By Steve Thomas
Attending the recent Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ) conference, held at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., was a great way to get up-to-speed on current environmental issues and trends, while also gaining an understanding for the point of view of the media folks who report on environmental issues. The conference was very well organized, with more than 900 attendees from media, academic institutions, corporations and non-governmental organizations.
I wished I could have been three people at many points during the conference, since there were usually at least three conference sessions I wanted to attend at any one time. SEJ did a good job of bringing in experts to represent more than one point of view on major issues and giving those experts equal time to present their viewpoints.
One thing I learned that surprised me was that journalists are skeptical about ethanol as a good renewable energy solution. Many journalists are not even willing to consider it renewable energy, since they say it takes a great deal of fossil fuel to plant, tend and harvest the corn (which is most often used) and more energy to convert the corn to ethanol. Then they think that there is only a small benefit to the environment of burning ethanol instead of gasoline, and they are worried that rising corn prices are having a negative impact on many communities.
On the other hand, photovoltaic solar seems to be the renewable energy favored by most journalists, with wind energy being a close second. With wind, however, there were questions about the death rates of birds coming into contact with turbine blades and differing opinions about the proper location for wind farms, with much discussion about whether the need for renewable energy outweighs concerns about spoiling the view in some prime locations.
Many journalists took the opportunity to try out a variety of hybrid vehicles available for test drives at the conference. While they enjoyed the experience and liked the models they drove, quite a few also remarked that they couldn’t afford something like a hybrid SUV and are having a hard time with the economics of even the low-end hybrids. The conversation goes something like this: “The 1992 Corolla is still running fine, it gets good mileage, and I don’t make a lot of money. How can I justify the additional cost of a hybrid?” The conversations were a lot like the one I had with my wife after test-driving a Toyota Prius at a Milwaukee dealership recently.
We learned one solution to this dilemma during the very popular tour of Google’s headquarters. The company offers its full-time U.S. employees a $5,000 subsidy toward the purchase of a vehicle with an EPA fuel economy rating of 45 mpg or higher. I have since learned that quite a few other corporations offer similar incentives, including Hyperion, Bank of America, Timberland, Patagonia, and ST Microelectronics. To find out the details, visit www.hybridcars.com.
We traveled to the Googleplex on a very nice shuttle bus, one of 30 low-emission buses Google runs to and from its Silicon Valley headquarters, providing no-cost transportation to almost 30 percent of its headquarters employees. When we arrived, the Google folks let us walk around on the roof-tops of their buildings to get a close-up view of the new photovoltaic solar panels they have installed.
Journalists were impressed when Bill Weihl, the Green Energy Czar for Google, and Dan Reicher, the Director of Climate Change for Google, showed off a new solar carport the company has installed and demonstrated several vehicles using vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technology. V2G technology allows for the bi-directional sharing of electricity between electric vehicles and the electric power grid. The technology essentially transforms each vehicle into an energy storage system, thus increasing power reliability and the amount of renewable energy available to the grid during peak power usage.
The most important thing I was reminded of at this conference is that journalists are skeptical about almost everything, especially corporate claims about being green. While companies like Google may get a pass for now, the prevailing view is that most corporate environmental claims are simply green-washing. It’s clear that companies have to be able to walk the talk on every level to be seen as an environmentally friendly by environmental journalists.
Steve,
Not only journalists but engineers are also skeptical about ethonal and other fossil fuel replacements. The energy equation is very important when evaluating the usefullness of an alternate energy source. I believe that switch grass and corn husks as a source for ethanol may have a positive net energy gain as opposed to the use of corn itself.