Dr. Hansen meets with Al Gore
to Discuss New Solutions
To Global Sustainability
After the success of his recent movie “An
Inconvenient Truth”, Former Vice President Al Gore delivered a
speech at NYU on September 18, 2006 that outlined strategies and
policies immediately needed to address the challenges posed by
Global Climate Change.
“Scientific American introduces the lead article in its
special issue this month with the following sentence: “The debate on
global warming is over.”
Many scientists are now warning that we are moving closer to several
“tipping points” that could - within as little as 10 years - make it
impossible for us to avoid irretrievable damage to the planet’s
habitability for human civilization. ….
… Each passing day brings yet more evidence that we are now facing a
planetary emergency - a climate crisis that demands immediate action
to sharply reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide in order to
turn down the earth’s thermostat and avert catastrophe.
The serious debate over the climate crisis has now moved on to the
question of how we can craft emergency solutions in order to avoid
this catastrophic damage.”
Dr. Hansen spoke with Al Gore after his speech, to discuss the new
strategies and brief him on ETG’s activities to address global
climate changes. ETG is working on several fronts to contribute to
these strategies.
In his speech, Al
Gore said,
“taking a page from the early pioneers of ARPANET, we should develop
a distributed electricity and liquid fuels distribution network that
is less dependent on large coal-fired generating plants and
vulnerable oil ports and refineries.” Just as a robust information
economy was triggered by the introduction of the Internet, a dynamic
new renewable energy economy can be stimulated by the development of
an “electranet,” or smart grid, that allows individual
homeowners and business-owners anywhere in America to use their own
renewable sources of energy to sell electricity into the grid when
they have a surplus and purchase it from the grid when they don’t.
The same electranet could give homeowners and business-owners
accurate and powerful tools with which to precisely measure how much
energy they are using where and when, and identify opportunities for
eliminating unnecessary costs and wasteful usage patterns.
Dr. Hansen informed
him of activities in San Francisco currently underway to create this
new “electranet”.
1)
Green Energy
San Francisco Energy Independence—ETG
is supporting San Francisco’s efforts to shift off the conventional
power grid and to contract electric energy suppliers who will build
and operate locally generated renewable energy capacity. San
Francisco has declared that it will achieve 40% renewable energy
portfolio by 2017, developing 360 MW of renewable energy sources.
ETG is supporting efforts to
develop a renewable energy cluster of energy companies and suppliers
as a means to accelerate the development of this emerging industry
and the efforts by San Francisco and 48 other municipalities in
California to adopt Community Choice Aggregation as the mechanism to
address global climate change and local renewable energy delivery.
North
Dakota Wind Energy—ETG Supported North
Dakota during the early stages of its development of wind energy.
During 2000-2001, ETG assisted business and government leaders to
launch and implement the North Dakota New Economy Initiative which
led to the development of seven economic clusters—including Energy
and the Environment Cluster, which supported the development of
North Dakota’s emerging wind industry. One key initiative was the
development of WIND-Wind Interests of North Dakota–an organization
for individual wind developers to meet, share ideas and information,
and work together in areas of common interest, coordinate around
statewide issues, and establish common voice for legislative change.
2) Green Building
ETG recently supported the
design and facilitation of the world’s largest conference and expo
on green residential building—West
Coast Green.
As Al Gore said, 48% of
green house gases come from buildings, vs. 27% from transportation
and 20% from industry.
ETG supported West Coast
Green in developing a highly interactive conference and moving to
action, by creating an Action Hub. During the conference a range of
initiatives were developed and are in various stages of
implementation.
Ø
One Energy House to Low-Energy
Prefab House Factory in US
Ø
100% Carbon Neutral Model House for
Habitat for Humanity Riverside and Video Documentary
Ø
Build green Autoclave Concrete
Plants in Southwest and California near buildings and source
materials
Ø
Green lumber yard and hardware
store under one roof in Sierra Foothills - meeting the 2030
Challenge changing the marketplace to change the market
