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Illinois Sustainable Technolgoy Center/Champaign, IL

Director. Illinois Sustainable Technology Center (ISTC)
Prairie Research Institute
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

ISTC, www.istc.illinois.edu, a division within the Prairie Research Institute, invites applications and nominations for the position of Director to lead the Center in the execution of its mission and in maintaining and enhancing its tradition of excellence. We seek candidates with national visibility, proven leadership and managerial skills and a commitment to promoting sustainability. This position requires a graduate degree, with PhD preferred, and demonstrated ability to lead and build successful programs that enhance public good. For full position announcement and application requirements visit, http://www.istc.illinois.edu/…yment.cfm#director. The U of I is an AA-EOE, www.inclusiveillinois.illinois.edu

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Georgia Institute of Technology/Atlanta, GA

The Center on Business Strategies for Sustainability (http://scheller.gatech.edu/…ebusinesscenter.html) at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business will hire a Professor of the Practice of Sustainable Business starting June 1, 2013. The successful candidate will take a significant leadership role in directing the Center, including: industry outreach and partnership development; educational initiative and student career opportunity development; and teaching up to four courses per year in undergraduate, graduate and executive degree programs. Minimum requirements: MS, MBA or equivalent degree; extensive background and substantial experience in sustainability. Preferred: PhD and/or teaching experience. Salary will be competitive. Applicants should submit (in pdf format only) a cover letter outlining relevant experience, a curriculum vitae, and contact information of at least three references to recruit-cbss@scheller.gatech.edu no later than April 19. Reviews will start on April 1. Georgia Tech is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer that values diversity.

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Human beings are pretty damn clever. We have adapted and invented our way out of some extremely grim situations. And we can do the same in the face of climate change! The ideas and innovations necessary to ensure our security, and the security of future generations, are within our power. What’s needed is a smooth, effective conveyor belt to carry those ideas and innovations from our heads, into the world, and up to sufficient scale.

Unfortunately, as things now stand, that conveyor belt is rusty and full of gaps. Clever ideas get stuck in our heads, or fail to make it across the “valley of death” between labs and markets, or fail to take hold and grow in those markets. We call these gaps “market failures,” but that is a misleadingly passive construction. The conveyor belt is not something that exists in Platonic market space, a priori, that we merely need to uncover. It is something we must build, consciously, using markets among other tools.

Tastes great vs. less filling

For many years, climate hawks have been engaged in misguided and self-defeating debates about which end of the conveyor belt to fix. On one side are those who want to fix the early end, where ideas move from imagination to lab to early market. These folks talk a lot about innovation and are criticized (somewhat unfairly) as denying the need for deployment.

On the other side are those who want to fix the later end, where ideas move from early market to large, world-changing scale. These folks talk a lot about deployment and are criticized (somewhat unfairly) as denying the need for innovation.

Both sides accuse the other of failing to grasp the threat of climate change.

The innovation side accuses the deployment side of misunderstanding the scale of the problem. There is so much energy poverty remaining in the world, so many people in the developing world rising toward the middle class, such massive demand, that we can’t hope to satisfy this century’s energy (or agricultural, water, transportation …) needs with today’s technologies.

The deployment side accuses the innovation side of misunderstanding the urgency of the problem. If we are to stay within our carbon budget for the century, global emissions must peak and begin falling (quickly) within five years or so. To have a real chance at preventing catastrophe, we ideally ought to drive carbon emissions to zero, or even negative, well before the end of the century. There is simply no way to do that unless we rapidly deploy the technology we have today. Even if a technology breakthrough appeared in a lab tomorrow, there simply isn’t enough time to drive it past all the market barriers to wide adoption fast enough to forestall disaster.

So, who is right? Well, they are both right, about everything except the fact that the other is wrong.

So why fight at all? Here it’s worth briefly pondering the history of the debate.

The history of a stupid fight

Ever since the ’70s, energy politics has involved fights over the relative roles of research and deployment.

For decades, conservatives have argued that the only legitimate role of government in energy markets is basic research. Beyond that, they have claimed, government should create a “level playing field” and refrain from “picking winners.”

In practice, they have favored nothing of the sort. Instead, they have fought to protect the power and privileges of today’s “winners.” Current energy systems are shot through at every level with government policy designed by and for the status quo. (Republicans have fought clean-energy research too, remember.) Nonetheless, the rhetorical strategy of setting research in opposition to deployment is longstanding.

Over time, that strategy created an oppositional mindset among those concerned about climate change and the other negative effects of fossil-fueled development. Climate and clean energy hawks grew to see talk of energy R&D as hostile, a way of delaying real action. Under Reagan, under Republican Congresses post-Gingrich, under Bush II, they were generally right to do so. Climate hawks came to fixate on pricing carbon as a way of shifting markets immediately.

Thus, an unhealthy dynamic: R&D “vs.” pricing carbon.

Into this milieu stomped the Breakthrough Bad Boys, in 2005, with “The Death of Environmentalism.” The practical value of the paper was to argue for a renewed focus on innovation. Unfortunately, that nugget of value was buried in a morass of wild overgeneralizations, shoddy history, and self-mythologizing. It wore its contempt for environmentalists and deployment advocates proudly, which garnered it considerable media attention, but, unsurprisingly, drew — and continues to draw — hostility from its targets.

In the eight years (!) since, sniping between the innovationeers (most notably the Breakthrough guys) and the deploymenteers (most notably Joe Romm) has been incessant. I’ve indulged in a few rounds myself. The latest outbreak is the recent charge from clean-energy entrepreneur Jigar Shah that “President Obama doesn’t know how to deploy new energy.” It’s what finally prompted me to write this post.

Why the debate is stupid

I very much do not want to get into the weeds of these past disputes. (For the record, Obama has deployed a ton of clean energy! He doubled the amount in the U.S. in his first term.) Instead I want to back up and try to show why the dispute is stupid.

What is humanity’s overall goal here? It is twofold. First is to bring billions of people out of poverty and to provide the basic services necessary for a life of decency to everyone in the human family, including future generations.

The second part follows from the first. The rising consumers of the developing word cannot achieve prosperity the same way today’s wealthy nations did, driven by fossil fuels and overconsumption. There just isn’t enough stuff left in the world for all of them — enough fossil fuels, enough minerals, enough arable land, enough carbon budget in the atmosphere. If they go through it at the same rate Western nations did as they grew, there will be shortages, dislocations, and massive, irreversible ecological harm.

So the second part of the goal is to transition from a set of systems that is not sustainable to a set that is. Habits, practices, technologies, institutions — they must all evolve to adjust to the realities of the Anthropocene. The goal must be zero carbon and zero waste, as soon as possible.

The challenge is enormous — or rather, the challenges. There are at least three (I’m focused here on energy, but this could also apply to agriculture, etc.):

1. The technological challenge of how to generate, store, conserve, and manage enough zero-carbon energy to satisfy global demand.
2. The policy challenge of how to use government to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy systems.
3. The political challenge of how to build and use power in order to push governments to act.

A great deal of confusion and needless strife in the energy world traces to people confusing these three challenges, making category errors: mistaking nuclear power for a policy, cap-and-dividend for social movement, or a carbon tax for a technology development strategy.

Once they are understood as distinct challenges in their own right, something else becomes clear: they are interdependent. Progress in any one of them makes progress in the other two easier. So:

• if clean-energy technology becomes cheaper and more powerful, it broadens support for more ambitious policy;
• properly constructed policy can accelerate clean-energy tech development and/or deployment, which in turn creates political constituencies;
• sufficiently smart and powerful political constituencies can scare politicians and investors away from dirty energy and toward clean energy.

These are three aspects of the same effort, like three legs of a stool. Without any one of them, the whole thing will fall over.

Still, partisans of a particular technology, policy, or strategy often see those pushing other technologies, policies, or strategies as competitors, people who are doing it wrong, distracting from superior alternatives. Nuclear advocates bash wind, carbon pricers bash deployment subsidies, innovationeers bash carbon pricers, wonks bash activists, activists bash political hacks. Everyone finds enemies among those involved in the same effort. As is human beings’ wont, we make a zero-sum game out of what out of what ought to be a positive-sum situation.

Those involved in intramural disputes often point out that the amount of time, attention, and money to be spent on the overall effort is limited, so disputes over priorities are important. And that’s true.

But the overwhelming problem today is that the amount is too small. There is not enough being spent on any part of the conveyor belt. Innovation is underfunded and often ineffective; so is deployment. There’s no coherent, holistic approach to the broader effort.

The priority of all involved should be to expand the total resources devoted to achieving the shared goal, not to denigrate and draw attention away from competing strategies.

We are all in this together. We should start acting like it.

Filed under: Article, Business & Technology, Climate & Energy, Politics

View full post on Grist

Human beings are pretty damn clever. We have adapted and invented our way out of some extremely grim situations. And we can do the same in the face of climate change! The ideas and innovations necessary to ensure our security, and the security of future generations, are within our power. What’s needed is a smooth, effective conveyor belt to carry those ideas and innovations from our heads, into the world, and up to sufficient scale.

Unfortunately, as things now stand, that conveyor belt is rusty and full of gaps. Clever ideas get stuck in our heads, or fail to make it across the “valley of death” between labs and markets, or fail to take hold and grow in those markets. We call these gaps “market failures,” but that is a misleadingly passive construction. The conveyor belt is not something that exists in Platonic market space, a priori, that we merely need to uncover. It is something we must build, consciously, using markets among other tools.

Tastes great vs. less filling

For many years, climate hawks have been engaged in misguided and self-defeating debates about which end of the conveyor belt to fix. On one side are those who want to fix the early end, where ideas move from imagination to lab to early market. These folks talk a lot about innovation and are criticized (somewhat unfairly) as denying the need for deployment.

On the other side are those who want to fix the later end, where ideas move from early market to large, world-changing scale. These folks talk a lot about deployment and are criticized (somewhat unfairly) as denying the need for innovation.

Both sides accuse the other of failing to grasp the threat of climate change.

The innovation side accuses the deployment side of misunderstanding the scale of the problem. There is so much energy poverty remaining in the world, so many people in the developing world rising toward the middle class, such massive demand, that we can’t hope to satisfy this century’s energy (or agricultural, water, transportation …) needs with today’s technologies.

The deployment side accuses the innovation side of misunderstanding the urgency of the problem. If we are to stay within our carbon budget for the century, global emissions must peak and begin falling (quickly) within five years or so. To have a real chance at preventing catastrophe, we ideally ought to drive carbon emissions to zero, or even negative, well before the end of the century. There is simply no way to do that unless we rapidly deploy the technology we have today. Even if a technology breakthrough appeared in a lab tomorrow, there simply isn’t enough time to drive it past all the market barriers to wide adoption fast enough to forestall disaster.

So, who is right? Well, they are both right, about everything except the fact that the other is wrong.

So why fight at all? Here it’s worth briefly pondering the history of the debate.

The history of a stupid fight

Ever since the ’70s, energy politics has involved fights over the relative roles of research and deployment.

For decades, conservatives have argued that the only legitimate role of government in energy markets is basic research. Beyond that, they have claimed, government should create a “level playing field” and refrain from “picking winners.”

In practice, they have favored nothing of the sort. Instead, they have fought to protect the power and privileges of today’s “winners.” Current energy systems are shot through at every level with government policy designed by and for the status quo. (Republicans have fought clean-energy research too, remember.) Nonetheless, the rhetorical strategy of setting research in opposition to deployment is longstanding.

Over time, that strategy created an oppositional mindset among those concerned about climate change and the other negative effects of fossil-fueled development. Climate and clean energy hawks grew to see talk of energy R&D as hostile, a way of delaying real action. Under Reagan, under Republican Congresses post-Gingrich, under Bush II, they were generally right to do so. Climate hawks came to fixate on pricing carbon as a way of shifting markets immediately.

Thus, an unhealthy dynamic: R&D “vs.” pricing carbon.

Into this milieu stomped the Breakthrough Bad Boys, in 2005, with “The Death of Environmentalism.” The practical value of the paper was to argue for a renewed focus on innovation. Unfortunately, that nugget of value was buried in a morass of wild overgeneralizations, shoddy history, and self-mythologizing. It wore its contempt for environmentalists and deployment advocates proudly, which garnered it considerable media attention, but, unsurprisingly, drew — and continues to draw — hostility from its targets.

In the eight years (!) since, sniping between the innovationeers (most notably the Breakthrough guys) and the deploymenteers (most notably Joe Romm) has been incessant. I’ve indulged in a few rounds myself. The latest outbreak is the recent charge from clean-energy entrepreneur Jigar Shah that “President Obama doesn’t know how to deploy new energy.” It’s what finally prompted me to write this post.

Why the debate is stupid

I very much do not want to get into the weeds of these past disputes. (For the record, Obama has deployed a ton of clean energy! He doubled the amount in the U.S. in his first term.) Instead I want to back up and try to show why the dispute is stupid.

What is humanity’s overall goal here? It is twofold. First is to bring billions of people out of poverty and to provide the basic services necessary for a life of decency to everyone in the human family, including future generations.

The second part follows from the first. The rising consumers of the developing word cannot achieve prosperity the same way today’s wealthy nations did, driven by fossil fuels and overconsumption. There just isn’t enough stuff left in the world for all of them — enough fossil fuels, enough minerals, enough arable land, enough carbon budget in the atmosphere. If they go through it at the same rate Western nations did as they grew, there will be shortages, dislocations, and massive, irreversible ecological harm.

So the second part of the goal is to transition from a set of systems that is not sustainable to a set that is. Habits, practices, technologies, institutions — they must all evolve to adjust to the realities of the Anthropocene. The goal must be zero carbon and zero waste, as soon as possible.

The challenge is enormous — or rather, the challenges. There are at least three (I’m focused here on energy, but this could also apply to agriculture, etc.):

1. The technological challenge of how to generate, store, conserve, and manage enough zero-carbon energy to satisfy global demand.
2. The policy challenge of how to use government to accelerate the transition to sustainable energy systems.
3. The political challenge of how to build and use power in order to push governments to act.

A great deal of confusion and needless strife in the energy world traces to people confusing these three challenges, making category errors: mistaking nuclear power for a policy, cap-and-dividend for social movement, or a carbon tax for a technology development strategy.

Once they are understood as distinct challenges in their own right, something else becomes clear: they are interdependent. Progress in any one of them makes progress in the other two easier. So:

• if clean-energy technology becomes cheaper and more powerful, it broadens support for more ambitious policy;
• properly constructed policy can accelerate clean-energy tech development and/or deployment, which in turn creates political constituencies;
• sufficiently smart and powerful political constituencies can scare politicians and investors away from dirty energy and toward clean energy.

These are three aspects of the same effort, like three legs of a stool. Without any one of them, the whole thing will fall over.

Still, partisans of a particular technology, policy, or strategy often see those pushing other technologies, policies, or strategies as competitors, people who are doing it wrong, distracting from superior alternatives. Nuclear advocates bash wind, carbon pricers bash deployment subsidies, innovationeers bash carbon pricers, wonks bash activists, activists bash political hacks. Everyone finds enemies among those involved in the same effort. As is human beings’ wont, we make a zero-sum game out of what out of what ought to be a positive-sum situation.

Those involved in intramural disputes often point out that the amount of time, attention, and money to be spent on the overall effort is limited, so disputes over priorities are important. And that’s true.

But the overwhelming problem today is that the amount is too small. There is not enough being spent on any part of the conveyor belt. Innovation is underfunded and often ineffective; so is deployment. There’s no coherent, holistic approach to the broader effort.

The priority of all involved should be to expand the total resources devoted to achieving the shared goal, not to denigrate and draw attention away from competing strategies.

We are all in this together. We should start acting like it.

Filed under: Article, Business & Technology, Climate & Energy, Politics

View full post on Grist

Late last month, I wrote a post about an intriguing new solar technology that promised to radically reduce the delivered price of solar electricity. At the top of my post, I included that standard disclaimer, warning people not to get too excited until the product proved itself in the marketplace.

Of course, that disclaimer did not stop the inevitable: Cranky people from all over the internet descended on the comments to explain why the technology is absurd and could never possibly work. This is a familiar cycle to anyone who writes about cleantech.

Robert Styler, the chief marketing officer at V3Solar, contacted me to ask if I would elevate his response to some of the criticisms so that people would be sure to see it. So I’m doing that.

Just to be clear: I have no particular expertise on solar technology. I’m in no position to adjudicate these conflicts. But I do think they’re worth hashing out in public. So here are some criticisms from champion skeptic MrSteve007 and some responses from Mr. Styler.

——

Robert Styler:

We don’t reveal everything about our tech on the internet and that creates some false assumptions. Hopefully this will clear up some of the more common mistakes. In response to the questions by MrSteve007:

1. No matter what angle the sun is shining, 50% of the solar cells are always shaded at one time (except at high noon, at the equator). That dramatically increases cost and inversely lowers efficiency.

Steve, you are looking at this as static rather than dynamic. The inner cone is rapidly spinning in and out of highly concentrated bands of light — also, the ambient light on the backside of the cone will be captured. PV is a light-sensitive semiconductor. Every other semiconductor works under periodicity, on/off, 1/0, binary code. For the last 30 years, PV has either been ON during the day, or OFF during the night. Moore’s law states that the computing power of semiconductors doubles every two years. Why have we not seen a similar dramatic increase in PV?

By creating high-intensity flashes of light, we make the PV respond differently than it does in a static environment, just baking in the sun (see Q-switching and the Avalanche Photodiode effect). Again, we only go into specifics under NDA [non-disclosure agreement] with stakeholders and investors. We all know what we know, but few are open-minded enough to know what we don’t know — and that’s the first step of innovation.

2. Solar cells work best when the sun is perpendicular to the panel — by mounting the panels at a spinning 45% angle, you get the reduced production angle of flat panels, and all the complications and maintenance problems of tracking.

The lensing on the outer cone focuses the light through the day and year at the proper angle as the inner, PV cone spins.

3. They tout the device is cooled by the spinning motion, and then in another sentence, say the whole thing is under hermetically sealed glass. That’ll generate one heck of a greenhouse effect. Spinning won’t cool it if the air is blazing hot around the panel.

I recorded the word “hermetically sealed” in the audio and it has created some misunderstanding. The PV and the electronic circuitry are sealed. There is an air exchange between the outer cone, which does not spin, and the inner PV cone, which does spin. Sorry for the confusion.

4. Spinning a panel constantly = constantly consuming energy just to spin the panel. Not exactly an efficient idea.

The inner PV cone floats on magnets and uses less than 10 watts. The gains of dynamic spin far outweigh the minimal loss. Since no parts are rubbing against each other, this also minimizes the maintenance concern below.

5. Anything with mechanical motion will break down and require regular maintenance.

Seriously? So wind power and washing machines are too complex to reach mass market acceptance? For large-scale commercial farms, we can use the same large-scale AC wind inverters that GE and others have developed for the wind industry. Yes, we have an “inverter” built into the Spin Cell, but it may be more cost effective on large projects to remove that aspect and use inverters developed for the wind industry to connect with the grid.

6. Honing and creating a perfectly conical and sealed glass won’t be cheap or easy (if even possible). If it’s plastic, expect UV to cloud the plastic covering fairly rapidly.

We are under NDA with a Fortune 50 company that has developed a new process for the outer cone. It will be glass, with the lensing added by a proprietary process. The pricing is quite competitive.

This brings up another question — there is only 1000 watts of light in a square meter, etc. We understand that. It was a major stumbling block for me and it took me months to wrap my mind around it. There is a staircasing, or additive, effect of light, as the PV spins rapidly under multiple lenses. I am not going to go into the specifics here, because it is almost irrelevant. The outer lensing cone is a nominal cost. In our BOM costs, we calculated it being 2.5X bigger than the size we believe it is going to be. If it ends up being 5X bigger, it would still only add 5 cents/Wp to our BOM costs. If there is no staircasing, we simply make the outer cone bigger.

I could go on and on as to why this isn’t a design imagined by someone who knows what they’re talking about, let alone an engineer. I’ll put good money down that this product (if it even makes it to prototype stage) is destined to be a complete flop.

Our engineers and the engineers at NectarDesign.com deserve more respect, Steve. We understand there are legitimate questions, but let’s not be rude. To protect our stakeholders, we don’t share all of the specifics online, and that creates some misunderstandings. We have strong patent protection, but not everyone respects patents. We flew Bill Rever out to meet with our engineers and do a full technical analysis, which is on our website.

I wrote this response because I respect Grist and the comments seemed to have spiraled downward. As Einstein wrote, “We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.” It is interesting that the default for many people (especially with internet comments) is, “I don’t understand it, so it must be wrong.” We still have plenty of work to do, but we have proven our assumptions. The fun part will be commercial production and market share.

If you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at Robert.Styler@V3Solar.com … and please use your real name, 007.

Filed under: Article, Business & Technology, Climate & Energy

View full post on Grist

Southern California Edison/Irwindale, CA

Introduction:
Highly-motivated; likes challenge; collaborative; committed to delivering high quality work… Did we describe you? Read on…

Southern California Edison is one of the nation’s largest investor-owned electric utilities. We are an industry leader that is designing new and innovative ways to meet our customer’s needs. We are looking for highly motivated individuals who enjoy the challenge of working on key industry changing projects. We need your good ideas and your contributions to remain a leader in this industry.

About IT:
The role of IT goes beyond the traditional Information Technology “service provider.†Many of the innovative ideas and projects that shape the company’s future and move SCE forward are dependent on technology. IT employees are at the heart of these projects, collaborating, designing and executing technology solutions that are transforming our industry.

Position Overview:
The Enterprise Technology Strategy Manager will report to the Enterprise Architecture Division within Information Technology (IT) Department. They will be responsible for aligning and coordinating the activities and deliverables of all technology domain architects across IT, providing guidance for the Applications, Enterprise Information Management (EIM) and Infrastructure groups. The successful candidate will be charged with creating and managing a forum for the sharing of architectural best practices and methodologies, building the architecture community across all IT departments, and integrating all architectural blueprints across IT into a common technology roadmap. They will be responsible for directing leadership and management of critical forward-looking reference implementations that have a strategic architectural impact on the technology roadmap, as technology solutions are chosen in support of the company's strategic initiatives. This position defines and manages the model and framework for external vendor resources and relationships, including sourcing strategies that impact technology capability and scale. This position works with the CIO , IT Directors and technical/ functional domain leaders to ensure transformation costs, impact and value are properly understood, estimated and controlled. Directs and monitors the work of technology architects on major programs and projects. Manages integration across the enterprise and interacts with key business stakeholders, process owners, and program and project managers.

The successful candidate will be responsible for planning, coordinating and reviewing technology / functional domain work, managing issues and risks with domain leadership and communicating with IT Leadership. Participate in technical reviews, key architecture decisions with the Architecture Review Board (ARB), Enterprise Architecture Management Office (EAMO), etc.. Plans and coordinates project resource requirements with Resource Management, other Enterprise Information Management & Architecture (EIMA) Managers and vendors. He/she also manages the performance of technology architects for IT program/projects, managing resources and budget levels to meet strategic objectives and operational needs. They w ill make, recommend and/or approve employment decisions (e.g., hiring, promotion, appropriate pay, rewards/recognition, succession planning, and termination) as well as manage employee performance (training, coaching and timely feedback) for both direct and/or matrixed reports. They will be responsible for creating and maintaining a safety conscious work environment by leading and influencing others to follow Edison safety protocols and safe work practices. Other duties as assigned.

Job Requirements:
•BA/BS degree in computer science, information systems, engineering or an equivalent combination of education, training, and experience.
•Must have a minimum of five years’ experience managing or supervising one or more technical organizational units.
•Must have a minimum three years’ experience in IT architecture and engineering disciplines and practices including industry standard approaches and frameworks e.g. TOGAF (The Open Group Architecture Framework) and DODAF (Department of Defense Architecture Framework).
•Typically possesses two years of experience managing large corporate budgets.
•Typically possesses experience with evolving IT technologies across technology domain (e.g. SOA, telecom, network.)
•Experience with managing technical teams and strong individual technical contributors in the context of large critical IT projects. .
•Demonstrate the ability to integrate work across relevant areas, develop the business and services to enhance customer satisfaction and productivity, manage risks appropriately, develop and execute business plans, manage information, and provide exceptional service to internal and external customers.
•Demonstrate effective resource and project planning, decision making, results delivery, team building, and the ability to stay current with relevant technology and innovation.
•Demonstrate strong ethics, influence and negotiation, leadership, interpersonal skills, communication, and the ability to effectively manage stress and engage in continuous learning
•Demonstrated experience using Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Visio, and Project.
•Demonstrated ability to create and maintain a safety conscious work environment.

Preferences:
•MBA/MA/MS degree in engineering, computer science, information systems or equivalent experience.
•Ten years of experience managing one or more technical organizational units
•Five years of IT architecture experience.
•Knowledge of SDLC methodologies including modern approaches like Unified Modeling Language (UML) and Rational Unified Process (RUP).
•Knowledge of the utility industry.

Comments:
•Relocation may apply to this position.
•Edison International and Southern California Edison reserve the right to close or cancel a posting at any time.
•If you are interested in this position, please submit your resume in confidence by visiting www.edisonjobs.com.
•Edison International is an Equal Opportunity Employer.
•Candidates for this position must be legally authorized to work directly as employees for any employer in the United States without visa sponsorship.
•SCE provides access and opportunities to those with disabilities; please let us know if you require an accommodation for this appointment.

Southern California Edison, an Edison International (NYSE:EIX) company, serves a population of nearly 14 million via 4.9 million customer accounts in a 50,000-square-mile service area within Central, Coastal and Southern California. Join the utility leader that is safely delivering reliable, affordable electricity to our customers for over 125 years.

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International Living Future Institute/Portland, OR (Cascadia Bioregion)

The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) seeks an exceptional Information Technology Manager in its Portland, OR office. ILFI's mission is to lead and support the transformation toward communities that are socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative. The IT Manager will have primary responsibility for day-to-day & long-term support, maintenance, planning, and troubleshooting of all internal and external technology tools. The IT Manager reports directly to the COO.

The successful candidate must exhibit a strong passion for the environment and the organization’s mission as a whole, have proven technical & problem-solving skills, be a quick learner & a good communicator, and be able to multi-task. The ability to work independently on tasks at various scales with minimal supervision is critical.

The IT Manager’s role is to administer all technical systems, provide staff support & training on said systems, install & configure new computers & applications, provide project management & oversight for web application development, and consult with various departments on process development & it’s relationship to technology.

This job is full-time, exempt and typically 40 hours per week. Intermittent travel to the Vancouver BC office (2-3 visits/year), and regular travel to the Seattle office (6-10 visits/year) are required.

Compensation is commensurate with experience and is supplemented by ILFI’s generous benefits package that includes health and dental insurance, three weeks of paid annual leave and 12 days annual sick leave.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES

Infrastructure
• Maintain all user accounts for Google Apps, EventBrite, Salesforce, Dropbox, etc.
• Support backup systems for CEO personal computer.
• Maintain IP phone system for all offices, including connection issues, accounts, extensions, voicemail, training, auto-attendants, etc.
• Serve as webmaster for multiple websites on various technology platforms.
• Maintain wireless networks, wired networks, and Internet connections in all offices.
• Configure, install, and maintain printers & multi-function printing devices in 3 offices.
• Monitor, update, and clean the organizational Salesforce database as necessary.
• Manage relationships with external service providers & developers.

Planning
• Work with development department to track constituent & membership data coherently and adapt existing systems to match development pushes.
• Oversee development of and provide support for web-based applications to support unique, cutting edge green building certification programs.
• Write & manage the budget for all organizational technology needs.
• Research, test, implement, & train staff on technology solutions to meet new & evolving organizational needs while staying within a non-profit budget.
• Remain appraised of available & evolving technologies which may serve the organization’s needs & goals, and make recommendations for organizational adoption.
• Maintain documentation for all organizational infrastructure, accounts, data sources, data methodologies, maintenance techniques, and custom applications.

Support
• Track, purchase, and configure all personal computers & individual software programs on 25 Mac workstations & 1 Windows workstation with diverse needs.
• Train staff on key organizational technologies (Salesforce, Dropbox, Drupal, ExactTarget, IP Telephones, Project Portal, EventBrite, etc)
• Address technology emergencies across 3 offices & multiple remote offices calmly & efficiently.
• Maintain, configure, and support 8 organizational iPhones along with telephone service & data plans
• Provide data access & transition support from departing employees to departmental leads & new hires in the event of staff turnover.
• Provide friendly & timely assistance with all technology tools, including education & troubleshooting, for all staff.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required:
• Bachelor’s degree in a field complimentary to job duties, or equivalent experience/education
• 4 years Network Administration, IT Management, or other technology infrastructure support experience
• Project management skills
• Database management experience
• Technology support experience
• Mac OS troubleshooting expertise
• Microsoft Office for Mac troubleshooting expertise
• Excellent communication skills
• IP Networking experience
• Must be able to collaborate with programmatic staff to plan technologically integrated processes for managing unique programs as the technical expert, & to carry those plans through implementation.

Desirable:
• Salesforce.com administration experience
• Google Apps administration experience
• IP telephone system management experience
• Dropbox for Teams management
• Drupal website administration experience
• HTML/CSS experience

ILFI IS AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION / EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Apply To Job

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Incoming search terms for the article:

• international livings future portland or

International Living Future Institute/Portland, OR (Cascadia Bioregion)

The International Living Future Institute (ILFI) seeks an exceptional Information Technology Manager in its Portland, OR office. ILFI's mission is to lead and support the transformation toward communities that are socially just, culturally rich and ecologically restorative. The IT Manager will have primary responsibility for day-to-day & long-term support, maintenance, planning, and troubleshooting of all internal and external technology tools. The IT Manager reports directly to the COO.

The successful candidate must exhibit a strong passion for the environment and the organization’s mission as a whole, have proven technical & problem-solving skills, be a quick learner & a good communicator, and be able to multi-task. The ability to work independently on tasks at various scales with minimal supervision is critical.

The IT Manager’s role is to administer all technical systems, provide staff support & training on said systems, install & configure new computers & applications, provide project management & oversight for web application development, and consult with various departments on process development & it’s relationship to technology.

This job is full-time, exempt and typically 40 hours per week. Intermittent travel to the Vancouver BC office (2-3 visits/year), and regular travel to the Seattle office (6-10 visits/year) are required.

Compensation is commensurate with experience and is supplemented by ILFI’s generous benefits package that includes health and dental insurance, three weeks of paid annual leave and 12 days annual sick leave.

DESCRIPTION OF DUTIES

Infrastructure
• Maintain all user accounts for Google Apps, EventBrite, Salesforce, Dropbox, etc.
• Support backup systems for CEO personal computer.
• Maintain IP phone system for all offices, including connection issues, accounts, extensions, voicemail, training, auto-attendants, etc.
• Serve as webmaster for multiple websites on various technology platforms.
• Maintain wireless networks, wired networks, and Internet connections in all offices.
• Configure, install, and maintain printers & multi-function printing devices in 3 offices.
• Monitor, update, and clean the organizational Salesforce database as necessary.
• Manage relationships with external service providers & developers.

Planning
• Work with development department to track constituent & membership data coherently and adapt existing systems to match development pushes.
• Oversee development of and provide support for web-based applications to support unique, cutting edge green building certification programs.
• Write & manage the budget for all organizational technology needs.
• Research, test, implement, & train staff on technology solutions to meet new & evolving organizational needs while staying within a non-profit budget.
• Remain appraised of available & evolving technologies which may serve the organization’s needs & goals, and make recommendations for organizational adoption.
• Maintain documentation for all organizational infrastructure, accounts, data sources, data methodologies, maintenance techniques, and custom applications.

Support
• Track, purchase, and configure all personal computers & individual software programs on 25 Mac workstations & 1 Windows workstation with diverse needs.
• Train staff on key organizational technologies (Salesforce, Dropbox, Drupal, ExactTarget, IP Telephones, Project Portal, EventBrite, etc)
• Address technology emergencies across 3 offices & multiple remote offices calmly & efficiently.
• Maintain, configure, and support 8 organizational iPhones along with telephone service & data plans
• Provide data access & transition support from departing employees to departmental leads & new hires in the event of staff turnover.
• Provide friendly & timely assistance with all technology tools, including education & troubleshooting, for all staff.

QUALIFICATIONS

Required:
• Bachelor’s degree in a field complimentary to job duties, or equivalent experience/education
• 4 years Network Administration, IT Management, or other technology infrastructure support experience
• Project management skills
• Database management experience
• Technology support experience
• Mac OS troubleshooting expertise
• Microsoft Office for Mac troubleshooting expertise
• Excellent communication skills
• IP Networking experience
• Must be able to collaborate with programmatic staff to plan technologically integrated processes for managing unique programs as the technical expert, & to carry those plans through implementation.

Desirable:
• Salesforce.com administration experience
• Google Apps administration experience
• IP telephone system management experience
• Dropbox for Teams management
• Drupal website administration experience
• HTML/CSS experience

ILFI IS AN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION / EQUAL OPPORTUNITY EMPLOYER

Apply To Job

View full post on GreenBiz Jobs

“Fracking”: It sounds more like a comic-book exclamation (kapow! boom! frack!) than a controversial method for extracting natural gas and oil from rock deep underground. By turns demonized as a catastrophic environmental threat and glorified as a therapy for our foreign oil addiction, fracking has become a flashpoint in our national energy policy.

First developed in the 1940s, fracking — literally, “hydraulic fracturing,” or “smashing rock open with lots of water” — only began to boom around 2005, but today, it’s used in nine out of every 10 natural gas wells in the U.S. As many as 35,000 wells are fracked each year [PDF], according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And shale gas (often fracked) now accounts for 15 percent of total U.S. natural gas production, up from virtually nil a few years ago.

Scientists assure us that fracking can be done safely — at least in theory. They are still working to understand the long-term implications of using this technology at large scale in the real world, however, where things spill, accidents happen, and people have their health, homes, schools, airports, groundwater, and even cemeteries to worry about.

We know scientists aren’t the only ones looking for answers. So below, we tackle six key questions about fracking.

1. How does fracking work?

Hydraulic fracturing involves cracking rock formations by pumping fluid into wells at high pressure, forcing oil or gas out of the rock. It’s also known as hydrofracking and fracing, and, most commonly, fracking (not to be confused with the colorful suggestions of autocorrect programs, “franking” or “freaking”).

Click to embiggen.

Done right, fracking can squeeze natural gas from layers of rock that would otherwise be too difficult or costly to exploit. Often this rock is a very tight, clay-rich, sedimentary mud stone known as shale — for example, the Marcellus Shale formation in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Maryland; the Bakken Shale in North Dakota; and the Barnett Shale in Texas. Drillers also use fracking to release gas from fine-grained sands known as tight sands, and to free methane from coal beds.

It takes more than a garden hose to get this job done. Frackers pump up to 4 million gallons [PDF] of fluid as far as 10,000 feet below ground at up to 4,200 gallons per minute. The pressurized fluid creates tiny cracks, or fissures, in the shale around a borehole far below ground level. Gas flows out of the rock and up to the surface.

The wells’ L shape, enabled by advances in “horizontal drilling” over the last decade, makes it possible to tap many small pockets of gas scattered across wide, thin rock layers. Horizontal drilling, combined with fracking, makes it worthwhile for companies to tap gas stores that just wouldn’t have been economical a few years back. And none too soon, since we’ve already harvested [PDF] much of the low-hanging fruit (read: the big, easily tapped gas deposits).

2. What’s in that fluid?

There are three basic ingredients in fracking fluids:

• Water: An Olympic-size swimming pool holds about 660,000 gallons of water, and a single fracking well can use seven or eight times that amount. Energy companies often buy water from farmers, lease surplus water from municipalities, or buy treated wastewater.

• Sand: Grains of sand, acting as “proppants,” keep cracks in the shale open so gas can flow out of the rock and up the well. In place of sand, some drillers use ceramic pellets or other particles.

• Chemicals: A chemical cocktail of “additives,” in industry speak, helps to dissolve minerals, reduce friction, prevent corrosion, thicken the fluid (so it can transport the sand), clean out debris, prevent clay from swelling, and fight bacteria, among other jobs.

At various stages, the list of chemical ingredients may include hydrochloric acid, petroleum distillates, ammonium persulfate, calcium chloride, boric acid, citric acid, borate salts, and many more additives. Exposure to high amounts of some common frack-fluid chemicals, like ethylene glycol (a key antifreeze ingredient), have been linked to serious health problems, such as kidney, heart, and nervous-system damage. Others, like sodium chloride (table salt) and guar gum (a common food thickener derived from beans) are generally benign.

3. Do those chemicals get into drinking water?

Maybe you’ve seen this startling scene from the Oscar-nominated film GasLand:

As it turns out, the faucet here was spewing naturally occurring methane, which is difficult to attribute to fracking in a direct, conclusive way. Nonetheless, people’s concern that fracking can taint our drinking water with unsavory and possibly dangerous elements is not unfounded.

A study published in May 2011 in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a link between methane in drinking water supplies and proximity to shale gas drilling. Seven months later, the EPA said for the first time that chemicals used in fracking had been found in drinking water in Pavillion, Wyo., home to hundreds of natural gas wells. And in July 2012, the U.S. EPA said its tests of wells around Dimock, Penn., had revealed barium, arsenic, or manganese at levels high enough to present health concerns in the water supplies of five households.

Remember, fracking involves millions of gallons of fluid for each well. That fluid must be transported via pipelines or trucks and stored in tanks or ponds prior to injection into the well. There are lots of opportunities for spillage (of the wastewater, as well as fracking chemicals like hydrochloric acid). Shoddy well casings can allow gas to leak out of the well and into water aquifers. Equipment failures and well blowouts can send wastewater flowing into nearby creeks.

Anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of the original fluid volume [PDF] doesn’t come back out of the well right away. It remains “stranded” underground for years. The wastewater that does bubble to the surface, which can now contain salts, minerals, and low-level radioactive materials leached out of the soil and rock, must be recycled or disposed of. Most frequently, this water is injected back into the earth, though it is sometimes pumped to ill-equipped municipal sewage plants — which can be bad news for rivers. (The EPA is now working on standards for shale gas wastewater treatment and disposal.)

4. Does fracking cause earthquakes?

It can. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), fracking “causes small earthquakes, but they are almost always too small to be a safety concern.”

Of course, residents near fracking sites may have a different standard for “concern.” Just ask around Lancashire, in the U.K., where two small earthquakes registering 2.3 and 1.4 on the Richter scale in 2011 have been linked to fracking. According to the International Energy Agency [PDF], fractures in this instance just so happened “to intersect, and reactivate, an existing fault.”

Re-injecting wastewater into fracking wells can also cause earthquakes that are “large enough to be felt and may cause damage,” according to the USGS. Scientists have fingered wastewater injection as the culprit behind quakes last Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve (magnitude 2.7 and 4.0, respectively) in Youngstown, Ohio, which didn’t used to be earthquake country.

5. Is there an environmental upside to fracking?

Original photo by Ari Moore.

Perhaps. Fracking helped produce so much natural gas that a supply glut drove gas prices down to a 10-year low in the winter of 2011-2012, according to the EIA, and that has made it more competitive with other fuels. That’s good news if you consider that natural gas does burn cleaner than either coal or oil. It produces less carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and less sulfur dioxide, a component of acid rain and an air pollutant linked to respiratory problems including asthma and emphysema. In fact, when lower gas prices made the fuel more competitive with coal for electricity this year, it helped the U.S. reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions.

But when you look at the whole natural gas package, from production through use and waste disposal, it’s clear that natural gas exacts a steep environmental toll — particularly when it’s fracked. In addition to the amount of water involved, and the huge quantities of chemical-containing wastewater, there is air pollution from heavy machinery at the drill sites and hydrocarbons released by the wells, which scientists are just beginning to investigate.

In Garfield County, Colo., preliminary research out of the Colorado School of Public Health suggests residents living within half a mile of natural gas drilling sites are exposed to higher levels of air pollutants, including benzene and xylene, than folks living farther way.

Other studies suggest that if methane, a principal component of natural gas, leaks during drilling, transport, or fueling, it can cancel out the greenhouse gas emission benefits of burning natural gas instead of gasoline in cars. It doesn’t take much, because methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

6. Can anything be done to stop the fracking boom?

Internationally, fracking has encountered stiff opposition over water pollution and other environmental concerns. Bulgaria and France have banned the practice, the United Kingdom and Romania have suspended it, and still more countries in Europe are considering the moratorium route. South Africa slammed the brakes on shale gas exploration in 2011, but it lifted its moratorium on fracking in September 2012.

Here in the States, the practice has met resistance on the local level from groups concerned about possible (and still poorly understood) consequences for health, rural landscapes, ecosystems, and the final resting places of veterans. New York residents living near the northern border of the Marcellus Shale and within the Utica Shale region have been especially vocal in opposing fracking. More than 130 municipalities in New York State have enacted moratoriums or banned fracking outright. Pittsburgh banned natural gas drilling in 2010, becoming the first city in shale gas-rich Pennsylvania to do so.

So far, however, the winners in this fight are those who benefit from squeezing cash — er, gas — from shale. That includes not only energy producers but also landowners who lease surface or mineral rights and state and local governments that make millions in tax revenue. The boom has also made a good talking point for politicians touting their contributions to national energy independence. And it’s one more sign that we’re hell bent on getting every ounce of fossil fuel the earth has to offer, never mind the long-term risks.

Filed under: Climate & Energy

View full post on Grist

“Fracking”: It sounds more like a comic-book exclamation (kapow! boom! frack!) than a controversial method for extracting natural gas and oil from rock deep underground. By turns demonized as a catastrophic environmental threat and glorified as a therapy for our foreign oil addiction, fracking has become a flashpoint in our national energy policy.

First developed in the 1940s, fracking — literally, “hydraulic fracturing,” or “smashing rock open with lots of water” — only began to boom around 2005, but today, it’s used in nine out of every 10 natural gas wells in the U.S. As many as 35,000 wells are fracked each year [PDF], according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). And shale gas (often fracked) now accounts for 15 percent of total U.S. natural gas production, up from virtually nil a few years ago.

Scientists assure us that fracking can be done safely — at least in theory. They are still working to understand the long-term implications of using this technology at large scale in the real world, however, where things spill, accidents happen, and people have their health, homes, schools, airports, groundwater, and even cemeteries to worry about.

We know scientists aren’t the only ones looking for answers. So below, we tackle six key questions about fracking.

1. How does fracking work?

Hydraulic fracturing involves cracking rock formations by pumping fluid into wells at high pressure, forcing oil or gas out of the rock. It’s also known as hydrofracking and fracing, and, most commonly, fracking (not to be confused with the colorful suggestions of autocorrect programs, “franking” or “freaking”).

Click to embiggen.

Done right, fracking can squeeze natural gas from layers of rock that would otherwise be too difficult or costly to exploit. Often this rock is a very tight, clay-rich, sedimentary mud stone known as shale — for example, the Marcellus Shale formation in New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Maryland; the Bakken Shale in North Dakota; and the Barnett Shale in Texas. Drillers also use fracking to release gas from fine-grained sands known as tight sands, and to free methane from coal beds.

It takes more than a garden hose to get this job done. Frackers pump up to 4 million gallons [PDF] of fluid as far as 10,000 feet below ground at up to 4,200 gallons per minute. The pressurized fluid creates tiny cracks, or fissures, in the shale around a borehole far below ground level. Gas flows out of the rock and up to the surface.

The wells’ L shape, enabled by advances in “horizontal drilling” over the last decade, makes it possible to tap many small pockets of gas scattered across wide, thin rock layers. Horizontal drilling, combined with fracking, makes it worthwhile for companies to tap gas stores that just wouldn’t have been economical a few years back. And none too soon, since we’ve already harvested [PDF] much of the low-hanging fruit (read: the big, easily tapped gas deposits).

2. What’s in that fluid?

There are three basic ingredients in fracking fluids:

• Water: An Olympic-size swimming pool holds about 660,000 gallons of water, and a single fracking well can use seven or eight times that amount. Energy companies often buy water from farmers, lease surplus water from municipalities, or buy treated wastewater.

• Sand: Grains of sand, acting as “proppants,” keep cracks in the shale open so gas can flow out of the rock and up the well. In place of sand, some drillers use ceramic pellets or other particles.

• Chemicals: A chemical cocktail of “additives,” in industry speak, helps to dissolve minerals, reduce friction, prevent corrosion, thicken the fluid (so it can transport the sand), clean out debris, prevent clay from swelling, and fight bacteria, among other jobs.

At various stages, the list of chemical ingredients may include hydrochloric acid, petroleum distillates, ammonium persulfate, calcium chloride, boric acid, citric acid, borate salts, and many more additives. Exposure to high amounts of some common frack-fluid chemicals, like ethylene glycol (a key antifreeze ingredient), have been linked to serious health problems, such as kidney, heart, and nervous-system damage. Others, like sodium chloride (table salt) and guar gum (a common food thickener derived from beans) are generally benign.

3. Do those chemicals get into drinking water?

Maybe you’ve seen this startling scene from the Oscar-nominated film GasLand:

As it turns out, the faucet here was spewing naturally occurring methane, which is difficult to attribute to fracking in a direct, conclusive way. Nonetheless, people’s concern that fracking can taint our drinking water with unsavory and possibly dangerous elements is not unfounded.

A study published in May 2011 in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a link between methane in drinking water supplies and proximity to shale gas drilling. Seven months later, the EPA said for the first time that chemicals used in fracking had been found in drinking water in Pavillion, Wyo., home to hundreds of natural gas wells. And in July 2012, the U.S. EPA said its tests of wells around Dimock, Penn., had revealed barium, arsenic, or manganese at levels high enough to present health concerns in the water supplies of five households.

Remember, fracking involves millions of gallons of fluid for each well. That fluid must be transported via pipelines or trucks and stored in tanks or ponds prior to injection into the well. There are lots of opportunities for spillage (of the wastewater, as well as fracking chemicals like hydrochloric acid). Shoddy well casings can allow gas to leak out of the well and into water aquifers. Equipment failures and well blowouts can send wastewater flowing into nearby creeks.

Anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of the original fluid volume [PDF] doesn’t come back out of the well right away. It remains “stranded” underground for years. The wastewater that does bubble to the surface, which can now contain salts, minerals, and low-level radioactive materials leached out of the soil and rock, must be recycled or disposed of. Most frequently, this water is injected back into the earth, though it is sometimes pumped to ill-equipped municipal sewage plants — which can be bad news for rivers. (The EPA is now working on standards for shale gas wastewater treatment and disposal.)

4. Does fracking cause earthquakes?

It can. According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), fracking “causes small earthquakes, but they are almost always too small to be a safety concern.”

Of course, residents near fracking sites may have a different standard for “concern.” Just ask around Lancashire, in the U.K., where two small earthquakes registering 2.3 and 1.4 on the Richter scale in 2011 have been linked to fracking. According to the International Energy Agency [PDF], fractures in this instance just so happened “to intersect, and reactivate, an existing fault.”

Re-injecting wastewater into fracking wells can also cause earthquakes that are “large enough to be felt and may cause damage,” according to the USGS. Scientists have fingered wastewater injection as the culprit behind quakes last Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve (magnitude 2.7 and 4.0, respectively) in Youngstown, Ohio, which didn’t used to be earthquake country.

5. Is there an environmental upside to fracking?

Original photo by Ari Moore.

Perhaps. Fracking helped produce so much natural gas that a supply glut drove gas prices down to a 10-year low in the winter of 2011-2012, according to the EIA, and that has made it more competitive with other fuels. That’s good news if you consider that natural gas does burn cleaner than either coal or oil. It produces less carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, and less sulfur dioxide, a component of acid rain and an air pollutant linked to respiratory problems including asthma and emphysema. In fact, when lower gas prices made the fuel more competitive with coal for electricity this year, it helped the U.S. reduce its overall greenhouse gas emissions.

But when you look at the whole natural gas package, from production through use and waste disposal, it’s clear that natural gas exacts a steep environmental toll — particularly when it’s fracked. In addition to the amount of water involved, and the huge quantities of chemical-containing wastewater, there is air pollution from heavy machinery at the drill sites and hydrocarbons released by the wells, which scientists are just beginning to investigate.

In Garfield County, Colo., preliminary research out of the Colorado School of Public Health suggests residents living within half a mile of natural gas drilling sites are exposed to higher levels of air pollutants, including benzene and xylene, than folks living farther way.

Other studies suggest that if methane, a principal component of natural gas, leaks during drilling, transport, or fueling, it can cancel out the greenhouse gas emission benefits of burning natural gas instead of gasoline in cars. It doesn’t take much, because methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.

6. Can anything be done to stop the fracking boom?

Internationally, fracking has encountered stiff opposition over water pollution and other environmental concerns. Bulgaria and France have banned the practice, the United Kingdom and Romania have suspended it, and still more countries in Europe are considering the moratorium route. South Africa slammed the brakes on shale gas exploration in 2011, but it lifted its moratorium on fracking in September 2012.

Here in the States, the practice has met resistance on the local level from groups concerned about possible (and still poorly understood) consequences for health, rural landscapes, ecosystems, and the final resting places of veterans. New York residents living near the northern border of the Marcellus Shale and within the Utica Shale region have been especially vocal in opposing fracking. More than 130 municipalities in New York State have enacted moratoriums or banned fracking outright. Pittsburgh banned natural gas drilling in 2010, becoming the first city in shale gas-rich Pennsylvania to do so.

So far, however, the winners in this fight are those who benefit from squeezing cash — er, gas — from shale. That includes not only energy producers but also landowners who lease surface or mineral rights and state and local governments that make millions in tax revenue. The boom has also made a good talking point for politicians touting their contributions to national energy independence. And it’s one more sign that we’re hell bent on getting every ounce of fossil fuel the earth has to offer, never mind the long-term risks.

Filed under: Climate & Energy

View full post on Grist