the bill. But Republicans are still trying hard to make sure there’s no way the bill can pass.

Last week there was a major vote on a resolution by Senator Murkowski (R-AK) to remove the EPA’s right to regulate greenhouse gases, which was originally instituted by the Supreme Court. Luckily, the resolution was voted down. It would also have nullified the new fuel economy standards for cars and light-duty trucks, which would reduce our reliance on oil, while saving Americans significant money at the pump.

But if Republicans take over the majority of Congress in the mid-term elections, we’ll move right back to this kind of antiquated ideology. It’s this back and forth that has so many Americans confused about climate change – they don’t know what to believe.

So, here are some facts. The National Climatic Data Center said on Wednesday that global temperatures were the warmest on record from January through May. Arctic sea ice melted 50 percent faster than the average in May. The earth is getting perilously close to exceeding a 2 degree Celsius global temperature increase, which would bring devastating consequences if it happens.

Inaction and outdated thinking have run their course. Our choice as Americans is to demand a clean energy bill or close our eyes and hope it’s not true. Meanwhile, we continue to send $100 million a day to Iran and live through environmental, and financial, disasters like BP’s Gulf oil spill.

Senate Democrats held a meeting on Thursday to review which measures in the energy and climate bill could garner the elusive 60 votes. Once again, they were unable to find the right formula that will get the votes. The only solution left now is to take the same path they took to pass health care reform. Democrats should use the Reconciliation process to pass the energy bill so they can pass it with a simple majority.

Making our climate a sustainable one is really a matter of life versus death, but unfortunately it has become a partisan issue. So come mid-terms in November Americans should know that if they vote Republican, an energy and climate bill will never be passed.

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By Kwok W. Wan

This time, it was a total surprise.  In a taxi on the road towards the beach, Gunfleet Sands appeared out of no-where and without warning.  Huge offshore wind turbines lined the English horizon.

My last encounter had been a far more distant affair, requiring a helicopter to see Robin Rigg in Cumbria, but Dong’s offshore wind farm was visible on the shore, visible from a car inland actually, and the giant machines pop up and startle you.

As we drove over the Frinton-on-Sea rail track earlier, the taxi driver pointed to the automatic electric barriers and said they replaced the hand-operated gates only last year, after the rail company overcame a three-year battle by residents who resisted the change.

Due to the conservative nature of the town, the driver said there was a myth that the town didn’t have a pub or fish and chip shop.  But it wasn’t true.  It got its first pub and fish and chip shop about ten years ago, he said.

“This town’s full of myths, but most of them aren’t true,” he said.  Pause.  “Yeah, so they’re myths,” he added, helpfully.

So how would this old south-east English town respond to a wind farm invasion?  The planting of 129 metre tall turbines on its beaches?  What would locals – who didn’t like electric rail crossing gates, pints of beer, or fried fish – think of the giant rotating blades slicing through the sea air?

Upon the walls of Frinton Golf Club hang black and yellowing photos of starched gentlemen in heavy clothing and hats.  In the men’s changing rooms, locker doors are still made of solid wood and from the Victorian fairways, you can see where the Danish energy company has put 48 spinning turbines.

“No-one really minds them at all,” the taxi driver said, as he dropped me off at the club house.  “There’ve been no protests or anything. No, nothing at all.”

Seven kilometres from land and with familiar white blades and towers with yellow bases, the wind farm is actually hardly noticeable, as you peer towards the putting green.  It feels like it has already blended in with coastline, like imported sand in Hawaii, like faded red beach huts, or a crumbling wooden pier.

“They said it’s big enough for this whole area, so hopefully we’ll get some cheap electricity,” the taxi driver said, and laughed.  I laughed, because I knew it wasn’t going to happen.  And then I stopped laughing because I knew it wasn’t going to happen, and got out of the car.

At the Gunfleet Sand inauguration at Frinton Golf Club, Dong chief executive Anders Eldrup said the 172 megawatt wind farm cost Dong 4 billion Danish krone ($660 million).  The same amount of money can pay for Scottish and Southern Energy’s UK Marchwood gas-fired power station, which at 840 megawatts is about five times bigger in terms of generation capacity, but is not renewable, carbon free, nor does it take into account the cost of buying gas.

A HSBC bank report published last year also estimated offshore wind was over twice as expensive as other ways of generating power, such as gas or nuclear.

I previously said I wanted the turbines to stay out of sight from the beach, but my opinions have spun and I’ve found I don’t really mind them at all.  Like the people of Frinton, the old wooden gates in my mind have been removed and replaced with something new and electrified.

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    It has an odd odor, oil mixed with dispersant. It’s reminiscent of the inside of an old mechanic shop or boat house, and out of place in the open water of Southern Louisiana’s Barataria Bay, which separates the Gulf of Mexico from the state’s fragile marshland.

One one point during a tour of the bay to see damage from the BP Plc oil spill, Capt. Sal Gagliano stopped his boat in a spot where reddish brown specs of the oil and dispersant mixture accumulated on the surface. It is slightly gooey to the touch.

The pollutants are why he was ferrying conservationists and reporters around and not taking customers out to fertile fishing spots. In other years this would be his busy season.

With the disaster in its eighth week, the fight against the oil will go on for months, if not years to come. The effects here, miles from the spill zone in the Gulf, are already evident.

In marshy areas, vegetation is blackened from oil, and looks burntjust above the water level even though booms have been laid to keep the crude out. On a late afternoon tour of the region hosted by the National Wildlife Federation, there were no birds in one swamp area. It was eerily quiet.

The booms also surrounded small islands in Barataria Bay, ones that teemed with brown pelicans, spoonbills and egrets. Many showed obvious signs of oil contamination.

“This is a perfect example of how we are part of the ecosystem,” NWF naturalist David Mizejewski said, looking at Gagliano, who has fished here since he was a child.

 ”The oil’s impacting (the birds’) ability to get their food. It’s the same thing for you. The fish are just as important to you as they are to those pelicans. I don’t think you could get a clearer example of how important healthy ecosystems are to our economy, to peoples’ livelihoods.” — Jeffrey Jones

Photo – Three oil-coated white ibis sit in marsh grass on a small island in Bay Barataria near Grand Isle, Louisiana June 13, 2010. Sean Gardner/REUTERS

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– Erin Brockovich is an environmental investigator and activist and Ben Adlin writes social commentary and is a former Coro Fellow in Public Affairs. Any opinions expressed here are their own. —

As the wreckage of the now-infamous wellhead continues to spew oil and gas into the Gulf of Mexico, evidence of environmental fallout comes streaming in.

Pictures of oil-soaked pelicans and dying dolphins emphasize our blight on land and sea.

We face the chilling realization that some sheared-off pipe at the ocean floor, a chimney stuck in the mud a mile beneath the dark slicks on the surface, might bleed millions more gallons of crude over months to come.

The world rightly takes pause at such a wound on the face of our planet. A moment of silence is due. But it’s important we see the disaster as a call to action and not merely an excuse for despair. Stewardship was clearly overlooked on the way to this disaster. We must not ignore it again.

The questions raised in the spill’s aftermath are overwhelming. We yet again have an enormous reason to re-think the nature of big business, the role of government, our relationship with oil, or the need to protect our dwindling wetlands and wildlife refuges.

But as much as this disaster forces us to look forward, other efforts are already overdue. Perhaps most pressing is the immediate need to clean up the Gulf.

No matter your distance from it, you will feel at least some of the spill’s impact. But for those who live in Gulf Coast communities, contamination poses a particularly focused threat. Residents who depend heavily on fishing and tourism face the possibility that these industries may never fully recover.

Many others from New Orleans and coastal parishes, Dauphin Island, Pensacola, and other ravaged areas are on boats right now, laying boom and helping map the slicks, shouldering cleanup duty as best they can. Too often we forget these workers’ sacrifice. Worse, BP and other companies seem to have put them directly in harm’s way—again.

On my website, Brockovich.com, I invite people to contact me if they suspect environmental contamination. A woman from a coastal parish in Louisiana wrote to me about her husband and other cleanup workers made sick by hazardous conditions.

Hired by BP to survey the plume, they reported the location of oil slicks to company officials. But when airplanes began spraying chemical dispersants above the water, she said, these workers developed unusual symptoms – open sores, high blood pressure, nausea, and high white blood cell counts. Other sources reported headaches, dizziness, and breathing troubles. The workers were never given respirators.

Scientists believe the ailments most likely come from exposure to oil, oil vapors, or chemical dispersants like Corexit. But the companies say that’s impossible.

Nalco Holding Company, the chemical manufacturer that makes Corexit, claims its product is “at least 25 times less toxic than common dishwashing soap.” Never mind that the UK banned the dispersant’s use and the EPA said Corexit is more toxic and less effective than available alternatives. As of this writing, more than 1.1 million gallons of Corexit have been used in the Gulf.

BP has simply shrugged off these complaints. It maintains that its monitors can’t detect anything unusual that could be making workers sick. Tony Hayward, the company’s CEO, suggested the illnesses might be food poisoning.

Unfortunately, withholding information is often in the best interest of corporations. Transparency and openness aren’t always good for the bottom line, even when they’re crucial for public safety.

Shortly after the spill became public, Hayward said BP took full responsibility for the cleanup. “It is indeed BP’s responsibility to deal with this, and we are dealing with it,” he said. But these sick workers demonstrate that the cleanup effort continues to be riddled with misinformation and deceit.

Part of “dealing with it” means properly equipping workers with respirators and protective clothing. It means being timely and forthcoming to the public. With stakes this high, there’s no room for unsafe conditions or PR spin.

Huge catastrophes grab headlines. But despite its prominence, the Gulf spill is emblematic of more widespread, quieter contamination that puts virtually all Americans at risk. Though we can see oil flooding the Gulf from space, we’re often blind to the chemicals we encounter every day.

From elementary school classrooms to backyard gardens, hazardous materials creep into the very places we feel most safe. These invisible bullets assail us daily, raising risks of injury, illness, and premature death. Many are known to cause cancer, the country’s second leading killer.

We should not lose sight of the fact that as bad as the oil spill may be, it’s but one example of the irresponsible corporate behavior that pervades our daily lives.

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Composite image shows a handout photo of Erin Brockovich and Ben Adlin. REUTERS/Handout

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