Bonneville Environmental Foundation

To celebrate the 40^th Anniversary of Earth Day, the Seattle Mariners Major League Baseball team offset the electricity use and CO2 emissions of its April 21 home game against the Baltimore Orioles by purchasing Green-e certified BEF renewable energy certificates (RECs) and BEF Carbon Offsets.

The purchase was part of the Mariners’ second annual “Strive for Zero Waste” campaign.  The Mariners purchased RECs to offset the electricity used at Safeco Field on game day and the electricity used at local hotels by the visiting team and umpires.

The Mariners also purchased enough BEF Carbon Offsets to match the CO2 emissions from Safeco Field’s natural gas use, the non-recyclable garbage created during the game, 180,000 car miles from fans driving to the game and the Orioles’ team charter flight to and from Seattle.

“Our April 21, 2010 game against the Baltimore Orioles was a perfect opportunity to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and encourage the public to help do their part to protect the environment,” said Scott Jenkins, V.P. Ballpark Operations for the Mariners.   “In addition to the zero waste theme, we were happy to work with BEF to offset carbon emissions for this game from electricity, natural gas, waste, and travel for fans, the visiting team and umpires. We have been working hard to minimize our environmental impacts while at the same time improving our bottom line.  We are excited about our recycling rate of over 70% through the first two series of games and the more than $1,000,000 in utility costs we have saved since 2007. BEF has been a great resource and partner as look for further opportunities to green our operations.”

The Mariners “Strive for Zero Waste” campaign is just one of several initiatives by Major League Baseball (MLB) to raise awareness for environmental issues. MLB is currently working with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) to develop a comprehensive software system to collect and analyze data from all 30 MLB stadiums in order to create league-wide environmental best practices. The MLB is the first professional sports league to develop this type of software.

“Major League Baseball has responsibilities to our fans and society at large that go beyond the playing field,” said Baseball Commissioner, Allan H. (Bud) Selig in a MLB press release.  “Our Clubs have made a commitment to sustainability and are leaders in their communities raising awareness and educating fans not just on Earth Day, but everyday about environmental stewardship.”

Visit MLB.com for more information about the league’s initiatives.

BEF has worked with several professional teams and leagues to reduce their environmental impact. They include the Boston Red Sox, Tampa Bay Rays, Cleveland Indians, MLB at the league level, Minnesota Timberwolves and the NBA All-Star game. BEF also worked with Major League Soccer for last year’s final cup game and for MLS games this April in Seattle, Chicago, Columbus, Dallas and San Jose.

Visit b-e-f.org/business to learn about carbon solutions for your business.

In May, BEF finalized agreements formally committing to support 10-year watershed restoration partnerships with seven watershed groups located throughout Oregon’s Willamette River Basin.  Working with the Meyer Memorial Trust (MMT), BEF officially established long-term restoration partnerships with the Long Tom, Marys River, Middle Fork Willamette, Luckiamute, Calapooia, and North and South Santiam Watershed Councils.  In signing memorandums of understanding with each of these groups, BEF and Meyer Memorial Trust have now pledged to jointly provide funding, technical, and logistical support to these groups through 2018.

Each of the groups selected for support worked with BEF to design a comprehensive, decades-long restoration strategy for select target streams and rivers within the Willamette River basin.  The comprehensive plans that were formalized and approved this month outline the actions each group expects to take over the next ten years to engage local landowners, restore water quality, and improve habitat for fish and wildlife.

To date, BEF has committed 10-year Model Watershed support to individual watershed groups scattered across Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Northern California.  The newly established Willamette Model Watershed partnerships, however, comprise seven watershed groups working to restore individual tributary watersheds in one single river basin.  This is BEF and MMT’s first attempt to work collectively with numerous groups to cumulatively restore habitat and water quality across multiple watersheds in a large geographic area.  In working with many groups in the same basin, this program is exploring opportunities to share restoration resources, apply new efficiencies to restoration planning and implementation, and utilize common monitoring protocols to facilitate shared learning and adaptive management among all partner groups.

With a long-term commitment to support this work, we expect to closely track and report on progress and lessons learned.

Bonneville Environmental Foundation’s work to reduce the carbon footprint of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner made national headlines this month. The piece, titled “Obama, Leno and a Low-Carbon Menu” can be found in the New York Times Green Blog.

The black-tie dinner was held May 1. President Obama and Jay Leno provided some of the night’s entertainment.

Here’s a link to their speeches:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYsGwLWqWI4&feature=player_embedded

“This will be the most eco-friendly dinner ever hosted by the association,” said Edwin Chen, president of the (correspondents association) and a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News.

The association is purchasing 62 metric tons of offsets for the event, equivalent to the carbon that will be emitted by the 2,600 attendees traveling to the event, including President Obama’s 1.6-mile motorcade ride from the White House and Leno’s flight from California. This is the first time in its 96-year history that organizers have committed to reducing the carbon footprint of the event, and the first time the presidential motorcade is being offset.

By Dave Lettero, Education Manager, Project Management Group

In June, China will begin construction of the world’s largest solar power plant in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, China.  The 2 gigawatt thin film solar project will take nearly a decade to complete. First Solar, the American company leading the project, will use new solar cells able to produce electricity at low light levels providing reliable solar power generation for utilities.

“2 gigawatts, that is a lot of clean power,” I say to myself and punch and few numbers into my calculator, “enough to power 1.6 million American homes.  But just what is a lot of power? 2 gigawatts is adequate power to a utility.  It takes 80 terrawatts (80 billion kilowatts) to power the needs of human civilization.  And that’s not nearly the power needed for humanity to become a class 2 civilization–according to Carl Sagan that will take controlling the energy of an entire star.  I’m always trying to find new ways to translate the energy production from the solar panels on schools in terms students will understand.   Compared to the power used everyday 2 kilowatts might not seem like so much.  But it’s amazing just how much even that kind of power can do.

I lived off-grid for a while a few years back and I cherished the 2.5 kilowatts I was able to generate with solar electric panels.  It kept my radiant floor heat pumping, my water UV sterilizer glowing, lights on over my head, kept my DC fridge cold and my computer running.  In short bursts I even used energy sucking power tools.  2.5 was a lot of power to me and it’s about half the size of the average solar electric installation on an American home. To a villager in a developing area 2 kilowatts is a world of power.  Individual energy shares in a village can be 2 to 5 watts per person.  A 30 watt panel in a village can mean power for a computer, lights, UV sterilization equipment for hospitals, pumps for wells, fans to stay cool.

On a school 2 kilowatts can power a 200 square foot classroom space minus the heating system.  2 kilowatts can power about 500 iPods, or 83 laptop computers, or 35 desktop computers, or 2 refrigerators,  or 1 energy efficiency dryer, or one circular saw—virtually all the items we use every day.  That means an annual savings of hundreds of dollars.

We’ll need to continue to find ways to make these items more efficient and to decrease our personal daily energy demands if we are to make the most of the large scale clean power projects coming online in the US in a few years.  What’s relatively average energy usage to an American today is a whole lot to someone in a place like China.  The new 2 gigawatt solar array there will power twice as many Chinese homes as American homes.

BEF’s award-winning Solar 4R Schools Program continues to raise the bar for teachers, students and schools who join the program. Just last month, the team produced several renewable energy activity videos to supplement educational materials available in the program’s science kits and activity guides.

These videos, available on the Solar4RSchools.org web site here (link: http://www.b-e-f.org/solar4rschools/node/752) showcase renewable energy experiments we’ve developed and help teachers build the materials available in the science kits.

These videos are designed to jumpstart the learning process by giving teachers and students valuable instructions in an easy-to-digest format. Teacher Champions in the program will also be given access to premium video content through the Teacher Champion section of the web site. Visit www.Solar4RSchools.org and click on the Learn section for more information.

Since the beginnings of the Solar 4R Schools Program, one of the most popular tools available to schools was the informational kiosk that displays real-time production data from the school’s photovoltaic system. These touch-screen kiosks are roughly the size of an ATM machine and are typically placed in high traffic areas of the school, like in the lobby or library. These kiosks have proved valuable in providing students with a way to interact with the energy generated by their school’s solar electric system and learn more about the benefits of renewable energy technology.

This spring, the Solar 4R Schools team is proud to announce that it has revamped these kiosks to give them a fresh new look, reduce their power consumption and add the ability to further customize its interactive content.

The kiosks will feature current and historical power data, photos and a description of the project and its funding partners, and information on how students can make positive energy-saving decisions in their own lives.

Rob Harmon, BEF Chief Innovation Officer, will be speaking at the Corporate Water Vision 2010 pre-summit workshop on June 7th. Use code “103008″ to receive 25% off cost of registration.  For more information, please visit: www.infocastinc.com/corporatewater

Bonneville Environmental Foundation’s work to reduce the carbon footprint of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner made national headlines Monday. The piece, titled “Obama, Leno and a Low-Carbon Menu” can be found in the New York Times Green Blog.

The black-tie dinner will be held May 1. President Obama will speak and Jay Leno will provide some of the night’s entertainment.

“This will be the most eco-friendly dinner ever hosted by the association,” said Edwin Chen, president of the (correspondents association) and a White House correspondent for Bloomberg News.

The association is purchasing 62 metric tons of offsets for the event, equivalent to the carbon that will be emitted by the 2,600 attendees traveling to the event, including President Obama’s 1.6-mile motorcade ride from the White House and Leno’s flight from California.

Rob Harmon, BEF’s chief innovation officer and senior vice president, made a strong case for keeping voluntary renewable energy purchases part of the country’s energy solution in this piece published today on Sustainable Business Oregon’s web site.

In it, Rob points to the thousands of Oregon jobs created from investment through the voluntary market and to the environmental benefits of these investments.

It’s a little known fact that, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, nearly one million individuals, businesses and institutions across the United States voluntarily purchased renewable energy in 2008. Together, all of those voluntary purchases support 24 million megawatt hours of renewable energy from sources like wind, solar and biomass. That’s equivalent to the entire electricity needs for the state of Idaho.

Thanks Rob for the article and to Sustainable Business Oregon for publishing it. And a special thanks goes to everyone who has voluntarily made such a positive difference for the planet!

Congratulations go to Redmond High School and Solar 4R Schools teacher champion Mike Town for winning the inaugural $25,000 Green Prize in Environmental Education from the NEA Foundation on Monday.

According to this article in the April 19 Seattle Times, Town received the award in part for his program called the “Cool School Challenge.”

(The program) shows kids how to do energy audits of their school buildings and, using math and science, reduce the carbon footprint by powering down computers at night, turning out lights that aren’t being used, recycling, composting and a range of other strategies. About 150 participating schools across the country have saved and estimated 1.5 million poinds of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions.

Town’s school, Redmond High, estimates that it saved more than $30,000 a year in electricity and waste costs, and reduced carbon-dioxide emissions by more than 200,000 pounds.

According to the article, Town plans to use some of the prize money to add to the solar array on their home in Duvall, Wash.

Diane Zipper with Renewable Northwest Project will be giving a talk called “Renewable Energy 101: A presentation on Renewable Energy and the Choices Available to You” at the REI Portland store on Earth Day, April 22 from 7 to 8 p.m.

The talk is an overview of renewable energy projects in Oregon and a discussion on the environmental and economic benefits of clean power. Diane will also talk about area tax credits, incentive and local green power programs.

All attendees will get an REI shopping bag and there will be a raffle drawing for prizes.

The cost is free and you can register on line at http://www.rei.com/stores/13

The talk will be held in the REI-Portland store Community Room located at 1405 NW Johnson St.