From life in Washington to nuclear waste disposal and more, Energy Secretary Steven Chu navigated a slew of topics at a Santa Barbara conference Friday. Calling his job a sort of “multi-dimensional chess game” that involved “a lot of crystal ball stuff,” the government's top energy official said that he saw his position as a form of “prudent risk management.” After a little more than a year in office, he said that his transition is “going all right.”

Chu was the final speaker at the ECO:nomics conference put on by the Wall Street Journal. Other featured guests included Peter Voser, chief executive of Royal Dutch Shell and John M. Woolard, chief executive of BrightSource Energy.

As a former academic who shared the Nobel Prize for physics in 1997, Chu said that he’s noticed several common denominators between Washington D.C. and his past life as a professor. “Practice over 35 years of explaining things to people is helpful,” he joked. But his experiences with politics, he said, have shown him that “it is so much easier to spread fear than it is to spread a vision of the future.”

Chu also discussed the controversial nuclear waste repository that had been planned at Yucca Mountain near Las Vegas. The Energy Department officially asked the Nuclear Regulatory Commission this week to withdraw the license application for the site after pressure from the Obama administration.

The Nevada site, Chu said, has long been considered not ideal. "It is what it is," said the staunch advocate for research into nuclear power. "But instead of wringing my hands, let's go forward and do something better." If nuclear projects "can be built on time and on budget, they can be  very good investment," he said.

-- Tiffany Hsu

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Over at sister blog Money & Company: Steven Chu also talks about China and India at the economics forum.

The United States and Brazil signed a memorandum of understanding to work together to slash greenhouse gas emissions from tropical deforestation, one of the main drivers of global climate change. The deal, signed by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Brasilia on Wednesday, marks the first time the two countries have formally agreed to work together on deforestation.

In the past, Brazilian leaders have been wary of foreign interference in the Amazon, Earth's largest tropical forest. But climate scientists are raising loud alarms that the slashing and burning of forests, which cause about 15% of the emissions that are trapping heat in the atmosphere, threatens to dangerously disrupt the world's climate.

Indonesia and Brazil are, respectively, the globe's third and fourth biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, after the U.S. and China, mainly because of how rapidly they are destroying their forests. In Copenhagen in December, a group of nations made progress in negotiating rules for quantifying the carbon saved by avoiding deforestation, so that credits could be used to offset industrial emissions, a program known as "Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation" -- or REDD.

But when the Copenhagen negotiations collapsed without a formal treaty, the deforestation agreement was left in limbo. Now the bilateral cooperation between the U.S. and Brazil "shows the world's major nations are moving forward," said Jennifer Havercamp, international climate policy director for the Environmental Defense Fund. "We can really move the ball forward with bilateral efforts like this."

In two articles and an audio/slide show last month, the Los Angeles Times chronicled efforts to save the Amazon forest and described a REDD project sponsored by local leaders outside Manaus that has encouraged river-dwellers to preserve trees around their villages. Read more here, in a report from Taruma Mirim. And in a report from the Juma reserve, learn how U.S. companies are funding REDD projects. Listen to the sounds and see the scenes of the rain forest in Brian Vander Brug's audio slide show here.

--Margot Roosevelt

Photo: In Taruma Mirim, a village outside Manaus, settlers have cleared much of the forest to make charcoal which they sell in bags for cooking. It is one of 2500 settlements built over the last 40 years where the Brazilian government encouraged villagers to clear the forests to plant farms. Credit: Brian Vander Brug/L.A. Times

A decade-long battle between a Corona del Mar couple and the state Coastal Commission over a palapa (Spanish for hut) and other structures on a beachside strand has ended. The buildings must go, three judges ruled.

George and Sharlee McNamee had claimed that their property rights were under assault. They had the help of the Pacific Legal Foundation, which takes such issues to court and promises an appeal.

More details on the tiff here.

Coastal Commission file photo

The thick, wet forests of the Pacific Northwest are the carbon storage powerhouses of the U.S. -- in fact, they store more than 1-1/2 times as much carbon as the entire amount of carbon dioxide burned in fossil fuels throughout the country each year, a new study shows.

Two analysts for the Wilderness Society looked at data compiled by the U.S. Forest Service and identified 10 national forests, from the Tongass in southeast Alaska to the Siskiyou in southern Oregon, that together store about 9.8 billion metric tons of carbon on a total of 19 million acres.

By absorbing carbon dioxide, forests accumulate and store carbon in trees, roots and soil -- a valuable depository for greenhouse gases that, if released into the atmosphere, might contribute to climate change.

"To get a better idea of how much carbon this really is, we could compare it to the CO2 equivalent contained in the fossil fuels burned n the U.S. each year, about 5.8 billion metric tons," said Ann Ingerson, an economist for the Wilderness Society who co-authored the analysis with Mike Anderson, a senior resource analyst at the organization.

Carbon dioxide (C02) is the most prevalent greenhouse gas that is trapping heat in the atmosphere, warming the planet to what most climate scientists consider dangerous levels. But methane, a greenhouse gas that is 25 times more powerful than CO2, has also been growing at an alarming rate, with concentrations more than doubling since pre-industrial times.

A paper published Thursday in the journal Science reveals that parts of the East Siberian continental shelf, which extends up to 1000 miles out into Arctic waters, show concentrations of methane in surface waters that are 100 times higher than expected. And in the air, more than 5,000 measurements taken by scientists on Russian icebreakers and on helicopters document methane levels more than four times higher than elsewhere in the Arctic basin.

The researchers, led by Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska, along with Swedish and Russian colleagues, found that the amount of methane seeping into the atmosphere from below the Arctic Ocean is comparable to previous emissions estimates for all the world's oceans. The Arctic is warming faster than any other part of the planet, and scientists fear that methane emissions could rise even more dramatically in a feedback loop: As the atmosphere warms, the permafrost that has locked in methane gas in wetlands and beneath continental shelves melts, releasing more methane, which then warms the planet more.

"Wetlands and permafrost soils, including the subsea permafrost under the Arctic Ocean, contain at least twice the amount of carbon that is currently in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide," Martin Heimann wrote in an article accompanying the paper. "Release of a sizeable fraction of this carbon as carbon dioxide and/or methane would lead to warmer atmospheric temperatures, causing yet more methane to be released." The researchers recommend that their data be immediately incorporated into current assessments of how fast the Arctic is likely to warm in the near future.

Kyocera Solar Inc. plans to begin manufacturing solar modules in San Diego this year, the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based company said Wednesday.

Production at the company’s existing Balboa Avenue facility is expected to help push Kyocera toward its goal of making 1-gigawatt-worth of cells by 2013. Reaching that level would allow the company to supply 3.5-kilowatt solar-electric systems to about 285,000 homes each year, Kyocera said.

The initial production target is 30 megawatts per year when the manufacturing begins in June. San Diego was appealing to the company because of its close proximity to Kyocera Mexicana in Tijuana, which also manufactures solar modules, Kyocera Solar President Steve Hill said in an e-mail.

“But the biggest reason is the local market,” he said. “San Diego  is probably the leading city in California for the deployment of solar photovoltaic systems. And California leads all U.S. states in solar deployment.”

The company manufactures solar modules in Japan, China, the Czech Republic and Mexico. Kyocera Solar is a subsidiary of Kyocera International Inc. of San Diego, which is the North American headquarters for Kyocera Corp. in Kyoto, Japan. The parent corporation also makes telecommunications equipment, copiers, printers, industrial ceramics and more and pulled in about $11.5 billion in net sales for the year ending March 31, 2009.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: Rodney Lanthorne, president of Kyocera International Inc., speaks at Wednesday's press conference. Credit: Gary Payne for Kyocera

For a brief period last spring, a university study out of Spain whipped up excitement among Republicans on Capitol Hill -- and brought heartburn to environmentalists and renewable-energy lobbyists in the process - because it purported to show that government support for "green jobs," a signature push by the Obama administration, ultimately hurts employment more than it helps.

Several months after the study was released, a branch of the Energy Department released an unusual research paper: a direct attack on the Spanish study and its key findings.

The "rebuttal" paper was funded by taxpayers and launched in response to government researchers' discussions with concerned renewable energy boosters. This is the tale, from internal Energy Department emails, of how it came to exist. Read here for more.

--Jim Tankersley

The idea seems like a slam dunk, a win-win-win for the environment, farmers and politicians hunting for green-energy solutions: Turn cow manure into electricity by collecting the methane gas released off the dung, compressing it, running it through a generator and voila! You have a renewable, seemingly never-ending (though very fragrant) source of electricity.

Great, right? After all, methane released into the air is a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, scientists have found.

There’s only one problem: Turns out that the generators used to turn the gas into power emit nitrogen oxides, or NOx. Some emit more NOx than others. And while methane may damage the planet, it doesn’t damage -- at least, not in the immediate sense -- people’s health like NOx does.

So central California, with its air pollution problems, is seeing some of the country’s strictest standards for what sort of digester generators can -- or cannot -- be used out on the farms. Some say they’re stricter than what dairymen are working with in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or New York -- and all because California’s NOx problems are … well … noxious.

Getting such systems permitted, though, has become a real headache for many California farmers, so state folks are trying to work together to figure out some of these hurdles. The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board has paired up with a team of other state and local agencies to pull together a programmatic environmental impact report for anaerobic manure digestion and co-digestion facilities. The goal, say board officials, is to streamline the process for farmers and others to get the appropriate permits from state and local agencies.

There’s also a push to capture the energy in a cleaner way. There are plans being bandied about to use biogas to power fuel cells. And three dairies -- Joseph Gallo Farms of Atwater, Hillcrest Dairy Farms in Le Grand and Lima Farms in Lodi -- have signed an agreement with the state Department of Food and Agriculture, the Merced Irrigation District and an environmental engineering firm to roll out pilot projects that will use digesters, algae ponds and other means to turn the waste into energy.

One of their goals? If NOx is created, why not use it to help fuel an algae farm?

To read more about what's happening in California, check out this story. And curious about how the process works? Then watch this slide show.

-- P.J. Huffstutter

Just in time for the Oscars, the environmental group Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy is holding its own red-carpet event. An eco version of the Razzies, the Toxies will take place Wednesday at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and hand out awards for "bad actor" chemicals.

More than 80,000 chemicals are competing for awards in six categories, but it’s lead that will walk away with the "lifetime achievement in harm" award for its longstanding role in child poisoning; Bisphenol-A for "worst breakthrough performance" due to its leaching properties; and toluene, phthalates and formaldehyde for "best performance in an ensemble cast" (i.e., their widespread use in nail salons.

The first of what is planned as an annual event, the Toxies are timed not only for the Oscars but in advance of next week’s release of California’s Department of Toxic Substances’ Green Chemistry Initiative, a list of harmful chemicals and a set of requirements designed to keep toxics and non-biodegradable products out of the state.

"We wanted to make these issues accessible to people," said Martha Dina Arguello, executive director of L.A.-based Physicians for Social Responsibility, one of several groups involved in creating the Toxies. "When we do education on these issues, it tends to scare people, so we wanted a fun way to show how bad these chemicals are. They should not be in products. They should not get work, just like bad actors don’t get work."

-- Susan Carpenter

Could Los Angeles’ subway system soon operate hybrid trains?  Pentadyne Power hopes so.

The Chatsworth-based company, a leader in flywheel energy storage, sells uninterrupted power supply systems to institutions such as hospitals, data storage centers and airports that can’t afford to have the power go out, even for a minute.  

Flywheel systems use energy to spin a rotor inside a low-friction vacuum.  During power outages, the rotor becomes an interim generator that provides instantaneous power until conventional backup generators take over.  In California, Pentadyne’s clients include Scripps Green Hospital in La Jolla, TGF Linux Communications in Irvine and San Jose airport.  In 2008, Pentadyne was recognized as the Los Angeles area’s single fastest growing private company.  In 2009, it grew by an additional 10%.

When Vancouver, Canada, made the decision to go for the greenest Olympic Games ever -- constructing low-energy venues and one of the greenest neighborhoods in the world at the Athletes Village -- nobody wanted to wait for a report card.

Throughout the events, managers and spectators could click into a Venue Energy Tracker for a real-time readout of how much energy was being consumed, compared to how much energy might have been used under typical construction methods.

A mobile phone application allowed spectators to peek at electricity consumption from the stands, should they find themselves suddenly fretting about how much it was costing to chill all that ice.

The report card: an estimated 15.4% reduction in electricity consumption during the second week of events -- 24,624 kilowatt-hours, for example, saved at Canada Hockey Place.

While the technology allows Olympics organizers to pat themselves on the back for innovations such as green roofs, waste-to-energy power generation, solar panels and reuse of waste heat, developers say the more important targets are older, drafty buildings that need to tighten up on their power consumption.

"Everyone has been talking about solar and wind and new technology, but there is this mass of existing buildings that will really be here forever," said David Helliwell, chief executive of Vancouver's Pulse Energy.

By detailed monitoring of a building's actual energy usage, Helliwell says, it's sometimes possible to cut consumption by 40% or more just by figuring out where power is being wasted -- too much outside air being drawn in, for example, or air being cooled on one floor, only to be heated up again on another.

--Kim Murphy

Chart tracking energy usage at Richmond skating oval; credit: Pulse Energy

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s rationing program has reduced the city’s water use to an 18-year low.  But Los Angeles’ long-term water challenges are well-documented. Why can’t the city take advantage of the sea to solve its water shortage?  Because conventional approaches to desalination, the removal of salt from water, are too energy-intensive, and therefore too expensive, for widespread use. As a result, the total capacity of all of California’s desalination plants is little more than a 10th of Los Angeles’ annual water consumption.

A desalination plant that would provide water for 100,000 homes is moving forward in San Diego.

Traditional desalination occurs through one of two processes.  The first is distillation, during which water is heated and evaporated before the resulting vapor is condensed to form fresh water.  The second and more common method is reverse osmosis, during which water is forced through a membrane through which salt cannot pass. 

A Canadian startup, Saltworks Technologies, is promoting a new, innovative process that it claims will reduce desalination electricity costs by up to 80%.  The key to understanding Saltworks’ thermo-ionic desalination process is appreciating the chemical nature of salt, which is composed of positively charged sodium and negatively charged chlorine ions. 

There’s a lot of talk about green jobs being the savior for the country’s disturbingly high un- and under-employment rates. But the city of L.A. is actively working to create some.

In a quiet ceremony on the third floor of L.A.’s City Hall on Wednesday, 23 gardeners were awarded certificates for completing a green gardener training course that is seen as a template for creating jobs that will also protect the environment.

"Since last spring, we’ve been working on this program to train gardeners in managing and maintaining the designs of the 21st century garden in Southern California, which is a garden that uses drought-tolerant plants and that retains and reuses rainwater," said L.A. Board of Public Works Commissioner Paula Daniels, who helped pioneer the program.

Thirty-one gardeners participated in the pilot training program that began late last year. Funded with $250,000 in federal stimulus money awarded through L.A.’s Community Development Department, and conducted in partnership with the immigrant education group Institute of Popular Education of Southern California, the pilot program will run two additional classes that will raise the total number of trained green gardeners to 120.

The six-day, 48-hour training educates gardeners in sustainable strategies for making better use of water, such as incorporating drought-tolerant plants, drip irrigation, smart controllers and mulch. The curriculum, which was developed by the Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council, also focused on soil types, sun patterns, microclimates and how to work with clients to educate them in water-saving gardening practices and its money-saving potential.

The city of L.A. unveiled a pilot program Tuesday to encourage more recycling of beer bottles, old newspapers, cardboard, plastic and other recyclables. Called RecycleBank, the program gives points to individuals who recycle, worth as much as $400 per year per blue bin.

Angelenos already reduce, reuse or recycle about 65% of their waste -- the highest rate of the country’s 10 largest cities. But in an effort to be "the cleanest, greenest big city in America," with a "goal of zero waste," according to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who announced the L.A. RecycleBank program, "we are building innovative partnerships that will employ outside resources ... to motivate residents to recycle more and pump money directly back into the local economy."

About 15,000 single-family homes in the West Valley and North Central sections of L.A. are eligible for the program, which will begin April 5 after participating residents’ bins have been equipped with identification tags that allow their waste to be weighed and assigns them points that can be redeemed at various retailers. CVS, Bed Bath & Beyond and Ruby Tuesday are among the national chains participating in the program. El Pollo Loco, Tritsch True Value Hardware and Jollibee are some of the local businesses that have also teamed with RecycleBank. Throughout the nation, more than 1,000 stores accept RecycleBank points.

The mysterious pelican malady that left hundreds of the birds sick and stranded along the Oregon and California coasts this winter was probably caused by a combination of bad weather and fish shortages related to El Nino, state Fish and Game officials said Monday.

After ruling out such potential causes as disease or marine toxins, a group of scientists from state and federal agencies, nonprofit groups and Sea World in San Diego concluded that a simple scarcity of pelican prey, such as anchovies and sardines, probably combined with winter storms to produce flocks of hungry, wet, soiled pelicans, dying on beaches or looking for handouts.

Of the hundreds of birds washed, warmed and fed at rescue centers, about a third died, and many that were not rescued also succumbed.

Fish and Game officials called it a “cyclical event” that amounted to a perfect storm of bad luck for the birds. Many had strayed too far north during their annual migration, then arrived back in California weak and emaciated, only to find their usual food sources depleted and the weather inclement. They began eating the wrong things, lost weight, and got cold.

SG Biofuels on Monday revealed a proprietary variety of the jatropha curcas plant that the Encinitas-based company said will yield more oil at a more profitable rate.

The newly launched JMax 100 has traits that make it optimal for harvesting in Guatemala, said the company, which also said it will produce 100% more oil than existing jatropha varieties.

JMax 100 will also be more than 300% more profitable than current commercial varieties, SG said, able to produce more than 350 gallons per acre at $1.39 per gallon.

Oil from the seeds of the jathropa shrub, an inedible plant from Central America that can be grown where agricultural crops cannot, can be refined to produce diesel and jet fuel and specialty chemicals.

The cultivar – a plant variety selected for specific traits - was created after more than three years of research and access to the company’s Genetic Resource Center, which features 6,000 entries. The center also keeps track of a wide range of jatropha’s genetic characteristics, including pest resistance, soil adaptation and flowering capabilities.

SG is also working with the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center to develop another customized cultivar. The company recently announced its partnership with biotechnology firm Life Technologies Corp.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: SG Biofuels

If the United States is at a loss over what to do about nuclear waste, it may be time to check out the Swedish model. A symposium Friday at the annual meeting of the American Assn. for the Advancement of Science in San Diego highlighted the success of the Swedish power industry in gaining public support for a geological repository for high-level radioactive waste.

The Scandinavian success comes in stark contrast to the U.S., where, for decades, spent nuclear fuel rods have remained in temporary storage at power plants around the country while Congress debated where to bury it, then decided on a repository under Yucca Mountain in Nevada and then changed its mind. The Obama administration, mindful of the fierce resistance of Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has opposed Yucca and in the 2011 budget slashed all funding for the Department of Energy-led project. At the same time, President Obama called last month for "a new generation of safe clean nuclear plants," and has budgeted $36 billion in loan guarantees for nuclear power.

Like the U.S., Sweden, which gets 50% of its electricity from nuclear plants, has faced opposition in its three-decade quest to find a suitable burial site. Protests halted studies at several sites. And the Swedes had a high barrier to overcome: Under Swedish law, any municipality can veto a repository within its borders.

The key, according to Claes Thegerstrom, chief executive of Swedish Nuclear Fuel & Waste Management Co. was a methodical, deliberate process, with a dash of human psychological insight. Between 1977 and 1985, the private company, acting on behalf of the nuclear industry, studied the geological suitability of 12 sites. It then conducted scientific feasibility studies of eight sites. By 2002, it had narrowed the search to two municipalities, one south of Stockholm and the other north of Stockholm.

The industry worked closely with citizens groups, local politicians and civic groups all through the process, listening to their views. (A marked contrast, remarked one former Yucca engineer in the audience, to the U.S., where the public comment period to review 6,000 pages of federal documents was 60 days.) "We looked at how we communicated," Thegerstrom said, adding that the company "backed off" talking about canisters and materials, and any intimation that the waste was safe. Instead "we started with the basic message: This spent fuel is very dangerous. It exists, so we have to find a solution."

After a federal judge made it clear that it was either fix it or risk losing it, the Obama administration announced it will revamp its plan for recovering salmon on the mighty Columbia River.

Accepting U.S. District Judge James A. Redden's offer of a voluntary three-month remand in the long-running legal case, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Administrator Jane Lubchenco made it clear the government does not necessarily intend to make substantial changes to the plan, which conservationists say is not strong enough to prevent extinction of the fish on the Columbia and Snake rivers in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

"The court noted that we do not need to start over from scratch, develop a new jeopardy framework or put at risk the progress made through the regional collaborative process," Lubchenko emphasized in her statement.

NOAA is proposing no major changes in the operation of dams on the rivers, long blamed for killing the threatened and endangered fish, though it says it will tailor river flows to help juvenile salmon in their journeys to the sea.

To beef up protections for the fish, the agency in September proposed to spend millions of dollars on new habitat improvements up and down the rivers by way of an "adaptive management implementation plan" that includes close monitoring of salmon stocks and quick, serious measures to intervene if the plan isn't working.

This month, Redden of Portland called the adaptive management plan "a positive development" and said government officials "deserve credit" for the additional mitigation measures and enhanced research and monitoring provisions.

But he said the government must go back and include the new adaptive program in the administrative record for the 2008 biological opinion -- the heart of the court case -- which concludes that operation of the massive hydropower system on the Columbia and Snake rivers is not a threat to the fish.

Green is good — right? Not necessarily when it comes to lawns, according to a new study by University of California Irvine researchers. For the first time, scientists compared the amount of greenhouse gases absorbed by ornamental turfgrass to the amount emitted in the irrigation, fertilizing and mowing of the same plots.

In four parks near Irvine, they calculated that emissions were similar to or greater than the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the air through photosynthesis — a finding relevant to policymakers seeking to control the gases that trap heat in the atmosphere and contribute to climate change. “Green spaces may be good to have,” said geochemist AmyTownsend-Small, the lead researcher in the paper published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “But they shouldn’t be automatically counted as sequestering carbon.”

The paper is particularly timely, she added, because governments are calculating their carbon footprints, and discussing whether parkland could offset other sources of emissions, such as refineries, power plants and automobiles. Turfgrass covers about 1.9% of the U.S. and is the most commonly irrigated crop. It is increasingly in demand in urban areas.

Townsend-Small and colleague Claudia Czimczik measured the carbon content of the parks’ soil, and compared that with emissions from producing fertilizer, from mowing with gasoline-powered equipment and from pumping water to irrigate the plots. The pumped water was recycled — but if it were fresh water transported from distant rivers, as is much of Southern California water, emissions would be higher, said Townsend-Small. They also factored in the nitrous oxide released from soil after fertilization. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, which is released by fossil fuel combustion.

 

The delta smelt have moved, allowing water managers to turn up -- at least for now -- the federal pumps that draw water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

Only one smelt has been killed at the pumps in the south delta since Feb. 10, and biologists say most of the smelt are in the north delta now, reducing chances that they will be sucked into the pumps.

Found only in the delta, the native smelt are at the center of an escalating battle over federal endangered species protections and their effect on water deliveries to the San Joaquin Valley. Irrigation districts have gone to court to try to overturn the protections, which at certain times of the year limit pumping to avoid killing spawning smelt and migrating salmon.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is expected next week to introduce a rider to a federal jobs bill that would ease the restrictions to increase irrigation deliveries.

-- Bettina Boxall