The U.S. Environment Agency is kicking off the anniversary on April 24th with a two-day event in Washington which showcases EPA’s many achievements in protecting America’s environmental heritage. One of the event’s major features is the National Sustainable Design Expo, which will present the best new green technologies and alternative energy designs from more than 40 college teams.

The U.S. Air Force is also no stranger to environmental stewardship. For Earth Day’s 40th anniversary, the U.S. Air Force has recommitted to protecting more than eight million acres of land and water areas including over 234 acres of wetland, 570,000 acres of forest land, 200 miles of preserved  coastline and 70 endangered and threatened species. In addition, the U.S. Air Force continues to lead research efforts on alternative and renewable energy sources.

Yet Washington is only one of many actors on this important stage. Grassroots, citizen-initiated action is vital in achieving a cleaner, greener world. In his April 13th address, President Obama urged Americans to take local action and make a difference in their communities – and from coast-to-coast they are doing just that.

In Massachusetts, Salem State College has organized April 12-22 an environmental series entitled “Growing a Greener Economy for a Healthier Planet”. The series features lectures on wind power and food sustainability, environmentally-conscious art work, and multiple environment-networking opportunities for students and the local community.

On April 17th at North Hampton State Beach in New Hampshire, local divers took to the ocean depths to remove debris from the sea floor, while non-divers cleaned-up the surrounding beach areas. Maryland-based vendor and growers gathered for lectures on how to increase sustainability within their organizations, while volunteers from a Georgia middle school helped with trail beautification in nearby forests.

What better way to remind people how important their environment is, than to get them actively using it! On April 17th and 18th, Cloudland Canyon State Park invited visitors to an Outdoor Adventure Weekend of caving, climbing, rappelling and fishing at rock-bottom prices ($3-$5 an event).

And the celebrations continue. On April 22nd, the community of Carbondale, Illinois is hosting an “Off the Grid” Solar Music Festival. Residents of Boise, Idaho will be planting trees along the city’s main streets on April 24th.  In Portland, Oregon, Audubon Society volunteers will gather on April 24th to rebuild a bridge over a local waterway.

Here at US Embassy Helsinki, we are also making a difference. We have just added two Chevrolet flexi-fuel vehicles to the Embassy fleet. We have also installed more motion-sensor lights in Embassy corridors.

In June 2010, Ambassador and Mrs. Oreck will host a bee colony in their backyard to promote the importance of local beekeeping. Expert beekeeper Corwin Bell is visiting Finland this month to connect with the local Finnish beekeeping community, and share information on new, advanced bee hive equipment that is effective and easy to use for first-time beekeepers.

Ambassador and Mrs. Oreck also have plans to create an Embassy vegetable garden at their residence this summer, to support the use of organically-grown, sustainable produce. 

Perhaps our most ambitious green project is the rehabilitation the 109-year old Chancery Annex. Ambassador Oreck is working hard to incorporate green elements into the renovation plans. Use of advanced insulation and state-of-the-art lighting are just a few of the elements that will improve the building’s energy-efficiency and reduce the Embassy’s carbon footprint.

So whether from north-to-south, coast-to-coast, or even beyond in our overseas Embassies, Americans are actively working to make the world a little greener for many more Earth Days to come.

**  More information on local U.S Earth Day celebrations can be obtain from the EPA website at http://www.epa.gov/earthday/events.htm.

One of the first trips I made after arriving in Finland just over two months ago was to Jyväskylä to attend a two day Bio-Energy conference there. Anyone who cares about technology (and of course for me that means technology applied to address energy and environmental problems) knows that two days in Jyväskylä is not nearly enough time to begin to get a sense of all the cutting edge products that are being developed there. The day started with an amazing visit to Moventas, where the team from the U.S. Embassy met with Moventas’ senior management. Partnering with world leaders in wind turbine industry such as Vestas (which has brand new manufacturing facilities in my home state of Colorado) and General Electric (who manufactures wind turbines in Pennsylvania), Moventas engineers and builds what are arguably the finest wind turbine gearing mechanisms in the world. Their plant is as spectacular as is their technology.

From there, we traveled to the home of Markku Anderson, the Mayor of the City of Jyväskylä. I had the pleasure of meeting Markku on my first trip to Jyväskylä (a very funny thing happened at that first meeting – but I will leave that for another entry). His home, a beautifully restored wooden house from the late 1800’s – was filled with wonderful art and furnishings – and the lunch was terrific. Just to prove how much fun we had, check out the photograph below.

The afternoon was filled with terrific presentations from a number of start-up and established businesses all relating to alternative energy and energy efficiency. The view from their conference room was so spectacular that I had a hard time imagining how anyone actually got any work done there.
 
Last stop of the day was at the offices of Keskisuomalainen Oyj, the publisher of so many Finnish newspapers. I was there to learn about their leadership in sustainability. I saw and heard the details about their real commitment to sustainable business practices. I know it isn’t Finnish to brag about oneself, so I will do that on their behalf. I was impressed and inspired.

Once again, the time in Jyväskylä flew by and we had to rush off to catch our train back to Helsinki – I plan to return to Jyväskylä soon.

Thermometer (Photo Credit: Wikimedia)

Imagine a newly-built apartment heated only with the excess energy produced by your television, your computer, even your own body. Now imagine that same apartment in Helsinki, Finland – one of Europe’s northern-most cities where winter climes can dip to -20C (5F). Sound impossible? Not at all. Finnish building contractors, Reponen Oy, are making it an everyday reality with their new low-energy building concept called MERA. 

Reponen’s Jukka Kinnunen and Mika Airakselaa recently took Embassy Helsinki’s Economic staff on a tour of their latest MERA project – a new apartment complex that blends passive housing designs with Finnish craftsmanship to create ultra-low energy housing.  

Here’s how MERA works – in simple terms. First, the apartment building is super insulated.   The roof and walls have extra thick insulation to keep warmth in and the cold out. Next the windows are quadrupled paned – four layers of specially-designed glass that lets in light but effectively keeps out drafts. Then there are the pièces de résistance: a thermostat box located near the door and a small, understated air vent near the ceiling. Via the thermostat, you set the desired temperature for your apartment – say 20 degrees Celsius. Your appliances, your own body, even your dog produce heat that raises the apartment’s internal temperature. The air vent sucks up the internal air, runs it through a filter located in an adjacent hallway and then shoots it back out into the apartment in quantities sufficient to keep the internal temperature at your desired level. 

Since Finland’s winter weather can be rather severe – and the amount of heat-generating appliances/people/dogs may vary from one apartment to the next – each apartment complex is equipped with back-up central heating for the coldest winter months. But according to Reponen, central heating is used only two months at the most throughout the entire year –an impressive feat considering Finland’s cold weather can stretch for eight months from September to April.  

Equally impressive is that the MERA design is more energy efficient than Finnish passive housing standards. For the non-initiated, passive housing standards require that a house (or an apartment building in this case) have exceptionally low energy consumption – particularly for heating/cooling systems. How low to go varies vary widely from country to country. 

In Finland, passive standards require that the amount of energy required to heat a home not exceed 30 KwH/m2 per year. By comparison a conventional apartment building uses an average of 70kWh/ m2  per year for heating.   Reponen’s first MERA apartment complex, located in Heinola (2 hours from Helsinki) and occupied since May 2009, measures in at 15.6 KwH/m2 per year. That translates into a nearly 25% reduction in heating energy compared to conventional apartments.

But how comfortable are the apartments, really? After all, living in a cave with blankets might be energy-efficient but not entirely practical. Luckily, the apartments are aesthetically pleasing with all the modern conveniences one would expect from high-quality apartment living in Helsinki – lots of windows, enclosed balconies, electric ranges and even individual saunas. As for its winter warmth, we unfortunately could not judge the toasty-factor just yet.  But similar designs in central (albeit warmer) Europe have proven quite effective. 
 
MERA homes are also surprisingly affordable. Construction costs for Reponen’s MERA designs are only 1.7% higher than conventional buildings, keeping the price of a MERA low-energy apartment competitive with traditional housing.  Clearly the Finns are hooked:  the new MERA apartments are still under construction yet every unit is already sold. 

In the US, passive housing is gaining traction. In 2003, architects Katrin Klingenberg  and Nicolas Smith built America’s first passive home in Urbana, Illinois. The two-bedroom home’s annual heating demand averages only 11kWh.  Klingenberg now co-directs the Passive Housing Institute US, a consulting and research firm working to further the implementation of Passive House standards and techniques nationwide. Many US top architectural schools, such as MIT and Yale, are also introducing green and passive building courses into their curriculums. Solar panels, green roofs and state-of-the-art energy efficiency are all steadily becoming the norm of the built environment – a small, but important step on the road to a greener, cleaner tomorrow.  

Even our new US Ambassador to Finland Bruce Oreck has personal experience with US-based green housing. Ambassador Oreck and his wife Cody Oreck launched the Zero Carbon Initiative as a clearinghouse of information on green housing standards. They even used their own Colorado home as at a test lab, successfully turning it into a model of low-carbon living that sacrifices neither quality nor luxury.  

Imagine fifteen years from now living in a low-carbon world where homes are fully energy efficient and actually make more energy than use. Sound impossible? Not any more.

Paul Sheldon in Finland

Former US Representative Thomas Barrett once said, “Chaos in the world brings uneasiness but it also allows the opportunity for creativity and growth.” And it was this opportunity for creativity and growth, which Paul Sheldon, Senior Consultant for Natural Capitalism Solutions based in Longmont, Colorado, highlighted on September 21st to US Embassy contacts during an evening reception hosted by Ambassador Bruce Oreck and Mrs. Cody Douglas Oreck.

The ‘chaos’ in this context was global warming. Global climate change is rapidly altering the environment in which we live, and the impact on businesses will be significant. Deteriorating ecosystems will lead to more volatile energy prices and increased economic instability – neither of which bode well for the commercial sector.

Yet businesses do not have to be passive players when it comes to global warming. As Mr. Sheldon pointed out, businesses not only have an important role in protecting the environment, but ‘going green’ is actually very profitable.   He pointed to the example of DuPont – an American Fortune 500 company. In 1990 DuPont decided to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and raise revenue by 6% with no corresponding increase in energy use. Today their GHGs from global operations are down by 80%, their global energy use is 9% below 1990 levels and they recorded a savings of $3 billion between 2000 and 2005 alone – all thanks to new green measures.

Mr. Sheldon also discussed Wal-Mart, describing how in undertaking a comprehensive review of its carbon footprint its executives noted several wasteful energy practices – particularly in the open-bin refrigerated meat and dairy aisles. Wal-Mart redesigned the aisles putting all refrigerated food behind sealed doors and installing motion-sensory lights. This small effort significantly improved Wal-Mart’s energy efficiency and reduced its carbon footprint. It also helped sales! Children found the motion-sensory lights fascinating, which attracted parents (as potential buyers) to new items.

As Mr. Sheldon described it, the developed world is entering the “6th wave” of industrial innovation, which encompasses sustainability, radical resource productivity and renewable energy. Just like the 1st wave (iron, mechanization) or the 5th wave (digital networks, software information technology), companies that react first will reap the best rewards of reduced expenses and increased revenue.

Finland already has a number of local companies riding that wave and tapping into green growth. During his two-day trip, Mr. Sheldon met with representatives of the Federation of Finnish Financial Services, Helsingin Energia, and BaseN to exchange best practices.

Mr. Sheldon’s presentation provided the kick-off for US Embassy Helsinki’s Energy and Environment Series – a four-part speaker series running October to December 2009. The series features key American specialists highlighting America’s technical and scientific creativity in dealing with global warming. The series details can be found on the Embassy website . All are encouraged to attend and take part in this most important discussion.

Landscape of the area of Kayes, in Mali (Photo Credit: Wikimedia)

Needless to say, not much happens during the heat of the day.  But as I sat melting under the shade of a mango tree, mint tea in hand, I couldn’t help but think what an asset all this sunshine could be. A field of solar panels in the Kayes region alone could potentially supply the entire country with much needed electricity. Expand them to Mali’s other regions – over one-third of the country lies in the Sahara Desert – and Mali could produce enough electricity to sell to its neighbors.

I am hardly the first to see the potential of green technology in the developing world.  Over a decade ago, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) called on developed nations to provide financial and technical support to the developing world in mitigating the effects of climate change. Since then 192 countries have ratified the UNFCCC, including the United States in October 1992.      

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been at the forefront of meeting America’s UNFCCC commitments in the developing world. Since 1991, USAID’s Global Climate Change Program (GCCP) has been implementing projects which provide sustainable, climate-related benefits to over 40 developing countries. 

• In Mexico, GCCP projects are reducing GHG emissions through the promotion of solar and wind water pumps for off-grid farm use.
• In Central America, the USAID and NASA-sponsored SERVIR satellite monitoring system provides weather alerts and a fire warning system to assist decision makers tackling climate change issues.
• In South Africa, USAID solar water heaters are reducing household energy consumption and costs while providing hot water to households that could not otherwise afford it.

Solar Panels (Photo Credit: Wikimedia)

Such USAID programs have helped avoid the equivalent of over 15 million metric tons of CO2 over the past five years alone. 

Clean technology alone will not transform the developing world – plenty of challenges remain from good governance to health care. But GCCP’s holistic approach to fully integrate clean technology and development, allows developing countries to leap-frog past ecologically unsustainable technology and embrace the future. So maybe ten years from now, when I return to Kayes for another visit, I will be sitting, mint tea in hand, beneath the cool breeze of a solar-powered fan.