Submitted on March 18, 2014 - 5pm
Pat Proano, Assistant Deputy Director of the Environmental Programs Division at the Los Angeles County Department of Public Works, spoke with VerdeXchange News about strategies for meeting AB 341’s mandate to recycle 75 percent of trash in LA County. He focuses on the promise of conversion technology, which transforms organic waste into fuels, and the efforts at a state-wide, legislative level to clarify this practice. Proano also outlines benchmarks he expects the county to meet in the next year in terms of organics management, waste steam diversion from landfills, and citizen education. With landfills already full, a paradigm shift is underway to handle the 22 million tons of trash generated each year.
Submitted on March 18, 2014 - 12pm
In a June speech at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama outlined his strategy for both mitigating climate change and responding to its repercussions. The plan’s three pillars involve reducing the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere, increasing readiness for the impacts of climate change, and serving as a global leader to address the issue. In the following article, VerdeXchange News has reprinted the beginning of the plan’s introduction. To provide an overview, VerdeXchange News has also reprinted a summary of the text that first appeared in The Washington Post.
Submitted on March 17, 2014 - 11pm
VX2013 featured the panel “California’s Water Supply: Demand & Quality”, moderated by the State Water Resources Control Board’s Felicia Marcus. In the discussion, Paul Helliker (Deputy Director of the California Department of Water Resources), Phil Isenberg (Chair, Delta Stewardship Council), and Jeff Kightlinger (General Manager, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California) focus on the challenges of bringing water from Northern California to Southern California as that supply becomes less dependable with climate change. Coupled with vulnerable Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta infrastructure, Californians are due for serious capital investments to ensure the continued existence of a reliable water supply.
Submitted on March 17, 2014 - 11pm
Nate Lewis is the George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry and Scientific Director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) at Caltech. JCAP is one of several federally funded Energy Innovation Hubs, with a specific focus on deriving fuel from sunlight. In a recent talk given at the LAEDC Mid Year Economic Forecast, republished here in VerdeXchange News and TPR, Professor Lewis puts the earth’s current greenhouse gas levels in historic perspective, noting that no energy source has the power to both clean our atmosphere and meet civilization’s growing energy demands except the sun. Yet harnessing the sun’s energy with current solar panel technology presents problems of space and storage. Lewis outlines how artificial photosynthesis might solve these problems, as well as the steps Caltech is taking to make this hypothetical technology a game-changing reality.
Submitted on March 17, 2014 - 6pm
The City of Lancaster aims to become the first net-zero city in the world, and took strides toward that goal by mandating solar energy for every new single-family home constructed in the municipality at the start of this year. R. Rex Parris, the Mayor of Lancaster, described his vision to VerdeXchange News: that the city will serve as an example others follow, so that the nation can reduce greenhouse gas emissions and help prevent the worst potential outcomes of climate change. With a clear goal, Mayor Parris has united his constituents around the frank reality of climate change.
Submitted on March 17, 2014 - 4pm
As renewable energy becomes the base upon which society operates, how will utilities manage unbalanced production and overproduction? Advances in communications technology, or the Industrial Internet, promise to channel energy to where it is most demanded via sensors and automatic communication between machines. Efficiently connecting supply and demand will grow with the increased ubiquity of our M2M devices and their potential for sensing energy needs across a myriad of platforms. VerdeXchange News reprints the following with the permission of ThomasNet News.
Submitted on March 17, 2014 - 4pm
Bruce Katz, Vice President at the Brookings Institution, co-authored The Metropolitan Revolution. VerdeXchange News has printed a piece adapted from this book below, which originally appeared online as part of LinkedIn’s Influencer’s series. Mr. Katz discusses how innovation districts—clusters of anchor institutions and innovative firms, along with related companies, mixed use housing, office, and retail—are taking the place of traditional corporate campuses, and what impact this will have on cities moving forward.
Submitted on October 3, 2013 - 3pm
In this VerdeXchange News interview, James Kelly, formerly of Southern California Edison and now a strategic advisor to GRIDiant Corporation, among other startups, discusses the role of Embedded Network Sensing (ENS) in generating data, how improved data analytics will affect the management of the electrical grid, and what the evolution of data portends for the physical worlds of industry and utility. As alternative energies and power sources gain support in state and local government, stronger tools for monitoring the electric grid will be necessary for balancing supply and demand.
Submitted on October 3, 2013 - 3pm
On September 23, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti welcomed visitors and participants to the One Water Leadership Summit, hosted by the US Water Alliance in Downtown Los Angeles. The One Water approach to water management aims to eliminate the departmental silos that discourage recycling of properly treated waste, storm, and potable water worldwide. It is a holistic approach to managing the resource. Mayor Garcetti highlights the progress LA and other California jurisdictions have made through investment in waste and stormwater infrastructure and green streets as his emphasis on the need for further action. VerdeXchange News presents the following edited transcript of the mayor’s summit remarks.
Submitted on October 3, 2013 - 3pm
VerdeXchange News presents the following remarks by Amy Myers Jaffe, Executive Director for Energy and Sustainability at UC Davis, delivered this summer at the biannual Asilomar Conference on Transportation and Energy. Her thesis: Many incorrectly imagined that the globe and the Industrial West were running dry of oil and thus alternative energy and fuels could depend on high oil prices shifting us to lower carbon emissions. Jaffe suggests that environmental policy advocates shift away from arguing scarcity and instead prepare for possible fossil fuel surpluses, and what that might mean for the economy and for climate change initiatives.
Submitted on October 3, 2013 - 3pm
In August, VerdeXchange News sat down with Stephen Cheung, the Mayor of Los Angeles’ first Director of International Trade, to discuss the purview and mission of his new position, which liaisons between the Port of Los Angeles, LAX, and City Hall. With trade being a critical component of the LA regional economy, and with the infrastructure of trade constantly evolving, Cheung works for goods movement, logistics, storage, and transportation to operate as smoothly as possible to retain customers doing business in and through LA. The potential growth of ethanol trade with Brazil serves as an example of how LA is making strides to adapt.
Submitted on October 3, 2013 - 3pm
Over the past three decades, North America has seen a fivefold increase in weather-related natural disasters, with relief spending mirroring this exponential trend. As the population grows, the number of Americans residing in “at risk” areas along the coast, rivers, and in the “fire zone” also continues to rise. In the following VerdeXchange News interview, Oregon Congressman Earl Blumenauer explains why our current federal policy on natural disaster recovery is both fiscally unsustainable and life threatening. He suggests the changes in zoning, infrastructure investment, insurance, and taxation that must occur on a national scale to prepare for climate change.
Submitted on October 3, 2013 - 3pm
Southern California Edison recently decided to shut down the San Onofre nuclear power plant after trouble with faulty generators. VerdeXchange News consulted Long Beach Mayor, ISO Chair, and former SCE president Bob Foster on the impact the closure will have on energy supply in the Southland, and how the state plans to counter the impending power loss. Foster also talks demand response, California’s energy future (he thinks: renewables), and the revolutionary role storage technology will play in fostering a green energy grid. While San Onofre presents a challenge, Foster notes California’s energy agencies are more capable than ever of meeting such challenges together.
Submitted on October 3, 2013 - 3pm
VerdeXchange News interviewed Arizona entrepreneur, CEO, investor and philanthropist Glenn Williamson, Chairman of EPCOR Water USA, a Canadian-based utilities company that has now come to Arizona. Williamson is also Chairman of the Canada Arizona Business Council, which aims to increase bilateral trade between Canada and Arizona to $5 billion by 2014. He discusses both organizations and their objectives for Arizona, including better management of water supply and demand through the application of data analytics; the economic value of Canada investments in jobs and technology; and future prospects for Arizona business and sustainable initiatives.
Submitted on October 3, 2013 - 2pm
Sanjay Ranchod is the Assistant General Counsel and Director of Policy and Electricity Markets at SolarCity, the nation’s largest full-service photovoltaic solar power provider for residential, commercial, and government customers. In this VerdeXchange interview, Ranchod discusses California Assembly Bill 327, recently passed by the state’s legislature and written to modernize electricity rates and remove restrictions on the state’s net metering program. Expected to be signed into law by Gov. Brown, the solar industry, most especially rooftop solar companies, have cheered the law’s passage while also preparing for the coming changes to state policy that will follow from the adoption of new regulations interpreting and applying AB 327.
Submitted on October 3, 2013 - 2pm
With state and federal transportation funding slow, Metro and Caltrans are embracing public-private partnerships to finance and accelerate planned infrastructure projects. Doug Failing, Metro’s Executive Director of Highway Programs, tells VX News about their Accelerated Regional Transportation Improvement (ARTI) program, a series of small projects through which the county transit agency plans to demonstrate its viability and desirableness as a partner with private enterprise. Failing outlines the specific focus of ARTI (including the I-710 gap between the 10 and 210, the high desert corridor from LA to San Bernardino, and the 710 freight corridor), the benefits of P3 funding, and what Metro and Caltrans expect to learn about project delivery under a P3 system.
Submitted on September 5, 2013 - 5pm
The inaugural VerdeXchange Arizona conference in October will bring together business leaders and politicians who are helping to build Arizona and the west through sustainability, infrastructure and international business projects.
Submitted on April 11, 2013 - 11am
As Executive Officer of the California Air Resource Board since 2007, James Goldstene oversees the development and implementation of the Board’s clean air policies and represents the ARB before the legislature and other state, regional, national, and international forums. 2012 was a landmark year for the ARB, with the successful launching of the first of 32 cap-and-trade auctions planned four times annually through the year 2020. In the following interview with VerdeXchange News, James Goldstene elaborates on the plans and partnerships CARB aims to realize in 2013 and beyond.
Submitted on April 11, 2013 - 11am
Newly reelected President Barack Obama and California Governor Jerry Brown both began 2013 - the former in his Inaugural Address and the latter in his State of the State speech - by emphasizing the need for lawmakers to address the issue of climate change. And both also cite the need for critical infrastructure investment and mitigation efforts to act as part of a solution to control the symptoms of climate change. Project funding, ranging from high-speed rail to flood control, they assert, are key to reducing the amount of energy consumed from non-renewable sources of energy, limiting carbon footprints, and protecting posterity from future disasters; thereby creating newer, innovative green jobs and protecting jobs that already exist from being threatened by climate change.
Submitted on April 11, 2013 - 11am
Last fall, the Los Angeles City Council approved the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s request for a $267-million budget for the next two fiscal years. Supported by an 11-percent rate increase, the expanded budget will go towards LADWP’s goal of 10-15 percent energy efficiency by 2020. Long-time energy executive David Jacot, formerly of Southern California Edison, joined the LADWP as Director of Energy Efficiency last summer, tasked with the development and management of the utility’s new, energy-saving programs. VerdeXchange News was pleased to discuss the specifics of these programs in a December 2012 interview with Mr. Jacot.
