Wouldn’t seem very wise, would it? Yet we often accept similar “wisdom” in the form of studies on important issues like energy and transport without asking who or what was actually behind the study.

Take, for example, the US National Research Council’s (NRC) recent report on “Transitions to Alternative Transportation Technologies — Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” which concluded that hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles could reduce oil consumption better than plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Interesting and perhaps consequential for our future transport decisions, no?

Yes, except for  the fact that, as several astute observers quickly pointed out, the study’s authoring group — the Committee on Assessment of Resource Needs for Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technologies — included, in the words of climate blogger Joe Romm, “at least three retired oil and auto company people, academics who do hydrogen research, consultants with oil company ties and one who has served on the National Hydrogen Foundation board and another the retired Vice President Hydrogen Systems for Chevron Technology Ventures, and a venture capitalist immersed in hydrogen.”

These kinds of oddly skewed studies come out more often than you might expect, and have been especially pernicious in the fields of tobacco and climate research, as James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore point out in their 2009 book, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. They trace many of the papers that took a contrary view of tobacco’s health effects and the risks of climate change to authors backed by groups or institutions funded by — surprise — tobacco or oil companies.

The bottom line: while it’s very easy to identify and dismiss the obvious slanted studies (you know, the petroleum-sponsored research that predicts bottomless oil wells for decades to come, or the cereal company studies that “prove” a bowlful of bran makes your kids smarter, etc.), some of the more “objective” appearing research that generates headlines every day might also bear a bit of scepticism and scrutiny.

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First, investigative journalists need to focus on the real crime regarding the hacked emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit … that is, who dunnit?

“In my mind, it is so necessary now to find out who distributed the emails,” Nasheed said during a talk today at Freie Universität Berlin. Who hacked it? Where was it placed? How did it (make) the rounds? How did it find its way to newspaper headlines? Where is the investigative journalism on that line? Where is the investigative journalism on the criminal element of it all?”

He continued, “I believe that there is a conspiracy and I think any responsble journalist — and I believe all responsible students — really would have to think of this element. Why is it coming out on and on and on? Who is behind this? Who is the devil? We have to find it and we have to point that finger and we have to again make the science as credible as in fact it is. We have to get rid of the perception that there is something wrong with the science. There’s nothing wrong with the science. We are just simply stupid, I would say, that this is the height of ignorance.”

World leaders, on the other hand, need to stop focus on the process of climate talks and simplify the path to real and substantive action, Nasheed said.

“There are clear planetary boundaries and you cannot give this to a country and take that from this country,” he said. “It doesn’t work like your ordinary negotiations. These are not world trade negotiations. These are not disarmament negotiations. These are not negotiations. These are facts and you better believe it and act accordingly.”

Nasheed’s talk comes on the same day that more than 150 scientists have signed and sent an open letter to US federal agencies calling to “bring the focus back to credible science, rather than invented hyperbole, so that it can bear on the policy debate in the United States and throughout the world.”

The letter notes that the National Academies of Sciences is soon set to release a series of assessments on climate research published since 2006, adding that those studies are expected to confirm the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change … “ie, that the climate change issue is serious and real.”

“Given these findings,” the letter adds, “we believe that the climate change issue deserves the urgent and non-partisan consideration of the country’s legislative and administrative leaders. We feel strongly that exaggerated focus on a few errors from 2007 cannot be allowed to detract from open and honest deliberations about how to respond to climate risk by reducing emissions and promoting adaptation at home and abroad.”

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Social critic James Howard Kunstler doesn’t think so. Always one to view suburbia with a jaundiced eye, his prediction for the mall is one of “decline, dereliction, default and disappearance.”

But Vicky Poole, director of marketing and special events for the Galleria mall in Cleveland, Ohio, has a different vision for the shopping mall’s future. And it’s a surprisingly green and clever one: why not take advantage of the glass-roofed mall’s resemblance to a greenhouse and actually turn it into one?

Poole told the Cleveland Plain Dealer that she got the idea after seeing a photo of numerous plants growing on a cafe window grid in New York.

“I said, ‘That’s our food court,’ ” she told the newspaper.

Acknowledging that the Galleria, which has lost many tenants, is “not really a shopping mall anymore,” Poole launched an effort to transform the property into a sustainable “urban eco village.” The project has started with plantings of tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers, herbs, peppers and flowers in the mall — crops that can eventually be sold to shoppers or Galleria eateries.

Eventually, the “eco village” project also envisions adding vegan and vegetarian restaurants, garden art, a natural health food store, a garden supply store, shops that specialise in recycled products and a year-round indoor farmers market.

The long-term goal: to turn the mall into an “an educational centre to inform the public on the importance of urban gardening and harnessing alternative natural energy resources such as solar, wind power and rainwater.”

Sounds a heck of a lot better than “dereliction and disappearance,” wouldn’t you say?

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Peter Elsman, Copenhagen’s former managing director of the Environment, Water and Energy Department, suggested a number of ways in which London could meet Mayor Boris Johnson’s proposed goal of cutting carbon emissions by 60 per cent by 2050. They included initiatives to:

• Send city waste to facilities to convert it to heat and power, instead of to landfill;
• Build more local low-emission and renewable energy plants;
• Better insulate buildings and use heat maps to help people envision the energy efficiency of their homes; and
• Install more cycle lanes to encourage cleaner modes of transport.

“London wants to become a low-carbon city but it has a long way to go compared with league leaders such as Copenhagen,” said Murad Qureshi, chair of the London Assembly’s Environment Committee. “I hope that what we have heard today will help London to reach its carbon reduction goals.”

The 2009 “European Green City Index” (PDF), a research report sponsored by Siemens and conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit, ranked Copenhagen as the continent’s greenest city overall, with a score of 87.31 out of a possible 100. London ranked 11th with a score of 71.56.

Copenhagen has also announced plans to become the world’s first carbon-neutral capital by 2025.

Isabel Dedring, the mayor’s environmental advisor,  acknowledged that one of the challenges to reducing carbon emissions is the significant differences across the capital in carbon emissions per household, with factors such as house size and vehicle power making the biggest contribution to an individual’s carbon footprint.

The Environment Committee plans to submit its formal response to the mayor’s Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Strategy sometime this month.

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Today, though? Not so much.

“At no time in human history have we been exposed to so many chemicals,” warns the executive summary to “Bad Actor Chemicals,” a report highlighting the “winners” of Toxies awards from Californians for a Healthy and Green Economy (CHANGE). “There are an estimated 85,000 chemicals in the stream of commerce, and very little is known about most of them. The health effects of almost half the major industrial chemicals have not been studied at all. Of those that have been studied, approximately 1,400 chemicals with known links to cancer, birth defects, reproductive impacts
and other health problems are still in use today.”

The tongue-in-cheek Toxies single out 16 chemicals as some of the worst “bad actors” in widespread use in California (and beyond). They include:

• Formaldehyde, winner of the “Worst Breathtaking Performance” as an “acting chameleon, having been
  linked to asthma and various types of cancers.”
• Phthalates, winner of “Worst Makeup” for a cancer-causing performance as a plastic softener and ingredient in personal care products.
• Toluene, winner of “Worst Intoxicating Performance” in nail polish, paints and glues for damaging the central nervous system and causing birth defects.
• Bisphenol-A, winner of the “Worst Breakthrough Performance” award for “her career as an estrogen impersonator.”
• Lead, winner of the “Lifetime Achievement in Harm” award for continuing to star in everything from children’s toys and candy to artificial turf and jewelry despite its known link to learning disabilities, infertility, cancer and increased risk of heart attacks.
• Polybrominated diphenyl ether, winner of “Worst Local Performance” as a flame-retardant that’s widely required in goods in California, but not in any other state.
• Trichloroethylene, winner of “Worst Underground Performance” as a toxic industrial solvent that’s contaminated many communities with aerospace and military operations.
• Perchlorate, winner of “Worst Special Effects” as a oxidiser for rocket fuel that’s made its way into the groundwater or soil of 43 states.
• Methyl iodide, winner of the “Worst Replacement Actor in a Series” as a Bush II-era pesticide with a “propensity to produce cancer.”
• Mercury, winner of the “Worst Long Running Performance” for “his reputation for causing nervous system damage and birth defects.”
• Hexavalent chromium, winner of the “Worst Performance in a School Drama” for being “a known carcinogen
  and reproductive toxicant for both males and females.”
• Hydrofluoric acid, winner of the “Worst Performance in a Horror Film” as a corrosive actor found in high-octane gasoline, refrigerants, herbicides, pharmaceuticals, aluminum, plastics, electrical components, and fluorescent light bulbs.
• N-methyl pyrrolidone, winner of the “Worst Stripper Performance” award for work as a paint stripper/graffiti remover with a “reputation for reproductive and testicular toxicity.”
• Perfluorinated compounds, aka “Teflon,” winner of “Worst Revival Performance” for being linked to damage to ovaries, liver, kidney, spleen, thymus, thyroid, pituitary and testis.
• Perchloroethylene, winner of “Worst Costume” as a dry cleaning chemical linked to damage to the central nervous system, kidneys, liver and reproductive system.
• Triclosan, winner of “Worst Viral Media Performance” as a popular antibacterial that can lead to antibiotics resistance, cancer and thyroid disruption.

CHANGE notes in its Toxies report, “Although this report takes a tongue-in-cheek approach, make no mistake about it — these chemicals have deadly serious health impacts on male and female Californians of all ages, socioeconomic class and ethnicity. Childhood cancers have increased 20 per cent since 1975, and autism now is so prevalent that it is
diagnosed in one out of every 110 children.”

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Green Energy UK, which supplies green and renewable electricity to homes and businesses in Britain, was just named “Customer King 2010″ at Cisco’s and Real Business magazine’s annual customer service awards. the utility company was chosen over more than 100 other businesses to land the top prize for creating the best customer experience.

The award stands in stark contrast to the findings of Cisco’s survey of 1m000 British SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) last month, which ranked utility providers second to bottom for customer service, only just ahead of trains. However, Green Energy UK has shown that it operates differently from other utility provider.

For one, it is the only private company in the UK to offer customers the opportunity to part-own the company by giving them free shares. This unique scheme rewards customers for making the decision to go green with their electricity. It also encourages Green Energy UK customers to make suggestions at any time to improve the business, and enables them to attend the annual meeting and put questions to the board.

“We are a small company that has come a long way in less than a decade of trading in what is a highly competitive market dominated by heavyweights,” said Doug Stewart, Green Energy UK’s founder and chief executive. “The success of Green Energy UK is built on bringing new, clean energy sources to market, coupled with treating customers with respect and intelligence and involving them in the business. To be recognised like this by Cisco and Real Business is a fantastic accolade, one I’m naturally proud of, particularly as customer service in our industry is not highly regarded. I am especially pleased for the team here, as it recognises the excellent work they do in making Green Energy UK a success.”

Judges praised Green Energy UK for its online customer area, which enables customers to upload meter readings, compare their electricity use with previous months and years, and sets targets and provides guidance on how to reduce their electricity use further. The judging panel also noted on the ease with which customers can get through to the company’s staff.

“Customer Kings celebrates those businesses that show innovation and excellence when it comes to creating a lasting customer relationship,” said David Critchley, Cisco UK’s head of SME and commercial. “Green Energy UK has both of those qualities in abundance, blending a unique idea with a well honed understanding of its customer base and building a truly memorable brand and experience as a result. We are thrilled to recognise them as worthy winners of this year’s contest.”

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In an announcement made last month, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband confirmed a cash-back scheme in which businesses and individuals can receive up to 40p for every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated in solar panels and photovoltaic (PV) installations of up to 5 megawatts. Estimates suggest that, under the tariff, one typical household panel could deliver around £900 a year in cash back (a return of around 10 per cent) as well as a saving of £140 on electricity. Further incentives will see the proceeds be tax-free, as well as a new “pay-as-you-save” scheme, funded by renewable energy loans from banks and supermarkets.

With a YouGov survey showing that 71 per cent of homeowners would consider installing green energy systems if offered sufficient financial incentive, and Miliband predicting that 10 per cent of the population will have installed renewable energy technology in the new decade, the introduction of the tariff looks set to kick-start the sector. In Germany, where feed-in tariffs have been in place since 2000, 130,000 homes are now fitted with PV panels every year and similar success has been seen in California, which implemented its own scheme in 2008.

However, the key to realising the government’s targets clearly lies in establishing an appropriate tariff level and the infrastructure to cope with the resulting interest. Critics have suggested the return on investment is too low, and that it is necessary to offer a higher subsidy; the Spanish industry is now experiencing bust after boom, the market having been saturated by subsidies which were too generous. It is imperative that the UK learns from both these successes and failures if we are to establish a UK industry and attract international investment.

In the North East, the announcement has been warmly received. County Durham glassmaker Romag is expecting a surge of interest in its PV glass, PowerGlaz, predicting that sales will increase by 60 per cent year on year. Indeed, so confident is the business that it is investing in an installation at its own headquarters, which will become the largest of its kind in Europe. As a further reflection of its optimism, the business is also creating a specialist centre to train people across the manufacturing industry in sectors including development and planning, electrical professions and roofing.

Equally important, the region has also made great progress in laying the research and development foundations for industry to build up from. This stretches from the Newcastle Photovoltaics Application Centre at Northumbria University, to the region’s two centres of excellence, the New and Renewable Energy Centre and the Printable Electronics Technology Centre. The latter revealed in July that it had secured a £12 million grant from the government and £8 million from One North East to continue its pioneering work aimed at establishing the UK as the international leader in the field. The centre estimates that up to 250 jobs locally and 1,500 jobs nationally could be created as a result.

Indeed, the spirit of innovation has stretched beyond. In November, the North East hosted the national PV conference, Solar Flair 2009, aimed at demonstrating to a wider cross-section of organisations the business opportunities that will be created by the new industry. One such company to fully grasp the potential is Romag, which has looked to capitalise on the region’s status as the dedicated low-carbon economic area for electric vehicles by launching a canopy that uses PV glass to generate the charge to power an electric car.

Of course, this is just the start. The feed-in tariff will serve to galvanise the UK PV industry, providing a huge boost to businesses across a range of sectors, and delivering a step change in the country’s domestic generation capacity. Nowhere is this more true than in the North East, the region that powered the industrial revolution and is now driving the low-carbon one. Its unparalleled manufacturing pedigree, research, development and commercialisation excellence and business innovation offer it a unique opportunity to become the Silicon Valley of the UK, attracting investment not just from the rest of the UK, but from Europe and the rest of the world.

Editor’s note: This was a guest commentary by Chris Pywell, Head of Strategic Economic Change for One North East, the regional development agency for the North East of England.

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One “Rosenfeld” would equal an electricity savings of 3 billion kilowatt-hours per year, as much as is produced annually by one 500-megawatt coal-fired power plant.

Arthur Rosenfeld, who recently retired at the age of 83 after two five-year terms on the California Energy Commission, led the way in helping the state set its first-ever energy standards for household appliances and buildings. His mission as an energy-efficiency evangelist was launched in 1973 during the OPEC oil embargo … rather than rail on the oil producers, he reasoned, wouldn’t it be better if the US could find ways to stop wasting so much energy?

Thus began the University of Chicago-trained physicist’s quest for a more energy-efficient society. He eventually went on to found what would become the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Centre for Building Science, which has helped to develop numerous technologies for boosting energy efficiency.

“He recognised early on, earlier than anyone else I think, that really great gains will come from energy efficiency, that there’s an enormity to be gained by this approach,” said Richard Muller, a physicist who took one of Rosenfeld’s graduate courses in 1965.

Rosenfeld’s impact on energy efficiency explains why 54 scientists from 26 research institutions around the globe came together this week to publish a paper in the journal Environmental Research Letters suggesting a new unit to describe energy savings.

They state, “The proposed name for this metric is the Rosenfeld, in keeping with the tradition among scientists of naming units in honour of the person most responsible for the discovery and widespread adoption of the underlying scientific principle in question — Dr Arthur H. Rosenfeld.”

This wouldn’t be the first time Rosenfeld’s name has become an energy term. His impact on California’s per capita electricity consumption, which has remained flat since the mid-’70s, has long been dubbed the “Rosenfeld effect.” And he himself coined “Rosenfeld’s Law,” which asserts that the amount of energy required to produce one dollar of economic output has decreased by about 1 per cent per year since 1845.

Rosenfeld calls the latest proposal by Berkeley Lab scientist Jonathan Koomey — a former student of his — and colleagues “nice.”

“I’m honored that Jon Koomey got 53 of my oldest friends to join together on such a nice thought,” he said. “This nice article is really the result of the early usefulness of using cars, homes and power plants as an example of savings from energy efficiency.”

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Of course you don’t. That’s because these life-altering technologies didn’t spring up ready for market overnight, but evolved, often behind the scenes, for years before we were ready to use them en masse.

Viewed through the filter of our memories, technological progress tends to seem revolutionary, with one amazing innovation after another coming to mind as immediately game-changing. In reality, though, progress is more incremental, moving forward — or sometimes sideways into blind alleys — slowly over time. With that in mind, then, we offer these helpful rules for identifying “cleantech porn,” ie, news reports that play to our fantasies about clean energy more than they reflect reality:

1. View anything described as a “Holy Grail” with great scepticism. (And, yes, we here at Greenbang have been guilty of that as much as anyone else.) Endless and cheap clean energy without any downside is indeed a Holy Grail … because it’s probably impossible, which brings us to the next warning sign of cleantech porn …
2. Beware any “innovation” that violates the laws of thermodynamics. If someone claims to have found a way to get more energy out of something than was put into it in the first place, keep your wallet in your pocket. And if a startup announces it’s developed a perpetual motion device, run.
3. Think twice about any breakthrough that promises to cut the cost of something by an outrageously wonderful percentage in the next few months. The R-Squared Energy Blog has a nice take on one such claim — a reported announcement from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that it could produce algae-based fuel for $2 a gallon — here.
4. Watch out for Pigs in Space. OK, not pigs, but anything else space-based with claims to be commercially viable, affordable and ready to deploy in the near future. Yes, space-based solar energy, lunar colonies and Earth-orbiting hydroponic farms are possible, but they’re not ready to hold your breath for anytime soon.
5. Be on the alert for “some guy” announcements. Not to denigrate garage-based tinkerers and part-time inventors … we’ve all heard of how Bill Gates got started. But, more often than not, “some guy” is not likely to discover the clean-energy Holy Grail (see Rule No. 1) that researchers armed with hundreds of millions in government or corporate funding are also searching for.

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That’s because, whenever it imports goods from other parts of the world, a nation is effectively “outsourcing” its carbon emissions to the export country. It makes sense, when you think about it: if you stop making widgets at home, you’ve reduced your widget-related carbon emissions. But, unless you choose to do without widgets at all, you’re still getting widgets from somewhere. So your widget-producing trade partner has actually moved your widget-related emissions onto its own soil.

In a globalised economy that ships millions of different widgets of various kinds around the world every day, that emissions outsourcing can be anything but minuscule, according to new research from the Carnegie Institution.

Ken Caldeira and Steven Davis, both researchers at Carnegie’s Department of Global Ecology, have found the US, Japan and western Europe outsource considerable amounts of their carbon emissions by importing goods from other countries, typically developing ones like China. Their results were often surprising, as with the case of Switzerland, which turns out to be far less low-carbon than it would appear on paper.

While Switzerland ranked 63rd in national carbon emissions in 2006, those figures told literally less than half the story. Davis and Caldeira’s analysis found that the emissions associated with Switzerland’s imports actually exceeded the amount of carbon dioxide emitted within its borders. The same was true for several other small countries, according to the researchers.

In fact, in parts of Europe, the per capita footprint for outsourced carbon dioxide emissions amounted to more than 4 tonnes per person … considerably more than the 2.5 tonnes per person in the US, which generally enjoys a far less green reputation than its EU counterparts.

Davis, lead author of the study, said the findings could actually help overcome some of the obstacles that have stood in the way of reaching a global agreement on carbon dioxide emissions cuts.

“Where CO2 emissions occur doesn’t matter to the climate system,” he said. “Effective policy must have global scope. To the extent that constraints on developing countries’ emissions are the major impediment to effective international climate policy, allocating responsibility for some portion of these emissions to final consumers elsewhere may represent an opportunity for compromise.”

Can anyone say “carbon sales tax”?

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