Dickcissel - a grassland bird. Photo Credit: Amy Larson

In an effort to improve the sustainability and health of their land, farmers are increasingly interested in taking a systems approach to farmland management. A systems approach acknowledges the key connections between ecological, economic, and social components. Given the ensuing complexity, measuring the health of a farm system requires good diagnostic tools. In addition, these tools need to be clear and straightforward.

Our current effort at the University of Nebraska Lincoln to develop a set of such indicators for farmers, the Healthy Farm Index, focuses on biodiversity and ecosystem services at the farm scale. One indicator in the index is the presences of a given set of birds on the farm. Birds are a popular indicator because they are sensitive to change in farm practices, found broadly in the environment, and are easy to detect by sight and sound.

The ability to detect birds by sound has spurred our research group to develop resources to aid farmers and other people interested in the songs and calls of farmland birds. As researchers, we use auditory detections of birds as one of our primary monitoring tools. With acoustic recorders, we have recorded the songs and calls of our local bird communities. Back in the lab, we use software to identify and isolate the best songs and calls. These vocalizations have been posted to our website, Farmland Birds of Nebraska, and distributed back to farmers and others interested on CDs. With the acoustic recordings, farmers can select a group of indicator species suitable for their area, learn its call, and listen for the bird while working in the field. This information can be used by the farmer in assessing their own farm or can be shared more broadly with researchers.

The recordings also allow farmers to share with consumers (many of whom are birders) an added environmental benefit of their farm. This spring we were able to take these recorded vocalizations back to one of our participating farms. In partnership with Common Good Farm, we hosted a “Birding on the Farm” tour. Local residents and other farmers spent the morning listening for and identifying the community of birds at the farm. New and experienced birders alike were surprised at the diversity found on the single farm.

In the coming months, we are expanding our network of recorders. This winter we will be monitoring winter bird communities on participating farms and testing the influences that road noise may have on bird vocalization and communication.

Scientists are trying to mimic the ability of spiders to produce ultra-strong fibers without the use of heat or toxins.

Underwater glue, molecular-sized solar cells, self-assembly, insect communication, swarm behavior, genetic algorithms – what do these biological phenomena have in common? These are all inspiring innovation through a process called "biomimicry." Biomimicry is budding in the Bay Area in the form of new business technologies, design think tanks, and K-university curriculum.

By bringing biologists to the design table, biomimicry offers solutions for increasing sustainability of products, processes, and systems. Popular Science published an article in March interviewing Biomimicry Guild's Tim McGee on how bio-inspired design is reshaping the future.

Biomimicry is gaining widespread recognition for its interdisciplinary approach to innovation. The College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley hosted Janine Benyus's talk on biomimicry and the future of architecture and environmental design last February. Recognizing the opportunities that abound through interdisciplinary collaboration, IDEO and Autodesk designed and built a digital library of nature's strategy's called AskNature. Conventional businesses are even being challenged to address and improve organizational, IT, and design challenges using concepts and expertise from octopi and flamingos.

Despite the buzz, actually designing and building things that are biomimetic is quite challenging. Stanford lecturer and designer Jeremy Faludi attests, "Most designers, engineers, architects, and other people who build things just don't know that much about biology and the natural world, and when they do, there's often a gap of capability in available materials manufacturing methods, and economic systems." Even the most creative people can get stuck thinking along certain lines. Defining a design problem is challenging and finding strategies in nature that inspire solutions can be even trickier.
Researchers study swarm behavior for more efficient computing.

A new interdisciplinary course at UC Berkeley, "How Would Nature Do That?", tackles these challenges through project-based learning. Students from architecture, engineering, business, science, and design disciplines learn from each other and nature to implement innovative solutions to sustainable design challenges. By offering case studies of biomimicry, along with guest lectures and a series of design challenges, instructors Tom McKeag, Dr. Robert Full, and Dr. Lewis Feldman hope students will gain exposure to multiple methods for design.

Dr. Robert Full uses bio-inspired design and established the UCB Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-inspiration in Education and Research (CIBER).

A few weeks ago I visited the class, which is held at the Cal Design Space. Several student teams were previewing some of their ideas; one team was tasked with designing a sustainable humidity control system for a greenhouse. Discovering that the Hercules beetle changes color with changes in humidity, the team conceptualized a filtration membrane that activated upon sensing changes in color. In addition, I was delighted to hear renowned biomechanist Dr. Steven Vogel of Duke University give a presentation on his previous work. His talk inspired students to consider designing passive HVAC systems based on his observations of limpets, sand dollars, fish nostrils, rhododendrons, desert spiders and many other examples.

The course is sponsored by Qualcomm’s MEMS Technology Unit and is a joint effort of the College of Natural Resources, and the College of Letters & Science. Highlights from the course include guest lecturer Dr. Michael Weinstock from the Architectural Association of London and author of the "Architecture of Emergence," as well as visits to the CIBER lab, tidepooling at Duxbury Reef in Bolinas and a field trip to Qualcomm in San Jose.

Biomimicry education can also be found in other sustainability courses and centers in the Bay Area. Cabrillo College's sustainable cultures class all incorporate biomimicry principles into design thinking. The Monterey Bay Aquarium hosts the daily show 'Whales to Windmills': Inspiration from the Sea, a Biomimicry Institute production. Biomimicry curriculum produced by BioDream Machine teaches students at the Marine Science Institute in Redwood City to observe different adaptations and functions within San Francisco Bay marine life. Even the Cal Academy of Sciences devotes a website which introduces bio-inspired technologies.

Qualcomm's Mirasol display technology uses the same principle of light interference to produce color as does a butterfly wing.

The Bay Area is also a hub for biomimicry technology. Moss Landing-based company, Calera, manufactures a concrete that sequesters CO2 by emulating sea coral. San Rafael's PAX Scientific developed fluid-handling devices based on the efficiencies of natural fluid flow. And in Napa, Aquagy uses anaerobic digestion and microalgae to treat wastewater in a carbon-negative process.

With any new method of design comes rounds of trial and error. But that's not stopping investors and researchers. JWT, a prominent marketing communications brand, announced that biomimicry is the #11 thing to watch in 2011. With its widespread recognition, biomimicry is certain to inspire real innovation to today's design challenges.

QUEST on KQED Public Media

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Artist's rendering of exoplanets around a star. (credit: NASA)

A team of researchers, led by NASA scientists in Mountain View, announced on Thursday the discovery of at least two Saturn-sized planets outside of our solar system orbiting the same Sun-like star.

News of these extra-solar planets or ‘exoplanets’ marks the first major discovery from the $600 million Kepler mission which launched in March 2009 on a quest to find planets similar to Earth in their composition and size that could possibly sustain life.

“The mission is designed to find several hundred such planets if they exist” said William Borucki, Principal Investigator of the Kepler science mission, based at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View.

The two new exoplanets which the astronomers named Kepler 9-b and Kepler- 9c – are 2,000 light years away in the Lyra constellation, and were found after analyzing seven months of data from 156,000 stars. Scientists believe the two planets are comprised of hydrogen and helium and are slightly less massive than Saturn, with the bigger of the two planets – Kepler-9b – orbiting the Kepler-9 star in 39 days, about twice as long as the orbit time for the other planet.

In 1995, a Swiss team found the first exoplanet passing in front of a star. Since then, there have been nearly 500 exoplanets discovered, though most of these have been large, Jupiter-sized planets that wouldn’t be capable of supporting life.

These large exoplanets were found with ground-based telescopes but now missions like Kepler and the European Space Agency’s COROT mission, which launched in December 2006, add an additional tool for exoplanet discovery with space-based telescopes that are powerful enough and presumably close enough to detect smaller, Earth-sized exoplanets.

“Mankind has been asking the question, ‘are there other planets out there, is there other life out there?’”, said Borucki. “In the next few years, we'll have answers to some of these questions.”

To help answer these questions, the Kepler spacecraft telescope is positioned 18 million miles from Earth, staring at hundreds of billions of stars. It can view more than 100,000 stars at a time that are a few hundred to a few thousand light years from the sun. A light year is roughly 6 trillion miles.

The telescope instrument is more than three feet wide, armed with an array of light sensor detectors akin to those found in a digital camera, only more powerful. But instead of taking pictures of a star, it measures the temporary dips in brightness from a star when a planet transits, or passes in front of the star.

By measuring these dips, how often they occur and how long it takes the planet to transit the star, scientists can confirm the existence of an exoplanet and how far it is from its star. By adding Kepler’s measurements to ground-based telescopes measuring the properties of stars, they can calculate the planet’s temperature, its mass and they can even infer the composition of the planet– whether it contains a rocky core or is mostly gas, for example.

Transit signature of a multi-planet system (credit: NASA)

Scientists said that it’s too soon to definitively confirm the existence of a third possible planet – about 1.5 times the radius of Earth – orbiting the Kepler-9 star. If it is confirmed, it would be the smallest exoplanet found to date transiting a star.

But this small planet would still be too hot to exist in the ‘habitable zone’ where water and possibly life could exist, given its close, 1.6 day orbit around its star. Similarly, the surfaces of the two confirmed gas giant exoplanets are estimated to be more than 2300 degrees Fahrenheit.

Still, by studying the orbits of the new exoplanets, scientists hope to uncover additional information, such as the formation and migration of planets as they gravitationally pull and tug at each other when orbiting the same star.

In June, the Kepler team announced they had identified more than 700 “candidate” exoplanets after the first 43 days of data collection, including six candidate planetary systems that appeared to contain more than one transiting planet in them.

But the challenge scientists have when identifying smaller exoplanets that transit in an orbit similar to Earth is that such transits occur only about once a year, compared to the more frequent, shorter transits associated generally with hotter, larger planets. So they need a sequence of four transits, typically, to get enough reliable data to confirm the existence of Earth-size planets, which is why the Kepler mission was designed to run for nearly four years.

Scientists are already looking ahead to future missions which may be able to expand upon Kepler’s discoveries.

“There are missions on the planning board that may be able to tell us what the atmospheres are like around these planets, do they have water in them, do they have C02 in them like our Earth’s atmosphere, do they have oxygen?”, Borucki said.

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A view of Stanford's campus, taken from Hoover Tower. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

Originally reported for KQEDnews.org.

In 1888, when famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted drafted his master plan for Stanford University in Palo Alto, he drew the academic buildings along an east-west axis to efficiently make use of heat and light from the sun.

Now, more than 100 years later, a new generation of eco-centric builders and designers are embarking on a $250 million project to raise, retrofit and re-power buildings across the 8,000-acre campus, in the hopes of slashing Stanford’s greenhouse gas emissions to 20 percent below 1990 levels in just 10 years.

The plan tackles energy demand in existing and new buildings, while also laying the groundwork for a new energy supply loop that powers, heats and cools the 125 biggest buildings on the main campus.

“It’s one of the most far-reaching efforts in the nation for a major research university to make a total transformation of a complete campus energy system”, said Joe Stagner, a civil engineer who directs Stanford’s Department of Sustainability and Energy Management.

Despite the steep price tag, the university estimates that by going greener it will save be saving lots of green – $639 million by 2050 through lower utility bills and operating costs.

Under the plan, which received preliminary approval by the Stanford Board of Trustees last fall, the energy savings are expected to build up with time. By 2050, the campus is projected to emit only 50 percent of the greenhouse gases it emitted in 1990.

“And that's a minimum, it doesn't mean that we're going to stop at 50 percent”, said Fahmida Ahmed, manager of sustainability programs at Stanford. She and Stagner wrote the new energy and climate plan that serves as the university’s sustainability roadmap and presented it to the Trustees in October 2009.

Although Stanford has pursued recycling, composting and energy efficiency since the 1980s, until just a few years ago, it lacked a single, cohesive campaign to shrink the university’s carbon footprint – a task made more urgent by Stanford’s steady growth spurts. By 2025, two million square feet of new academic buildings and housing are expected to be built for 2,400 additional faculty, staff and students.

“The whole idea to attack greenhouse gases gained momentum in 2006 and 2007,” said Stagner. “University stakeholders, including faculty from the Woods Institute to members of Students for a Sustainable Stanford and faculty and even some alumni, all of them let the university’s leadership know that they wanted Stanford to be more sustainable”, he added.

On average, the campus generates 262,000 metric tons – nearly 580 million pounds – of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases each year through direct sources such as generating electricity each day at an aging campus power plant, and indirect sources such as airline trips and commuting miles driven by faculty and staff. If no new initiatives are undertaken, pursuing instead a “business-as-usual” level of energy consumption and energy generation, Stanford is expected to produce 325,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases by 2020 and nearly 400,000 metric tons by 2050.

Stagner and his team realized early on that energy conservation improvements alone could not achieve substantial greenhouse gas reductions for a campus growing at such a fast clip.

“We had to come up with a comprehensive energy model that includes energy demand on one side and energy supply on the other side to inform how to best prioritize our work, to see what had the best return, environmentally, and the best bang for our buck”, said Stagner.

The biggest environmental gains, his team discovered, would come from overhauling the campus’ natural gas-fired power plant which has operated for more than 20 years and accounts for nearly 90 percent of the campus’ greenhouse gas emissions.

Since Stanford is situated in a Mediterranean climate, many of its buildings need simultaneous cooling and heating. Currently, the cooling system pipes chilled water into buildings to cool them and also remove excess heat that builds up inside them. As the water extracts the unwanted heat from buildings, it warms and is piped back to the central energy facility where massive cooling towers exhaust the excess heat from the water into the atmosphere. The loop continues, with the water being re-chilled at the central energy facility and sent back out to the buildings.

Conversely, heat and hot water are supplied to buildings in a separate loop. It uses steam, which is made as a byproduct of burning natural gas to generate electricity to power the buildings. The steam cools into hot water after it has been sent to the buildings, and then it is sent back to the central energy facility, where it is reheated and sent back out.

In October 2008, during a year-long audit of the campus’ hour-by-hour energy use, Stagner experienced an ‘a-ha moment.’

“I took a look at the data and saw that the potential for reusing the waste heat to heat the campus was much larger than we had hoped for and got very excited about the possibilities,” said Stagner.

Stagner realized that nearly half of the campus’ heating needs can be met through bypassing the cooling towers and reusing most of the heat which would otherwise be exhausted into the air. This new scheme of heat recovery is being called “regeneration.” Through it, the campus will also cut its water use by nearly 20 percent since less water would be used by the cooling towers.

The project won’t happen overnight, however. It will take five to 10 years, and university crews will have to dig up 10 miles of underground pipes that are currently designed to distribute steam – not hot water — to buildings.

When all of that is finished, the campus will be able to burn less natural gas to make electricity and will instead be able to buy electricity from utilities or from direct suppliers using renewables like solar and wind to green up the grid.

The electricity will power up to five new multimillion-dollar “heat recovery chillers.” The machines will form the backbone of the new energy loop, where warm water that would have been sent to the cooling towers instead will now be sent for further reheating and piped back out as 170-degree water to provide heat and hot water to buildings.

By the end of this year, Stagner will present to Stanford’s trustees an update of the heat recovery system and the broader energy and climate plan, which is receiving one last peer review to see if further greenhouse gas reductions are possible under it. But he and his team are already moving forward.

Stanford's new heat exchange unit. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

Campus map showing the buildings where pipes carrying steam will need to be replaced by pipes carrying hot water. Photo and image copyright Stanford University

On a patch of land behind Memorial Auditorium, for the past six months, workers have been installing a $750,000 heat exchange station next to Stanford’s new business school, the Knight Management Center, which will open later this year. The station is needed to convert the steam currently made by the campus power plant to hot water, which will then be distributed through new pipes snaking underground that will serve 12 new and existing buildings when it fires up next summer.

Other universities, including the University of Rochester in New York and Auburn University in Alabama, also have converted from steam to hot water to meet their heating needs, but not to the extent Stanford plans.

In addition to the engineering plans, Stanford also is working to change the behavior of its students, professors and staff.

“We live in an eco-minded area,” said Ahmed, whose office worked with students to create a guide to sustainable living that describes how to reduce water and electricity use and act sustainably beyond the dorms and dining halls. “But for conservation to be a part of daily experience there needs to be incentives that we relate to and feel encouraged about.”

One Stanford program, for example, establishes an annual baseline of average kilowatt-hours used for an individual school or administrative unit based on past consumption trends. Then, it allows that school or unit to keep whatever money is saved if it falls under its budget for energy spending. In three years, the program yielded a three percent decrease in energy use and $830,000 for the energy-saving participants.

Last year, a penalty component was added, so now departments that go over their budgets are supposed to pay back to the university the cost of excess electricity they used. The Office of Sustainability wouldn’t reveal which departments were penalized, pointing out instead that “there are sometimes valid reasons for their energy usage going up” and that the budgets for electricity use “can and will be revised over time as a trend appears.”

“If an academic department isn’t responsible for its energy expenditures or budget, it is in the same position as a renter in an apartment who isn’t responsible for paying for the utilities. The renter has no incentive for energy efficiency or water efficiency. It’s just human nature,” said Stanley Young, a spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, in Sacramento.

Stanford junior Ishan Nath wrote an editorial last fall in The Stanford Daily, calling for an expansion of the incentive program so students could pocket some of the cost savings from lower energy use in their dorms.

“It seems that the double benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions while saving money is something we should be taking advantage of in any place we can and I think it’s really important that Stanford is leading in this direction,” he said.

Another key part of the Stanford plan to reduce greenhouse emissions is to retrofit existing buildings.

There are nearly 200 buildings on campus that are larger than 20,000 square feet, roughly the size of a small supermarket. A 2004 study found that 12 buildings accounted for 33% of the campus’ electricity use.

“We put together a new program to look at a single building in detail and go top to bottom and find energy savings opportunities,” said Scott Gould, a senior energy engineer with the Department of Sustainability and Energy Management who oversees the Whole Building Retrofit Program.

In 2007, the campus approved $15 million in funding to retrofit these energy-intensive buildings, many of which contain research labs built in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s. Some have annual energy bills of $2 million to $3 million each.

Two building retrofits are currently taking place, one at Gilbert Hall, which houses the biology department, and the other at the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine. The fume hoods in them are being fitted with valves that can more efficiently regulate the flow and exhaust of air, so that instead of 10 air exchanges in an hour, there may only be six or eight. New valves also will control the total amount of air supplied to a room.

“It’s a technology that wasn’t available in the ‘70s”, said Gould, whose job is compounded by the fact that the retrofit work needs to typically take place over short periods of time to minimize the impact to the still-active labs.

It’s easier to design super-energy efficient buildings from the start than going back and retrofitting old ones.

A view of the Y2E2 building. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

The greenest building on Stanford’s campus – and a model for future construction – is the Jerry Yang and Akiko Yamazaki Energy + Environment Building, known as “Y2E2.” Opened in 2008, the four-story, L-shaped building uses 38 percent less energy and 90 percent less total water than older buildings – the latter feat accomplished in part by using recycled water for flushing toilets and rainwater for irrigating landscaping. Four atriums funnel natural light through angled skylights, and they also serve as the building’s lungs, drawing in fresh air and circulating heated air through vents that open and close automatically throughout the day.

A skylight inside the Y2E2 building. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

Looking down the atrium inside the Y2E2 building. Photo by Sheraz Sadiq

Stanford also has solar power demonstration projects at seven locations on campus but they generate enough power currently to meet only two percent of the campus’ energy needs. Ahmed acknowledged that solar power has the potential to meet 10 percent of the sunny campus' energy needs, but the university is continuing to track progress on solar power technology before committing to its wider use on campus.

So far, students seem pleased with the university’s level of planning and implementation around sustainability.

“It’s a period of tremendous uncertainty in what’s going to happen with California’s climate policy,” said Nath. “Without knowing that, it’s impossible to fairly plan for what type of renewable energy to use, and it’s difficult to compare the financing to see what’s the best decision.”

John Ten Hoeve is president of the Stanford Solar and Wind Energy Project, a group run mostly by graduate students trying to promote renewable energy at Stanford. “I believe I speak for the group when I say that we are very pleased with the new climate and energy plan”, Ten Hoeve said, while complimenting its Office of Sustainability for being “open-minded” to opportunities to cut Stanford’s carbon load.

Stanford’s plan focuses on more near-term energy supply and conservation steps to curb campus emissions, but doesn’t fund much renewable energy at the moment. A chart laying out the expected emissions savings as color-coded wedges from building retrofits, heat recovery and other initiatives, has a wedge that corresponds to emissions savings through electricity generated by renewable means, like solar, wind and geothermal power.

Ten Hoeve pointed out that the ‘green electricity’ wedge doesn’t kick in fully, however, until 2035. “If Stanford were to produce its own renewable energy, through a few well-sited local wind turbines for example, it would be great PR for the university at little to no cost, which is why we hope it will happen sooner than later”, he said.

Some students think that an array of solar panels, such as the one adorning the Y2E2 building, do more than just green the grid.

“It’s important to have them in places where people can see them and when they come to Stanford, they’ll say, ‘oh, maybe solar panels are developing enough to be used on a wide scale’”, said Nath.

Junior Eli Pollak, a member of Students for a Sustainable Stanford, said he’s impressed by the Stanford plan, but would have liked to have seen more students involved in drafting it.

“In keeping with Stanford’s educational mission, it would have been beneficial for the administration to have drawn on the intellect of the students and the students could have gained real-world experience to address climate change and see how a large institution approaches climate change and energy planning,” Pollak said.

Stanford isn’t alone in trying to improve energy efficiency and reduce its carbon footprint.

The American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment has recruited nearly 700 college and university presidents to cut more than 30 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually across their campuses.

“The niche that we were filling was helping people learn from each other,” said Paul Rowland, executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, an organization that has created a tool to help universities and colleges that have signed the climate commitment measure and report their annual greenhouse gas emissions.

The first university to have achieved carbon neutrality, Rowland said, is the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, which it did in part by purchasing renewable energy credits to offset its greenhouse gas emissions.

Stanford has declined to join the organization ever since 2006 when it was first asked.

“Stanford commits to reductions it can meet. Committing to carbon neutrality without having the solutions at hand must have seemed not very authentic to the administration at the time,” said Ahmed.

Stanford’s energy and climate plan also does not endorse the use of carbon offsets or renewable energy credits, citing in part their “regulatory uncertainty,” which suggests the university is more focused on projects campus officials can directly observe, control and monitor to track the progress on its emissions reductions.

The chancellors of the 10 campuses that make up the University of California system have, however, signed onto the ACUPCC. The UC campuses have set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 2000 levels by 2014 and to 1990 levels by 2020, while also eliminating all waste sent to landfills by 2020. After these targets have been met, the UC sustainability policy directs the campuses to pursue carbon neutrality “as soon as possible.”

“Over the past five years, the UC system has saved $15 million by replacing aging lighting, heating and ventilation systems and expanding the monitoring and metering of campus buildings,” said Matthew St. Clair, director of the UC sustainability efforts.

At UC Berkeley, energy efficiency projects such as changing leaky heating and cooling systems and installing more efficient lighting in its buildings, some of which are more than 100 years old, has cut the campus’ electricity use. At Tang Center, home to the university’s health services, an analysis revealed that the air circulation system was running 24 hours a day. So a new air circulation system was installed, saving the university each year enough electricity to power 46 single family homes.

UC campuses are also exploring projects that will generate a total of 10 megawatts of on-site renewable energy by 2014. To date, three of them – Irvine, Merced and San Diego – have one-megawatt solar panel arrays installed at each of their campuses. The solar array at Merced spans nearly nine acres and provides the campus with nearly 20 percent of its annual energy needs.

“As a public institution that includes a mission of public service, we need to demonstrate to the taxpayers and voters of California that we are being good citizens in reducing our environmental impact, cutting costs through efficient resource consumption and modeling sustainability leadership”, said St. Clair.

Stanford’s Stagner said he similarly feels that colleges and universities don’t need to wait for a blueprint from the government to start tackling climate change, adding that they have a responsibility to “to help create the scientific, human, cultural, and political solutions to it, and to educate tomorrow’s leaders so that they may continue to work on this challenge and advance civilization toward a sustainable future."

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I often look at the chemical ingredients in what I buy. I shop at farmers markets for organic produce and use green cleaning supplies. So, it caught me off guard when a friend remarked, "you are so aware of what you eat, why aren't you just as curious about what you drink?" Well, we drink organic coffee but not organic wine. I was worried about sacrificing taste and I just didn't think most vineyards were heavily sprayed with pesticides. Then I learned that wine grapes are the second most sprayed crop in the state. This didn't seem like it could be that good for the farm workers, the Earth, or the consumer. Several studies have found trace amounts of pesticides in wine. They may be at extremely low amounts, but what kind of impact could pesticide residues have overtime?

Armed with a new green cause, I set out to find more information about eco-wines. I learned that organic wine is just one type of green wine — there is also wine made with organic grapes. It turns out I had been drinking some of these wines and enjoying them. The thing is, you can't call it "organic wine" if the wine has added sulfites, a naturally occurring compound. Most winemakers add sulfites to help preserve the wine and make it more stable. If a wine is made from organic grapes but contains sulfites, the world "organic" can only be mentioned as part of the ingredient claim on the back of the bottle. No wonder I didn't know I was drinking wine farmed organically.

It turns out northern Sonoma County and Mendocino county are hotbeds for green wine. In the course of reporting this story, I visited several of these wine makers. Bonterra Vineyards, below Ukiah, has been farming organically since 1987 and now farms one of their ranches, McNab, biodynamically. Their red blend is nicely balanced and tastes very good.

Biodynamic is a novel form of organic farming practice with its roots in France. A biodynamic vineyard is a self-sustaining ecosystem — making organic compost, removing chemicals from the soil and farming with the cycles of the Earth.  Biodynamic has its own international certification. (Here is a list of their certified wines). Just up the 101 from Bonterra is Parducci Wine Cellars. This family run company is farming organic grapes and in some cases, biodynamically. Parducci also claims to be one of the most sustainable wineries in the country.

Sustainable is a squishy term. Sustainable wineries may be running off solar power or doing creek restoration to save spawning salmon but they are not necessarily organic and they are not certified. However, the California Sustainable Winegrowing Program is working toward an industry certification. The idea is to raise the entire industry's practices and help vintners make more eco-friendly choices that often include using less chemicals in the vineyards.

Back to sulfites. This ended up being the main reason for the stigma still associated with green wine. Twenty years ago, green wines were uneven and there were not that many choices. Now, several of these eco-wines are winning high points from the industry. Organic wine can only contain naturally occurring sulfites, under 10ppm. Wines farmed organically must keep the added sulfites below 100ppm. Conventional wine can contain sulfites as high as 300ppm. When I was reporting this story, several folks asked me if I was going to explain why they get headaches from red wine. Isn't it the sulfites? Actually, it is not known why some people get headaches from drinking red wine. It could be the histamines. It doesn't look like it's the sulfites. Less than 1% of the population, according to the FDA, is sensitive to sulfites. The reaction is a respiratory one.

Anyway, if you enjoy wine, I encourage you to think beyond red and white but to consider green, too. To find out more, listen to our radio story and check out our links. Also, green wine pioneer, Paul Dolan together with Parducci has created a green wine handbook which is very helpful.

Listen to the The Politics of Green Wine radio report online.

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Chef Ryan Farr demonstrates the art of the butcher.

On Thursday night, the Society of Agriculture and Food Ecology and Meatpaper Magazine co-hosted a panel discussion at UC Berkeley titled, "The Art of the Butcher". Using whole animals from local ranches was the topic of the night, and judging from the standing room only crowd, it's an area that the sustainable agriculture community is gravitating towards.

Marissa Guggiana of Sonoma Direct led the panel, which included both chefs and producers. Melanie Eisemann and David Budworth of Avedano's butcher shop discussed how butcher shops typically don't break down whole animals in-house, and usually provide only the most popular cuts of meat such as the tenderloin, ribs and chops. At Avedano's, they encourage their customers to try lesser-known cuts that can be cheaper and more flavorful depending on the method of preparation. They also offer regular classes on how to butcher your own meat.

Producer Mark Pasternak of Devil's Gulch Ranch described the change he has seen in the marketplace from both chefs and consumers. He's able to sell his pigs to restaurants and markets that are looking for local animals that are raised outdoors, and Bay Area customers are helping to increase the demand for this sustainably raised meat. Chefs Nate Appleman of A16 and Ryan Farr of Ivy Elegance are both dedicated to using every bit of the pig that they can, from the ears and skin all the way down to the hooves. Appleman serves 20 pounds to tripe of week.

The culmination of the evening was a demonstration by Chef Ryan Farr on how to break down an entire side of a pig. It was divided up into CSA shares, which were pre-sold to members of the audience. For more on local meat CSA's, check out this Quest story.

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Watts in your kitchen?

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), which develops product testing for the Energy Star program, recently reached an agreement with LG, one of the world's largest manufacturer's of appliances and consumer electronics, over some LG refrigerators that failed to live up to the Energy Star label.

DOE allows manufacturers to test their own products. Some LG refrigerators were tested with their icemakers turned off and earned the Energy Star label, meaning that they are among the most energy efficient refrigerators on the market. But consumers don't generally turn their icemakers off. The LG refrigerators in question, with French doors and through-the-wall ice and water dispensers, can use up to twice as much energy than is reported on the refrigerator labels.

If you own one of the notorious refrigerators–go to the LG special web site to find out–then LG will send someone out to make some modifications, and hand you a check to cover all the hidden energy charges for the life of the refrigerator. Home Energy's Senior Executive Editor Alan Meier estimates that LG will be spending around $150 million on home visits and energy rebates.

Is LG the only manufacturer to circumvent performance standards? Probably not, so we are watching the news for more DOE settlements.

Do you know how to spot hidden energy guzzlers in your house? If you get your gas and/or electricity from PG&E, you can compare your home energy use over time and spot those peaks and valleys that indicate something is wrong, or something is right. If your electric bills shoot up soon after buying a new refrigerator, TV, or other appliance, and it isn't due to a change in the weather, you can easily spot the culprit.

If you have an online account, login, click on the "Billing" link, and then click on "Usage History". What's really cool, at least for energy geeks like me, is that you can pull up graphs showing two years of electricity use, gas use, and electricity and gas charges. And you can pull up a graph that superimposes your gas and electricity use with a graph of "heating degree-days" and "cooling degree-days". The degree-days give you a snapshot of the load on your heating and air conditioning systems–more on that later.

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This sushi is good enough to eat.
Photo credit: Andrea Kissack.

There is a new trend in town. Sustainable sushi. The Monterey Bay Aquarium, and two other ocean conservation groups (Blue Ocean Institute and Environmental Defense Fund), have come out with new advice for making better sushi choices. Modeled after the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s popular Seafood Watch Pocket Guide, the new sustainable sushi guide helps consumers make informed choices by categorizing seafood into three areas: Green (or best choice), Yellow (or good alternative) and Red (what to avoid). Just what kind of sushi you should avoid may surprise you. Until now, Unagi (bbq eel with avocado), seemed pretty harmless and a good choice for reluctant sushi eaters. Well, Unagi is farmed, freshwater juvenile eel so that definitely gets a red light from the Seafood Watch folks. You can try a sustainable alternative to Unagi at Tataki Sushi Bar in San Francisco. It may be the only restaurant of it’s kind in the country. The owners of the all sustainable sushi restaurant say they don’t want to become a niche as much as they want to influence the rest of the industry to change its’ practices. And with sushi a growing multibillion dollar industry, consumer preferences can have a big impact.

So how do you green your sushi? Try Pacific Halibut, farmed scallop or North American Albacore. Monterey Bay Aquarium biologists consider these among the “best” seafood because they come from abundant, well-managed fisheries or are raised using sustainable aquaculture methods.

Each big storm with a high tide and an
onshore wind takes a big bite out of Sarichef.Photo By Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition

In an email this week from John Woodward, an Alaska builder and Home Energy author, he wrote, "I put together a working/management group to manage the relocation of the community of Shishmaref sustainabely. They live on Sarichef, a barrier island that global warming is wiping out."

Shishmaref is home to a small community of Inupiat, a Native American tribe. John is working with the Inupiat Tribal Government, the City of Shishmaref, and the Shishmaref Erosion & Relocation Coalition, to salvage as much of the village as possible before it goes under water and move it, along with the island inhabitants, to a new plot of land in the interior of Alaska.

The Army Corp of Engineers gives the island about 5 or 10 more years of livability. But as the ocean and permafrost warm and the ocean rises, unpredictable storms take a heavy toll on the island. "Each big storm with a high tide and an on-shore wind takes a big bite out of Sarichef," says Woodward.

The community is seeking funds for a comprehensive alternative energy plan, an anaerobic pump/methane generator, and the retrofit of all existing buildings, including more than 110 homes, community buildings and a school. The homes will be retrofit to use less than 5 Btu per square foot to heat. Heating load calculations can be pretty complicated, but in general, contractors recommend furnaces that can provide 30-50 Btu per square foot to heat homes in the Bay Area. To reach such a high level of energy efficiency, the Shishmaref homes will have the insulation installed on the outside of the structure, a technique that Woodward has successfully used in the past. The new village will have the look and functionality of the Inupiat culture as defined and designed through community planning.

"Our community planning process involves community charettes with the whole community gathered in the school gym," say Woodward. "The goal of these meetings is the rough-out of a comprehensive community plan for sustainable relocation of the existing salvageable infrastructure and the development of the new village site."

The Inupiat will build their new village to suit their needs and lifestyles, to be efficient, and to be in harmony with its surroundings-in other words, sustainabely. Let's keep an eye on our northern neighbors, who may teach us some valuable lessons. How long before whole towns in California will have to relocate because of water shortages? We all witnessed what happened in New Orleans a few years ago. How long before towns and cities on the coast of California will have to move inland or be seriously reconfigured because of the rising Pacific Ocean?

You can e-mail John Woodward with questions, comments, ideas, and offers of help at panuktuk@yahoo.com.

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