The lecture was only a few hours away. Chuck Norris was pitching his new book on post at the same hour. In desperation, I turned to Facebook. “I've got just 50 minutes with the cadets at West Point today to talk water, conflict, and cooperation. What are the most compelling examples you would use to make both hard security and human security points, both threat and opportunity points? I ask in part because it is proving harder to decide what to leave out than what to put in!”

Within seconds, experts from the Departments of State and Energy, USAID, and National Geographic responded with examples, including the Tibetan plateau and glacial melt, the lower Jordan River, and more. I used these cases and others to break through to an audience that included both those skeptical of “treehugger” issues and those eager to learn. The map of Chinese current and planned hydro projects produced audible gasps and wide eyes among the class of future officers.

While at West Point, colleague Meaghan Parker and I met with geography faculty to better understand how and what they are teaching on environmental security and demographic security. The professors on the banks of the Hudson face similar challenges to their non-military brethren; today’s students have shorter attention spans and lack experience conducting in-depth research (or getting beyond Google).

But some challenges are unique to the service academies: isolation from academic peers; the need to make sure the material is relevant to future military leaders; and most of all, the physical and mental demands on cadets’ time placed by army training. I saw it as a sign of success that I only had three stand up during my lecture, the military’s sanctioned way to keep yourself awake in class. (LTC Lou Rios USAF, one of the faculty members we met with, wrote about teaching environmental security at West Point previously on New Security Beat.)

Video, blogs, and other new media seem like a way to bridge some of these gaps. We’re especially excited that the cadets in at least three courses will be using the New Security Beat as part of their classes by reading posts, commenting, and proposing a post on a topic of their choosing. We’re looking forward to a cadet joining us next summer for internship with ECSP.

All of these outreach efforts are part of our strategy to both understand how all types of actors—including future army officers—come to understand environment and security links while providing insights and analysis to that same diverse group.

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In some hopeful news for sustainable energy advocates, the latest production numbers from the federal government are out -- and they show that the growth rate of renewable sources continues to outpace nuclear and fossil fuels.

The data come as Sens. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) are expected to introduce legislation today designed to curb man-made climate change, with hearings on their bill  -- a counterpart to the one that narrowly passed the House in June -- expected to begin early next month.

While the politics of the climate bill are likely to be even more contentious than health reform, some note with optimism that a shift toward renewables is already underway.

"As Congress debates energy funding priorities and climate legislation, it would do well to take note of the clear trends in the nation's changing energy mix," says Ken Bossong, executive director of the SUN DAY Campaign, a Maryland-based nonprofit research organization that promotes sustainable energy technologies. "Renewable energy has become a major player -- growing rapidly and nipping at the heels of nuclear power -- while fossil fuel use continues to drop."

According to the latest issue of the Monthly Energy Review published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, renewable energy sources -- biofuels, biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, solar and wind -- provided 11.37% of domestic U.S. energy production in June 2009, the most recent month for which data is available. That represents a gain since the first half of 2007, when renewable sources accounted for 9.89% of domestic energy production, and from the same period last year, when they represented 10.2% of production.

At the same time, EIA's latest Electric Power Monthly reports that renewable energy sources provided 11.18% of net U.S. electrical generation for the first six months of 2009 -- a significant gain over renewables' 9.9% share for the first half of 2008.

Renewable energy sources grew by 4.62% during the first half of this year compared to the same period last year. Most of that growth came from wind and hydropower, which expanded by 24.54% and 7.14% respectively in the first half of 2009 compared to the first half of 2008.

In comparison, nuclear power increased by only 1.38%, while domestic fossil fuel production actually dropped by 0.7%. Meanwhile, overall consumption of fossil fuels -- including imports -- declined 7.67%.

The numbers for renewable energy are likely to grow even more in the coming months as planned projects get underway.

Those include a new North Carolina effort to develop offshore wind power. Charlotte, N.C.-based Duke Energy and UNC-Chapel Hill are finalizing a contract that would have the company build one to three wind towers in Pamlico Sound while UNC researchers would study environmental impacts, maintenance and other related issues.

At the same time, though, Duke Energy is still investing heavily in new generation from polluting sources, constructing a new $2.4 billion coal-fired power plant at its Cliffside facility in western North Carolina. The Cliffside plant is expected to release to the air annually 6 million tons of carbon dioxide as well as large quantities of chemicals toxic to human health.

Meanwhile, the rate hike the company requested to help pay for the plant has met opposition at public hearings across the state this month, with one local newspaper describing the scene at this week's public hearing in Macon County, N.C. as "a seeming never-ending procession of citizens stating their considered opposition" to the increase, which is also opposed by a grassroots coalition of 25 environmental and public-health advocacy groups.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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When you hear the phrase "alternative energy," what comes to mind?

Solar power? Wind? Hydroelectric?

Not for West Virginia's political leaders. They think a little differently.

In the recent legislative session, Gov. Joe Manchin (D) championed and state lawmakers approved an energy portfolio standard bill requiring 25% of generation to come from "alternative and renewable" sources by 2025. But the new standard, which goes into effect this month, has defined "alternative" to include natural gas, old tires, coal gas and even waste coal -- energy sources that emit significant quantities of climate-warming greenhouse gases as well as toxic, health-damaging pollutants.

"It's Governor Humpty Dumpty occupying that nice mansion beside the Kanawha River (where he can admire the endless coal barges)," West Virginia Sierra Club Chair Jim Sconyers wrote about the new law. "After all, it was Humpty Dumpty who said, 'When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less.'"

SB 297 sets up a system of tradable credits for electricity produced by alternative and renewable sources. While it offers credits for traditional renewable sources including solar, wind, hydropower and geothermal, it also gives credits for what it calls "alternative" sources -- defining those as:

* advanced coal technology, a method of capturing emissions from burning coal that's still unproven on a large scale;

* coal bed methane, or natural gas extracted from coal beds, an energy source that has a serious impact on groundwater supplies;

* fuel produced by coal gasification or liquefaction, which emits toxic pollutants as well as greenhouse gases;

* synthetic gas made from coal, another hydrocarbon-intensive and polluting fuel;

* integrated gasification combined cycle technologies, which reduce but do not eliminate the emissions typically associated with coal plants;

* waste coal, the burning of which produces large amounts of greenhouse gases as well as toxic emissions;

* tire-derived fuel, another polluting, toxic fuel source;

* pumped storage hydroelectric projects, which are actually net consumers of energy;

* natural gas, the burning of which produces greenhouse gases and other pollution; and

* nuclear power, which releases radioactive pollution to the environment and also produces dangerous waste products.

The West Virginia Environmental Council head lobbyist Donald S. Garvin Jr. blasted the new standard in an op-ed:

No other state includes natural gas as a source of "alternative" energy. Nuclear energy is included by only a few, and they specify "advanced generation" nuclear facilities.  Most states that include "clean coal" specifically limit it to facilities that include carbon capture and sequestration, or require that they lead to a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Some jurisdictions specifically exclude "pump-storage" hydropower facilities.

By listing all of these heavily polluting sources as "alternative," Garvin said, the standard undermines the original goal of reducing carbon emissions while creating a system that puts West Virginia "completely out of step" with the rest of the nation.

He also pointed out that by including natural gas and nuclear, the new law may enable West Virginia's utilities to meet the standard without building any renewable energy facilities at all. That because there's no requirement that the electricity provided actually be produced in West Virginia. And American Electric Power -- the Ohio-based utility that serves the state through its Appalachian Power unit -- already has enough nuclear and natural gas generation to meet the requirement through 2025.

A toxic standard for environmental health

The new law gives West Virginia the dubious distinction of being the first state to include tire burning in its alternative/renewable portfolio, observes Mike Ewall of the Energy Justice Network. While that helps dispose of the 290 million or so tires discarded in the U.S. every year, burning tires also release toxic chemicals including cancer-causing lead, benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and dioxin.

The new standard also makes West Virginia the only other state besides Pennsylvania to include in its energy portfolio standard waste coal  -- mining refuse originally cast aside during processing as too low-quality but which can now be burned thanks to the development of fluidized bed combustion technology.

As with burning tires, this provision helps disappear a big waste problem -- but the experience of the Pennsylvania communities with the nation's heaviest concentration of FBC waste coal burning power plants raises serious questions about waste coal's potential environmental health impact.

Last week, representatives of the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry held a public meeting in eastern Pennsylvania to discuss a planned $5.5 million research project into what may be causing a confirmed cluster of the rare blood cancer polycythemia vera in the coal mining communities of Schuylkill, Luzerne and Carbon counties. The area where the cancer was found to be occurring at an unusually high rate is home to toxic hotspots including numerous waste-coal burning plants, with five such facilities in Schuylkill County alone and three others just across its border in Northumberland, Carbon and Luzerne counties.

Plants using FBC technology operate at lower temperatures and oxygen levels than conventional coal-fired power plants and inject limestone during combustion to reduce sulfur oxide pollution. But lower temperatures and oxygen levels, low-quality fuels and limestone injection have all been found to contribute to increased emissions of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) -- toxic compounds known to cause genetic mutations and cancer. In fact, the specific genetic mutation involved in polycythemia vera has been linked to PAH exposure. And because radioactive elements are found in waste coal, FBC plants emit radioactive pollution, which has also been linked to an excess risk of polycythemia vera.

Today there are 18 FBC plants nationwide using waste coal as a primary fuel, according to the Energy Justice Network -- 14 in Pennsylvania, three in West Virginia and one in Utah. There are another 13 plants using waste coal as a secondary fuel -- four in Virginia, three each in Alabama and South Carolina, two in Pennsylvania and one in Mississippi.

The three existing waste coal burners in West Virginia include Dominion's North Branch plant in Grant County; the company's Morgantown Energy Facility in Monongalia County, which provides power to West Virginia University as well as other customers; and Edison International's Grant Town plant in Marion County, which also burns tires.

Looking at these three plants' emissions, it is clear that "alternative" does not mean non-polluting. Together these facilities released more than 89,000 pounds of toxic chemicals into the air alone in 2007, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory. That includes more than 38,000 pounds of hydrochloric acid, 11,000 pounds of sulfuric acid, more than 9,000 pounds of hydrogen fluoride, 183 pounds of mercury and 57 pounds of lead. The TRI does not include PAHs or radioactive emissions.

Three new waste coal burning plants have been proposed for West Virginia, according to the Energy Justice Network, and a big waste coal plant -- the nation's largest, in fact -- is slated for Wise County in southwestern Virginia, just three counties south of the West Virginia line. A coalition of environmental groups represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center is challenging the Wise County plant's air permits in court, with the trial scheduled to start July 31.

At the same time West Virginia is promoting dirty power through its energy standard, new evidence is emerging about the serious environmental health problems already afflicting residents of Appalachia's coalfields. A study released last month by West Virginia University Professor Michael Hendryx documented higher mortality rates in Appalachian coal counties, which it blamed in part on environmental pollution.

Unfortunately, rather than easing the problems associated with environmental pollution and poor environmental health, West Virginia's new energy standard ensure they will continue -- a big missed opportunity for the state to build a greener, cleaner future.

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

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A local irrigation project in southern India.Courtesy Michael Foley Photography via FlickrGeorge Black has a fascinating story about how India might lift its people out of poverty without torching the environment in the current issue of OnEarth, the magazine run by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Written largely as a travelogue through clean energy innovations in northern India, Black’s narrative considers the three essentials the country aspires to deliver to its billion-plus citizens—water, energy, and mobility.

The story includes the requisite bleak facts, like India’s booming population, its over-reliance on coal-fired electricity, the melting Himalayan glaciers that will threaten water supplies, the squalor of slum life, the poor planning of traffic-choked mega-cities, and so on.

The story also includes the requisite rays of hope, like a local water-user’s association in the western desert state of Rajasthan. The jal sabha, or co-op, created its own management plan for a large pond, posting local guards to ensure it wasn’t contaminated and allotting the water supplies democratically. Black observes:

More interesting, though, is Black’s argument that India’s best bet is to harness the entrepreneurial zeal of its people in finding solutions to energy, climate, and development problems. In a very big country, looking for big fixes might be the very worst approach, especially with a government famous for its bureaucratic stagnation and culture of corruption. For a short time I lived near one such big fix, the Tehri hydropower dam in the mountains north of Delhi. Not only did the Tehri Dam, 100 feet taller than the Hoover Dam, displace hundreds of villagers. It was also built atop an earthquake zone. Among locals there was a pervasive sense it was designed by New Delhi and for New Delhi, with scant attention to local interests.

Small is beautiful, Black argues, particularly with bringing electricity to the countryside. Small, interconnected power plants, powered by solar, hydro, or biomass, are far more likely to succeed, one solar expert tells him. Local planners would be less likely to build a dam on a fault line, and nearly any alternative would be cleaner than coal, which provides 55 percent of the nation’s energy supply.

This skates near the cliché that village wisdom always trumps the knowledge of guys in suits. It's true Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s newly elected government could be doing plenty to encourage clean energy innovation. But with one of Singh's climate negotiators already saying India will oppose putting limits on its greenhouse gas emissions in Copenhagen this December, every bit of small-scale creativity helps.

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Q. Dear Umbra,

Please tell me you didn't just imply that hydroelectric is a clean energy source. You didn't just say that, did you?

Brian K.
Eugene, Ore.

You've got the power in your hands.iStockA. Dearest Brian,

In my recent column on living off the grid, I pledged to discuss micro-hydro as a power source for homeowners. Your question, which dates from a while back, is the most related I could find in my inbox -- although it sets a bit of a sad and awkward tone. As Brian suggests, large-scale hydropower is a renewable energy source that does have problems. Problems such as habitat destruction and forced relocation of entire communities. I welcome more questions about large-scale hydro, but let's not think about those sad things today. For now I want to give a brief overview of micro-hydro.

Micro-hydro power is less environmentally destructive than regular old hydro, and a feasible way for some of us to produce our own electricity. Admittedly, it's not hard to be less destructive than the Grand Coulee dam. With small hydro in a backyard stream, there is likely no need to dam or even seriously divert the flow of water, much less relocate sacred burial grounds or doom an entire salmon run.

In a micro-hydro system, falling and moving water is funneled into a tube and diverted to a turbine. The turbine powers a generator, which in turn either feeds directly to your home energy needs and storage batteries, or goes into the power grid. This aquatic idea should be familiar to those of us who dimly remember our exploration of tidal and wave power. Hydro power can be fairly constant, which is not true of wind or solar power; and it can potentially produce more energy in the winter months, when humans generally need it.

The key aspects to micro-hydro potential include the "flow," which is the amount of water in a stream (or other moving body); the "head," which is the vertical drop between the water intake area and the turbine; the distance the water must travel in pipes between the intake and the turbine; and the distance the resultant energy would need to travel to get to your home or other place of energy use. Fun jargon: the pipeline from the intake to the turbine is also known as the "penstock." The intake can be as simple as a small box covered with a slanted debris screen, with the penstock pipe reminiscent of home plumbing piping emerging out of the box side.

Logically, the bigger the head and/or the heavier the flow, the more potential power one can get out of a water body. The potential watt output is equal to the feet of head multiplied by the gallons per minute of flow and divided by ten, according to one calculator. Or here is a handy chart, which indicates that 25 feet of net head (gross head minus lost power in the penstock) and 20 gallons per minute of flow will generate approximately 40 watts. I also liked this Home Power magazine series on hydro, which includes articles on measuring the head and flow of your stream.

As I promised, this a very brief introduction to the idea of generating electricity from nearby streams. I would love to discuss it in more detail, and eagerly await any interest you may have in the topic, so that I need not scrape the bottom of the question reservoir (as it were).

Couleely,
Umbra

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The Ivy League is the greenest of them all, according to the EPA, which today announced the college and university winners of the Green Power challenge -- a competition to motivate American schools to purchase more renewable energy. Participating schools compete within their athletic conferences to purchase the most certified green power, but conferences only qualify if each purchases more than 10 million kWh in aggregate. 

University of Washington.The Ivies, anchored by University of Pennsylvania's purchase of 192 million kWh, chalked up the best conference performance, purchasing a total of 225 million kWh of green power. Here in the Pacific Northwest, four colleges and universities bested their respective conferences: Oregon State University (Pacific-10), Western Washington University (Great Northwest Athletic Conference), The Evergreen State College (Cascade Collegiate Conference), and Pacific Lutheran University (Northwest Conference).

But as remarkable as these collegiate green-power investments are, the competition itself is a bit thin.  For instance, participation in this challenge is voluntary, so even though Oregon State won in the Pac-10, it only had to beat the University of Washington and Stanford University's Synergy House, a cooperative living residence. Other major Pac-10 schools such as USC, UCLA, and Arizona State did not participate.

What's more, the competition results are misleading. UW is only recognized for a purchase of 14.9 million kWh of green power, even though the university is entirely powered by a portfolio of carbon-free electricity.  John Chapman, director of campus engineering and operations, explained that 94 percent of UW's power comes from hydropower, which the EPA does not count as green.  The 6 percent the EPA does credit comes from the the renewable energy certificates that the university purchases to compensate for the portion of its utility's electricity portfolio that is fossil-fuel derived.

"We are completely powered by renewable energy and carbon-neutral electricity, but the EPA does not count hydro, and it does not look kindly on utility-purchased electricity," said Chapman.  "They want you to buy the credits and certificates."

Oregon State's win comes from its purchase of renewable energy certificates for 75 percent of the university's need. "We buy 75 percent of our power in renewable energy certificates from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation.  It's mostly windpower," said Brandon Trelstad, sustainability coordinator for Oregon State.

But the Green Power challenge wasn't a motivating factor Oregon State's win.  The university won in 2008 with the exact same amount of green power  (66.7 million kWh), as it did this year. The green-power investment is primarily funded (and limited) by a student fee of $8.50 per student per term, which was voted on by the student body in the spring of 2007.

"Nothing really significant has chaged in our power purchasing," said Trelstad.

Like Oregon State, it seems that most collegiate winners were celebrated for doing what they were already doing. Overall winner U. Penn. purchased over 192 million kWh of green power to win this year, but the Ivy League leader posted the exact same amount in 2008 [PDF]. In the three years that the challenge has run, the overall purchasing leaders have stayed the same -- U. Penn., New York University, and Penn State -- with little variability elsewhere in the field of competitors (see 2007 results [PDF]). So what good is a Green Power challenge that fails to motivate colleges to actually green their power purchasing habits?

I would have liked to pose this question to the EPA, but the contact did not return my calls.

The Green Power challenge is one of many tools with which to rank the greeniness of colleges and universities in the U.S. For more info, check out America's Greenest Campus, the Princeton Review's green rating honor roll, and Grist's list of the 15 greenest colleges.

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Washington state’s Initiative 937, the renewable energy bill voters approved in 2006, looks to be safe from meddling state legislators. From Josh Feit at Publicola:

Lawmakers have been considering loosening restrictions in the measure, which was meant to ramp up wind and solar energy production in the state. Feit suggests the original plan is safe for now.

Some background on the bill from Publicola:

A March 24 AP story recounts some of the legislative tussle. It also dips into the debate over old renewables (hydropower) versus new renewables, an interesting question in the dam-dependent Northwest.

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Some of the world's largest banks and construction firms gathered with seven African governments Monday to chat about plans for an $80 billion hydroelectric dam on the Congo River. The proposed Grand Inga dam could generate twice the electricity of China's controversial Three Gorges Dam and greatly increase the amount of cheap and clean power currently available in Africa, according to supporters. "It is the greatest sustainable development project, offering Africa a unique chance for interdependence and prosperity," says Gerald Doucet of the World Energy Council. But critics say electricity generated by the dam would be exported to urban centers as far away as Europe and Israel, while rural, poor areas in the Congo and surrounding countries see none of the benefit. Backers of the dam say they'll be mindful of the social and environmental implications of the project. If Grand Inga gets the green light, it could be operating by 2022.

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Federal flood control managers will let loose a rush of water through the Grand Canyon on Wednesday, which the feds say is necessary to restore sand banks and side pools, and National Park Service officials say is unnecessary, aimed at pleasing hydropower companies, and could irreparably destroy the habitat it's meant to restore.

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The company that owns China's problem-stricken Three Gorges Dam is expected to sign a pact with The Nature Conservancy to conduct a feasibility study on flood risk and floodplain management within the Three Gorges Dam reservoir. The Three Gorges Dam Company and the green group have also agreed to cooperate on researching eco-minded management of four more dams that are planned to be built upstream on the Yangtze River. These four dams have the potential to increase output of ecologically sustainable hydropower and generate more money from electricity generation, which could then be put toward warning systems, flood insurance, and floodplain protection downstream, says The Nature Conservancy. The Conservancy says it doesn't support dams, but nonetheless, "These dams will be built," says the group's Yangtze River project manager. "We must use our experience and knowledge to reduce their ecological impact."

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China may force another 2 million to 4 million people out of their homes over the next 10 to 15 years to make room for the reservoir building up behind the Three Gorges Dam -- and that's in addition to the 1.4 million citizens who have already been relocated. The "world's biggest hydropower project" is quickly becoming a big pain in the neck, and not just for the poor, rural folks being uprooted. Recently, top government officials have spoken publicly about the serious environmental problems associated with the dam, which include polluted waters and possible landslides. Even the official Chinese news agency reported last month on a conference where experts concluded, "If no preventive measures are taken, the project could lead to catastrophe."

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Brazil gives go-ahead to controversial dams in Amazon

Brazil has given the preliminary OK for two hydroelectric dams to be built on a major Amazon River tributary. Business leaders, who say the dams will provide much-needed energy, are impressed; greens, who see the project as a disaster waiting to happen, are depressed. Proponents say the Santo Antonio and Jirau dams could produce up to 10 percent of Brazil's current electricity demand when completed. Opponents point out that damming the Madeira River, home to one of the most diverse fish stocks in the world, will flood hundreds of square miles of biodiverse rainforest, stir up mercury deposits in the river, and bring pollution to the pristine area along with workers and construction. Brazil's environmental protection agency has outlined 33 restrictions that will minimize ecological damage, but critics aren't mollified; neither is neighboring Bolivia, which fears floodwaters could reach its border. Bids must be taken and permits obtained before the project gets going. Stay tuned.

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