EDP Renewables Signs 115-MW PPA with TVA
EDP Renewables, through its subsidiary Horizon Wind Energy, has entered into a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement with Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to sell 115 megawatts (MW) of renewable wind energy from the first phase of its Pioneer Prairie Wind Farm located in Mitchell and Howard Counties in Iowa.
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EDP Renewables Signs 115-MW PPA with TVA
Summer Rayne Oakes: Green Never Looked So Good
For a lanky brunette from northeastern Pennsylvania, walking the runway during New York City’s Fashion Week might seem like a dream come true. But when Summer Rayne Oakes propels her 5-foot-11-inch frame down the catwalk, she’s working for a much bigger agenda — creating a sustainable planet — and fashion is just her means to that end. What other model has published papers on sewage sludge, attended the Copenhagen climate talks, and raises insects in her apartment? As an author, television correspondent, consultant, and independent businesswoman, Oakes relentlessly pursues her mission to promote a culture of sustainability. We spoke with her on the eve of Fashion Week. What are you doing for Fashion Week? I hear it’s going to be a carbon-neutral event. They’re doing a few different things to bring some sustainability into the mix. Aveda’s doing a big water campaign, eliminating bottled water and supplying reusable aluminum bottles filled with tap water. They’re serving local food and shuttling people around on pedicabs. I’m doing some behind-the-scenes coverage for Modelinia Fashion Week TV as an environmental correspondent. I’m going to attend some of the Green Shows , which happen at the same time as Fashion Week. I’ll also be walking in the deux fm show and in Ekovaruhuset. What are you going to be wearing? I actually don’t know, I haven’t even been for a fitting yet. I don’t get to see what I’m wearing until the last minute. I’m also about to launch a new project in March, so I really haven’t been paying attention. What’s the new project? It’s called S4 Style Inc., a business-to-business online marketplace that allows designers to purchase and compare sustainable materials, like organic cottons and recycled polyesters. We’re doing a private beta launch on March 1 with 30 suppliers and 1,000 items. Photo Gallery: Modeling With a Mission What prompted you to get into Internet commerce? I wanted to figure out a way to help designers become self-reliant and source things more sustainably. We want to reduce the research they have to do and spend more time designing. There’s no Coco Chanel of the green world yet, because materials aren’t easily accessible. The industry hasn’t come together as a community, and designers haven’t been informed how the supply chain integrates with design. You launched a shoe line, Zoe and Zac, with Payless last year. Did that experience help inform your business? Working with them has been wonderful. They have an incredibly well-versed sourcing team that’s been around for about 50 years now. When they approached me, it was their excitement that got me, and the idea that we’d be reaching out to an audience that’s not normally informed on environmental issues. That’s always been the core of my work. You refer to your modeling work as "cause-related modeling." Is that a term of your own making? I started using that, or "values-based modeling," as an alternative to "eco-modeling," which the press uses. It really bothered me. I was a serious scientist and wanted to be taken seriously, and "eco-model" just doesn’t command that. What’s your scientific background? I graduated from Cornell with degrees in environmental science and entomology. Why entomology? I love insects. I’ve been raising them since I was 9 years old. I didn’t pick that major at first, but I had a class with a cool professor, Cole Gilbert. He always dressed really nicely, in these bright Hawaiian shirts and khaki pants and loafers. We were walking around a lake on campus on a spring day with collecting nets, and all of a sudden he just hurls himself into the lake chasing whirligig beetles. And I thought, if someone gets that excited about a bug with a bubble on its ass, that’s where I want to be. What insects are you raising now? Right now I have a handful of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, red-backed darkling beetles, and blue death-feigning beetles. When you scare them they roll over with their legs up in the air, and you can stack up them up like chairs. Do they have names? I always have a Hercules and an Attila the Hun around. How did a budding scientist get into modeling? I realized as an undergrad that university research was only going to get me so far. I had been doing sewage sludge research and had a paper accepted for publication, but I knew it wasn’t going to change federal regulations or even land use permits. I decided if my work was going to get to a wider audience, it had to be somewhere other than the environmental industry. The most achievable thing to me seemed to be fashion. Why did fashion seem achievable? Maybe it was naïveté. I had nothing to lose. I didn’t have a clue as to what was possible or impossible. One day I got on the bus from Cornell to New York City, stayed with a friend and started meeting folks, telling them what I wanted to do. Later on I met John Cooper, a photographer doing a project with models in natural elements , and he asked me to join. We turned it into a project about sustainable development. A lot of things broke off of that. I started a curriculum, Ecofashion101, for 1st to 12th graders. I started writing a series of sustainable fashion editorials for Lucire , a global fashion magazine in Australia and New Zealand. It was really empowering doing all this while in university, laying down tracks and defining what this was all about. Was it a natural fit, or do you feel like an outsider in the fashion world? You dip in and out of it, like a wet washrag in a pail. I feel I’ve come into fashion through a strange, secret garden path and defined myself within it. Some people look at it from the outside and say you’re a model, you’re in the core. But you choose the folks you hang around, how you spend your life. You have to move in and out fluidly. Same with the environmental movement; I dip in and out with the different projects I marry myself to. British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood recently told people to stop buying so many clothes . Do you agree? Yeah, I’m not really a shopper. I don’t get enjoyment out of purchasing stuff. Once in a while I do. I went to Eco Citizen when I was in San Francisco and got some really nice stuff that I will enjoy and wear for quite some time. But I never really understood even as a kid growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania when kids would walk around the mall and buy stuff. I never got that as an activity. Also living in my New York apartment with a small closet, my wardrobe has to be edited. Less is more for me. I probably wear the same damn thing six days a week. How do you reconcile that ethic with your involvement in the fashion world? You’re out there pushing product. You have to meet people where they’re at, and if it’s someone who needs a pair of shoes or is buying something for their home, that’s the hook where you can bring them in. If you can tell your story through fashion, humor, media, consumer goods, food or technology, those are the tools we can use to connect back with something much greater and motivate people to do something greater. My passion has never been the fashion angle. It’s just a communications tool. Do you think people are still receptive to the idea of sustainable goods in this economic downturn? Will big brands continue to pursue a more sustainable ethic? The downturn has been a sobering experience. So much of green fashion was made up of these independent small boutiques that got hit hard in the downturn and couldn’t hold on. But the industry is inevitably moving toward a focus on sustainability. Women’s Wear Daily just did a survey with senior executives in the apparel supply chain, and 89 percent said the most important thing in global sourcing is sustainability. Whether they like it or not, they’re moving. As more big corporations start talking about sustainability, do you think there’s a bigger danger of greenwashing? I don’t think it’s that easy to greenwash any more. There are a lot of watchdog groups out there that keep people in check. Some people maybe don’t purposely greenwash, but need to stay away from vague language. Sustainability hasn’t been defined, and it’s part of the industry’s responsibility to do that. I’m part of the Eco Working Group for the apparel industry, and we’re shaping that language, but it’s going to take a few years. Do you plan to go back to science at some point? I crave it, to be honest. I deeply crave it. Lately I’ve been more of a publicist than a practitioner, and now I’m craving that practitioner role. It’s hard for me. In many ways I still operate as an environmental scientist. Maybe I’m in denial. It’s like my body exists in New York City, but I operate as if I’m in a small cabin in the woods somewhere.
Continue here: Summer Rayne Oakes: Green Never Looked So Good
Summer Rayne Oakes: Green Never Looked So Good
For a lanky brunette from northeastern Pennsylvania, walking the runway during New York City’s Fashion Week might seem like a dream come true. But when Summer Rayne Oakes propels her 5-foot-11-inch frame down the catwalk, she’s working for a much bigger agenda — creating a sustainable planet — and fashion is just her means to that end. What other model has published papers on sewage sludge, attended the Copenhagen climate talks, and raises insects in her apartment? As an author, television correspondent, consultant, and independent businesswoman, Oakes relentlessly pursues her mission to promote a culture of sustainability. We spoke with her on the eve of Fashion Week. What are you doing for Fashion Week? I hear it’s going to be a carbon-neutral event. They’re doing a few different things to bring some sustainability into the mix. Aveda’s doing a big water campaign, eliminating bottled water and supplying reusable aluminum bottles filled with tap water. They’re serving local food and shuttling people around on pedicabs. I’m doing some behind-the-scenes coverage for Modelinia Fashion Week TV as an environmental correspondent. I’m going to attend some of the Green Shows , which happen at the same time as Fashion Week. I’ll also be walking in the deux fm show and in Ekovaruhuset. What are you going to be wearing? I actually don’t know, I haven’t even been for a fitting yet. I don’t get to see what I’m wearing until the last minute. I’m also about to launch a new project in March, so I really haven’t been paying attention. What’s the new project? It’s called S4 Style Inc., a business-to-business online marketplace that allows designers to purchase and compare sustainable materials, like organic cottons and recycled polyesters. We’re doing a private beta launch on March 1 with 30 suppliers and 1,000 items. Photo Gallery: Modeling With a Mission What prompted you to get into Internet commerce? I wanted to figure out a way to help designers become self-reliant and source things more sustainably. We want to reduce the research they have to do and spend more time designing. There’s no Coco Chanel of the green world yet, because materials aren’t easily accessible. The industry hasn’t come together as a community, and designers haven’t been informed how the supply chain integrates with design. You launched a shoe line, Zoe and Zac, with Payless last year. Did that experience help inform your business? Working with them has been wonderful. They have an incredibly well-versed sourcing team that’s been around for about 50 years now. When they approached me, it was their excitement that got me, and the idea that we’d be reaching out to an audience that’s not normally informed on environmental issues. That’s always been the core of my work. You refer to your modeling work as "cause-related modeling." Is that a term of your own making? I started using that, or "values-based modeling," as an alternative to "eco-modeling," which the press uses. It really bothered me. I was a serious scientist and wanted to be taken seriously, and "eco-model" just doesn’t command that. What’s your scientific background? I graduated from Cornell with degrees in environmental science and entomology. Why entomology? I love insects. I’ve been raising them since I was 9 years old. I didn’t pick that major at first, but I had a class with a cool professor, Cole Gilbert. He always dressed really nicely, in these bright Hawaiian shirts and khaki pants and loafers. We were walking around a lake on campus on a spring day with collecting nets, and all of a sudden he just hurls himself into the lake chasing whirligig beetles. And I thought, if someone gets that excited about a bug with a bubble on its ass, that’s where I want to be. What insects are you raising now? Right now I have a handful of Madagascar hissing cockroaches, red-backed darkling beetles, and blue death-feigning beetles. When you scare them they roll over with their legs up in the air, and you can stack up them up like chairs. Do they have names? I always have a Hercules and an Attila the Hun around. How did a budding scientist get into modeling? I realized as an undergrad that university research was only going to get me so far. I had been doing sewage sludge research and had a paper accepted for publication, but I knew it wasn’t going to change federal regulations or even land use permits. I decided if my work was going to get to a wider audience, it had to be somewhere other than the environmental industry. The most achievable thing to me seemed to be fashion. Why did fashion seem achievable? Maybe it was naïveté. I had nothing to lose. I didn’t have a clue as to what was possible or impossible. One day I got on the bus from Cornell to New York City, stayed with a friend and started meeting folks, telling them what I wanted to do. Later on I met John Cooper, a photographer doing a project with models in natural elements , and he asked me to join. We turned it into a project about sustainable development. A lot of things broke off of that. I started a curriculum, Ecofashion101, for 1st to 12th graders. I started writing a series of sustainable fashion editorials for Lucire , a global fashion magazine in Australia and New Zealand. It was really empowering doing all this while in university, laying down tracks and defining what this was all about. Was it a natural fit, or do you feel like an outsider in the fashion world? You dip in and out of it, like a wet washrag in a pail. I feel I’ve come into fashion through a strange, secret garden path and defined myself within it. Some people look at it from the outside and say you’re a model, you’re in the core. But you choose the folks you hang around, how you spend your life. You have to move in and out fluidly. Same with the environmental movement; I dip in and out with the different projects I marry myself to. British fashion designer Vivienne Westwood recently told people to stop buying so many clothes . Do you agree? Yeah, I’m not really a shopper. I don’t get enjoyment out of purchasing stuff. Once in a while I do. I went to Eco Citizen when I was in San Francisco and got some really nice stuff that I will enjoy and wear for quite some time. But I never really understood even as a kid growing up in northeastern Pennsylvania when kids would walk around the mall and buy stuff. I never got that as an activity. Also living in my New York apartment with a small closet, my wardrobe has to be edited. Less is more for me. I probably wear the same damn thing six days a week. How do you reconcile that ethic with your involvement in the fashion world? You’re out there pushing product. You have to meet people where they’re at, and if it’s someone who needs a pair of shoes or is buying something for their home, that’s the hook where you can bring them in. If you can tell your story through fashion, humor, media, consumer goods, food or technology, those are the tools we can use to connect back with something much greater and motivate people to do something greater. My passion has never been the fashion angle. It’s just a communications tool. Do you think people are still receptive to the idea of sustainable goods in this economic downturn? Will big brands continue to pursue a more sustainable ethic? The downturn has been a sobering experience. So much of green fashion was made up of these independent small boutiques that got hit hard in the downturn and couldn’t hold on. But the industry is inevitably moving toward a focus on sustainability. Women’s Wear Daily just did a survey with senior executives in the apparel supply chain, and 89 percent said the most important thing in global sourcing is sustainability. Whether they like it or not, they’re moving. As more big corporations start talking about sustainability, do you think there’s a bigger danger of greenwashing? I don’t think it’s that easy to greenwash any more. There are a lot of watchdog groups out there that keep people in check. Some people maybe don’t purposely greenwash, but need to stay away from vague language. Sustainability hasn’t been defined, and it’s part of the industry’s responsibility to do that. I’m part of the Eco Working Group for the apparel industry, and we’re shaping that language, but it’s going to take a few years. Do you plan to go back to science at some point? I crave it, to be honest. I deeply crave it. Lately I’ve been more of a publicist than a practitioner, and now I’m craving that practitioner role. It’s hard for me. In many ways I still operate as an environmental scientist. Maybe I’m in denial. It’s like my body exists in New York City, but I operate as if I’m in a small cabin in the woods somewhere.
Continue here:
Summer Rayne Oakes: Green Never Looked So Good
Q&A: Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy
This is a special online preview of a story appearing in the Spring 2010 issue of OnEarth . Subscribe here to receive our magazine. When he established the senior White House position of assistant to the president for energy and climate change, Barack Obama created one of the most important and politically challenging jobs in his administration. He chose someone with long experience in climate issues and Washington politics: Carol Browner, the highly effective administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from 1993 to 2001. Browner’s mandate is to create jobs, enhance energy security, and combat climate change. That means integrating the work of a variety of federal agencies; forging cooperation among federal, state, and local governments; building partnerships with the private sector; and being constantly aware of how changing political dynamics in the nation’s capital affect — and are affected by — the responsibility of the United States to be a global leader on climate change. In a conversation with James Gerstenzang, Browner made it clear that comprehensive energy legislation, with bipartisan support, remains one of the administration’s top priorities. How are you going to get 60 votes for a climate bill in the Senate, given that you have not only opposition from the Republicans but disagreements within your own party? It’s more nuanced than that, because we’ve got John Kerry, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman leading a bipartisan effort to craft legislation that won’t result in the same sort of squabbles that perhaps have existed previously. If the price of getting 60 votes is to risk weakening the legislation, wouldn’t it be more effective to simply act administratively? Well, because of a 2007 Supreme Court decision, the EPA has authority [to regulate CO2 as a pollutant] under the existing Clean Air Act. The science proves that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The next steps in the process are the proposed rules, the first-ever greenhouse gas standards for cars. And what the president has said repeatedly is that we’re going to follow the science, we’re going to follow the law. But in the meantime, we want comprehensive energy legislation, because we need all the pieces of the puzzle. The administration’s pitch for climate legislation seems to be based on the economic arguments. When we look at what’s going to stimulate private-sector capital investments in the new energy future, it’s comprehensive energy reform. That’s where we are going to give the business community the predictability that allows them to make those investments. History is a perfect guide. Every time we have a debate, for example, about the Clean Air Act and acid rain, some industry says it absolutely cannot be done. We set a standard, or Congress sets it, or the EPA sets it, and guess what happens? American innovation and ingenuity find a cheaper, faster way to solve the problem. There are lots of people in the business community who will tell you that’s exactly what is going to happen if we put a cap on carbon and set a renewable electricity standard. Then you will see the capital investment. And with that will come the jobs. Any estimates on numbers? Our latest figures show that by the end of 2009 the outlays and tax credits for clean energy saved or created 52,000 clean energy jobs. Rather than retrofitting a coal-fired power plant from the 1950s or 1960s people are going to be making the component parts of a clean energy future, whether it be the batteries for the new generation of vehicles, or the bio-fuels, or the wind turbines, or the solar cells. Those manufacturing facilities have to be profitable here in the United States, and the way to make them profitable, to guarantee them a market, is to set the standards. Germany has a huge percentage of the world’s manufacturing jobs. Why did that happen? Because they had a clean energy policy, and so businesses were prepared to make the investments that created those jobs. And what happens in Congress will also shape the attitude of business. Yes, the second step would be comprehensive energy legislation, so there’s absolute clarity in the business community as to what’s going to be expected of them. I meet with business people every week, and lots of companies say they are sitting on making investments right now because they don’t know what the rules are going to be. We have a lot of folks who believe we are in danger of missing out on the global opportunities for clean energy technology. How much political capital is the president willing to spend on this, with everything else on his plate? You know, you don’t get the job to do the easy work. You get the job to do the hard work. When people said we couldn’t do it in the House, the president went to work and we passed in the House. There were people who said he shouldn’t go to [the U.N. climate conference in] Copenhagen. But he went and he made it a hugely important step forward on the global commitment to climate change. Now we need to do the rest of it and get a binding international treaty. The president has said repeatedly that this is one of his priorities, that it’s absolutely essential in terms of moving our country forward in this global market for clean energy. What’s your overall assessment of Copenhagen, as you look in the rearview mirror? We are very pleased with what we were able to achieve. It was, I think, a direct result of the president’s personal engagement. To me, he really ended up being the person putting the deal together by working with the various groupings of interested countries: China, India, Brazil, South Africa, the coalition of African nations, Europeans. And I think we got things that we haven’t gotten before, for example, commitments on transparency that are hugely encouraging. Jonathan Pershing, the lead U.S. negotiator in Copenhagen, has raised the idea of focusing more on bilateral agreements and less on the U.N. process. Might that not isolate the United States from its natural allies, such as the small island nations, which are at immediate risk from sea-level rise, or the European Union? We need to do both. The U.N. process is important because it gives every country an equal voice. But it’s not our process. At the same time, we worked with China on some important bilateral commitments and similarly with India. The magnitude of the problem and the need for global action is such that we want to take advantage of all appropriate forums, using every tool available to achieve real reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. In the past, China has tended to take a wait-and-see approach, to see what we would do first. Well, we have taken tremendous actions over the last year. If you look at our domestic agenda, it starts with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. A study was just published that shows we may have the best year ever in terms of investments in renewable energy. We recently announced $2.3 billion in tax credits for the manufacture of renewable components. So we’re not just putting up the facilities, building the solar farms, the wind farms, the geothermal plants. We’re also investing in the manufacturing. If you look back at what the administration has done on global warming, what one thing would you change? I think we’ve been very successful in using our executive authority, whether it’s on appliance standards or the work going on around fuels. You have two ways to create change from a broader perspective: one is through the legislative process and the other is through executive authority, and I think we have moved very successfully on both fronts. So no regrets? Well, you always want to do more. If you do six efficiency standards, you want to do twelve. But we have to do these in ways that are defensible. Also, we inherited eight years of inaction. In the first year of an administration, a lot of what you do is framed and set by what the prior administration did. Going into your second year, what’s the one thing you see as essential? Getting Congress to pass comprehensive energy legislation.
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Q&A: Carol Browner, Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy