At the closed Perdido Landfill in Escambia County, Florida, they’re digging into the past to eliminate old garbage that could contaminate groundwater and clear space for future trash. In the process, they’re also mining for any treasure that could help offset the cost of doing so. During its first phase, which ran from 2009 to 2011, the dig uncovered a copious amount of soil that was then used to cover up new trash, a practice required by federal and state regulations.

The project, which will start phase 2 in 2019 or 2020, is a classic case of landfill mining — an intriguing idea to address multiple growing problems worldwide: increasing population, depleting natural resources and climate change.

“I’m a big proponent of mining landfills,” says Mark Roberts, vice president of engineering consulting firm HDR and project manager for the landfill mining work at Perdido. “Garbage real estate is really valuable.”

The biggest challenge to make landfill mining work is economics, experts say. The cost of excavating trash, sorting out valuable materials such as metals and then reburying the rest tends to exceed the revenues from selling recovered materials.

“Resource recovery alone can’t justify these projects financially,” says Joakim Krook, associate professor in the Department of Management and Engineering at Linköping University in Sweden. “They need to have alternative benefits.”

However, if alternative benefits such as the value of preventing pollution, lowering greenhouse gas emissions, reducing the need to mine new materials, and making room at an old dumpsite for modern, more environmentally friendly waste disposal are factored in, landfill mining in some cases becomes an attractive option.

Making Room

Landfill mining can be traced back to a 1953 project in Israel to find fertilizers for orchards by scooping up soil from decomposed trash.

Few other projects were reported until the 1990s when, in an effort to prevent groundwater contamination and other pollution, new regulation in the U.S. required landfill owners to use plastic liners and soil to sandwich the garbage like a layer cake.

The national effort to modernize garbage dumps shut down many old landfills and required 30-year monitoring of closed dumps for groundwater contamination and methane gas production. It also forced communities to look for new space for landfills.

Digging up closed landfills to make room for new ones has been one of the goals behind some of the landfill mining projects that have sprung up since the 1990s. Other goals include eliminating a potential source of pollution, reclaiming valuable materials and acquiring waste to burn to generate steam and electricity, says Jeremy O’Brien, director of applied research at the Solid Waste Association of North America, an industry trade group.

The U.S. has seen sporadic projects scattered across the country with a variety of primary goals. For example, the main goal of a 1989 project in Connecticut was to move waste from an unlined cell to a lined one, and a 2000 effort in Iowa aimed mainly to protect groundwater and recover space.

Costs and Benefits

The costs and benefits of landfill mining can vary so widely that projects that aren’t deemed cost effective in one place could be considered worthwhile elsewhere.

The city of Denton, Texas, for instance, scrapped a project to excavate a 30-acre (12-hectare) site last year after determining that it wasn’t going to generate nearly as much revenues from selling recyclable materials, such as metals and plastics and creating new landfill space as had been anticipated back in 2015.

In southern Maine, on the other hand, a four-year reclamation work that began in 2011 created an estimated US$7.42 million worth of recovered metals, according to Travis Wagner, professor of environmental science and policy at the University of Southern Maine and co-author of a study of the project that was published in the journal Waste Management. A private scrap-metal company contracted with Ecomaine, the nonprofit owner of the landfill, to mine metals from the site.

The project dug up 34,352 metric tons (37,867 tons) of metals at an estimated cost of US$158 per metric ton. In addition to the value of the metals, Wagner pegged the economic value of the newly created landfill space at US$267,000.

The landfill wasn’t your typical garbage pile, however. It was a space reserved for the ash created by a nearby incinerator that vaporized trash from the regular landfill onsite, such as auto parts and mattress springs, to produce electricity. The process creates the ash with a concentrated amount of metals.

The ash also contains metals that are uniformly distributed in the pile. The metals included steel, silver, copper and aluminum.

“At a regular landfill, the metals aren’t uniform, and to get to the metal, you have to get rid of a lot of nasty crap and rocks. It’s expensive to process that waste,” Wagner says. “If you want to mine something, you want to know exactly what the metals are and their concentration.”

Soil and Space

The Escambia County project dug up mostly soil made from decomposed organic materials mixed with dirt used to cover the garbage. Roberts says the soil is valuable because it could be used to cover trash in the adjacent, active part of the landfill. Reusing the soil reduces the need to buy and truck in soil from elsewhere. The ability to rebury unwanted trash in the newer section of the landfill also helped to lower the project’s cost.

“A lot of the economics of it is due to transportation — you don’t have to haul mined garbage across the county,” Roberts says. Even so, the soil was only the second-most valuable item recovered. First was the room for more garbage. “The value is not necessarily in the recovered materials. It’s the air space you will gain — that’s worth a fortune,” he says.

The first phase of the project cost US$2.7 million in mining and processing the long-buried waste, and another US$3 million to build new landfill space of 2.8 million cubic yards (2.1 million cubic meters), Roberts says. That new space will bring in US$60 million in fees charged to haulers. Overall, the return on the investment is at least fivefold, he says.

Similarly, a 2015 project in Washington State didn’t generate a lot of money from recovered metals, mostly unidentifiable rusty pieces, but it cleared out space for a new stormwater detention pond and created a new landfill space, or cell, in the pond’s former location.

“It was not a spectacular success in terms of recovering resources. However, we did successfully relocate the waste into a modern cell to mitigate risk to the environment,” says Pat McLaughlin, director of solid waste division for King County, which operates the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill. “We were able to upgrade our stormwater detention system and increase landfill capacity in the new cell.”

The project took place in part of Cedar Hills that began burying trash in the 1970s, next to an area built to modern standards. The project provided good lessons for the county to experiment with excavating and relocating old garbage, an undertaking that could be under consideration in the future, McLaughlin says.

Shifting the Balance

Currently landfill mining projects are few and far between. However, some see that due to change.

A good number of academic and government-funded research projects in Europe, including in the United Kingdom, Belgium, Sweden and Germany, are working to shift the cost-benefit balance of mining materials from landfills by bringing down the sorting costs and factoring in the value of the environmental benefits that can be gained. Projects range from improving the technology for sorting and recovering materials to calculating environmental benefits, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions, from using previously mined materials, says Krook.

Available landfill space plays a role, too. Trash generation is rising globally and projected to increase by 70 percent and reach 3.4 billion metric tons (3.7 billion tons) per year by 2050, according to the World Bank. The upward global trend is echoed in the United States, which has seen the amount garbage from cities and counties grow from 217.3 million tons (197.1 million metric tons) in 1995 to 262.4 million tons (238.0 million metric tons) in 2015, the most recent data available, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“Right now, I would generally say that there’s a lot of landfill capacity out there. When supply starts to dwindle then you will see more interest in this,” O’Brien says.

While landfill mining can create values beyond pure profits, for now the waste management industry is paying more attention to solving sustainability problems through promoting recycling and other efforts that divert trash from landfills.

“It always seems silly that we put in all this energy to produce these materials and goods, and then we dispose perfectly good materials,” Wagner says.

“Meanwhile, we are mining and producing more virgin materials.”

O’Brien echoes the sentiment. “Once we stop new materials from reaching landfills, then we can focus on reclaiming old ones,” he says.

This story was originally published in Ensia.

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A letter sent from Austria’s EU council presidency to the Polish organisers on Friday, shared with Climate Home News, gives an indication of how the EU hopes to progress its agenda when diplomats arrive in the Silesian city of Katowice for the Cop24 meeting.

The bloc’s divisions with Poland on climate are well documented.

In a nutshell, Brussels wants to lead from the front, pushing all member states to make deeper carbon cuts. That was made clear on Wednesday by commission president Jean-Claude Juncker, who endorsed his climate commissioner’s recent call for increased targets. Poland has consistently resisted higher EU goals.

The letter details how the EU believes Poland and the current climate presidency Fiji should run a key event at the talks, the Talanoa Dialogue.

The EU wants the event to trigger governments to consider “enhancing climate action,” according to a negotiator for the bloc. Among other things, this will mean all governments drafting new climate targets.

“With the commission proposal for the EU [2050 climate strategy] coming forward before the Cop, the EU will be in a good position to do so,” said the negotiator.

Climate Home News spoke to the head of the Polish presidency Michał Kurtyka in Warsaw. He said discussions over the European 2050 target would be “very intense”.

“We look forward to this discussion with the hope that Europe will be able to speak with one voice at Katowice,” he said.

The Talanoa Dialogue “is the first political moment after the Paris Agreement in 2015 to take stock of progress towards the long term temperature goal of the agreement,” said the EU negotiator. “We think it is important for the credibility of the process to give the Talanoa Dialogue sufficient space at the Cop, to recognise the science and to capture the political momentum in a robust and forward looking way.”

In the letter, the heads of the EU’s climate delegation, Helmut Hojesky and Elina Bardram, rejected a suggestion from the Polish and Fijian organisers that countries be allowed to participate without sending a minister.

The event should be “at least at ministerial level, if not higher,” they wrote. To attract ministers, it must be “visible to the media and the general public.” They also suggested inviting the UN secretary general Antonio Guterres.

They said the event should contain a briefing on the UN’s special scientific report on the impacts of 1.5C of global warming, which is due to be finalised in October. The latest leaked draft said the difference between that and 2C, once seen as the “safe” warming threshold, was “substantial.”

At talks last week in Bangkok, the Fijians and Poles canvassed delegations for their thoughts on how the event should run. The EU followed up with the letter detailing their suggestions. The Polish presidency did not respond to questions regarding the EU’s letter. A Fijian spokesman said the input was a “normal part of the process.”

This story was originally published in Climate Home News.

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Rajesh was just 10 years old when we met. His days were spent standing on tiptoe to dunk computer circuit boards into big vats of hot acid. He had gloves but no goggles, and the acid splashed his shirt. He had an incessant cough and drank alcohol at night to ward off dizziness caused by the fumes.

Rajesh had moved with his older brother from the Indian countryside to work in Mandoli, a suburb of the Indian capital New Delhi, which has become a charnel house of the digital world. The vats of acid that he tended removed the copper from the circuit boards so it could then be sold to a nearby factory that made copper wire. Somebody made a profit. But in the acrid air and with local well water contaminated by toxic metals, Rajesh’s future looked bleak

This scene in Mandoli is a disturbing face of a vast global business in recycling electronic waste. Between 20 and 50 million metric tons (22 and 55 million tons) of used computers, TVs, air conditioners, mobile phones, refrigerators, light bulbs and other e-waste is produced every year around the world. All of it has to go somewhere, and all of it contains valuable metals — including toxic lead, cadmium and mercury — that are worth reclaiming for future use.

Right now the “urban mining” of precious metals from e-waste is largely an environmental and social nightmare, polluting landscapes and poisoning its practitioners.

But it needn’t be like this.

Contrast Mandoli with the scene at Skellefteå, a neat Swedish gold-mining town close to the Arctic Circle with a famous hockey team. Here a giant industrial smelter operated by Boliden, one of the world’s largest e-waste recycling companies, last year smelted almost 80,000 metric tons (88,000 tons) of scrap e-waste, much of it circuit boards cut from European computers and mobile phones, to extract copper, gold, silver and other precious metals. No vats of acid; no acrid fumes; no 10-year-old workers.

The automated process operates to European environmental and health and safety standards. It is equipped with systems to clean process gases and prevent dust releases. Waste heat generated during smelting is circulated to heat local buildings; and the scant leftovers from smelting are buried in purpose-build stores under the site.
Could this bode a better future for e-waste? Perhaps so. Mainstream metals refining companies are now sniffing profits from e-waste and touting for business from the U.S. to China.

China’s Mixed Bag

Umicore in Hoboken, Belgium, a longstanding European metals refiner, is getting ever more of its raw materials from e-waste. The company’s director of European Union government affairs, Christian Hagelüken, says its smelters can extract 400 grams (14 ounces) of gold from a metric ton (1.1 tons) of mobile phones, along with copper, silver, lead, tin and indium. After smelting, the metals in the waste stream are chemically separated. The plastic casings go into the smelter, where they are burned to provide most of the fuel for the facility.

“Over 95 percent of the feed is turned into useful products,” Hageluken says. The final 5 percent includes toxic elements like mercury and cadmium that have to be disposed of “in a safe way,” plus slag that is used for constructing flood-protection dikes along the Belgian coast.

Such advanced processing plants are also turning up in the developing world. China in particular is keen to replace its notorious e-waste villages with high-tech e-waste metals recovery. Its flagship company, GEM Co. Ltd., says on its website that it aims “to become the world leader in green enterprises.”

Not every Chinese company is so fastidious as GEM claims to be, however. When Thai police raided the Chinese-owned Wai Mei Dat Recycling complex east of Bangkok in May this year, they found illegal workers burning waste in the open and spewing dioxin from plastics into the air. The surreptitious site had been found by the Basel Action Network (BAN), a non-governmental organization that researches international trade in waste, using tracking devices attached to e-waste.

U.S. Initiatives

In the United States, most e-waste is landfilled. A study five years ago paid for by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 8.5 percent of collected e-waste was exported, with Mexico, Venezuela, Paraguay and China among the most popular destinations.

Some of that trade is legitimate. California-based ERI collects hundreds of thousands of tons of e-waste a year across the U.S., which it shreds and sells either to its partner Alcoa’s smelter in Massena, New York, or to LS Nikko, an established copper-smelting giant in South Korea.

But the BAN has accused several American companies of “scam recycling” — that is, advertising recycling services that simply export to places such as Pakistan and the Philippines where the waste is “smashed, burned or treated with dangerous chemicals” by migrant workers.

Some electronics manufacturers are taking the initiative to improve practice, however. Dell has been collecting old equipment for a decade to pass on to recyclers for the extraction of precious metals. Apple recently rolled out a robot able to dismantle iPhones, sorting components for ease of recycling “so we can recover materials that traditional recyclers can’t,” according to the company’s 2018 environmental responsibility report.

The company claims to recover aluminum, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin, silver, tantalum, gold, palladium and various rare earths. It intends to install the robot, known as Daisy, in many consumer countries, with the eventual aim of using only recycled materials in its production processes.

Good Business

E-waste recycling is about more than good housekeeping. What is really driving the industry is the discovery that, in a world where the prices of metals are rising and most conventional mines are in distant countries with poor-grade ores, urban mining of e-waste is good business.

Copper and gold, which make up more than half the value in e-waste, are now often cheaper to obtain from jettisoned products, says Xianlai Zeng, an associate professor of solid waste management at Tsinghua University in Bejing, China. “Urban mining of e-waste is becoming more cost-effective than virgin mining,” he concluded in a recent paper, after studying the economics of eight recycling plants in the country.

This is not so surprising. There is more gold in a ton of mobile phones than in a ton of ore from a gold mine. One estimate is that all the e-waste discarded annually round the world contains more than 300 tons of gold.

Zeng’s analysis concluded that, with some government subsidies, urban mining in China could recover copper at less than US$2 a kilogram (2 pounds), which is less than a third of the international market price.

“The total value of all raw materials present in e-waste is estimated at approximately US$55 billion in 2016, which is more than the 2016 gross domestic product of most countries in the world,” says Cornelis Balde, a researcher with the United Nations University to Tokyo.

Huge Opportunities

Some fear that the potential profits from urban mining will lead to an upsurge in rogue operators, with escalating environmental and safety hazards. But more likely — just as poor regular miners soon get muscled out by big corporations when a new geological seam provides rich pickings — urban mines will soon be the preserve of the big operators.

Yet they have a ways to go. Zeng estimates only 20 percent of e-waste is currently handled by the “clean” sector of big companies using largely automated processes. About 40 percent ends up in places like Mandoli, in China’s notorious villages around Guiyu in Guangdong province, or in Agbogbloshie, a district in Accra, the capital of Ghana, which some say is currently the world’s largest e-waste dump. The remaining 40 percent is uncharted, often stored in drawers or attics or disposed of in landfills.

“There are huge business opportunities in e-waste recycling, especially in the big countries of e-waste generation,” says Zeng. So sending our e-waste to the back streets of India and China is not only ethically unacceptable, it is also a missed business opportunity at home.

Many ethically concerned consumers are conflicted about recycling e-waste. They applaud the virtues of recycling, but fear the stuff they are done with may end up polluting a Chinese village or poisoning Indian children. With increased awareness of the opportunities in urban mining, that dilemma could soon end.

The post A better way to recycle e-waste appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Malcolm Turnbull will be replaced by Scott Morrison, his treasurer, who defeated challenger Peter Dutton 45 votes to 40 for the leadership of the governing right-wing Liberal party.

One of the most dramatic weeks in Australia’s political history began with Turnbull’s admission that he could not pass his signature energy reform – the National Energy Guarantee (Neg). Rebels in his party, led by former prime minister and arch conservative Tony Abbott, had refused to back a policy that would have set – relatively weak – emissions targets for the power sector.

That led to a leadership challenge from Dutton on Tuesday, which narrowly failed. But Turnbull bled support throughout the week as ministers resigned across the government. He did not contest the vote on Friday.

In a valedictory press conference, Turnbull said his party, which governs in coalition with the Nationals, was unable to implement a climate change policy.

“I think the truth is that the coalition finds it very hard to get agreement on anything to do with emissions. The National Energy Guarantee is a vitally important piece of reform,” said Turnbull.

Turnbull said the opposition to action on climate change within his own party was an article of faith.

“Emissions issues and climate policy issues have the same problem within the coalition of bitterly entrenched views that are more ideological views than views based, as I say, on engineering and economics. It’s a bit like same-sex marriage used to be, almost an insoluble problem,” said Turnbull, who oversaw marriage reform this year despite strong internal opposition from the right.

“As for what the future holds in terms of energy policy, again you’ll have to talk to Scott about that,” said Turnbull.

Speaking to the media on Friday, Morrison would not be drawn on the future of the Neg. His new deputy Josh Frydenberg was Turnbull’s environment and energy minster and was responsible for developing the climate policy.

Morrison, ostensibly the moderate candidate, made global headlines last year when he entered parliament brandishing a lump of coal. But he has also said cheap power from new coal plants is a “myth”.

The election of Morrison diminishes the immediate likelihood of Australia exiting the Paris climate agreement, which observers said was possible under a Dutton prime ministership. Dutton is aligned with Abbott, who has repeatedly called for Australia to follow Donald Trump’s US out of the deal.

But the narrowness of the leadership contest shows conservative, Abbott-aligned forces are powerful within the party. Environmental advocates called on Morrison to immediately clarify his position on the Paris deal.

Australian Conservation Foundation CEO Kelly O’Shanassy said: “Australia signed up to Paris in good faith. As one of the highest polluters per person in the world, if we were to capitulate on our responsibilities there would be rightful international condemnation and more unnecessary climate damage at home.”

Greens leader Richard di Natale said the only option for Australia to develop a response to climate change was to vote the government out of office.

“They have no climate policy, no energy policy and no economic policy and the paralysis is likely to continue. They are unfit to govern,” he said.

Di Natale called the Liberals “a bunch of spiteful, backwards-looking, anti-immigration, climate deniers with no economic plan. It’s time to turf them out and make a fresh start”.

Turnbull said he would leave the parliament, triggering a by-election and leaving Morrison with no majority in the lower house. Ties will be resolved by the speaker, Liberal party member Tony Smith, whose vote means Turnbull’s resignation will not immediately bring down the government.

Australia is due to hold elections within the next nine months. The Labor opposition is leading in the polls.

This story was originally published on Climate Home News.

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On the rocky beach at Little Girls Point County Park in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, the heavy wash of Lake Superior seeking the shore rolls stones the size of softballs back and forth in the surf.

The power and immensity of the lake seems immutable. If there is anything in nature that will withstand the passing of time, this inland ocean would seem a likely candidate.

Peter Annin knows better. The author of The Great Lakes Water Wars, which examines the fight to protect the lakes from an encroaching and increasingly water-starved world, has stood in the dry ocean bed of Central Asia’s Aral Sea and reflected upon the fragility of such seemingly infinite resources. The Aral was once the fourth largest inland body of water in the world. But the Soviet diversion of Aral water in the 1950s to grow crops dried up 90 percent of the lake in the span of a generation.

“Standing in the middle of the seafloor in a place where the water was once forty-five feet deep, the magnitude of the disaster can be difficult to grasp — nothing but sand stretches off to the horizon in all directions,” Annin wrote in his book. “Photos cannot capture the true extent of this ecological calamity; it even challenges the bounds of the written word.”

At least partly because of the lesson learned from the fate of the Aral Sea, withdrawals from Lake Superior and its four sister lakes are regulated by a hard-won eight-state protective agreement called the Great Lakes Compact and a companion document that provides oversight in Ontario and Quebec.

Hammered out over five years, the compact, aimed at keeping Great Lakes water in the Great Lakes, was approved by the legislatures of all eight states bordering the Great Lakes, Congress and the Canadian provinces and signed into law by President George W. Bush on Oct. 3, 2008.

The soon-to-be-celebrated 10th anniversary of the compact’s creation comes at a time when the durability and effectiveness of the agreement are under close scrutiny. With a major proposed diversion being challenged in court and scientists warning of climate-driven drought in coming decades, the 10-year-milestone offers a timely opportunity to consider whether the compact is working as intended and whether it is likely to withstand the political challenges that will come with fending off a thirsty world.

Pressure Off

The Great Lakes Compact prohibits new or increased diversions outside the Great Lakes basin with limited exceptions for communities and counties that straddle the basin boundary and meet rigorous standards. It asks states to develop water conservation plans, collect water use data, and produce annual water use reports. Great Lakes states as well as Ontario and Quebec are to keep track of impacts of water use in the basin.

A few diversions have been approved under the compact, including withdrawals from Lake Michigan by New Berlin and Waukesha in Wisconsin. The Waukesha diversion of 8.2 billion gallons (31 billion liters) a day was especially controversial. While the city is outside the basin, it is located in a county that straddles the boundary. The dispute took six years to resolve, with Great Lakes states finally approving the request in 2016.

The latest test of the document comes with the controversial approval by Wisconsin of a giant Taiwanese-owned factory near Racine. The city requested a diversion from Lake Michigan of 7 million gallons a day (nearly 27 million liters). Of that, according to the state Department of Natural Resources, 5.8 millions gallons (22 million liters) a day will be used by Foxconn Technology Group to manufacture liquid-crystal display screens. The plant, the size of three Pentagons, is projected to create 13,000 jobs.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources says the factory’s withdrawal satisfies the terms of the compact — including returning a specified amount of water to the lake. But environmentalists and others disagree. Midwest Environmental Advocates has filed a legal challenge of the agency’s decision to approve the withdrawal. The group argues that the diversion ignores a key requirement in the compact — that all water withdrawn from the Great Lakes basin must be used for public water supply purposes.

Annin, who has just completed a second edition of his book, points out the irony of compact disputes to date all originating within the Great Lakes region and not from more far-flung and ambitious diversion proposals by water-needy entities elsewhere in the world.

Indeed, a private company’s failed 1998 plan to ship Great Lakes water to Asia was a shocking reminder that others in the world had their eyes on the lakes as a solution to their water problems. But such schemes, including ones to pipe water to dry western states such as New Mexico and Arizona, seem to have been short-circuited by the compact, according to Annin.

“The Great Lakes compact has successfully taken the pressure off the Great Lakes Basin,” says Annin. “It’s almost nonexistent right now because of the compact. If anyone was considering it, they have turned away to look for other avenues.”

Others agree that the compact has done what it was intended to do — regulate diversions, encourage water conservation, and provide for more data collection on water use.

Todd Ambs, now campaign director of the advocacy group Healing Our Waters – Great Lakes Coalition, was the head of the water division for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and represented the state in the development of the compact. He says the very fact that proposals such as the Waukesha and Foxconn diversions are being debated under the terms of the compact show that the agreement is providing necessary oversight.

“You wouldn’t even be grappling with these questions or asking them if you didn’t have the compact,” says Ambs. “These are big issues, big questions and the compact lays out a framework for dealing with them.” Ambs says the compact “is regarded as one of the most significant public water policy achievements in the world.”

Karen Hobbs, senior policy analyst on water issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the compact has provided what has been a largely successful means to manage Great Lakes water. It provided a way for Great Lakes states and Canadian provinces to work together that didn’t exist before.

“I think it’s a seminal milestone in terms of managing the water in the Great Lakes Basin,” says Hobbs.

Hobbs adds, however, that the compact is not without faults. She says implementation has been a slow process for some states, especially efforts to put conservation measures in place.

And some say that the approval of Foxconn reveals weaknesses in the compact’s language. While most new diversions are banned under the compact, the Foxconn withdrawal was approved under the provision that allows straddling communities to apply for a diversion. In such cases, the governor of the state has the final say, bypassing approval by all the compact states.

John Dickert, president and CEO of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, says it sets a dangerous precedent. “If we allow cracks in the armor,” he says, “then the armor is no good.”

Hobbs, however, says the compact is relatively young as far as such agreements go and that it should be viewed as a living document that is likely to be fine-tuned over time, often through difficult disputes and legal challenges similar to the Foxconn case.

Todd Jarvis, director of the Institute for Water and Watersheds at Oregon State University, agrees that amendments to such compacts are not unusual and even to be expected. He cites the Colorado River Compact, which dates from the 1920s. That agreement, he says, was signed during a period of abundant water. With the region now under siege by drought, some experts are looking to alter how the compact apportions available water.

“Things change,” says Jarvis. “So what we need to do is go back every few years and reassess where we are.”

In an article in the Environmental & Energy Law & Policy Journal, Noah Hall, an environmental lawyer from Wayne State University, said the changes wrought by climate alterations could require amendments to water compacts.

“While some of these reforms can happen at the state level,” Hall wrote, “or through operational changes in compact administration, more fundamental changes will require revision of existing compacts.” Such changes will not come easy, he added, and “will require leadership and political will.”

Looming Large

Certainly, the future of water on the planet seems fraught enough to make one wonder how the compact will fare as the years pass. The most ardent supporters of the compact say that challenges abound. These include a changing climate that is expected to bring drought as well as heightened political pressure to open up what some view as an invaluable public resource now off limits to the rest of the world.

Water shortages throughout the world are on the rise, among the most visible being in the city of Cape Town in South Africa, where severe drought nearly dried up the drinking water supply. Hall, in his analysis of water compacts and climate change, said global warming is expected to lead to reductions in water supplies throughout the United States. Even the water-rich Great Lakes region will be subject to the trend, he added, with most climate models predicting water levels in the lakes dropping below historic lows in the next century.

Growing threats to the availability of water are already causing consternation in Canada, where droughts have alarmed water experts, according to John Pomeroy, director of the Global Water Futures Program at the University of Saskatchewan.

In a recent article for The Conversation, Pomeroy wrote that the program’s extensive research reveals a bleak water future for large parts of the country, with climate change reducing snow packs and increasing the likelihood of drought.
So it is easy to see why the Great Lakes loom large in the eyes of those who seek to solve their water woes. The lakes are the largest system of fresh surface water on Earth. They hold 84 percent of North America’s surface fresh water and about 21 percent of the world’s supply, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

This blue and liquid treasure may be such a powerful allure in a dry future that even a legal document such as the compact will be of little protection. Jay Famiglietti, director of the Global Institute for Water Security at Canada’s University of Saskatchewan, says water scarcity may conspire to force the opening up of the Great Lakes or other water resources as sources for water in the future. He says it is less a matter of politics than practicality, especially when it comes to growing food.

“My research has shown quite clearly that when you look at the U.S., the upper half is getting wetter while the lower half is getting drier,” says Famiglietti. “Embedded in the drying lower half are our two major food-producing regions, the Central Valley and the High Plains aquifer. The southern halves of both of these are running out of water. So it begs the question about the future. Will we move water to where food systems and food production are optimized, or will we move food production to where the water is?”

Famiglietti says he believes there are better solutions than piping in water from elsewhere, including conservation and growing crops in the proper locations. But he adds that time may be running out and that it may be necessary sooner rather than later to make a decision about tapping a resource such as the Great Lakes to grow food elsewhere in the country.

“I believe that it’s just a matter of time before — assuming we want to continue producing food at current or increased levels in the Central Valley or the High Plains — we will have to bring in water. Obviously, because there won’t be any groundwater left.”

Annin reports in an epilogue to the second edition of his book that others see Famiglietti’s prediction as inevitable and are not happy with what they believe is an effort to lock up an invaluable public resource such as the Great Lakes. Pat Mulroy, a well-known and outspoken Nevada water official, predicted that, in an age of growing water scarcity, the protections afforded by the compact would eventually be breached.

“Anything that is born of fear and paranoia, in essence, has some issues with it,” Mulroy told Annin. “There is going to come a day when somebody, somewhere, in a loud enough voice, starts talking about hoarding, saying, ‘Wait a minute folks, you’ve got 20 percent of the world’s freshwater? Why would you be able to contain and restrict it in the manner that you have?’”

Uncertain Future

Officials in the Great Lakes region recognize such sentiment and point to the compact as a forward-looking document that was put in place not only to encourage conservation but also as a hedge against the day when the world knocks on the door for water.

Environmental lawyer Hall praises that foresight. “The Great Lakes Compact states made a rare move to address a problem before it became a problem,” Hall says.

Dickert, who is also a former three-term mayor of Racine, says the compact gives shape to the desire of the region to protect its most valuable resource in the face of growing threats.

“The water wars are just beginning,” he says. “We just haven’t done a very good job of taking care of our water. The compact has reminded us that water is precious and needs [to be] looked after.”

Shawn Reilly, mayor of Waukesha, speaks about the compact from very personal experience. He helped shepherd the city’s request for a diversion through what ended up being a six-year battle for approval. Satisfying the provisions of the compact proved a complicated and difficult process, but Reilly says that is as it should be. After going through the ordeal, Reilly says he now believes future proposals for diversions from dry regions outside the basin are less likely and would be nearly impossible under the rigorous protections of the compact.

Reilly doesn’t foresee that — or the compact itself — changing, even in the face of growing water shortages.

“I don’t think the compact would change so much that it would allow water to go to Arizona,” Reilly says. “I think the world would really have to change dramatically for the politics to be such that the compact would be changed.”

Reilly adds that the large public works projects that would be required to build pipelines to move water across the country are probably too expensive to be viable. He says Waukesha’s Lake Michigan pipeline is costing US$286 million and isn’t expected to be completed until 2023.

Hall says history is on the side of the compact. “Congress has never in U.S. history amended or repealed a compact against the states’ consensus,” he says. But he also warned that, despite this history, Congress could take action in the face of a national water crisis — such as passing a public law that allocates freshwater or enacting a national water policy — that would substantially weaken or negate the protections offered by the compact.

“It’s a nice law,” Hall says, “but it’s just a law.”

So the future remains uncertain even with the compact in place. Whatever our political will, nature has a way of undoing the most carefully designed protections that humans devise and changing the face of places that we, in our naivete, believe would be unchanged forever — a beloved wilderness stand of seemingly indestructible white pine toppled by straight-line winds, a favorite stream turned warm and devoid of trout by a changing climate.

Consider Little Girls Point, where this story began. A few years ago, its beach was the classic example of a wild Lake Superior shoreline with golden stretches of sand intermingled with patches of glistening stones and agates. Above the shoreline rose a green and piney bluff.

Today, the beach is narrow and battered and littered by a tangled nightmare of bare and broken tree trunks washed down a nearby stream by an enormous storm that brought chaos and death up and down the southern shore of Lake Superior in 2016. Bluffs once green with growth are now raw and eroded and bare. Clouds of silt stain the normally crystalline water. It happened in a stormy, violent flash of a few hours on a summer afternoon.

To some extent, the fate of the Great Lakes in the end may be linked to the whim and fury of a natural world that we’ve made even more unpredictable. Regardless of the directions those winds blow, the Great Lakes Compact offers some assurance that any potential change wrought by humans will at least be well-considered.

The post The Great Lakes face a thirsty world appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The outer defensive wall of what is expected to be the world’s most expensive nuclear power station is taking shape on the shoreline of the choppy gray waters of the Bristol Channel in western England.

By the time the US$25 billion Hinkley Point C nuclear station is finished, possibly in 2028, the concrete seawall will be 12.5 meters (41 feet) high, 900 meters (3,000 feet) long and durable enough, the UK regulator and French engineers say, to withstand the strongest storm surge, the greatest tsunami and the highest sea-level rise.

But will it? Independent nuclear consultant Pete Roche, a former adviser to the UK government and Greenpeace, points out that the tidal range along this stretch of coast is one of the highest in the world, and that erosion is heavy. Indeed, observers reported serious flooding on the site in 1981 when an earlier nuclear power station had to be shut down for a week. following a spring tide and a storm surge. However well built, says Roche, the new seawall does not adequately take into account sea-level rise due to climate change.

“The wall is strong, but the plans were drawn up in 2012, before the increasing volume of melting of the Greenland ice cap was properly understood and when most experts thought there was no net melting in the Antarctic,” he says. “Now estimates of sea level rise in the next 50 years have gone up from less than 30 centimeters to more than a meter, well within the operating lifespan of Hinkley Point C — let alone in 100 years time when the reactors are finally decommissioned or the even longer period when spent nuclear fuel is likely to be stored on site.”

In fact, research by Ensia suggests that at least 100 U.S., European and Asian nuclear power stations built just a few meters above sea level could be threatened by serious flooding caused by accelerating sea-level rise and more frequent storm surges.

Some efforts are underway to prepare for increased flooding risk in the future. But a number of scientific papers published in 2018 suggest that climate change will impact coastal nuclear plants earlier and harder than the industry, governments or regulatory bodies have expected, and that the safety standards set by national nuclear regulators and the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), are out of date and take insufficient account of the effects of climate change on nuclear power.

The Problem With Flooding

Flooding can be catastrophic to a nuclear power plant because it can knock out its electrical systems, disabling its cooling mechanisms and leading to overheating and possible meltdown and a dangerous release of radioactivity. Flooding at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan as a result of the March 2011 tsunami caused severe damage to several of the plant’s reactors and only narrowly avoided a catastrophic release of radioactivity that could have forced the evacuation of 50 million people.

According to maps prepared by the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO), around one in four of the world’s 460 working commercial nuclear reactors are situated on coastlines. Many were built only 10–20 meters (30–70 feet) above sea level at a time when climate change was barely considered a threat.

In the U.S., where nine nuclear plants are within 2 miles (3 kilometers) of the ocean and four reactors have been identified by Stanford academics as vulnerable to storm surges and sea-level rise, flooding is common, says David Lochbaum, a former nuclear engineer and director of the nuclear safety project at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS).

Lochbaum says over 20 flooding incidents have been recorded at U.S. nuclear plants since the early 1980s. “The most likely [cause of flooding] is the increasing frequency of extreme events,” he says.

“There was no consideration of climate change when most U.S. plants were built,” says Natalie Kopytko, a University of Leeds researcher who has studied nuclear power plant adaptations to climate change. “They used conservative models of historical reference. Also, they were largely built at a calm period, when there were not many major storms.”

“While an accident has never yet happened due solely to sea-level rise and storms, the flooding experienced at Fukushima resembles what could occur in the future from sea-level rise,” says Kopytko.

Considering Climate Change

IAEA’s current global safety standards were published in 2011. These state that operators should only “take into account” the 18- to 59-centimeter (7- to 23-inch) sea-level rise projected by 2100 in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s fourth assessment report, published in 2007.

But those safety standards don’t factor in the most recent assessment of the IPCC, published in 2013–14. This scientific consensus report has seas rising 26 centimeters (10 inches) to 1 meter (39 inches) by 2100, depending on how far temperature continue to rise and the speed at which the polar ice caps melt.

A 1-meter (39-inch) increase, combined with high tides and a storm surge, significantly increases the risk of coasts and nuclear stations being swamped, says Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

“Nuclear stations are on the front line of climate change impacts both figuratively and quite literally,” Mann says. “We are likely profoundly underestimating climate change risk and damages in coastal areas.”

A recent study from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center expects the mean average rise to be a minimum of 65 centimeters (26 inches) by 2100.

“This 65-centimeter [rise] is almost certainly a conservative estimate,” says NASA lead author Steve Nerem, a professor of aerospace engineering sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. “Our [study] assumes that sea level continues to change in the future as it has over the last 25 years. Given the large changes we are seeing in the ice sheets today, that’s not likely.”

A Matter of Timing

Sea-level rise, averaging 3 millimeters (0.1 inches) a year worldwide — but more or less in some places depending on topography and geography — is regarded by the two global nuclear trade bodies as a future, rather than a present risk.

“The IPCC says sea-level rise is not expected to kick in for some time. It’s a very long timeline,” says WANO spokesperson Tim Jeffery.

Most reactors, says Jonathan Cobb of the World Nuclear Association, will have been long decommissioned by the time any significant sea-level rise takes place. “The industry has been taking climate change impacts into account and taking action,” Cobb says. “This has happened both before and after the Fukushima accident.”
However, flooding already is becoming much more frequent along the U.S. coastline. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), nearly all of 27 regularly measured coastal sites have experienced a significant increase in flooding since the 1950s, with the rate accelerating in many locations along the East and Gulf Coasts where many reactors are situated.

The most comprehensive research yet conducted also shows sea-level rises are accelerating as ice caps melt. Such is the speed of ice melt observed since 2007 that even the 2013 IPCC estimates of sea-level rise are thought to be outdated.

“There has been a steep increase in ice losses from Antarctica during the past decade, and the continent is causing sea levels to rise faster today than at any time in the past 25 years. This has to be a concern for the governments we trust to protect our coastal cities and communities,” says joint lead author Andrew Shepherd, professor of earth observation at the University of Leeds and principal scientific advisor to the European Space Agency.

Sea-level rise was not considered when the first British and U.S. nuclear stations were built in the 1960s. In the UK, analysis by the government’s floods and coastal erosion team found in 2012 that 12 of the country’s 19 nuclear plants would be at risk of erosion or coastal flooding by the 2080s without more protection. Those at Bradwell, Hinkley Point, Hartlepool, Sizewell, Dungeness and Oldbury were considered “high risk.”

Threats From Storms

On top of sea-level rise, the added impact of flooding from storm surges must be considered as well, scientists say. Since 1970, the magnitude and frequency of extreme sea levels (ESLs, a factor of mean sea level, tide and storm-induced increases), which can cause catastrophic flooding, have increased throughout the world, according to the Global Extreme Sea Level Analysis project. New satellite studies by the U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA, and other leading scientific institutions all show mean sea level rising and magnifying the frequency and severity of ESLs.

The destructive power of the typhoons that regularly wreak havoc across China, Japan, Korea and the Philippines has intensified by 12 to 15 percent in the past 40 years with the proportion of category 4 and 5 storms doubling or tripling. Similarly, many of the most severe recorded Atlantic hurricane seasons have taken place since 2003. And new research suggests that every 1.8 °F (1 °C) increase in global average temperatures could lead, via increased sea level and more severe storms, to a two- to sevenfold increase in the risk of surges that are the magnitude of those caused by Hurricane Katrina, which struck New Orleans and other U.S. southern coastal cities in 2005.

Some individual U.S. plants are highly vulnerable, says Kopytko. Using the global average of an annual 3-millimeter (0.1-inch) sea-level rise and taking into account natural subsidence and the latest storm data and surge levels, she calculated in 2015 that several U.S. coastal plants could be inundated by storm surges. These included the St. Lucie and Turkey Point stations in Florida.

Her research, published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, supports a 2012 Stanford University study that showed that many coastal nuclear plants are more vulnerable to inundation than was Fukushima Daiichi, including the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear plants in New Jersey, the Millstone station in Connecticut, and the Seabrook reactors in New Hampshire.

While no nuclear power plant has been in imminent danger of a meltdown because of a storm surge, there have been many close calls. Three U.S. nuclear power reactors were temporarily shut down because of Hurricane Sandy in 2012 and a fourth, Oyster Creek in New Jersey, was put on alert when water levels rose dramatically, according to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC).

The closest any U.S. station may have come to a storm-related disaster was in 1992 when Hurricane Andrew hit Florida’s Turkey Point plant. Wind gusts of 175 miles per hour (282 kilometers per hour) and a 16-foot (4.9-meter) surge did only limited damage, but if the sea levels had been as high as are now projected, it could have led to a major disaster, according to Lochbaum.

“Hurricane Andrew is historic because this is the first time that a hurricane significantly affected a commercial nuclear power plant,” wrote the NRC in a 1993 review of how Turkey Point fared during the emergency. None of the essential safety features was compromised during the storm, and the nuclear units, which had been shut down hours before the hurricane arrived, remained in a stable condition.

In 2006, if Typhoon Saomai — one of the strongest storms to hit China in 50 years, with 3.76-meter (12-foot) storm surges and 7-meter (23-foot) waves that caused 240 deaths and sank 952 ships — had landed two hours later on the coast it would have coincided with a spring tide and would almost certainly have inundated the reactors at Qinshan nuclear plant, says researcher Liu Defu of the Ocean University of China at Quinbgdao.

Reassess and Improve

The IAEA advised the 31 countries that generate commercial nuclear power to reassess their safety after the Fukushima disaster in 2011. Within days of the 2011 earthquake, China suspended approvals for new plant construction and temporarily stopped work pending tests at plants under construction.

Stress tests on reactors demanded by the IAEA and nuclear regulators after Fukushima forced the world’s nuclear operators to reassess and improve their emergency control measures, including those related to flooding. One aging British station at Dungeness, for instance, was shut down for two months in 2013 while extra flood protection measures were set in to place in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.
Since the Fukushima incident, all coastal nuclear plants have installed more powerful pumps, upgraded power supplies, and installed waterproof doors and moveable flood barriers, says the World Nuclear Association’s Cobb.

“In response to the accident [at Fukushima], reviews took place at reactors around the world, including checks of flood defenses and robustness of back-up power supplies — the so-called stress tests,” he says.

In the U.S., the NRC ordered operators to tighten their safety plans after Fukushima and Hurricane Sandy. New back-up equipment to handle flooding was installed, substations and generating stations were shored up, new batteries installed and access roads strengthened, says NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell.

“All U.S. coastal nuclear facilities are built to withstand the worst-case storm scenario,” Burnell says. “Every U.S. reactor site has completed its flooding hazard re-analysis. Forty of 49 sites have completed required focused evaluations of local intense precipitation and the plants’ available margin to safely deal with the updated hazard. These include for sea-level rise and related effects such as storm surge.”

However, few regulatory authorities around the world appear to have specifically asked operators to increase their defenses against climate-change-related dangers.

“Steps have been taken to lessen vulnerability to flooding at nuclear plants, but problems remain,” says UCS’s Lochbaum. “More portable power supplies, to give people more chance to respond to flooding have been installed. But pumps have been found to be inadequate. People spent a lot of money on new equipment after Fukushima, but it’s not always working.”

“The plant operators understand the problems of sea-level rise and extreme events,” he adds. “They look at Fukushima and take note. They have billions of dollars in assets and they don’t want to lose them. But if the regulator doesn’t require a more robust structure then it’s up to the operator, and they have shallow pockets.”

A Look to the Future

According to the World Nuclear Association, some 50 nuclear power plants are now under construction, with roughly another 150 planned. Many of the world’s new nuclear plants are being built on the coasts of Asian countries, which face floods, sea-level rise and typhoons. At least 15 of China’s 39 reactors in operation, and many of the plants it has under construction, are on the coast.

According to an IAEA spokesman, Jeffrey Donovan, the agency’s Department of Nuclear Energy hopes to publish later this year a study on how nuclear power and other energy facilities can adapt to climate change, including rising sea levels.

“Changes are happening faster than expected,” says Myles Allen, head of the Climate Dynamics Group at Oxford University’s department of physics and lead author of the upcoming IPCC 1.5 °C special report. “Standards must take climate change into account.”

The post How nuclear is preparing for climate change appeared first on Corporate Knights.

“Is seaweed a vegetable?” a wide-eyed child asks a tall man chopping kelp at a “Taste the Nature” market in the Zuiderpark city farm in The Hague.

“Well, it has lots of vitamins and minerals,” the cook, Jethro van Luijk, replies.

“It does look like spinach,” says the child thoughtfully. But, unconvinced this plant is truly edible, he bounces away to other stalls displaying other wonders like organic snails and mushrooms grown from coffee grounds.

Under his pseudonym The Green Chef, Van Luijk is at the market to promote seaweed as the food of the future. He says along with the vitamins and minerals, seaweed is also full of protein, and cultivation requires no arable land, no fertilizer and no freshwater. And by growing it locally, he says, the Netherlands could wield a sustainable food source that has the added benefit of cleansing the seawater along the Dutch coast.

For today’s event he has teamed up with The North Sea Farm Foundation, which owns an experimental seaweed farm 15 kilometers (9 miles) out to sea from The Hague. He is here to help with a big problem: There’s not a big enough demand for Dutch seaweed to make growing it worthwhile.

Or is there?

Even though the North Sea Farm Foundation is still in the experimental stage — and even though a 2016 report found seaweed farming in the North Sea unlikely to turn a profit — two Dutch companies, Seamore and Zeewaar, have been slipping their seaweed into some of the country’s largest restaurant franchises and supermarkets. Combining clever marketing with environmental stewardship, they may have found the philosopher’s stone to a locally grown seaweed market eluding European and North American producers for decades.

Food of the Future

As he chops mushrooms and carrots for his kelp stew, van Luijk says that seaweed is a newcomer to Dutch cuisine.

“In Asia, eating seaweed is a very old tradition, and also in places that have a rocky coastline, like Norway and Scotland,” he says. “In the Netherlands, though, we’re in a delta. There are no rocks, so seaweed has nowhere to grow.”

He has hope, however, that large-scale cultivation will put Dutch seaweed on the menus of tomorrow. To this same end The North Sea Farm Foundation in 2014 set up a “Seaweed Platform” interest group to help advance the seaweed industry in the area.

The Seaweed Platform idea arrived at the same time as a report from The Netherlands Scientific Council for Government Policy, a prominent independent advisory body, which urged the government to adopt a food policy that would make ecological sustainability a top priority. The report quoted the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations warning that global food production must rise 70 percent by 2050 to meet demand, and expressed concern that such an increase would be limited by environmental impacts. The report also noted that the country’s consumption of food and forestry products already required land equal to three times the country’s surface area.

Seaweed is often seen as an environmentally friendly food source because requires no land to grow. Wild harvest raises some concerns because of its potential to harm underwater ecosystems. But the Dutch government conducted research suggesting that 400 square kilometers (nearly 100,000 acres) of seaweed fields could be farmed in the North Sea with no negative impact.

In November 2016, a letter to the Dutch House of Representatives co-written by then State Secretary for Economic Affairs Martijn van Dam said the government would build a new food policy that would promote healthy food, ensure greater sustainability and develop new protein sources such as seaweed.

Just a few months later, van Dam was on a boat harvesting The North Sea Farm Foundation’s first crop of seaweed off the coast of The Hague. He came on shore to attend a one-off “Extraordinary Seaweed” event marking the occasion, made a seaweed wrap and then announced the investment of €5 million into a new program titled Seaweed for Food and Feed, involving The North Sea Farm Foundation among other industry players and research institutions.

“Seaweed is the food of the future: sustainable and healthy,” van Dam was quoted as saying at the announcement. “With this ‘innovation program’ we will focus on new food products that are produced sustainably and are attractive to a wide audience.”

Sustainable Alternative

Sarah Redmond, a seaweed farmer with Springtide Seaweed in Maine, U.S., says that interest in seaweed aquaculture has been growing strongly in recent years, but the North American industry has yet to take off.

“The seaweed aquaculture industry is still new and developing, so there are very few processing operations in place to process the new crops into saleable items,” Redmond says. She notes, however, that seaweed has a stellar potential if marketed as a sustainable alternative to other ingredients.

In the Netherlands, the Dutch seaweed distributor Seamore has used this approach to get its European Union–grown seaweed into over 500 stores in the Plus and Albert Heijn supermarket chains as of 2016. Its two main products, tagliatelle and seaweed bacon, are made from 100 percent organic, gluten free, non-GMO, vegan, low-carb seaweed.

Seamore’s approach has been to avoid unappetizing connotations of slimy weeds from the sea, and make their products a synonym for ingredients that consumers know and love. They then circumvent culinary confusion with a website packed full of videos, recipes and pictures, and encourage fans to send in their own creations.

“Of course, as with any innovation, educating consumers is a challenge that players will need to address,” says Seamore’s founder, Willem Sodderland.

Though one of the most successful Dutch seaweed businesses, Seamore actually sources its products from France and Ireland — still regional, but not quite local. The seaweed is also wild harvest. Sodderland says this was not desirable and due to a lack of supply and very high prices within the Netherlands for cultivated seaweed.

“Our vision is that ultimately almost all seaweed will be farmed,” he says.

Original Umami

Zeewaar is the first and only commercial Dutch seaweed farm and, according to co-founder Jennifer Breaton, the only certified organic seaweed farm in the whole EU. Though its product is more expensive than regional wild harvested seaweed, the company markets it to other businesses as an ingredient replacement with added sustainability — as well as good taste.

“Seaweed is the original umami,” says Breaton. “MSG was designed after the umami of seaweed. It’s a flavor enhancer. Dashi (Japanese stock) is all kelp.”

The pitch seems to have worked: Zeewaar has gotten its harvest into a surprising array of products, including salt, roasted peanuts, tea, chocolate and falafel balls. The roasted peanuts are sold by Hema, a major discount Dutch retailer, and the balls have found their way via Dutch food producer ProLaTerre into Ekoplaza, the largest organic supermarket chain in the Netherlands.

Flavor From the Sea

By far the most iconic of Dutch seaweed entrepreneurs, however, is The Dutch Weed Burger. The biggest customer of Zeewaar, it has turned the company’s two crops of royal kombu and sea lettuce into Weed Sauce (think mayonnaise), Sea Nuggets, Weed Dogs, Seawharmas and Weed Burgers.

“Just eating it raw? You have to be a hardcore lover of seaweed to do that,” says co-founder Mark Kulsdom. “But if you dose it nicely, you have the flavor from the sea without having a fish reference.”
Kusldom has just returned from his production facility with a stock of 30,000 seaweed burger patties to see him through the summer. In addition to his eponymous restaurant and food truck, he says he stocks over 200 Dutch businesses, including all 74 cafes in the nationwide Bagels & Beans chain.

Much like Seamore and Zeewaar, Kulsdom says that a certain comfort factor is key to his success.

“Burgers are a way in, because you can introduce the flavor, but there’s still a lot of familiarity to the product,” he says. “[Customers] know the burger, they know the toppings, they know how it looks, how to hold it and how to eat it.”

And with an easy-to-understand product and a sly name, Kulsdom says his restaurant is bringing in customers for adventurous, novel eating — vegan and non-vegan alike. Unlike the raw green product spurned by the child when this article began, Kulsdom has made Dutch seaweed something that, after a long and unlikely journey, can be found in the hippest of restaurants in the heart of Amsterdam.

The post Making seaweed mainstream appeared first on Corporate Knights.

Ontario Government and Consumer Services Minister Todd Smith announced July 10 the cancellation of the nine-turbine White Pines Wind Project in eastern Ontario.

wpd AG, a medium-sized German wind producer, and the city of Munich have already put C$100 million into the nearly finished project, according to wpd’s Canadian subsidiary. One hundred workers were on site the day news of the cancellation broke.

“I’m definitely hearing a lot of questions and concerns from the German government,” ambassador Sabine Sparwasser told Corporate Knights in an interview July 19. “Beyond that, it is a case that has by now attracted the attention of the EU and European companies who want to invest in Ontario and in Canada.”

Recent concerns on foreign investment and the rule of law in Canada have focused on British Columbia’s attempts to stop Kinder Morgan’s expansion of the Trans Mountain crude pipeline, which is being developed in that province and Alberta. The federal government is contesting British Columbia’s efforts to regulate the project’s environmental risks.

But the new Progressive Conservative government in Ontario, which is seeking to dismantle its predecessor’s environment and energy policies, is raising new concerns about investment safety.

“This is a case of how safe is our investment, how good is it to invest in Ontario and Canada because we do want to have bilateral investment,” Sparwasser said.

There are 800 German companies in Canada and more are hungry to invest, she said. Most of Canada and Europe’s comprehensive free trade agreement went into force last year, laying the groundwork for more European money in Canadian projects.

But the White Pines cancellation is pushing interest away, according to the ambassador.

“When you have all the necessary permits, to be asked to immediately stop the project and take it down, with no clarity on what the indemnification process would be, is unsettling,” Sparwasser said. “It is unusual to have such a drastic measure when all the necessary permits of a project are present.”

Ontario’s government introduced legislation outlining its cancellation of White Pines on July 16. The bill, which is being examined by members of the provincial Parliament, includes a section on how compensation will be calculated but doesn’t provide any hard figures.

Premier Doug Ford’s office, as well as Smith’s, did not respond to a request for comment on Sparwasser’s concerns.

wpd AG issued an open letter to Ford July 12 calling on the new premier to reconsider the cancellation.

“Do you think, dear premier, that it is fair and equitable that a project right before completion is now being ruined retroactively and that our company is suffering serious damage through no fault of its own?” wpd AG CEO Hartmut Brosamle wrote.

It’s still too early to consider a formal complaint under the Canadian-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), Sparwasser said.

“This is why we want to raise the concern now and say we want to proceed here in a better matter and in a manner that respects contracts and in a manner that respects the investment trust that an investor has put into the province of Ontario,” she said.

The post Investors wary after Ontario wind farm closure: Germany appeared first on Corporate Knights.

ESG funds, which select companies for their broader environmental and social impact on top of performance, include a lot of big names whose business has little to do with reducing pollution, Greenchip president Cook said.

Traditional investments like Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc. and JP Morgan are often at the top of portfolios labelled ESG.

“When I talk to young people who are interested in the sustainable economy, I don’t think they’re thinking, ‘I want Netflix to behave better,’” Cook said in an interview July 9 with Corporate Knights. “I think they’re thinking, ‘Solar panels and wind turbines and (electric vehicles) and more efficient ways to reduce energy and reduce pollution.’

Cook, whose investment fund focuses on companies selling the “stuff” of the low-carbon or sustainable economy, said the difference between what ESG means and how some investors might perceive it has been growing with the expansion of ESG funds globally.

The current assets under management of socially-responsible investing and ESG funds grew by 25 per cent between 2014 and 2016 to reach around US$23-trillion, Morgan Stanley’s May report on the market, ESG Investing Goes Mainstream, says.

Almost 40 per cent of asset allocators use some kind of ESG measure in their investment decisions compared to just 20 per cent three years ago, the report says.

Investment funds in this space are led by equities that would appear to do well regardless of their impact on the environmental and society, Cook said in a note to Greenchip investors on July 9 on ESG indicators.

While there are over 400 U.S. stocks in a new offering from Goldman Sachs called the JUST fund, the top five positions are held by Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and JP Morgan, Cook’s note says.

Whether this means ESG is making a difference for the environment and society is a tough question.

Morgan Stanley’s report from May says that ESG is having an impact. Overall, the amount of ESG disclosure is growing and ESG indicators are rising over time, it says. Interestingly, ESG indicators have risen in emerging economies in the 2010-2015 period, but declined in developed markets over the same time, the report says.

Cook is not so certain the approach is pushing markets toward a sustainable model.

“We need to keep investing in all this stuff — the traditional economy — but we also want to have a foot on the dock of the new economy,” he said.

For those who agree with Cook, the key is to differentiate between what companies sell and how companies behave, he said.

The ESG market rewards sound environmental and social behaviour. Amazon’s main businesses don’t involve a lot of air pollution, for example, compared to the rest of the economy, so its strong economic and ESG performance make it a good investment.

But other funds, like Greenchip’s, focus more on what a companies does. Do they replace competitors that pollute more? Are they building products that turn economies away from intensive resource use?

Some of the companies Greenchip invests in include Canadian Solar, rail company Alstom and LED-maker Signify, formerly Philips Lighting.

Cook advises to not just use the ESG tag but look for “sustainability themed” funds.

“They need to look past the label,” he said.

The post Looking past the labels appeared first on Corporate Knights.

The third annual Clean50 identified 50 individuals and small teams who made a great contribution to sustainability and 15 Projects that made a major impact in Canada over the past two years. The Clean50 Summit 3.0 brought our honourees together for a day of interdisciplinary strategy and solution building. It will take a combination of leadership, collaboration, innovation, energy and, ultimately, political will to move Canada through the obstacles towards cleaner, healthier, sustainable management of our bountiful resources and our uncertain future. Our solutions will require brave new policy, scientific and economic tools, built with long term vision. Here are some of our tool-smiths, whose work is rarely in the spotlight but may shine the way on our journey towards sustainable, equitable, responsible prosperity.

You will find the rest of Canada’s Clean50 (individuals), Clean16 (category leaders) and Clean15 Projects at www.Clean50.com. There you may also enter nominations for next year. Each year, the Clean 50 community grows. While many of our elected and administrative representatives are diverted by pressing short term exigencies from addressing potential long term emergencies, the Clean50 network is hard at work shaping our collective future.

Enviro-Stewards & Tim Hortons

Waste Discharge Reduction

PROJECTS: In-plant measures in Ontario are saving $490,000/yr with an ROI of 260%, and reducing loading to sewer 80%, landfill 70% and GHG emissions 30%. A portion of the savings sponsored 40 BioSand Filters that purify 800,000 L/yr of drinking water and avoid 120 tonnes/yr of GHG in South Sudan, Africa. Fruition Fruit & Fills is a subsidiary of Tim Hortons Inc. Enviro-Stewards Inc. is an engineering firm and Certified B Corporation that helps clients increase their profits, sustain the environment, and compellingly benefit society. www.enviro-stewards.com

Paul Richardson

CEO, Renewal Funds

ANGELS: Paul and his colleagues at Renewal Funds invest growth capital in early stage businesses in the organic food, green products and environmental innovation sectors with the goal of providing strong triple bottom line returns. A pioneer in the social venture capital field, Renewal has been supporting sustainability businesses since the early 90s.

Karen Clarke-Whistler

Chief Environment Officer, TD Bank Group

FINANCIAL SERVICES: Karen developed and leads TD’s environmental strategy, which calls for the environment to be embedded across all aspects of the bank. This strategy led TD to become the first North American based bank to be carbon neutral and to the founding of TD Forests, which works to grow and protect North American forests. Karen has been a key advocate for building TD’s renewable financing.

Francisca Quinn

President and Founder, Quinn & Partners Inc.

CONSULTANTS: Francisca was named a 2014 Clean50 honouree thanks to her work with leading Canadian companies in reducing their environmental footprints and achieving high sustainability engagement scores from employees, customers and analysts. She uses business analytics and organizational change tools to design, implement and communicate industry-leading corporate sustainability programs. Francisca strives to set a personal example for sustainability by applying best practice at work and at home.

Tim Faveri

Director, Sustainability and Responsibility, Tim Hortons Inc.

RETAIL & CONSUMER PRODUCTS: Tim Faveri, Director, Sustainability and Responsibility provides joint oversight to the Tim Hortons Coffee Partnership, a grassroots capacity building program with a goal to improve the lives of small-scale coffee farmers in regions where the company sources its coffee. Since 2005, Tim Hortons has invested nearly $7 million and worked with more than 3,400 farmers, positively impacting the lives of more than 17,000 people in project communities.

Neil Pegram

Corporate Sustainability & Responsibility Manager, Morguard

BUILDING: DESIGN, REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT:There are few organizations globally that have set 25 year sustainability objectives. At real estate company Morguard, Neil led the development of such a sustainability strategy including 6 long-term objectives that are tied to a rigorous definition of a sustainable society. Neil also developed the company’s first sustainability report to align with GRI.

Jeanette M. Southwood, P.Eng., FEC

Urban Development & Infrastructure Leader – Canada Global Sustainable Cities Leader, Golder Associates Ltd.

CONSULTANTS: Jeanette is a dedicated leader in her profession and as a volunteer, honored with Ontario’s “Leading Women Building Communities” Award and as a Fellow of Engineers Canada. Her work unites the Sustainable Cities, Federal, Rail, Real Estate, Waste, and Transportation businesses at Golder, a global firm of over 8,000, providing consulting, design, and construction services in earth, environment, and energy.

Bryce Conrad

President and CEO, Hydro Ottawa

TRADITIONAL ENERGY GENERATION: Bryce and his team have made Hydro Ottawa the largest municipally owned producer of renewable power in Ontario. Their portfolio of hydroelectric and landfill gas generating stations has grown to more than 320,000 MWh of clean energy annually. This achievement is borne from the company’s belief that success lies in capturing and leveraging core competencies and expertise in new ways to translate them into revenue-earning opportunities.

Peter Love

President, Love Energy Consultants Inc.

TRADITIONAL ENERGY GENERATION: President of the Energy Services Association of Canada and Adjunct Professor at York’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, Peter has been advocating a culture of conservation since the early 70’s when he was part of the team that developed the 3 R’s (Reduce, Reuse Recycle). Ontario’s former Chief Energy Conservation Officer, Peter now serves on corporate and non-profit boards and is a volunteer Advisor to the Cleantech Practice at MaRS.

Kate Whalen

Senior Manager, University Sustainability and Director, Sustainable Future Program, McMaster University

EDUCATION: By bringing together McMaster and the broader Hamilton community, Kate has facilitated implementation of over 80 sustainability initiatives in less than 4 years, Including: development of McMaster’s sustainable procurement policy; providing opportunities for over 300 students to engage in for-credit, experiential, sustainability-related learning; and creation of interdisciplinary courses focused specifically on sustainability.

Andrea Goertz

Senior Vice-President, Strategic Initiatives and Chief Communications and Sustainability Officer, TELUS

TECHNOLOGY AND TELECOM: Andrea is advancing TELUS’ triple bottom line approach to business, focusing on the social, economic and environmental impact of the national programs she oversees. Her team’s corporate real estate consolidation strategy includes the development and retrofitting of LEED-certified buildings in major Canadian centres and the creation of Work Styles, which sees almost 60% of eligible employees working remotely.

Lloyd Switzer

Senior Vice-President, Network Transformation TELUS

TECHNOLOGY AND TELECOM: Lloyd drives the sustainable transformation of TELUS’ networks, plus its 10-year energy reduction initiative. This includes construction of two state-of-the-art Internet Data Centres designed to LEED Gold status that are 80% more efficient than traditional facilities. In 2013, the team eliminated 42.7 GWh in annualized energy waste – equivalent to the carbon sequestered annually by 435,000 seedling trees.

Greg Nevison

Senior VP for Construction, Deltera Inc. (a Tridel Group Co.)

Jamie James

President & Founder, Tower Labs

BUILDING: DESIGN, REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT: Greg and Jamie have worked together over the past decade to help transform one of Canada’s most successful real estate developers into a leading green builder. In 2010, they set up Tower Labs as an independent, not-for-profit green building technology accelerator that validates and promotes green building innovations through pilot and demonstration projects in buildings under construction.

Kaz Flinn

Vice President, Corporate Social Responsibility, Scotiabank

FINANCIAL SERVICES: Leading Scotiabank’s Corporate Social Responsibility function since 2005, Kaz has been instrumental in the establishment of the Bank’s environmental policy and signature environmental program – EcoLiving. This unique program helps Canadians become financially better off by showing them, through multiple channels, how to save money and energy at home and ease the pathway to green home projects and practices.

HP & The Lavergne Group

“Closed Loop” Plastic Recycling Program

PROJECTS: From offering free and convenient recycling in more than 50 countries, through the HP Planet Partners Program, to putting the plastics from your returned cartridges back into new cartridges, HP’s leadership in sustainability is clear. Working with a Canadian innovative plastics recycler, HP has been able to reduce the carbon footprint of the plastics in ink cartridges by up to 33%.

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