In a campaign that started in February to get Facebook to change its strategy to power its planned data center in Prineville, Oregon, with renewable energy instead of coal, Greenpeace has garnered support from 500,000 Facebook users under its “Unfriend Coal” campaign against Facebook.

With half a million signatures in hand, Greenpeace sent a letter to Facebook’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg calling for the world’s largest social network to cut ties to coal-fired power at its new data center in Oregon, reports Reuters.

Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace, writes in the letter: “Other cloud-based companies face similar choices and challenges as you do in building data centers, yet many are making smarter and cleaner investments.” He cites Google’s recent agreement to buy wind power from NextEra Energy for the next 20 years to power its data centers.

Facebook said the new facility is a highly energy-efficient data center on a cloud computing platform that is expected to lower energy consumption.

But Greenpeace says since the initial announcement Facebook has signed a deal to source its energy from PacificCorp, which uses 83 percent coal in its energy mix, according to the Associated Press, reports Reuters. But PacifiCorp said the number is 58 percent with the remainder from natural gas (20 percent), hydro (10 percent) and renewable energy (10 percent).

Greenpeace also says in its letter that Facebook plans to double the size of its data center, which translates into twice the energy use and twice the coal.

In response, Facebook told Greenpeace to get its own house in order, and said that Prineville will be one of the most efficient data centers in the world, reports TGDaily.

Barry Schnitt, Facebook’s director of policy communications, said in the article that the Prineville data center will have a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.15, compared to the industry average of 1.6 to over 2.0.

Earlier this year, Greenpeace admitted that many of its own web hosting operations are also housed in data centers powered primarily by coal and nuclear power, reports The Guardian. The environmental group said it offset all the energy used to power its main website in Amsterdam and used renewable energy where it could including wind power for many of its servers in Washington.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rejected some aspects of Texas’ rules for air pollution for the third time in five months because they violate the Clean Air Act, reports Houston Chronicle.

The EPA said the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s New Source Review — which mandates when industrial plants must implement additional pollution controls — did not meet Clean Air Act requirements. The New Source Review is required by the federal Clean Air Act and is typically administered by states, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Under federal guidelines, expanding industrial plants calculate their emissions to determine whether they need new pollution controls but the Texas rules allow new plants, which aren’t included in the federal rules, to use estimates to set emissions limits, according to the Houston Chronicle.

EPA says the problem is that if the caps are set too high, it will make it easier for the plants to expand later.

Al Armendariz, regional administrator for the EPA, told the Houston Chronicle that the Texas program also falls short of federal standards for monitoring emissions, and the state’s rules don’t require plants to include all pollution sources when setting limits.

Armendariz added that the ruling will not require companies to seek new permits or shut down, though there may be additional restrictions on emissions.

The EPA said in the Dallas Morning News article that Texas’ New Source Review system also did not guarantee that emissions remained below acceptable levels, and that the state does not allow enough public scrutiny of pending permits.

The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, which issues permits on the EPA’s behalf, said the program meets the federal requirements and that the state’s air quality improved under the program.

The EPA previously struck down a Texas program that let industrial plants avoid some permitting procedures and the state’s use of “flexible permits,” which the federal agency says establish emissions caps that aren’t enforeceable at refineries and other plants, reports Houston Chronicle.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has asked the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in separate petitions to block the EPA from rejecting the two permitting programs.

Texas recently joined 16 other court challenges to EPA’s tailoring rule, which is intended to limit greenhouse gas limits to larger facilities.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that he would work to help push through an ambitious renewable-energy bill that the state legislature failed to pass before a midnight deadline on Tuesday.

Schwarzenegger said he would work with lawmakers on the renewable-energy bill while negotiating the state budget.

“We can fine-tune that so we get it done,” he said, speaking at a press conference webcast from Sacramento where he discussed the outlook for a bipartisan agreement on the state’s budget, Automated Trader reports.

The renewable energy bill, SB 722, would have required California public utilities to obtain 33 percent of their power from “new renewables,” i.e., solar, wind, geothermal, and biomass, but not large-scale hydroelectric dams. Debate was proceeding on a companion bill when August 31 turned into September 1 and the session ended, Greentech Solar reports.

Despite broad support, the legislature ran out of time Tuesday night for a final vote on the measure before a midnight deadline. While SB 722 is technically dead, the bill could be revived if it were included in the budget process, which is ongoing. It will be up to Schwarzenegger to decide whether to allow the bill to be included in the budget process, a move that he indicated he would consider.

“Anything that was not accomplished, I will try to get them done before I leave office,” Schwarzenegger told the Los Angeles Times.

The legislature passed a similar renewable-energy bill last year, but Schwarzenegger vetoed the measure over a disagreement about how much out-of-state electricity would be allowed under the program. This year, the two sides were much closer to agreement on a renewable-energy bill, although details, including a limit on out-of-state power purchases and compliance rules, were still being ironed out. Lawmakers also were working out final provisions, pushed by Schwarzenegger, for simplifying the approval process for construction of new solar and wind farms in California.

Schwarzenegger, who will leave office at year’s end due to term limits, and Democrats have extra motivation to nail down a 33 percent renewable-energy law, as the climate law that envisioned the mandate is under threat by a proposal set for the November ballot.

Proposition 23, backed by oil refiners Valero, Tesoro and other companies, would indefinitely suspend California’s climate law and associated regulations.

Norfolk Southern has set a goal to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per revenue ton-mile 10 percent by 2014, using 2009 as a baseline. The freight rail transportation company expects to reduce its carbon footprint through fuel-savings technology and improvements in operating efficiencies.

In 2009, Norfolk Southern transported 158.5 billion ton-miles of freight, producing 4.7 million metric tons of greenhouse gases, mostly from diesel-burning locomotives. Emissions per revenue ton-mile were 30.0 grams. To achieve a 10 percent reduction by 2014, the freight company has to reduce its emissions to 27.0 grams per revenue ton-mile, which would prevent the emission of 475,000 metric tons of greenhouse gases annually.

Blair Wimbush, vice president real estate and corporate sustainability officer for Norfolk Southern says the company’s emissions reduction strategy will focus on ways to achieve better fuel economy, including the purchase of new and more fuel-efficient locomotives, continued deployment of idle-reduction and train handling technologies and refined engine maintenance practices.

In October last year, Norfolk Southern unveiled its zero-emissions electric locomotive.

Other efforts will target direct and indirect emissions from energy used for heating, cooling, and lighting buildings and other facilities on the railroad, and adjusting its non-rail vehicle fleet to save fuel and cut emissions.

Norfolk has nearly completed a systemwide lighting upgrade that is reducing the company’s electricity use. The company also expects significant efficiency gains from its major infrastructure improvement projects, including the Heartland and Crescent corridors.

The Heartland Corridor is a three-year project to upgrade Norfolk Southern’s rail route between the Virginia ports and the Midwest by modifying 28 tunnels and other facilities to accommodate double-stack containers. The new gateway, scheduled to open on September 9, will cut about 250 route miles, and a day or more of transit time from current train schedules.

The Crescent Corridor project includes improvements to infrastructure and other facilities, which will create a high-capacity, 2,500-mile intermodal route spanning from Louisiana to New Jersey. The improvements will allow the freight company to handle more rail freight traffic faster and more reliably.

In March, Norfolk Southern Railway was fined $4 million over a 2005 chlorine spill in Graniteville, S.C., for alleged violations of the Clean Water Act and hazardous materials laws. The spill was caused by a train wreck.

California lawmakers have rejected a bill that would have been the first statewide ban on plastic shopping bags in the nation, USA Today reports.

The Democratic bill, AB 1998, which failed on a 14-21 vote late Tuesday, had drawn fierce opposition from the plastic bag manufacturing industry, which spent heavily on ads attacking the measure as a jobs killer.

“California uses 19 billion plastic bags a year. … We use them for 10 minutes and it takes 1,000 years to break down,” the bill’s author, Assemblywoman Julia Brownley, D-Santa Monica told ABC News.  Brownley said it costs the state $25 million a year to clean up the mess. “It’s very difficult to really completely clean it up,” Brownley said. “It’s very easy for us to change our habits.”

The bill, which GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger hailed when it passed the State Assembly in June, would have barred grocery stores, large pharmacies and retailers such as Target and Wal-Mart that sell food from offering plastic bags in 2012. The ban would have extended to convenience stores, drugstores and mom-and-pop shops in 2013. Consumers would have had to carry their goods in reusable bags or buy recycled paper ones at store cost.

Environmental groups have long lobbied for statewide bans, but only local ones have passed. The California cities of San Francisco, Malibu, Palo Alto and Fairfax have approved bans, and North Carolina banned single-use plastic and non-recyclable bags last year in the Outer Banks. In January, Washington, D.C., began requiring grocery stores to charge a nickel for disposable grocery bags, according to USA Today.

The proposed ban had gone further than in any other state, in part because of support from the California Grocers Association, an industry group that previously opposed the bill.

“The bill has been amended tremendously,” said the group’s CEO Ronald Fong, adding its revised version pre-empted local jurisdictions from passing their own bag bans. Without a statewide ban, he said stores will face a potential patchwork of dozens of varying local ordinances that could cause “chaos and customer confusion.”

“This issue is not going away,” Fong told USA Today. “The future is in reusable bags. It’s the right thing to do.”

To garner more support, Brownley also removed a provision that would have charged customers a nickel to buy a recycled paper bag. The revised version allows retailers to charge only what it costs them to buy the bags.

Despite the tweaks to the bill, the Virginia-based American Chemistry Council spent millions in lobbying fees, radio ads and a prime-time TV ad attacking the measure, reports the Associated Press. The group, which represents plastic bag makers including Dow Chemical Co. and ExxonMobil Corp, helped sink Seattle’s effort last year to charge 20-cents for each plastic or paper grocery bag .

Keith Christman, managing director of the group’s plastic markets, told USA Today the bill will only exacerbate California’s economic problems by putting 1,000 plastic bag workers out of jobs, taxing consumers for paper bags and creating a “bag police” at a time when teachers are getting furloughed.

State Sen. Mimi Walters, R-Lake Forest shared his sentiments. “If we pass this piece of legislation, we will be sending a message to the people of California that we care more about banning plastic bags than helping them put food on their table,” she told ABC News.

The amendment to Brownley’s bill would have provided $2 million in grants and loans to retain jobs in businesses making plastic bags so they could retool and produce reusable bags. A spokeswoman for Brownley told ABC News that she believed the bill would have created more green jobs.

“Workers don’t want training programs. With millions of people out of work,” Christman countered. “We don’t need this today. They want their jobs.”

After over a decade of intense involvement with chemicals, substances, and environmental compliance regulations, we’ve heard, asked, and answered a lot of questions.  So far, nothing has prompted the surge of questions that the REACH regulation has generated.

As the November, 2010 REACH deadline approaches, it’s a great time to clear up the top five most commonly asked questions about REACH.

What is the REACH timeline?

The REACH Regulation entered into force in Europe on June 1, 2007.  It’s still rising to its crest.

What is the goal of REACH and what’s been its impact so far?

REACH is an acronym – it stands for the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of Chemicals.  The big-picture goal of REACH is the safe use of chemicals in our environment. The hope is that, ultimately, because of REACH everyone will have the information they need to use chemicals safely. In the more immediate-future, REACH seeks to limit or prohibit the use of toxic substances in products.

REACH is a landmark piece of legislation with enormous impact.

REACH affects manufacturing and distribution companies that:

• have a supply chain that runs through Europe in any way
• import from, source from, or manufacture in Europe
• sell products in Europe
• plan to sell products in Europe

For instance: occasionally there is a recall or outcry over a significant amount of toxic substances such as cadmium or lead in a product like jewelry or paint. But who’s accountable? We’re not always sure. REACH is specific about who is accountable for which chemicals in a product, supply chain, or processing event. Companies must now concern themselves with what chemicals and substances suppliers use, as well as the ones used or emitted by their customers.

Overall, the idea behind REACH is to streamline and improve the previous legislative framework for chemicals.  REACH has driven raw material transparency requirements to an unprecedented level of market and regulatory attention.

In practical terms, this means that manufacturing and distribution companies are now implementing appropriate systems to measure, track and manage chemicals in their products and supply chains. This chemical accounting, as it were, appears to be good news for most with environmental interests, including the public in general.  Currently, the best way to manage REACH compliance is with a dedicated relational database and automated supplier communication, usually in the form of auto-dispatched emails that include a link that suppliers click to access their part of the database.

It’s a new, unpaved road. But there’s hope for a smooth ride: the hope is that once REACH settles in and companies have grown accustomed to its demands, then a safer environment will actually be fairly easy to maintain.

What is the difference between an SVHC list and a SIN list, and what other resources are there?

The SVHC list is the list of Substances of Very High Concern. Only the European community could come up with such a tactful term for “highly toxic stuff.” So far, the list is really just candidates – or substances that are likely to officially make the list when it does become final. As of this writing there are 38 substances on the SVHC list; the most recent additions were made in June 2010. The number is likely to increase to 165 identified substances by 2012.

More familiar substances on the list include types of lead, arsenic, and coal tar.

Substances of Very High Concern include substances which are:

• Carcinogenic, Mutagenic or toxic to Reproduction
• Persistent, Bioaccumulative and Toxic (PBT) or very Persistent and very Bioaccumulative (vPvB) (defined by REACH criteria), and/or
• identified causing probable serious effects to humans or the environment of an equivalent level of concern as those above, e.g. endocrine disrupters

SVHCs have hazardous properties of very high concern. It is essential to regulate them because the effects they can have on humans and the environment are very serious and often irreversible. There is no tonnage threshold for a substance to be subject to authorization. Bear in mind that “tonne” in this case means the European tonne measure, which is slightly larger than the U.S. ton.

The identification of a substance as a Substance of Very High Concern and its inclusion in the Candidate List is the first step of the authorization procedure. ECHA, which stands for the European Chemicals Agency, is the “mission control” of REACH administration. For assistance, they recommend contacting the Helpdesk for the particular EU member state where you are planning to source from or sell into.

Companies may have immediate legal obligations following such inclusion, so it’s best to be prepared for substances that are likely to make the list. Immediate legal obligations are linked to the listed substance on its own, in preparations and articles.  The latest SVHC candidate list is online here and here.

If you’re wondering which substances are likely to make the SVHC list in the future, take a look at the SIN list.  The SIN list is a list of things manufacturers should avoid.

The SIN list – as the name suggests – is an itemization of substances that “thou shalt not” get involved with.  The SIN list is a list of substances that are likely to make it onto the SVHC list. The SIN list came about because the SVHC listed a handful of substances NOT to use – and companies wanted to know if the chosen replacements would turn up banned in the future. The SIN list contains over 350 chemical-substances that should be replaced now. SIN is in fact an acronym for:  “Substitute it NOW!”

One tricky aspect of REACH is that its enforcement is different in each member state in the EU. Penalties and fines for lack of REACH compliance in Hungary, for example, are different than the penalties and fines in Poland – in some cases they’re enormously different.  So you must figure out which member state is most relevant to your concern.

This issue comes up, for example, if you have REACH questions. If your in-house REACH system hits a snag, the place to start searching for help on REACH would be the REACH helpdesk – but you need to select the one established in the appropriate member state, according to your unique chemical portfolio. These necessary layers of expertise can be frustrating and can derail a product initiative; these convolutions of legalities are why companies turn to software for REACH compliance.

Will there be REACH-like chemical regulation in the U.S.?

Yes, is the short answer. REACH-like chemical regulation is brewing in the U.S. The U.S. has had chemical regulation under Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) since 1976. However, interpretation and enforcement have been fleeting. The current EPA is working hard to update chemical legislation – see here and here – and the only sensible way to do it is to create a registration, evaluation, and authorization process. Which sounds a lot like an acronym for REACH, doesn’t it? Another parallel initiative is the California Green Chemistry initiative, which has REACH-like requirements and is a close cousin to the EU regulation.

State by state, expect to see more regional laws trying to regulate chemicals in products, production, and waste streams. While the effort is admirable, the result is often a mish-mash of rules, standards, and regulations that makes managing compliance a challenge at best.

Interestingly, chemical companies and their lobbyists tend to be on board with pursuing chemical legislation at the federal level. The reason is simple: manufacturers and chemical companies want one simple set of rules to adhere to.  Businesses do not benefit from the current multi-dimensional spider web of regulations, standards, and initiatives coming into play.  The closer regulations get to being universal, the easier they are to follow.  Problem is, of course, getting everyone to agree on one set of regulation procedures and standards.  The major agencies seem challenged to come at the solution from the same point of view.

In the meantime, it’s critical to stay tuned to information streams such as Environmental Leader to keep current as more localized REACH-like regulation rolls out.

How can a company comply with REACH and REACH-like chemical regulation?

Fairly, some criticize REACH and similar initiatives as being prohibitive to industrial growth – and in fact the infancy of these programs does pose a daunting and even tedious, if not impossible, task in terms of untangling disparate pieces of data.

When you have to gather and parse materials-data from suppliers, use-cases from customers, and all the regulatory footholds in a very steep cliff of compliance – it’s onerous, if not impossible.  However, modern challenges seem to generate modern solutions: and in this case there is software now available to solve the challenge of REACH Compliance and of Chemical Regulation Compliance in general.

Russell McCann is the Co-founder and CEO of Actio Corporation.  He can be reached using the contact form at www.actio.net.

 Nestlé is investing nearly $350 million over the next decade to expand its reach into sustainable coffee farming, make its factories more efficient and reduce its packaging. Beyond the Cup: The Nescafe Plan is the company's global project that adds onto the nearly $200 million already spent on coffee project in previous years.

Since the first humans carried a torch to provide light, heat has been a by-product of producing light. Traditional electric lights give off more heat than light. But LEDs are twice as efficient as fluorescents at converting electricity to light, generate very little heat, are nearly maintenance free and provide a high quality of light. So what's standing in the way of their broad adoption?

Email articleComment on this article Some 75 per cent of CILT members believe that the government should aim to protect spending that supports economic growth in its comprehensive spending review.

A major international conference on the future of lorry charging to achieve a cleaner, smarter and more competitive Europe.

The fuel consumption and CO2 emissions of vans can be cut much more quickly and cheaply than the European Commission's research suggests. That's the message from two new reports published by T&E. The first study says that fitting less powerful and smaller engines has been an overlooked but quick and cheap option to reduce emissions. The second report suggests emissions can be cut even more by limiting a vehicle's maximum speed.

Another two independent scientific studies have cast further doubt on the EU’s policy of pushing for biofuels to make up 10% of the transport market by 2020. And in a special report, the Reuters news agency says the general picture that emerges from a series of Commission documents is that EU officials might have ‘deliberately skewed the findings of scientific studies to fit their policies’.

Europe’s road transport in 2050 will involve lower speed limits and very few internal combustion engines. That is the vision that emerges from a Commission consultation on how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from Europe’s transport sector.

Belgium has confirmed it intends to shepherd the revision of the Eurovignette directive through the EU’s legislative process by the end of the year.

The newly-founded Clean Shipping Coalition (CSC) has been granted interim observer status at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO).

EU legislation to improve air quality on land and at sea is to be delayed until 2013. The environment commissioner Janez Potočnik says the measures to revise the National Emissions Ceilings directive and other air quality legislation will be too expensive, and he has other priorities for the next couple of years, but his assessment has been strongly criticised by environmental and health groups.

Two new independent scientific studies launched today cast further doubt on the EU’s policy of promoting biomass as fuel for heat and power generation, and biofuels for transport, [1] according to BirdLife International, the European Environmental Bureau and Transport & Environment.   

The German government has announced it is to introduce a tax on international air tickets. The move would make it the fourth western European nation following France, Great Britain and Ireland to have an aviation ticket tax.

The Commission has published its guidance on the sustainability and certification of biofuels, which it hopes will stop the loss of credibility in the EU’s biofuels policy. But the new guidelines for the sustainability of biofuels production still do not take indirect land-use change into account, which experts and campaign groups say is the most crucial issue.

A new study from the International Transport Forum reports a drop in transport demand and emissions during the global economic downturn, but says the long-term global trend continues to show growing demand for transport.