Domestic Fuel

Last week, I wrote a story regarding President Obama’s executive order for the federal government to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent by 2020. One goal of this program is to get other companies to follow suit, but many companies don’t know where to start. Enter the Hondo Green Assessment Tool (HGAT). To learn more about how companies can become more sustainable, I spoke with the Hondo Group’s CEO Lynn Balinas.

HGAT is an internet based tool for small to mid-sized companies that can measure a company’s carbon footprint, manage its carbon footprint and maintain carbon footprint goals, explained Balinas. The tool measures five categories: water, energy, transportation, materials and waste. Ultimately the tool helps companies become not only more sustainable but more profitable as well.

“People usually first think, it’s about the environment, it’s about global warming. That’s part of it,” said Balinas. “But it’s good governance and it’s actually profitable for organizations.”

A few years ago, people perceived that going green meant going broke. That is actually not the case. Going green will actually help you make more green. For example, if all small to mid-sized businesses turned off their computers and printers at night (unplug the electronics) nearly $2.1 billion could be saved annually.

Here is how it works. After 35 days of metrics based on the five categories outlined above, the HGAT will tell a company how to reduce the carbon footprint and give suggestions that a company can choose to integrate. Ultimately, the tools that are put into place will help a company manage its program and save money.

Companies can implement the program alone or partner with other small to mid-sized companies. Balinas said that the average cost to a company with less than 50 employees is around $50 per month but the return is much greater.

Listen to my interview with Lynn below to learn more about HGAT.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (2.8MB)

President Clinton was the keynote speaker during the closing session at the 2009 National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) conference. His focus during his speech was the American economy, with a few words on the state of health care, education and energy in the mix. But the big question was: is the recession over? His answer: “Yes. No. Maybe.”

If you are an economics professor, the answer is yes. Economists tend to determine the state of the economy using the textbook definition that says that two consecutive quarters of growth signal the end of a recession. If you are a business owner, the answer is no. People are still losing jobs and unemployment is still on the rise and home foreclosures are still increasing. The maybe comes into play, says Clinton, in that we can come out of a depression, but if people get spooked and stop spending, we’ll be right back into the recession. What could cause this? The price of oil going back to $100 per barrel. This may not be that far off as last week saw prices rise to $80 per barrel.

Clinton then went on to say, “We (America) has got to change how we create and exchange energy. Climate change is real.” He also expressed concern that if we lose the ability to feed the people when we need it most, we are going to have water wars and resource wars that make the middle east look tame. Clinton noted that the UK, Germany, Denmark and Sweden are the only four countries to exceed their climate goals. Why? These countries outperformed the U.S. because they created new jobs when they changed how they created and delivered energy.

Although this country has some very difficult challenges ahead of it, Clinton ended his speech with some words of encouragement, “On balance, I am widely optimistic about the future.”

The search for renewable energy sources is varied and sometimes strange and here is another one to add to the strange category: turning seawater into kerosene-based jet fuel. Who would research something like this? Look no further than our very own U.S. Navy. Navy chemists have processed seawater into unsaturated short-chain hydrocarbons that with further refining could be made into jet fuel. The catch? They will now have to discover a clean energy source to power the reaction if the end product is to be carbon neutral.

The process, according to a report from New Scientist, involves extracting CO2 dissolved in the water and then combining it with hydrogen. The hydrogen is produced by splitting water molecules using electricity (hopefully not coal based) to make a hydrocarbon fuel. For those scientists out there, you’ve probably already figured out that this is a variant of the Fischer-Tropsch process which is currently used to produce a gasoline-like hydrocarbon fuel for syngas.

The project is headed by Robert Dorner who is a chemist with the Naval Research Laboratory based in Washington, D.C. Dorner, along with several other researchers have published a paper on the project, “Catalytic CO2 hydrogenation to feedstock chemicals for jet fuel synthesis“.

Dorner notes that CO2 is not often used in the Fischer-Tropsch process due to its instability but due to its abundance and concerns about global climate change, it becomes a feedstock of interest.

Biofuels has been compared with fossil fuels, blamed for worldwide starvation, linked to CO2 increases and decreases, and born the brunt of scrutiny for rainforest destruction (aka land use). However, until now, biofuels have yet to receive a real beating on water use. Well, that day may be on the horizon with the release of the new Rice University study, “The Water Footprint of Biofuels: A Drink or Drive Issue?”

The paper studies the relationship between agrofuels and water shortage issues. The study’s lead author was Pedro Alvarez, George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and was funded by Rice University’s Shell Center for Sustainability.

The WorldWatch Institute has declared, “Water scarcity may be the most under appreciated global environmental challenge of our time,” and the Environmental Protection Agency has predicted that in the U.S. 36 states will suffer water shortages within the next five years if water use continues unchecked.

The report states, “As biofuel production increases, a growing need exists to understand and mitigate potential impacts to water resources, primarily those associated with the agricultural stages of the biofuel life cycle (e.g. water shortages and water pollution)–herein referred to as the water footprint.”

The report recommends that specific biofuel crops should be grown in certain regions. For example, corn for ethanol should be grown in states like Iowa where only one percent of the crops are irrigated, whereas significantly less corn should be grown in Nebraska where 61 percent of corn is irrigated. The report ultimately calls for more attention to the water footprint of biofuels as policies and mandates are put into place. However, it also states that with careful water usage planning, sustainable agricultural practices and energy conservation we can, “have our drive and drink our water too.”

The industry is not taking the concern over water lying down. Advanced biofuels are being developed with the need to use significantly less water and seed companies are developing hybrids that will ultimately cut water needs in half per acre. Like the continual debate as to the reality of global warming, we may be on the verge of a long debate on whether the world really has water quality and shortage issues.