Florida’s Race for Green Oil - by K. A. Gardner

Believe it or not – algae, that slimy green stuff,  is one hot commodity!  In fact, the race to use “algae oil”  as a petroleum alternative is in full throttle and state universities across Florida are chasing after a very green asset.

Florida’s potential as a industry leader in algal biofuel is huge. The Center for Marine Bioenergy Research was just established in March at Florida State University through a grant from the U.S. Dept. of Energy.   Mike Wetz heads up the center, which is under the umbrella of our friend Dave Cartes‘ Institute of  Energy Systems, Economics and Sustainabilty (IESES).

With our coastline, it only stands to REASON that Florida should be be a leader [in algae biofuel production] in the eastern U.S., Cartes said.

Of course FSU isn’t the only state university in Florida involved in bioenergy research (although news from  University of Florida hasn’t been fully explored).  All eleven state universities make up the Florida Energy Systems Consortium - collaborative  energy research among the universities. They met in May with industry leaders for a Florida overview of the “Algal Industry Survey” conducted in association with the Centre for Management Technology.

The reports’ findings – less than perfect:

1. Secrecy amongst companies in the field that leads to a lack of information sharing between affiliated scientists
2. Lack of rigorous assessments of the entire algal biofuel value chain (i.e., from production to distribution
3. Lack of trained workforce.

[As a guest blogger for the Journal of Renewable and Sustainable Energy's blog, Clean, Mike Wetz posts this overview of marine algae biofuels].

FSU researchers are developing a state-of-the-art algal cultivation operation at a site on the North Florida coast, which includes an off-grid, zero emissions facility that utilizes recycled CO2 (from the processing of algal biomass) and nutrients (from local wastewater sources) to support algal growth.  Since this unique operation will be run by an academic institution, a major goal will be to work towards overcoming problems noted in the aforementioned state of the industry report.

[NOTE:  Not all details of next month's meeting are solidified - a team of industry and state university academia is being put together now - UPDATE later]

Although the state of the industry report may seem mediocre,  Florida does have a number of established algal biofuels companies. Melbourne, Fla.-based PetroAlgae, for example, is a publicly-traded biofuels industry leader. The company received the Sustainable Energy Technology award  at the international Green Power Conference held in Brussels, Belgium this past March.

PetroAlgae is an important player in the state,  said Wetz. I have good interactions with them.

BUT OF COURSE – California also has plenty of coastline AND top-notch research universities …

Asked about California’s progress in algal biofuels, Cartes replied:

We have unique capabilities in FLORIDA. We don’t NEED to go to California to find our expertise.

GAME ON!!

- Karen Gardner

Ms. Cape gives us advice on how to approach sustainability and her unique perspective as a public servant makes this a video not to be missed.

This week we highlighted the Malkis’ vision in founding Green Cities and Jerome Ringo’s focus on the human element of sustainability. Creative Loafing’s  Joshua Michael Poll reviews the latest Green Cities event and highlights the 1 MW Solar Electric System at the Orange County Convention Center and Orlando’s Mayor Buddy Dyer’s announcement of “Green Works Orlando”. Here’s a list of posts about Green Cities from this week, in case you missed them:

EcoFactory Interviews Apollo Alliance’s President Jerome Ringo

What is Sustainability? Interview with Georgia Malki

EcoFactory Interview with Joseph Malki

Green Cities in the news this week:

Creative Loafing Recaps Green Cities Florida

For me, this was a breath of fresh air. Often when in a green convention, you’re likely to meet a huge mass of straight-ticket voters who hold the party line no matter what. Joseph Malki seemed pleased to rock the boat a little in revealing that he was a self-proclaimed radical green Republican. It was startling for a minute, and then it made sense. In order for the green movement to stick, it needs to have firm supporters on both sides of the aisle. Joseph Malki could be that guy.

Joseph talked to us about the science of sustainability, and made the point that business and government aren’t cooperating on green initiatives in a meaningful way. Joseph argued that green was turned into an ideology by progressives, activists, and the political left. He cited numerous instances where green initiatives turned out to be disasters, namely biofuel and CFL life-cycle risk-assessment.

It all makes sense to me. Creating meaningful change with this momentum requires a scientific, codified approach if we want it to last longer than the current administration. Joseph Malki may represent the future generation of green conservatives, or even the green movement as a whole.

-by Nate Kharrl of ecofactory

Our partners over at EcoFactory were able to catch up with Jerome Ringo of the Apollo Alliance for a few quick questions at Green Cities Florida. Fresh off his workshop “The Color of Green: The Next Inconvenient Truth “, Mr. Ringo addresses several issues. A personal favorite is “The problem of nature vs. Nintendo” and how we reconnect youth back to nature in the age of digital entertainment. Ringo’s focus on the human element brings the green movement back to where it matters the most. Hope you enjoy the interview and stay tuned for more highlights from Green Cities Florida.

I’m Kimberly Miller with Green Cities Media here with Steve Cochran on site in Orlando. Hi Steve, how’s it going?
Hi, Kimberly. Just fine, how are you? Nice to see you again.

It’s nice to see you too. So you just facilitated an open spaces event if you will. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Well what I just did was open space for the participants here at Green Cities Florida. I literally opened the space for them to take advantage of the opportunity to convene individual sessions about topics that they have an interest in that they felt they’d like to explore more from this wonderful conference of two days that they have a concern about, perhaps they have a model they would just like to describe that they see has worked. Perhaps they have a fear they’d like to express, just whatever at this point is on their mind that they would like to take advantage of an opportunity to explore more deeply. So my job as the facilitator which really is a misnomer was just to take that responsibility to empower them to do what they want to do which as you see they’re hard at work already doing. They’ve created probably about twenty 45 minute sessions which will occur in just the next less than two hours.

So give me an example of some of the sessions that have been created.
Some of the folks right now are talking about encouraging electric drive in Florida. One young man I know is talking about bringing sustainability education to public schools. One woman has a very specific model that she wanted to present about the triple bottom line tool. Some people have a question, they said, “I’m looking for someone who knows something about this.” So really to take a look at the marketplace which they’ve created for themselves; it’s kind of all over the map.

So what do you expect is going to come out of this open space session?
Well when I have used these tools with other groups, for one thing I think there’ll be a lot of energy and excitement which at the tail end of a long very packed two-day conference is always its own sort of reinforcement rather than the dribbling end of something. Almost always, too, I’d be very surprised if there aren’t some very concrete commitments where people will have said “I’m going to go forward and do this specific thing” or partnerships will have been formed which will enable actions to occur and they are encouraged in these sessions to have very declarative statements and concrete actions to take.

So how has Green Cities been for you so far?
Oh, it’s wonderful. It’s a great privilege in my work to really only work around groups of people who are mission-driven people, who care very deeply about the work of sustainability and what the entails so the great honor and privilege to be with and share time and serve and support people who care deeply about the common good is just always…I get chills just talking about it. Really it’s quite an honor and really a sacred thing. Also the very concrete and actionable sessions which were created in the conference itself, I’ve heard many people talk about the range and depth and just how usable information they’ve gained and the interactions they’ve had so I know people are going to go forward and Green Cities will help Florida become even more engaged in the sustainability imperatives than they are now so I feel very strongly about that.

So have you learned anything new while you’ve been here?
Oh, sure! I learn from everyone and in this field right now especially, I think I’ve mentioned to a couple people here, anyone who builds themselves as an expert in this or that or sustainability…we’re all on a learning journey anyway but particularly in areas like sustainability which so often are new now to plug in, so I learned amazing things about Florida. I mean I was not nearly aware at all about just how engaged Florida and central Florida, Orlando the kind of political commitment which exists here. The kind of very concrete actions which are occurring already I admit I have sort of the Orlando Megalopolis ya know, Disney World only lots of pavement …

Right I was pretty pleasantly surprised as well. I had no idea what was going on here in Florida.
So I intend to be an advocate for that and help people understand that they are doing some really serious things…really good people down there.

So what do you think it means for Green Cities that they had their first of a series of conferences in Florida in a place where people maybe don’t expect sustainability to be at the forefront. What do you think that means?
I think it sends a wonderful message and just as I described it’s sort of not exactly a paradigm shift for me but learning last week in Huntsville Alabama there was a modified Green Cities which actually was a small version of what occurred here over the last two days within just a few hours where a group of 200 civic leaders in Huntsville Alabama came together to envision Green Cities Alabama over several days which will occur further on down the road in the fall or the first part of next year.

Yeah that’s another shocker right? Alabama
I like Huntsville, Alabama. A lot of people who know the kind of work I do…I’m usually traveling internationally and I’m in Washington lots and as I said I live in Asheville, North Carolina work with energy companies in the southeast so friends were saying “Steve, Huntsville?” and “Orlando?” and “Have you changed careers or something?” and so I said I can go forth and say “no.” I mean these are places which ask us to come in and help because they are taking ownership and responsibility for their region so I think that sends a wonderful message and there’s always the usual places of Portland and Burlington and we all know that so the message is not just hopeful but I mean they’re very concrete things with people very engaged in their leadership.

Does it make you excited about the future of sustainability in America?
Oh absolutely. I’ve always been excited about it but with events like this occurring…not just events, mountain top events, but places like this where people come away and get real tools. They fill up their leadership toolbox and they go forth and they use it so it’s, as many of the presentations showed us here we’ve passed the tipping point you know whatever metaphor it is…this is off and running in a bad economy I mean to have a conference with 500 people in this kind of an economy around a topic like this which used to be kind of esoteric and nice if you can afford it on the side after you do real work type of thing. It shows that this is what is going to enable us to do anything else.

Well thanks so much for coming and for talking with me.
Thanks you. I’m delighted to be here.

We here at EcoFactory managed to catch Steve Cochran at Green Cities™ Florida and talk to him a bit about Open Space. It’s quite an impressive concept, to think that you can solve problems that might take weeks of meetings by doing an Open Space session for a few hours. I didn’t have the chance to ask everyone what they accomplished in sessions on May 21, but judging by past successes, I’d say some good things were accomplished.

Cochran told me that he’s done Open Space sessions with groups of all sizes, most recently with attendees at the Green Cities™ Alabama Summit. Seems like it always produces some good ideas. I can believe that, considering that some of my best classes in college were based on the sort of discussions that Open Space tries to foster.

Here’s how Open Space works: You gather a bunch of people together and encourage them to bring up topics on a particular theme. Those topics are written on pieces of paper, and anyone interested in that topic follows the piece of paper to the sidelines, where a discussion will start on the topic. Essentially the idea is that the people, not the leadership, set the agenda. If you get a bunch of people together in one room and encourage them to think freely to bring up solutions, odds are you’re going to come up with something original and creative.

The only requirements Open Space puts on participants govern how the discussion works, rather than what is discussed. Principles like “if you’re not contributing or learning, move on” and “when the discussion is over, it’s over” indicate that the direction is not to force accomplishment, but instead to foster it.

I hope that the Green Cities™ Florida Open Space session managed to accomplish some great things. Certainly there were some big movers involved in the discussions, with people coming from businesses, non-profits, and government offices. The biggest thing I brought away from the whole event was that there are people out there with big dreams for a greener planet. Let’s hope those dreams come true!

If you were asked to transform a notoriously neglected city block in one of America’s most recognizable cities into a model example of sustainability what would you create?  Hundreds of designers, architects, students and engineers entered the Re:Vision Dallas competition to answer this question.  The entries were diverse, imaginitive and showed an incredible passion for the future of Dallas and the world.    Mayor Tom Leppert, Central Dallas Community Development Corporation, and Dallas community organizations have to come together to select a winning design and the top 3 entries are on display here.  Media kits are available for download below each design.

Eric Corey Freed was in the unique position as a juror for the competition.  Imagine the difficulty of narrowing down over a 150 incredibly intriguing and forward thinking entries into 3 winners.  Listen to the podcast or read the transcript below to hear Mr. Freed’s thoughts on the entries and what were some of his favorites.

To learn more about Urban Revision check out the websites www.urbanrevision.com and www.revision-dallas.com.  You can also follow us on Twitter http://www.twitter.com/urbanrevision

——————————————————-

May 20, 2009

…Talking with Eric Corey Freed, organic architect, who is also a member of Urban Re:Vision.
So I just spent an hour talking to a room-full of people about urban revision and our entire story of how we started with a series of five competitions that looked at different aspects of sustainability, energy, water. And then our big competition which just closed in May, and we just had the judging yesterday, and we announce the winners next week of a city block in Dallas for a real block, for a real place in a real city that will really get built, and we pick three winners and three honorable mentions, and people can go online at urbanrevision.com and see them next week.

So if you can tell me, not the winners, but name an entry that you found particularly interesting.
There was an entry that I found very interesting that was a building that absorbed carbon and filtered the air, and they had a lot of science and documentation reams of paper showing how this could work, and it was a very intriguing idea of a building that’s truly regenerative not just in terms of providing energy but fixing some of the problems such as carbon emissions. There was one, actually showed it today that took aircraft fuselage, the tubes of the airplane, and cut off the ends and stacked them into a rack and became apartments, kind of a modular housing thing.

Very cool.
So there was a lot of great ideas. I mean the range and depth of the entries was phenomenal. In fact that’s what made it such a long two days because we had to narrow down 100 incredible entries down to three.

So you were impressed with the entries then?
Oh very impressed! It was far above what I ever could have imagined coming in. And they clearly spent hundreds of hours putting these things together.

So was it mostly professionals then who were entering the contest, or did regular citizens and students get involved too?
We had everybody. The entries were anonymous and then at the end we were able to look to see who did what, and there was a range of everything from students to big large gigantic corporate firms to everybody in between.  That was the real intent of the competition was to get that broad range of entries. And you wouldn’t know it by the entries… I mean they were just so overwhelming, but people can go online and look and see what was entered.

Cool thanks for talking with us!
Thank you.

Green Cities™ Florida hosted in Orlando was last week (May 20th & 21st) at the Orange County Convention Center. The overall focus of the event was to bring businesses and municipalities together to achieve green goals to save the planet, increase profits, and to qualify for possible federal funding. The Green Cities™ conference “demystified ’sustainability’ and provided tools, steps and resources from top experts and educators”.

There was a ribbon cutting ceremony and official “Flipping the Switch” for the new 1 MW Solar Electric System atop the Orange County Convention Center. This is the largest installation of its kind in the Southeast US, and one of the largest outside of California and the Pacific Northwest. This installation was installed with the help of a $1.8 million grant from the state of Florida, an example of the kind of partnerships that Green Cities™ Florida advocates.

The City of Orlando and Orange County teamed up to make Orlando a Solar City. Through this partnership, OUC (Orlando Utilities Commission), the city and county will develop a strategic energy plan with the goal of increasing the use of solar technology and the amount of renewable energy in Central Florida.

[ Read entire article ]

It may seem as though the green movement has caught lightning in a bottle and exploded onto the mainstream overnight.  However, Trish Riley of GoGreenAlternatives.com, has been connected with nature for quite some time now.  Ms. Riley will be featured during the Open Space Technology session of Green Cities Florida on May 21^st.  Founder/CEO of GoGreenGift.com and The author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide® to Green Living, Ms. Riley has also been featured in such publications as:  Hemispheres, Audubon, The Miami Herald, South Florida Business Journal, Natural Health, Natural Home, and E/The Environmental Magazine.

Her new book, “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Greening Business” tackles issues businesses may have bringing their companies up-to-date with the sustainability movement.  The work also covers:

·         Setting practical, achievable goals for the right green initiative

·         The difference between “Green” and Sustainability

·         Streamlining operations

·         Innovative staffing strategies to save commuting time and office overhead

·         Cutting fuel and energy costs

·         Understanding carbon credits and their value

·         Making your products greener

·         Green manufacturing, packaging, and shipping initiatives

·         Paperless marketing programs, precision-targeted to get more from less

When asked why she chose to change her focus from personal living to business Trish replied: “While it’s essential for individuals to do whatever they can to reduce their environmental footprint and to reduce their exposure to synthetic petrochemicals, the most effective changes to our planet will occur when businesses and government adopt truly sustainable policies and practices. Businesses are motivated by markets, which are dictated by the choices that individuals make. We can vote green with our dollars as well as in elections. That is how we – as individuals – have the power to save our planet. Helping businesses to go green – in response to the demand created by the public – was a logical step toward moving us into a healthier future”.  

Originally from Carmel, Indiana, where she was introduced to the wonders of nature, Trish and her partner James Steele (a veteran of natural growing techniques and web design) run Go Green Alternatives out of Gainesville;  a resource point for all of those wishing to make themselves and their surroundings as environmentally friendly as possible.  Together they are aiming “…to create a community resource to help bring these green-minded individuals, groups and businesses together to help strengthen our green community”.  Gainesville, like many other cities in Florida, is facing a myriad of sustainability issues from improving mass transit and lanes for cyclists, to eliminating pollutants from their water supply.  Her recommendation on how to tackle all these problems fits perfectly with the philosophy of Go Green Alternatives and that is “…with small steps in every direction”.

On May 21 from 1 – 4pm Green Cities™ Florida will offer sessions presented by conference participants and organized using Open Space Technology, allowing attendees the opportunity to dive deeper into topics and to get expert advice on specific questions and areas of interest.  Ms. Riley’s experience allows her to speak on numerous issues that attendees may have.  Though she states “I’d also like to share information about how to help build green communities by helping to raise visibility of environmental issues, businesses, jobs, and the people who are working toward a cleaner future.”