The Great Lakes Zephyr - Wind Energy & Hydrogen Journal

Two new stories from ENN,

First:

Tuesday, October 28, 2003
By Alister Doyle, Reuters


MOSCOW — With solutions costing up to a mind-numbing $18,000,000,000,000,000, it is among the most expensive questions in history: How do you stop people from causing dangerous global warming?

Eighteen quadrillion dollars is almost 600 times the 2002 world gross domestic product, estimated by the World Bank at $32 trillion. If you glued 18 quadrillion dollar bills end to end, they would stretch way past Pluto.

Luckily, most estimates of the costs of curbing global warming by the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) run to just hundreds of trillions of dollars over 100 years — a relative pin prick for a growing world economy.

But the costs of cleaning up human emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide produced by factories and cars and of shifting toward cleaner energies such as solar or wind power are starting to give governments nightmares.

"The long-term costs could be enormous," said Andrei Illarionov, an adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin who has backed away from previous promises to quickly ratify the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol on curbing global warming.

Kyoto, a tiny first step towards reining in human emissions of nontoxic carbon dioxide from fossil fuels blamed for blanketing the planet and driving up temperatures, will collapse without Russia's approval. The United States pulled out in 2001.

"Maybe the money would be better spent on promoting economic growth, on ending poverty, or on helping developing nations," he told a climate conference in Moscow this month, pointing to the highest IPCC estimate of almost $18 quadrillion by 2100.

Bush Says Kyoto Costs Too Much

Beyond Kyoto, which runs to 2012, climate experts say quadrillions of dollars in the 21st century may hang on interpretations of the word "dangerous."

At root is the 1992 U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, ratified by the United States, which aims for "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic (human) interference with the climate system."

A heat wave in Europe this year killed about 15,000 people in France. About 1,300 died in a heat wave in India. There were 562 tornadoes in the United States in May, more than any month on record. Was any of that caused by humans and "dangerous?"

If so, humanity would have to start...(Read on in: Global warming, the quadrillion dollar question)

And second:

Tuesday, October 28, 2003
By GreenBiz.com


WASHINGTON, D.C. — Investments in green buildings pay for themselves 10 times over, according to a new study for 40 California government agencies.

The study — by the Capital E group, Lawrence Berkley Laboratory, and participating California state agencies — is the most definitive cost-benefit analysis of green building ever conducted.

With this study, the California Department of Finance has recognized for the first time the existence of financial benefits associated with improved health productivity and lowered operations and maintenance costs in green buildings.

The California Board of Regents also drew on the early findings of this study and is moving forward in pushing for all state higher education new construction to be "green." This study, drawing on national data for 100 green buildings and an in depth review of several hundred existing studies, found that sustainable buildings are a cost-effective investment.

"Green" or "sustainable" buildings use key resources like energy, water, materials, and land much more efficiently than buildings that are simply built to code, the study points out. They also create healthier work, learning, and living environments with more natural light and cleaner air and contribute to improved employee and student health, comfort, and productivity. Sustainable buildings are cost-effective, saving taxpayer dollars by reducing operations and maintenance costs as well as by lowering utility bills.

The report concluded that financial benefits of green design are between $50 and $70 per square foot in a LEED building, more than 10 times the additional cost associated with building green. The benefits include cost savings from reduced energy, water, and waste; lower operations and maintenance costs; and enhanced occupant productivity and health.

"Total financial benefits of green buildings are over ten times the average initial investment required to design and construct a green building," concluded the authors. "Energy savings alone exceed...(Read on in: Green building investments yield high returns, says study)