All posts in News

Source: Flex Fuel.com

The Philadelphia City Council is hoping companies can learn energy conservation from each other by requiring owners of large commercial buildings to record yearly water and energy usage.

The rule would require owners of buildings larger than 50,000 square feet to score properties according to an Energy Star ranking developed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

“Property owners will find out how their building stack up to comparable buildings providing the tools necessary to formulate best practices and discover savings,” Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown said.

San Francisco, New York City and Washington, D.C. have made similar requirements to large commercial building owners.

Visit Flex Fuel.com to vote and view a pole on this issue.

Source: Environmental Leader.com
By: Amy Marpman, Director, Recycling Services Great Forest, Inc.

As my colleague Sandra Robishaw says, “Office workers are not freshmen but enthusiasm for meaningful causes and the community spirit that exists on campuses can be recreated in an office setting with just a few changes for big results. And the competition can be used to promote other green behavior as well, along the lines of the new Campus Conservation Nationals, where students compete to reduce their school’s energy usage.”

The key to a successful recycling challenge is participation. On a college campus, there are many opportunities for group activities and volunteer participation. Getting that in an office setting is challenging because employees are busy with work, deadlines and meetings. However, the fact that corporate employees come to the same place every day, and are busy at their desks is a plus for face-to-face engagement, which is highly effective. So while campus competitions concentrate their efforts on large, public areas, outreach at corporate challenges should be focused on desk-side efforts as well as a few key common areas like the pantry, where workers gather.

Another difference – while college competitions pit one school against another, corporate challenges are internal, often with floors or departments competing against each other.

But whether the challenge is on a campus or at a corporation, the basic approach of messaging, measuring and benchmarking remains the same. Here are 10 easy steps to a successful office challenge.
Read more

Source: Flex Fuel.com

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court is upholding the first federal regulations to reduce the gases blamed for global warming.

The rules, which were challenged by industry groups and states, will reduce emissions of six heat-trapping gases from large industrial facilities, such as factories and power plants, as well as automobile tailpipes.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington said Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency was “unambiguously correct” in using existing federal law to address global warming. The court denied two of the challenges, including one arguing the agency erred in concluding greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare.

The court dismissed challenges to two other regulations.

The court didn’t immediately release the decision, but The Associated Press obtained a copy from a participant in the case.
Greenhouse Gas Decision

Source: Fuel Fix.com

LAS VEGAS — Federal officials have approved a solar plant on an Indian reservation outside Las Vegas, marking the nation’s first commercial-grade solar energy project on tribal land and new territory for the Obama administration’s renewable energy agenda.

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Thursday that he signed off on a plan with the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians that will launch a 350-megawatt solar plant capable of powering 100,000 homes.

“We do not want Indian country to be left behind as we move forward with the new energy front in the United States,” Salazar said in a conference call with reporters.

The project, proposed by K Road Moapa Solar LLC, is planned on 2,000 acres of the tribe’s reservation. It will connect to and help power the Moapa Travel Plaza, a truck stop near the entrance of Valley of Fire State Park, which provides much of the small tribe’s income.

Officials plan to break ground this fall, and estimate the project will create 400 jobs at the peak of construction. They estimate between 15 and 20 of those jobs would be permanent.

“Everyone is extremely excited and hopeful and jazzed about the future of this project,” said tribal administrator Yvette Chevalier. “This project creates both financial and educational opportunities for the Moapa Band of Paiutes.”

The tribal initiative is part of a broader Interior Department effort to bring solar, wind and geothermal projects to public lands. It also marks the 31st utility-scale project approved on public lands since Obama took office in 2009.

Officials said the department is also working to revamp federal surface leasing regulations in an effort to streamline energy project development on tribal lands.

“Indian country has a wealth of resources,” said Donald “Del” Laverdure, the acting assistant secretary of Indian affairs. He said the initiative ensures “tribal governments can also participate in the American dream.”

By Haydn Bush
H&HN Senior Online Editor

A California hospital aggressively seeks opportunities to reduce its environmental impact while cutting costs.

Editor’s note: This blog is part of Fiscal Fitness, a regular H&HN series exploring the cost containment strategies hospitals are employing in response to reimbursement pressures and an uncertain economic climate. Read more at our Fiscal Fitness page.

At most hospitals, John Danby, the sustainability administrator for University of California-Davis Health System, says, “if somebody gets past 50 percent in [waste reduction], they have a big party.” But UC-Davis has a steeper mandate to fulfill. As part of the University of California system, the hospital is tied to a system-wide pledge to achieve zero waste by 2020. Achieving that goal for a hospital will prove to be an extremely tall order, but Danby says there are plenty of creative ways to reduce its overall footprint while improving the bottom line.

“For any hospital in the environment we are in today, the easiest way to get traction with sustainability is to show a cost containment,” Danby says.

That ethos has translated to a widespread and eclectic range of initiatives that target both reduced environmental impact and cost savings. Several years ago, Sally Lee, who now directs the hospital’s value analysis program, was working on a technology committee with a focus on physician preference items when she discovered that a number of other hospitals, including UC-San Francisco, were reprocessing single-use medical devices instead of throwing them out and buying new ones.

“It was fairly mainstream,” Lee says.

To convince doctors there was no downside to using recycled items, the hospital created a reprocessing committee, which worked with physicans, the hospital’s risk management team and infection prevention experts to research its clinical impact. Ultimately, the commitee determined that device re-processors are held to the same Food & Drug Administration standards as medical device manufacturers, and identified a 2008 Government Accountability Office report that found no elevated health risk for reprocessed devices.

Subsequently, the hospital began reprocessing catheters and sending them to a third party vendor that disassembled, cleaned, sterilized and repackaged the items; other efforts have targeted scalpels, laparoscopic shears and leg clamps. In the first 12 months of the initiative, UC-Davis saved $400,000.

Since then, Lee has taken over UC-Davis’s entire value analysis program; a recent effort to recycle blood pressure cuffs, at $1 per item, has reaped a $30,000 savings. UC-Davis has also worked to improve the source segregation of its medical waste stream from its operating room, resulting in a 30 percent reduction in medical waste and a savings of $30,000.

Energy efficiency initiatives, meanwhile, are often a challenge for hospitals, given that medical providers have stricter lighting standards than non-clinical enterprises. Still, UC-Davis has been able to take advantage of state rebates for lighting controls that use motion detectors to regulate use, allowing the hospital to install much more efficient lighting at a steep discount, Danby says.

“The fixtures were $220, and the rebate was $200,” Danby says. “A lot of it is opportunities like that.”

But the impact on UC-Davis has gone beyond the incremental bottom line improvements; the far-reaching collection of sustainable practices helped UC-Davis nab Practice Greenhealth’s 2012 Partner for Change Award.

“Making that synergy there is really what makes a sustainability program moves forward,” Danby says.

The opinions expressed by authors do not necessarily reflect the policy of Health Forum Inc. or the American Hospital Association.

Cecilia DeLoach Lynn, MBA, LEED AP
Director, Sustainability Programs & Metrics
Practice Greenhealth
12355 Sunrise Valley Dr. Suite 680
Reston, VA 20191
Phone: 866-995-1110 /Mobile: 202-744-9871
E-mail: cdeloach@practicegreenhealth.org
http://www.practicegreenhealth.org

Source: U.S. EPA
EPA met all of the federal goals of Executive Order 13514 by scoring Green (Green equates to meeting or exceeding the Federal requirements) on all seven metrics of sustainability and energy performance-leading by example! The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) uses a scorecard system to determine how the Federal Agencies are performing on energy and environmental issues.

There are seven metrics including Greenhouse Gas Scope 1&2 inventory submission, Greenhouse Gas Scope 3 inventory submission, reduction in energy intensity, renewable energy usage, reduction in water intensity, reduction in fleet petroleum usage, and the percentage of Agency facilities that are sustainable green buildings. See the scorecard and scoring narrative attached for more details.

FY2011 OMB Scorecard on Sustainability/Energy (PDF) (2pp, 56KB)
Summary of EPA’s 2011 Sustainability Performance (PDF) (2pp, 61KB)

Learn more about the OMB Susatainability and Energy Scorecards
Whitehouse Council on Environmental Quality

Greening EPA