Gheorghasbord: Environmental Edition

An unprecedented heat wave in western Europe is responsible for the deaths of thousands and stresses power grids to the point of breaking. Wildfires in the western U.S. and Alaska have scorched more than four million acres and threaten Sequoias, the world’s largest and tallest trees. Torrential rains caused devastating floods near St. Louis and in parts of Kentucky. The world grows hotter and drier in some places, while coastal locales gradually submerge. In short, much environmental news these days falls somewhere between discouraging and deadly. 

However, there are hopeful signs. 

Harnessing Sludge Clackamas County in northwest Oregon invested in technology and machinery that turns sewage into green energy, as part of the county’s plan to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. Renewable power is produced from methane, a natural by-product of human waste decomposing in an oxygen-free environment and whose emissions accelerate global warming. The county’s sewage treatment plant turns waste into clean water, fertilizer for non-food crops, and renewable energy. Water is filtered and goes through a disinfection process before being pumped back into the Clackamas River. Minimal solid waste is removed and transported to a nearby landfill. The remaining bio-mass goes into anaerobic “digesters,” which act like a human stomach. As they break down matter, they produce methane. The methane rises to the top of the digesters and is transferred to a lean-burn, co-generation engine that converts it into heat and electricity. The process produces heat for five of the treatment plant’s buildings and 4,300 megawatts of electricity, which amounts to approximately half of the plant’s energy usage. 

Officials estimate that they’ll save more than $400,000 per year by producing their own power. County water treatment officials and advocates believe that as the population grows and therefore produces more waste, that harnessing methane will generate more power, save money and serve as a hedge against natural or man-made disasters or failures that threaten power grids. 

Renewable Bet Canberra, the capital of Australia, and its surrounding area have managed to trim energy costs, while the rest of the country suffers from hikes due to the increasing price of coal and gas, and maintenance and outages of aging coal-fired power plants. It did so by betting on renewable energy when the nation’s conservative government doubled down on fossil fuels and by dismissing criticism that its lean toward green was unwise and too expensive. 

Canberra and its region in southeastern Australia are governed by the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). Back in 2012, the group set an ambitious goal of converting to 90 percent renewable energy sources within a decade and had begun to partner with various solar, wind and renewable outfits. They did so in less than 10 years. However, when a conservative government took power nationally in 2013, it promised to scrap the country’s carbon tax and pivot away from green energy sources and back toward an emphasis on fossil fuels. 

A gent named Simon Corbell, who was the ACT’s energy and climate change minister from 2011-2016, told a reporter in a story for the website Reasons to be Cheerful that because the region had been devastated by wildfires, drought and water shortages the previous decade, that residents and government officials remained receptive to alternate energy sources. Though the market for renewables dried up nationally with minimal federal backing, the ACT provided one of the few opportunities for green energy companies. 

Corbell, now the CEO of a clean energy investor group, said that the ACT began holding “reverse auctions” for renewable power companies, with the lowest bids receiving the stability of decades-long contracts. Because the bids were made public, companies knew the target number for various projects. As technology and efficiency of renewable energy sources improved, subsequent auctions routinely attracted lower bids and broke price records for cheapest energy in the country. While the remainder of the state is expected to see electricity bills climb between 8.5 and 19.7 percent, ACT residents will see a decline of at least 1.25 percent. 

Other Australian states have begun to emulate the ACT’s reverse auction strategy. After nine years of conservative rule, a new, center-left government that’s more green energy and renewable-friendly took power in May. It set a goal of 82 percent renewable energy nationally by 2030. Ambitious for sure, but don’t bet against them. 

Removing Plastic The Dutch-based nonprofit, The Ocean Cleanup, recently announced that it had collected more than 100,000 kilograms (223,000 pounds) of plastic waste from an area in the Pacific Ocean known as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP). The amount is barely a dent in the GPGP, which some estimates peg as holding 100 million kilograms of waste, but it’s a start. 

The OC made 45 extraction trips in recent months, covering an area the size of Rhode Island. The group developed a system in which nets strung between vessels take advantage of ocean currents and vortices where waste collects, gathers it and hauls it out of the water. The company is testing its third generation of ocean waste collection technology, which it hopes will be 10 times more productive than the present model. It also developed a system that collects plastic waste from rivers. 

Company research claims that the 1,000 most polluted rivers in the world deposit 80 percent of plasticwaste that ends up in oceans. The river waste collection system is presently deployed in the Dominican Republic, Indonesia, Vietnam and Malaysia. 

The OC was founded by 28-year-old Dutch inventor and entrepreneur Boyan Slat, who makes most of us mortals look like slugs and feebs. He dreamed up what became his passive waste collection system when he was 17 and gave a TED talk about it at 18. He studied aerospace engineering at the Netherlands’ oldest technical university, but dropped out at 19 and founded the OC. He has raised millions of dollars, and the OC is partners with corporations such as Maersk, Coca Cola, Kia and the Dutch government. He is the youngest recipient of the United Nations’ Champion of the Earth award. In 2017, Reader’s Digest named him European of the Year, and a Dutch mag named him Dutchman of the Year. One year later, he was awarded the da Vinci International Art Award, and Euronews named him European Entrepreneur of the Year. 

Our species may well be doomed, but I’m moderately encouraged knowing that the likes of Boyan Slat and Simon Corbell walk among us.