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Archive for the 'green technology' Category

OC Waste: Landfills are filling too fast

February 10th, 2010, 6:00 am by

Traveling coffee mugs. Reusable grocery bags. And table scraps? Think compost. landfill

Landfill operators will launch a $2 million public campaign today to change Orange County residents’ behavior: recycle, reuse, reduce waste to keep landfills from filling up too fast.

The goal of the new campaign, “Waste-free O.C.: Save Room for Tomorrow,” is to persuade residents to cut their waste by 10 percent in 2010.

“It doesn’t take that much,” said OC Waste & Recycling spokeswoman Julie Chay. “You can really make a difference by making small changes in your habits. It’s not like you have to overhaul your life.”

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O.C. firm behind Super Bowl ‘green police’

February 9th, 2010, 2:48 pm by

The electric, stand-up police scooters that seem to be popping up everywhere — including in a recent Super Bowl commercial — are the creation of a Costa Mesa company. t32

The “green police” were featured prominently in the ad for Audi during the Super Bowl, but the vehicles and their growing use by law enforcement are quite real.

Both the standup scooter — called T3 Series Electric Standup Vehicle — and its lithium-ion batteries have been distributed worldwide by T3 Motion, Inc.

The company says it recently hit a landmark: 5,000 of the batteries shipped to a variety of agencies around the globe. The batteries, with a range of 25 t0 50 miles, can be swapped out in minutes, so their range is limited only by the number of backup batteries on hand.

T3 Motion also has shipped out 2,000 of the vehicles themselves.

Marketing manager Jeff Simpson said the company tailored the vehicle for use by agencies. They are not available to consumers.

“We have a vehicle that the market helped design,” he said.

Some 500 law enforcement, government and security agencies use the devices, which can hit 20 mph and are ideal for tight, crowded spaces, indoors or out. Their turning radius is zero degrees.

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New Fullerton homes: affordable and “green”

February 3rd, 2010, 7:20 am by

Fullerton’s latest housing tract holds out promise to moderate-income buyers: the homes will be affordable and “green.” heritagewalkgoc

The city and The Olson Company broke ground Tuesday on the 2 1/2-acre site of the development, called Heritage Walk. Some of the planned 34 homes should be completed and sold within the year.

“It’s becoming important for everyone to focus on the environment,” said Kimberly Prijatel, vice president of development at the Seal Beach-based Olson Company. “So we’ve just started incorporating that into the plans for our designs.”

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Grass on the roof — at Camp Pendleton?

February 1st, 2010, 4:41 pm by

The military is going green, and two Irvine companies say they’re ready to help — by filling contracts worth tens of millions of dollars. greenroofirvine

The initiative could one day result in stylishly “green” military barracks, warehouses, chapels, hangars and other structures at the Camp Pendleton Marine base, some with turf grass on the roof, others with solar panels or windows that flood the interior with natural northern light to cut down on energy bills.

The new partnership between an Alaska native corporation called Ahtna Engineering Services LLC and an architectural firm, LPA Inc., will help Ahtna fulfill a series of $30 million contracts with the Department of Defense to construct environmentally sensitive buildings with low energy use and plenty of recycled building materials.

Much of the work is expected to center on Camp Pendleton.

“Our charter is to provide sustainable, elegant design and build services to the Department of Defense and federal clients,” said Gregory Grabowski, engineering director at Ahtna. “We’re going after what we consider to be a moral imperative: providing aesthetically pleasing, sustainable, and protective facilities for any of our men and women in uniform.”

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New power plant rules raise desalination doubts

January 25th, 2010, 8:00 am by

Read part one: To save sea life, power plants face tough new rules

Read part two: San Onofre cooling towers: An expensive eyesore?

Part three: New power plant rules raise desalination doubts

New rules proposed by the State Water Board would likely bring radical changes to the ocean-water cooling systems of 19 coastal power plants, two of them nuclear plants.

But the proposed regulations also throw into question future plans for seawater desalination. aesplant

Poseidon Resources hopes to build a desalination facility next to Huntington’s AES power plant by 2014, drawing its seawater from the plant’s intake pipe. It would be similar to the desalination plant being built alongside another power plant in Carlsbad.

If AES were forced to abandon its ocean-water cooling system, Poseidon would have to get a separate permit to pull in seawater on its own, said spokesman Brian Lochrie.

Lochrie said the amount of seawater needed would be far less than that for a coastal power plant, making destruction of eggs and larvae less of an issue.

But Joe Geever, California policy coordinator for the Surfrider Foundation, an environmental group that supports the proposed regulations, said he believes Poseidon’s plan is doomed.

“Poseidon is out,” he said. “Poseidon’s system is not going to work.”

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San Onofre cooling towers: An expensive eyesore?

January 24th, 2010, 8:00 am by

Read part one: To save sea life, power plants face tough new rules

Part two: San Onofre cooling towers: An expensive eyesore?

New state rules could force coastal power plants, including the San Onofre nuclear plant, to make radical changes in their cooling systems. sanopool

The seawater-intake systems now used by such plants take a toll on sea life, the State Water Board says, sucking in billions of eggs and larvae and millions of fish. Marine mammals such as sea lions are sometimes killed as well.

A technological alternative would involve building huge cooling towers across the freeway from the plant, officials at Southern California Edison say.

But while the company created a realistic rendering of what the cooling towers would look like, Stuart Hemphill, Edison’s senior vice president of power procurement, says such a massive construction project would likely cost billions, and would not be economically feasible.

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