Concord Bans Plastic Water Bottles

Concord's Ban on Plastic Water Bottles went into effect with the New Year. 

On or after Jan. 1, 2013, businesses in Concord will be prohibited from selling non-sparkling, unflavored drinking water in single-serving polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles of 1 liter (34 ounces) or less. The bylaw provides an exemption for emergencies and allows the ban to be lifted by the town if an emergency is officially declared. Businesses in town will still be able to sell non-sparkling water in plastic bottles that are larger than one liter.

The Town of Concord received notice from the Massachusetts Office of Attorney General Martha Coakley that the office has approved the ban of single-serving plastic water bottles in Concord under this year's Town Meeting Article 32, making Concord the first town in the country to implement such a ban.

Should other towns follow suit? 

[Boston Globe] [Wicked Local]

Avis Buys Zipcar

Lot's of folks are wondering if Zipcar can make car ownership a thing of the past. What do you think? Have you driven a Zipcar? Does it make sense for folks who live in the burbs?

While Zipcar investors count their cash from today's half-billion-dollar acquisition by Avis, the rest of us can start counting the days until we can say good riddance to one of the least rewarding aspects of city life: car ownership.

Zipcar said that Avis had agreed to purchase the Cambridge, Mass.-based company for $12.25 per share, or about $500 million. The deal brings Avis the most prominent brand name in what Zipcar describes as the $400 million car-sharing market. The question is, will the added muscle of Avis be enough to take car-sharing mainstream?

http://www.wired.com/business/2013/01/avis-zipcar-give-up-your-car/

Warren Buffett invests $2 Billion in Solar Power

Warren Buffett's MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company has acquired two SunPower solar photovoltaic power plant projects in California for between $2 billion and $2.5 billion, the companies said Wednesday.

The adjacent Antelope Valley Solar Projects will be built in Los Angeles and Kern counties and will generate 579 megawatts of electricity for utility Southern California Edison. At peak output that's the equivalent of a big fossil fuel power plant.

SunPower, the Silicon Valley solar panel manufacturer and developer, will build and operate the projects for MidAmerican Renewables, a division of MidAmerican Energy, which is controlled by Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.

"We are excited about these projects because they support our core business principle of environmental respect," Bill Fehrman, president of MidAmerican Renewables, said in a statement. "We are very proud to add SunPower technology to our portfolio of projects,"

It's just the latest solar deal for Buffett. MidAmerican Energy also owns the 550-megawatt Topaz Solar Farms built by First Solar in San Luis County, Calif., and holds a 49% stake in a 290-megawatt solar power plant in Yuma, Ariz.

Construction of the Antelope Valley Solar Projects is set to begin this year with the power plants going online at the end of 2015.

Wind Power - Renewed

In the last-minute tax maneuvering in Congress, wind power came out well.

Wind not only got an extension of its tax credit in the federal budget compromise, but the rules were also restructured: while the extension runs for only one year, the nature of the deadline has changed. Projects do not need to be finished and feeding electricity to the grid by next New Year's Eve; construction only needs to be started.

That change could prove critical. The renewal comes so late — developers had lobbied all last year to avert a Dec. 31 expiration — that most wind developers had simply stopped work on projects that could not be finished by the end of 2012.

The process of getting a wind farm going, including studying the wind resource, negotiating a land lease or purchase, obtaining environmental and construction permits, signing a contract to sell the electricity to a utility, getting financing, ordering the equipment and then installing it, can easily take more than two years.

A Senate aide who was involved in the run-up to the yearlong extension by Congress said that approval on New Year's Day could have been "like inviting somebody who is halfway around the world to lunch in an hour.''

When the numbers for 2012 are in, the wind industry expects it to have been a record year, surpassing the 10 gigawatts installed in 2010; the total in 2012 may have reached 12 gigawatts. Construction could resume at roughly the same pace. [NY Times]

Japan's Fukushima Cleanup is Denounced

Bags of contaminated soil outside the Naraha-Minami school near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

More than a year and a half since the nuclear crisis, much of Japan's post-Fukushima cleanup remains primitive, slapdash and bereft of the cleanup methods lauded by government scientists as effective in removing harmful radioactive cesium from the environment.

For eight hours a day, construction workers blast buildings with water, cut grass and shovel dirt and foliage into big black plastic bags — which, with nowhere to go, dot Naraha's landscape like funeral mounds.

There are no concrete plans about storing the vast amounts of contaminated soil and foliage the cleanup is generating, which the environment ministry estimates will amount to at least 29 million cubic meters, or more than a billion cubic feet.

“This isn’t decontamination — it’s sweeping up dirt and leaves and absolutely irresponsible,” said Tomoya Yamauchi, an expert in radiation measurement at Kobe University who has been helping Fukushima communities test the effectiveness of various decontamination methods.

http://nyti.ms/U0I2dx

Private citizens protect pubic land

A three-month fundraising sprint has saved a revered slice of the Wyoming Range in central Wyoming from oil and gas drilling.

The Trust for Public Land announced in October it had purchased oil and gas leases on 58,000 acres of the Bridger-Teton National Forest from the company planning on drilling the area, but needed to raise $8.75 million to finalize the deal.

The area under threat – known as both the Noble Basin and Hoback Basin – was featured last July in a video produced by the Center for American Progress. It is a place loved by residents of western Wyoming for its hunting, fishing and other recreation opportunities. Rich in wildlife, the area is important habitat for elk, deer, moose, antelope and other species. It also contains the headwaters of a stretch of the Hoback River that was previously designated by Congress as a wild and scenic river.

[Climate Progress]

Living in Hope

Here's what I've decided: the very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. 

What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibilty that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That's about it. Right now I'm living in that hope. I can't tell you how good it feels.

- Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams