How Dallas Became a Role Model for Community Policing, The Secret Streams That Keep Hawaii Pristine and More


A Different Beat, Texas Monthly
The sniper attack that killed five Dallas cops this summer shocked locals: “Why here?” they wondered. Unlike other racially diverse urban areas, police relations in this Texan metropolis were quite strong. Since 2010, Police Chief David Brown harped on the need for community policing — even after his own patrol cops called for his resignation — saying a team of 80 neighborhood specialists are the city’s best crime-fighting tool.

Uncovering the Potential of Honolulu’s Hidden Streams, Next City
Open a manhole cover on Oahu, and one might find a stream of crystal-clear freshwater, dotted with fish wriggling upstream — just one of the many auwai, or canals, that native Hawaiians dug, then paved over centuries later. In Honolulu, a city well known for its sandy beaches, architects are reclaiming the rest of the tropical island’s buried waterways to accent public parks, buffer against flooding and repair coral reefs damaged by impure runoff.

America’s First Offshore Wind Farm May Power Up a New Industry, The New York Times
Several miles from New England’s shore, a brand-new energy project could have massive environmental ramifications. No, not oil drilling (with its hazardous spills), but the first-ever offshore wind farm. When three massive turbines near Block Island, R.I., begin twirling this October in the unobstructed Atlantic Ocean breezes (likely at faster, more consistent speeds than those on land), they could turbocharge  the already booming renewable energy sector.

MORE: 5 Ways To Strengthen Ties Between Cops and Citizens

Everyone Should Stay Warm During the Winter — Especially America’s Heroes

Excluding Veterans Day and Memorial Day, it can be easy to forget the sacrifices that America’s former military personnel made on our country’s behalf. This winter, a national fuel retailer is stepping up to do something more for veterans, providing savings on an essential utility to help them stay warm.
Suburban Propane, a public company with headquarters in New Jersey and 700 locations in 41 states, is offering a special on the next delivery of 100 gallons or more of gas to households where a veteran or active-duty service member lives. For new customers with military ties, Suburban Propane will take $10 off the bill of their first delivery of 100 gallons or more and comp all charges for the change-out, safety check and the tank’s first year of rent. Existing customers have the opportunity to take advantage of the savings as well; they can receive $10 off the next delivery of 100 gallons or more, and by referring another veteran, they can earn an additional 35 gallons of fuel added to their next order.
Across the country, at least 49,900 veterans sleep on the streets on any given night. The shock of combat can make holding down a job, keeping up with bills and being responsible for other aspects of day-to-day civilian life difficult. Suburban Propane decided to lessen the financial burden on veterans after senior management realized how many of their colleagues had military ties, says Mark Wienberg, the company’s chief development officer.
Of Suburban Propane’s 3,600 employees, “many have family members who are veterans or are veterans themselves. Many have sons or daughters, nieces or nephews who are currently deployed. The head of human resources here is a veteran of the Marines. One guy that managed a local service center and is now overseeing our fleet and tank assets, he’s a military vet,” Wienberg says. The savings offer is “our way of giving back to those who have given for us,” he says.
[ph]
And it’s a way to reach veterans as the company ramps up recruiting efforts, offering military personnel employment opportunities. “Many, in their duty to the nation, have performed services that are similar to what we do here, driving major trucks and vehicles,” Wienberg explains. “Someone who comes back from duty could be a service technician, or an officer might run a service center.” The company is currently working with lawmakers on legislation at the state level that would streamline the licensing process for veterans who drove vehicles of a similar class overseas. “We’ll do whatever we can to assist them,” Wienberg stresses.
James Marentette, who was stationed on a Navy aircraft carrier in the 1950s, and his wife Cindy, recently signed up for the deal. The couple, who have a grandson serving in the Air Force, met in church after losing their spouses to cancer and now live together in Crossville, Tenn. Frustrated by their previous gas provider’s poor customer service, they switched to Suburban Propane two years ago at their daughter’s suggestion. The special savings for veterans has helped their pocketbooks, as they rely on fixed income from Social Security and a small pension.
“There is nothing more rewarding than serving your country. Not everyone has that privilege — and I considered it a privilege to do that. To be recognized by a company like Suburban, even in a small way, just means so much to me and so much to all of our friends too,” says Jim. “You get a lot of discounts in restaurants and things like that, but I never heard of a company that supplies utilities to homes helping vets.”
“We think it’s wonderful,” Cindy chimes in, “and we’re so thankful. It makes us feel like people really care.”
The offer is good for one delivery taken by March 31, 2016.

Tomorrow’s Energy-Saving Neighborhood Is Being Built Today in Texas

America’s most futuristic neighborhood is being built, perhaps surprisingly, in Texas.
Under construction in Austin, the Lone Star State’s liberal enclave, is a residential development boasting rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle charging stations and meters to measure the electricity usage of every appliance. Known as the Mueller neighborhood, the community is “smart grid experiment” where the Pecan Street research consortium brought together experts from universities and utilities alike to provide real-world data for one of the most important ecological questions of our time: How can we reduce our energy and water consumption?
“There was virtually no data available on appliance-level electric use. We were trying to determine if testing certain things out, like electric cars or home energy-management systems would affect people compared to how they used electricity before they got access to this stuff,” says Brewster McCracker, Pecan Street’s president and CEO. “There was not only no data on that but nothing on the market that would measure that. We spent a long time working with suppliers and configuring things to measure appliance use every minute 365 days a year.”
[ph]
Energy usage by homeowners and businesses fluctuates wildly, accounting for 41 percent of all consumption. To be more environmentally friendly, McCracken says, we need to think about reducing our use during peak times, as well as what will use less total energy. That’s why Pecan Street’s live data is so important for measuring exactly what appliances are putting heavy demands on the system. Its analytics can tell you that an electric vehicle charger puts the same load on the grid as a clothes dryer — both far less than an air conditioner. Previously, no one tested the kind of impact that a dozen electric vehicles on one block, let alone an entire neighborhood.
Through a mobile app, the research team informs customers of specific ways to reduce energy like, say, unplugging the microwave. Those suggestions have led to a 10 percent reduction in electricity use, McCracken, a former two-term member of the Austin city council, says. Overall, the Mueller neighborhood uses 38 percent less electricity on heating and cooling than their less green neighbors.
The stats help plan better infrastructure for an entire region. Conventional wisdom, for instance, holds that south-facing solar panels will absorb the most sunlight. Which is true generally, McCracken says, but energy companies should know that west-facing photovoltaic panels will absorb more energy during late summer afternoons when need is greatest, his team found.
[ph]
Additionally, Pecan Street can detect when something seems amiss on an individual home. “We found that people who have solar panels have minor maintenance issues, but they didn’t have any way to learn about them,” McCracken says. “By having that data, we were able to isolate the solar panels that are turned off. Other things could be more subtle. A single fuse that’s blown could produce at a reduced level. We have the data analytics running to detect that. It’s not something that you could stare at a rooftop or look at the electricity bill to see that happened, but better data helps.”
The research institute’s data collection has been so unique that other energy companies throughout the country have invited it to study their neighborhoods. Pecan Street now gathers stats from more than 1,200 homes, primarily clustered in Texas, Colorado and California, and ships the data out to 138 universities in 37 countries.
“We have strong reason to believe that access to better data and better information enhances our ability to solve problems,” McCracken says. “If we have better data on weather patterns, we can help people be safe in storms. If we have better data on car performance, we can make cars that work better.” With a hotter planet, drought in the West and superstorms along the East Coast, this Texan neighborhood couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune time.

Introducing the Country’s First Hospital System to Achieve Energy Independence

With a revolving door of patients, high-tech equipment and extensive lighting and heating needs, hospitals and healthcare systems require a lot of energy to run — giving them a sizable environmental footprint. In fact, according to the Department of Energy, they have about 2.5 times the energy intensity and carbon dioxide emissions of commercial office buildings.
As global temperatures continue to rise, hospitals and health care systems need to prepare for a rapidly shifting climate. Just think back to Hurricane Sandy when hospitals needed patients to evacuate due to floods and power outages.
ThinkProgress reports that several hospitals, like in Maine and Massachusetts, are ramping up their efforts to combat climate change. But the Gundersen Health System — an extensive healthcare network comprised of clinics, hospitals, nursing homes and other services in 19 counties (Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota) and has more than 6,000 employees — has really stepped up to the plate.
Gunderson recently reached an environmental milestone: It now produces more energy than it consumes. If you check out the video below, the hospital system (headquartered in La Crosse, Wis.) relies on a whole slew of green energy sources — including a biomass boiler that burns wood chips from milling or forest residue, geothermal pumps that use the earth as a heating/cooling source, a solar thermal water heating system and wind turbines, as well as dairy digesters and generators to create energy from cow manure from farms.
MORE: This Amazing Home Creates More Energy Than It Uses
This eco-friendly behavior all started in back February 2008, after an energy audit discovered dozens of energy-saving opportunities. For example, by simply changing the lightbulbs, ballasts and other fixtures in six buildings, Gunderson saved $265,000 a year and energy use dropped 4.4 kilowatt hours annually — enough to power 440 homes. Simple things such as cutting use of 24/7 exhaust fans and implementing automatic shutoff times for the organization’s 8,500 computers also added up.
By the end of 2009, Gundersen says it was able to improve efficiency by 25 percent, resulting in more than $1 million in annual savings. Fast-forward to today: The hospital system’s energy efficiency has reportedly improved by 50 percent, which translates to $2 million in savings a year.
Gunderson has also distanced itself from gas, oil and coal and has frozen “all future investments in fossil fuels as part of an energy strategy that executives said will help ‘set the standard for environmental stewardship in healthcare,'” Modern Healthcare reports.
“We did not set out to be the greenest health system,” Gundersen CEO Jeff Thompson says in a statement. “We set out to make the air better for our patients to breathe, control our rising energy costs and help our local economy. We believe we have made more progress on all three than anyone else in the country.”
[ph]
DON’T MISS: Here’s How Colleges Are Leading the Green Revolution in Sports
[ph]

While Our Actions Sometimes Say Otherwise, This New Survey Reveals That We Really Do Care About the Earth

What do you care about more, the environment or your bottom line? As it turns out, Mother Nature is finally trumping bank account balances for most Americans.
A recent survey by the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor found that Americans care (or at least say they do) more about the environment than energy affordability. In the past, many studies have asked about this subject by posing it as a trade off — a would you rather, in a sense, pitting dollars and cents over birds and bees.
This time around, the research team led by John DeCicco went about it quite differently. By clearly inquiring about the importance of energy cost and environmental impact separately from each other made respondents show their true beliefs, untainted by how they feel about the other.
By asking respondents how they feel about environmental impact, DeCicco was able to show that “roughly 60 percent of respondents said they worried a ‘great deal’ or ‘fair amount’” about it, according to Fast Company. This even held true across multiple income levels.
What’s so groundbreaking about these results? They show that caring about the environment is a natural and popular opinion, which should put more people in support of individual and communal environmental efforts. A similar study was done in October 2013, with results coming in about even, which was impressive at the time, but this newer study shows a great trend in our collective thinking.
So whether it be oil spills or hurricanes or just hotter summer days, Americans seem to be caring more about the place around them. Which is certainly good news for the planet.
MORE: Inspiring the Next Generation of Energy Conservationists
 

What’s That Strange Crop Growing in America’s Fields?

You’re familiar with corn and wheat and cotton. And maybe even soybeans. But you’re probably never heard of miscanthus.
This funny-sounding crop is already providing renewable energy in Europe, and now, it’s beginning to catch on with more farmers here in the United States. Currently, it’s sprouting in fields in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois, among others — although still on a small-scale basis.
A relative of sugar cane, miscanthus yields 15 tons of biomass fiber per acre. It’s a perennial, so once planted, it returns every year for up to two decades. A relatively small amount of chemicals are required to keep this crop healthy, and once it’s established, many farmers use no pesticides at all. For all these reasons, miscanthus promises to outperform corn as a clean and efficient energy crop.
“Miscanthus is such a new crop that we are the first 16 acres to be planted in Iowa,” Steve Schomberg, the farmer with Iowa’s biggest miscanthus crop, told Rick Frederickson of Iowa Public Radio. “It gets gawkers, yes. People stop along the road and talk about it, (and ask) ‘What are you growing there?'”
Schomberg sends his miscanthus harvest to the University of Iowa, where it is mixed with coal and converted into steam and electricity at the University’s power plant. Iowa is currently recruiting more farmers to grow the crop. The state hopes to have 2,500 acres of it by 2016.
In Illinois, farmer Eric Rund is promoting miscanthus as a cheaper heating fuel alternative to liquid propane.
Iowa State University agronomist Emily Heaton is studying ways to mix miscanthus with existing fossil fuel sources so that less non-renewable energy is consumed. “When I look at a crop like this, I see a chance to make fossil fuels cleaner,” Heaton told Frederickson. “Because what we’re talking about is blending this clean grassy biomass with coal, so it just cleans up coal a little bit.”
And when you’re talking about an energy source as dirty as coal, even a little bit cleaner is a whole lot better.
MORE: Read About The Remarkable Scientists Making Corn-Free Ethanol
 

10 Do’s and Don’ts: Easy Ways to Save Energy—and Money—at Home

With a few cheap gadgets and some simple lifestyle changes, you can slash your energy bill and protect the environment. NationSwell talked to Helene Gotthelf, projects manager at the Institute for the Built Environment, a sustainability research center at Colorado State University, to compile a list of 10 easy do’s and don’ts for improving the energy efficiency of your home — while also saving you money.

5 Easy Energy Do’s

[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]

5 Simple Energy Don’ts

[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]
[ph]

Can Wetland Restoration Be Good for Business?

If you can’t beat ’em, sell to ’em.
For years now, big businesses and big utilities have been viewed as Public Enemy #1 of the environment — hurting much more than helping. But one Louisiana firm, Tierra Resources, has found a way to turn energy companies’ needs into a possible win for Mother Earth: By making the preservation of precious coastal wetlands financially worthwhile, according to Next City.
The key? Carbon offsets.
Wetlands protect coastal development, provide homes for wildlife, and drink up the carbons in the atmosphere linked to global warming. In many areas, unfortunately, wetlands have disappeared, being drained for development or eroded by storms. While many argue that wetland restoration is necessary, the work could cost billions.
But there’s where the idea of carbon offsets (where a firm purchases the rights to create more carbon from another firm that can mitigate carbon) enter the equation.
If, say, Entergy, a Louisiana utility firm, can restore more wetlands on company-owned real estate, that ground could offset some of Entergy’s carbon emissions. And it could reduce the $50 billion-plus projected price tag for rebuilding an ecosystem so vital to the state and to the world.
Tierra Resources helps make this possible by developing a detailed system of scientifically tracking and verifying the carbon offsets the wetlands provide. While the science is fairly convoluted, it’s promising enough that Entergy has sunk $150,000 into a pilot program, Tierra reports.
The Ecosystem Marketplace reports that energy giant ConocoPhillips is also considering investing in wetlands reclamation. That might be a drop in the multinational firm’s budget, but it’s potentially a big deal for the environment, as the company owns 640,000 acres of wetlands — making it one of the biggest single owners of such land in the United States.
Perhaps this will ultimately be the key to turning the tide of wetlands, and the environment. If doing the earth-friendly thing isn’t inspiration enough, making responsible environmental stewardship a savvy business decision has to spur change, right?
 

This Man’s Seriously Bright Idea is Giving People the Ability to Create Power Anywhere

What would you do if your phone’s juice was running low? Most of us would probably try to find the nearest wall socket. But what if you were nowhere near an electric outlet? Or what if the power was out?
Considering our modern world’s amazing technological capabilities, the way we power our gadgets and gizmos hasn’t changed much since, well, ever.
And that’s where Harold Tan, the founder and CEO of SunJack, (aka the world’s most powerful solar charger), comes in. His device can power up eight iPhones with only five hours of sunlight. Granted, solar chargers have been around for some time now (we’ll explain why the SunJack packs such a powerful punch later). But more than just giving us the convenience of quickly juicing up our smartphones during outdoor camping or music festivals, what makes this 34-year-old entrepreneur important is that he’s also bringing light to people in need — across the globe and here in the United States.
MORE: So Meta: Using the Power of the Sun to Create Solar Devices
The Los Angeles-based Tan told NationSwell that he’s currently in discussions with the Red Cross, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Smokejumpers (airborne firefighters) to donate units for local emergencies or other natural disaster situations, like Hurricane Sandy. “At those times, cell-phones are not just a luxury, but a lifeline to communicate medical emergencies or even to provide lighting at night,” he said.
Additionally, Tan said that his start-up is working with homelessness organization PATH to help provide energy independence to those of the population without homes, so they can power cell phones and apply for job interviews or stay in touch with social workers.
Not only that, the London-born Tan teamed up with Greg Cooper (who heads philanthropic tech company Dome KRB) to help the rest of the world achieve energy independence. “So, what TOMS Shoes does for shoes, we do for energy. So with every purchase of a SunJack we’re donating solar chargers out to Papua New Guinea and other third world countries, so that these huts can have energy independence and be able to power their lighting needs,” Tan told Gather Green. “Without these lighting sources, rural areas are currently resorting to kerosene lamps and indoor fires which are causing serious health issues.”
ALSO: This Genius Device Can Detect Cancer Using Solar Power
SunJack recently completed a successful Kickstarter campaign more than a week early, raising thousands more than the initial goal of $33,000. The company is now pumping out 300 units for an initial production run.
So how exactly does the SunJack work? The charger runs on monocrystalline solar cells — the same type of solar cells that go on rooftops. As Tan says, what’s different about his product is how its proprietary USB port and lithium-polymer battery optimizes the power of sunlight. (It’s like getting “more water out of your faucet faster.”) The charger is extremely powerful for its size (it can be folded up and toted around like an iPad), plus it’s virtually indestructible, as demonstrated by the car that runs over it in the video below.
As we’ve seen multiple times before, solar power is changing the face of conventional energy. In the long run, solar power might just be the cheapest form of energy. Not only is harnessing the clean, green power of the sun a smart financial move, but it also allows anyone anywhere the ability to create power just with the sun’s rays.
DON’T MISS: How to Crowdfund Solar Power
Along with our growing consciousness of protecting the environment is a simultaneous move towards energy independence; solar chargers allow us to slowly cut ties from Big Power and peel ourselves off the grid.
Funny how something as old as the sun is changing modern electricity.
[ph]
[ph]

These Lamps Are a Lot Smarter Than They Look

We have smartphones, smart televisions, and smart thermostats, so why not smart lights?
As it turns out, we soon will. Last week, Silver Spring Networks announced it will build the largest-ever project to connect streetlights to a smart grid in the United States. The company plans to work with its client Florida Power & Light to build 75,000 smart lights  in the Miami-Dade County area.
Not only will this be the biggest such undertaking yet, but it will be the first to connect streetlights to a network used for smart metering. Each lamp will serve as a node that collects information about the grid. Workers will be able to control the lights, monitor outages, and figure out how to fix problems remotely. Because the streetlights will be connected to the same grid as houses and businesses, the additional information they provide will help the company diagnose and fix outages more quickly and pinpoint where the problem is originating. “To them, a street light is just another sensor on the network,” Sterling Hughes, Silver Spring’s senior director of advanced technology told Jeff St. John of GreenTech Media. “The lighting serves as a perfect canopy to strengthen the network.”
Silver Spring has previously worked on smart grid streetlight programs in Paris and Copenhagen. Hopefully this smart idea will prove to be a useful model here in the States as well.
MORE: How All These Snowstorms Could Make for Better Roads and Cities