Green Roof Resource

With Wall Street officially in a bear market, I was curious to see what effects if any the subprime mortgage mess and other woes have had on the environmental field.

Simply hired, an online job search service and aggregator, provides data on the number of postings over time with specific terms. While this is only as good as the aggregator and doesn’t reflect hiring, I found the results interesting. I looked at four general terms within job postings: sustainability, environmental engineer, environmental scientist, and green building. The first and last terms fit into the growing “green collar jobs” while the middle two are more traditional job areas for environmentally minded folk. What I found interesting is that while those “green collar jobs” are growing (by 47% for “sustainability” and 16% for “green building”), they represent a fraction of jobs in the sector. What is more disconcerting is that the general trend since November of 2006 in posts for environmental engineer and environmental science decreases by by 37% and 42% respectively. The postings for these positions are ten times the number of those with sustainability or green building in them. With that in mind, while “green collar jobs” are growing, those traditional environmental job postings are disappearing at an alarming rate. Where’s a bull when you need one?

Sustainability, Environmental Engineer, Green Building, Environmental Science trends

Sustainability jobs | Environmental Engineer jobs | Green Building jobs | Environmental Science jobs

Yesterday an article in TreeHugger summarized a map put together by Earth2Tech on CleanTech startups. The commentary mentioned that the map focused more on the US and specifically Silicon Valley. Regardless, it does a nice job of categorizing clean technology into renewable energy types, electric cars, and energy storage.

There are a number of clean tech support companies working to enable cleantech startups. Using Mapufacture, I was able to incorporate the data generated by Earth2Tech and add to it to include clean tech support companies. I’ve displayed the map below, and a full scale version with additional information can be accessed here. Any comments or additional information on companies supporting clean tech would be appreciated.

For those interested in learning more about the economic valuation of the environmental benefits of green roofs, Environmental, Science, & Technology released a paper that I co-authored on the topic. “Green Roof Valuation: A Probabilistic Economic Analysis of Environmental Benefits” summarizes the benefits over the lifetime of a green roof taking into account benefits due to energy savings, reduced stormwater fees, and potential savings under market-based valuation of air emissions uptake. This is presented in a probabilistic manner to aid decision-makers when considering a green roof or policies to encourage green roof adoption.

ES&T Policy News, June 13th, reported on a greenhouse gas mitigation guide published by Duke University and Environmental Defense. The guide provides case studies of projects that sequester CO2 (e.g no-till farming, afforestation). An online preview version is available from the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions . The guide provides a non-technical overview of the CO2 offset market, technical information for preparing land to enter the market, and information on quantifying CO2 offset allowances for different types of planted environments.

While the Chicago Climate Exchage (CCX) does accept CO2 offets, many CO2 markets do not due to the uncertainty of CO2 uptake and the complexities of verifying that the CO2 sequestration status of the land is not affected by changes in land use. This guide helps to address and reduce some of the risk involved in sequestion credits.

An article in PNAS this week reports that biofuel production results in a positive net energy balance (NEB). Several reports have suggested that the inclusion of energy required to produce farm equipment results in negative NEBs. However, this study found no evidence of that claim. Ethanol, produced from corn grain, yields 25% more energy than required for production with most of the NEB accounting for the cogeneration of animal feed. Soybean-based biodiesel yields 93% more energy than required for production.

Environmental Impact

Environmental impacts due to biofuel production are also less than conventional fuel production. Overall, soybean-based biodiesel came out on top for lease environmental impact. This is due to fertilizer and pesticide use as well as total greenhouse gas emissions.

Fertilizer application and pesticides are applied in greater amounts for the production of corn than soybeans. Soybean biodiesel production requires 0.01N, .083 P, and .13 of pesticides (by weight) of that needed for corn ethanol production). The type of pesticides used in corn production is also more harmful than those pesticides used in soybean production.

Greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are less for both biofuels than conventional fossil fuels when evaluating production from agricultural lands currently in use. However, conversion of all corn and soybean production in the US to biofuel production would supply only 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand. Converting land to meet more of the fuel demand through biofuels would reduce the benefit and possibly increase GHGs.

Environmental Economics

The article also discusses the economics of fossil fuel energy versus biofuel energy production. Current federal subsidies make the average cost competitive with subsidies of $0.20 per energy equivalent liter (EEL) for ethanol and $0.29 per EEL for biodiesel. With 2005 production of ethanol exceeding wholesale gasoline prices by $0.02 per EEL and biodiesel production exceeding diesel wholesale production by $0.09 per EEL, one wonders if the subsidies go too far. The fuel subsidy does not include federal crop subsidies that lower corn and soybean prices for biofuel producers. Half of the operating cost for ethanol production is due to corn prices.

Until an economic analysis can be performed that translates the benefits of reduced environmental impact due to biofuel production versus fossil fuel production, the appropriateness of the subsidy amounts is unknown. However, bringing the costs per EEL down below wholesale fuel prices creates a competitive market. If fuel prices continue to rise, demand for biofuels should increase.

All in all, an informative and timely article. While biofuels are not practical for complete replacement of fossil fuels, they are one tool that should be explored further. Additional investigations into the environmental and economic impact of switchgrass and reclaimed vegetable oil should follow to compare non-food based agriproducts as biofuels.