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EPA Seeks Input from Small Entities on Revisions for the Lead and Copper Rule

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is inviting small businesses, governments, and non-profit organizations to participate as Small Entity Representatives (SERs) for a Small Business Advocacy Review (SBAR) Panel. The panel will focus on the agency’s development of a rule that proposes revisions to the lead and copper rule.

EPA’s reconsideration of the current rule is based on a national review of the implementation of the lead and copper rule. The review identified several areas of concern about the effectiveness of the existing regulations. The changes under consideration are intended to improve the effectiveness of the measures to safeguard public health to control lead and copper in drinking water.

The Regulatory Flexibility Act requires EPA to establish an SBAR Panel for rules that may have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. The panel will include federal representatives from the Small Business Administration, the Office of Management and Budget, and EPA.  The panel asks a selected group of SERs to provide advice and recommendations on behalf of their company, community, or organization to inform the panel about the potential impacts of the proposed rule on small entities.

EPA seeks self-nominations directly from the small entities that may be subject to the rule requirements. Other representatives, such as trade associations that exclusively or at least primarily represent potentially regulated small entities, may also serve as SERs.

Self-nominations may be submitted through the link below and must be received by July 12, 2011.

Submit online at: http://www.epa.gov/sbrefa/leadandcopper.htm

Information about the lead and copper rule: http://water.epa.gov/lawsregs/rulesregs/sdwa/lcr/index.cfm

Clean Coalition Announces Local CLEAN Program Guide

The nonprofit Clean Coalition has released the first of seven modules of its Local CLEAN Program Guide, a free, downloadable policy tool designed to help communities and utilities evaluate, design, and enact the most effective policies for the timely and cost-effective deployment of clean local energy.

The first module provides an overview of Clean Local Energy Accessible Now (CLEAN) programs and the key considerations in assessing what a CLEAN program can do for communities and local utilities across the United States. A CLEAN program promotes the growth of a strong clean energy economy by reducing the time, risks, paperwork, and other costs involved in selling renewable energy from underused spaces in communities, such as warehouse rooftops and capped landfills. CLEAN programs have been implemented at the local, state, and national level around the world to drive renewable energy deployments. Gainesville, Florida was the first U.S. municipality to implement a CLEAN program.

For more information on the Local CLEAN Program Guide and to download the first module, please visit the Clean Coalition website at: http://www.clean-coalition.org/local-action/

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) WaterSense program is pleased to announce the release of its Draft Revised WaterSense Product Certification System.

In March 2009, EPA released Version 1.0 of the WaterSense Product Certification System to guide its independent, third-party product certification process. Since that time more than 3,500 tank-type toilets, bathroom sink faucets and faucet accessories, showerheads, and flushing urinals have been certified to meet EPA’s criteria for efficiency and performance.

As the WaterSense program continues to grow and expand to cover new product categories, EPA has identified several changes that are necessary to improve the certification process and balance the cost and burden of certification with the rigor the program needs to maintain the WaterSense label’s integrity. Additionally, since the initial release of the product certification system, EPA released its Third-Party Certification Procedures for the ENERGY STAR® program, which went into effect January 1, 2011. In order to facilitate future joint-labeling opportunities with ENERGY STAR, where appropriate, EPA has revised the WaterSense product certification system to complement ENERGY STAR’s sy stem. With these changes, EPA’s goal is to better focus the resources of the WaterSense program and accommodate future growth.

EPA is accepting written comments on the Draft Revised Product Certification System through July 25, 2011, and will hold a public meeting via webinar and conference call on July 13, 2011, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. EST to discuss the draft revisions. To review the Draft Revised Product Certification System or for information on how to submit comments, please visit the WaterSense website.

Eight Steps to the Right Lighting Technology

Which technology is right for your energy efficient lighting retrofit?

LED is the lighting technology everyone’s talking about. LEDs are in our flashlights, our cars — and increasingly — a viable option for energy efficient lighting retrofit projects. But how do you decide if LED lighting is the right technology for your project?

Precision-Paragon [P2] is encouraging businesses to first consider a lighting project’s goals, and then decide if LED, fluorescent, high-intensity discharge or even induction lighting is the best fit for those goals.

“We’ve been seeing quite a few projects being driven by technology, and that’s really the tail wagging the dog,” said Lou Preston, [P2] national marketing director. “Companies are picking a lighting technology and forcing it into their project, when something else might be a better fit.”

Because every lighting project is unique, there is no single technology that’s right for every project.

“There’s a reason we manufacture more than 100 fixtures, instead of just one,” said Preston. “When our customers come to us with advice, we pride ourselves on helping them pick the best fixtures for their project, regardless of technology.”

Imagine two businesses that both need outdoor parking lot lighting. One is a gas station that needs bright 24-hour lighting to attract freeway drivers to its pumps. The other is an apartment complex that needs safety lighting in its parking area from dusk till dawn. At their core, both of these projects need outdoor parking lot lighting, but it would be impossible to pick one fixture that would meet the needs of both projects.

Every technology offers a unique mix of advantages, like initial fixture costs, return on investment, annual energy costs, maintenance costs, light level metrics, aesthetics and controllability. Some lights may save money at the outset, but five years later they could require expensive maintenance. Others could require a significant up-front investment, but quickly pay for themselves with big energy or maintenance savings.

“Our engineers are famous for saying ‘it depends,’” says Preston. “If you ask us what the best lighting technology is, that’s the answer you’re going to get.”  Even once a project’s goals have been fully defined, there might be several reasonable technology choices for a single project. That’s why Preston feels it’s important to get as much information as possible before making a technology decision.

“It’s a simple equation. More information leads to better decisions,” explains Preston. “Once you understand both your lighting project’s needs and your technology options, you’ll be able to pick the technology that best meets those needs.”

8 Steps To Picking The Right Lighting Technology

Read the complete article at Sustainability Facility

Why Green Cleaning is Evolving Slower in the Home Market

Green cleaning has certainly come a long way, depending on the marketplace we are discussing. In the institutional and commercial marketplaces, which include offices, schools, public buildings, etc., green cleaning products are now selected over conventional products 35 percent to as high as 50 percent of the time.

This not only includes cleaning chemicals made from environmentally preferable ingredients, but also green paper products, high-efficiency cleaning equipment designed to be more sustainable and protective of the environment, and other tools and products that typically make up a green cleaning program.

But, this green cleaning success in the commercial and institutional markets does not appear to be evolving as fast or as far in the residential market. According to estimates, sales of green cleaning products sold in grocery stores and other retail outlets amounts to only about one percent of the market.

The question is why?

The simple answer is that the institutional and commercial industries have more reasons to be green. If seeking LEED certification, they must be using green cleaning products. Some facilities, such as school districts, are now required by law to only select environmentally preferable products.

And, there are several economic reasons. Commercial property owners often can ask higher rents when a facility is green cleaned. Tenants and potential tenants believe it is an indication that the facility is better operated. Additionally, studies now indicate worker productivity often goes up in green facilities. When worker productivity goes up, costs go down, and that is something that is on the top of every business’ list right now.

So, what about the home market? Let’s be frank. There are millions of Americans very concerned about their jobs and finances right now. If green cleaning products cost more, as they often do in the residential market, it is not surprising when a less environmentally healthy, but less costly and still effective, conventional product is selected.

Read the complete article at Sustainability Facility

 

Top five coolest ways to integrate renewable energy into the grid

Intermittent renewables at high penetrations will bring new challenges for the grid. But how big will they be? And is it true that wind and solar will necessarily need storage or natural gas back-up at high levels?

The International Energy Agency (IEA) wanted to know, so it modeled a variety of high-penetration scenarios in eight geographic regions around the world. Hugo Chandler, a senior policy analyst with the IEA, explains the organization’s findings to Climate Progress:

Variability is not just some new phenomenon in grid management. What we found is that renewable energy is not fundamentally different. The criticisms of renewables often neglect the complementarities between different technologies and the way they can balance each other out if spread over certain regions and energy types.

Grid operators are constantly working to balance available supply with demand — it’s what they do. There are always natural variations that cause spikes in demand, reductions in supply, or create disturbances in frequency and voltage. Once you see there are a variety of ways to properly manage that variability, you start whittling away at the argument that you always need storage or a megawatt of natural gas backup for every megawatt of renewable energy.

Theoretical modeling is important. But what companies are doing in reality?

Here are five of the top methods for integrating renewable energy into the grid — proving that intermittency isn’t the showstopper that critics make it out to be. Explanations of each of these with videos are below

Read the complete article at Grist

 

Who Wins an Energy Deathmatch Between Renewables & Efficiency?

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — EnerNOC’s Gregg Dixon compares the competition between on-site renewable energy generation versus reducing energy demand to an MTV celebrity death match.

Which is more valuable?

In one corner we have on-site renewable energy projects that tend to carry more sex appeal, largely due to the industry’s great job of marketing itself; there’s even a renewable girls calendar. In the other corner are demand response and energy efficiency, which many would agree are anything but sexy.

The complex answer is both, Dixon said during a webcast held at GreenBiz.com’s VERGE virtual conference. Employing many strategies and technologies are going to ultimately maximize energy management programs, but companies have to find a way to “reduce before they produce.”

“If we don’t get efficient first, it’s the equivalent of not filling the hulls of a ship while replacing the masts and sail,” Dixon said.

There is plenty of research supporting that energy efficiency is the single-largest untapped source for energy management, Dixon said. On a relative cost basis, energy efficiency “blows renewable energy out of the water.” Some predict solar energy could reach cost parity with the expected electric retail rates within five years, Dixon said, but noted these types of predictions aren’t new.

Read the complete article at GreenBiz.com

 

Busting Renewable Energy Myths

Discovery Channel has a rather curious show called Myth Busters. The show evaluates various myths — from MacGyver tricks to the Apollo 11 Moon landing — by staging them in a controlled setting. You may wonder why this may be relevant to renewable energy. The truth is, this entertainment show has more things in common with renewable energy than you think. The main goal of the show is to “bust” myths by proving them wrong. The same strategy can and should be used to increase popularity and public support of renewable energy initiatives.

As Discovery Channel does in its show, renewable energy companies should work together to “bust” negative myths about the industry. Of course, the most common criticism of almost any form of renewable energy is the intermittency of its resources. Remarkably, the public usually seems to have few objections to the potential lack of continuous availability of solar or wind power. They appear to be more concerned with the technical and ecological issues that may arise when producing clean energy. Below are some of the most common misconceptions about the renewable energy industry that cause unnecessary tension and disapproval in the public eye.

Myth: Hydropower is not carbon-neutral

Some critics of hydropower claim that this source of energy is not, in fact, carbon-neutral. They claim that some hydropower dams create more greenhouse gases than a fossil fuel plant of the same size. If soil and vegetation are trapped in turbines, spillways and surfaces of a dam, they will decay and emit methane and carbon dioxide. In addition, they argue that to build a dam, nearby forests that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere are destroyed, thus further damaging the environment.

Bust: Methane emissions can be controlled

A proper public relations campaign should be implemented to clarify how and why methane is emitted as a result of hydropower production. The industry must make sure the public understands that while such emission is natural, it can be controlled and eliminated. With proper technology dams can be built to be ‘clean’, emitting very little or no methane at all. In addition, it is crucial to educate the public in hydropower facts; that it is a clean alternative to coal and has the potential to fully replace fossil fuel energy.

Read the complete article at Environmental Leader: