The average house paint is linked to cancer, asthma and Sick Building Syndrome — not to mention multiple environmental issues. So why do people keep using it?
“They have no idea what’s in it,” says Michael Aiken. “At the end of the day, if it doesn’t smell too terrible, they think it’s probably OK.”
Aiken’s start-up, Romabio, has created an alternative to acrylics that don’t stir up health risks or additional problems for the planet. Its mineral paints and plasters are free of toxins. They’re odorless and mold-resistant. They’re even made from natural raw materials.
“When you hear something’s made with a synthetic chemical, you have to believe there’s a better solution in nature,” Aiken says.
He didn’t grow up planning to revolutionize the paint world. As an undergrad at Randolph-Macon College, Aiken loved science but “just did OK” in chemistry. Medical school didn’t pan out. “Since I’m a pretty big talker, people kept saying, ‘You should go into sales,’” Aiken recalls. He found his entrepreneurial spirit a good fit for the commercial real estate and finance industries.
Flash ahead to 2009. Married with three kids, Aiken was preparing to paint his Decatur, Georgia, house. A friend told him about an unusual, all-natural paint. It wasn’t sold at a big-box store but only available in a 1,000-square-foot shop tucked behind an architect’s office. Curious, Michael checked it out.
The store wasn’t impressive — there were only a few racks and a tint machine. But Aiken’s conversation with the owner, Chris Lewis, was. The two men talked acrylic paint and its devastating effect on the environment. Lewis explained how the nontoxic, solvent-free paint he sold had been created by an Italian chemist, Patrizio Betti, based on ancient methods that date back to the Etruscans.
Aiken left with enough natural paint to cover the interior of his home — and a gut instinct that more people needed to know about it.
He and Lewis went into business together. Over the next few years, they kept encouraging Betti to create more durable and even cleaner paint formulations. Then Aiken used his business acumen to introduce their products to the building trade.
This year, Romabio supplied interior paint for one of Google’s recent developments in Sunnyvale, California, and a skyscraper in Beijing. Cans of its products are sold in home-improvement stores across Europe, as well as Benjamin Moore dealers and Home Depots throughout the U.S.
In the meantime, Aiken’s mission is to go even greener. Romabio has plans to ship its products in biodegradable plastic buckets. Leftover paint may no longer need to be treated like hazardous waste but will instead biodegrade through a new technology the company has been working on for the past year.
Aiken is, after all, a big picture guy. The best part of his job? Being part of a venture that “drives humanity forward,” he says.
Tag: Preserving the Environment
Creating Food Out of Thin Air
Lisa Dyson is on a journey to revolutionize the way protein is made. “We have a lot of work to do,” she says.
By 2050, the world’s population is estimated to hit 10 billion. Food production will need to increase by 70 percent. Traditional farming won’t be able to keep up.
Dyson knows the answer. It’s literally all around us: carbon dioxide.
An odorless, colorless gas, CO2 is used to carbonate drinks, make dry ice and helps smother flames when put in fire extinguishers. It’s also a byproduct of burning fossil fuels — and a known culprit of climate change.
Producing food from thin air? Sounds too good to be true. That is, until you consider that Dyson holds three degrees in physics, including a Ph.D. from M.I.T., where she studied string theory. “My dream growing up was to become a scientist,” she says.
Several years ago, Dyson and a colleague, John Reed, began searching for technical solutions for climate change. They stumbled across NASA reports written in the 1960s and ’70s that discussed using powerful microbes to recycle carbon dioxide aboard spacecraft.
“We were fascinated by their research,” Dyson recalls. “We wondered if we could develop a similar technology that would enable us to recycle carbon dioxide into valuable products here on Earth.”
The answer is yes. Today, Dyson and Reed’s startup, Kiverdi, uses those microbes to transform carbon into bio-based products. The magic happens in special bio-reactors, similar to the giant urns used to brew beer.
This year, they’re commercializing a new process to transform CO2 into protein powder. The end product, called Planet+Protein, is packed with essential amino acids, vitamins and minerals, and contains over 50 percent more protein than many other non-animal-based proteins, like soy-based foods.
“Think of it like the flour you have in your kitchen,” says Dyson. “It can be mixed with other ingredients to make flavorful foods.” Burgers, pastas, smoothies … the possibilities are endless.
Not surprisingly, Planet+Protein has “an amazingly low environmental footprint,” Dyson says. “To produce it uses significantly less land and less water than most other proteins.”
By the time Planet+Protein is for sale at your local supermarket, Dyson’s hope is that it will be one of the most sustainable protein options up for grabs — but not the only one.
“A change is necessary and inevitable, given the increasing demand for protein and our continuously growing population,” she says. In the future, Dyson predicts we’ll see numerous products on store shelves that follow the same conscientious credo: an earth-friendly process that inevitably helps reduce greenhouse gases.
You don’t have to be a scientist to help stop climate change, Dyson adds. “If you have your own idea that you believe will have an impact, then jump in with both feet. You’ll discover there are so many people willing to help you.”
A New Answer to the ‘Paper or Plastic’ Question
“You can’t just throw it into the trash!”
Eight years ago, that’s how Daphna Nissenbaum’s arguments with her teenage son began. He’d finish a water bottle, then absentmindedly toss it into the garbage. The scoldings she gave him for not recycling made the Israeli mother of five think about what else was being thrown away.
“I realized plastic bottles weren’t the main issue,” Nissenbaum says.
After all, they could be recycled, when people remembered to do so. But what about all the flexible packaging — chip bags, candy wrappers and go-to containers — Nissenbaum also saw crammed into the trash?
She did some research. What she found shocked her: Most flexible packaging isn’t recycled and ends up in landfills, oceans or other places.
Unless an alternative could be found, “our children will find themselves facing mountains of plastic,” says Nissenbaum. She thought of an orange peel or apple. Once discarded, it disintegrates biologically and turns to compost. Why couldn’t packaging be engineered to do the same?
Most people would consider that a rhetorical question. Nissenbaum made it a personal challenge.
Before earning an M.B.A. in marketing and entrepreneurship, Nissenbaum graduated from the Israeli Army’s elite software engineering program. “Part of our education was thinking out of the box,” she explains. “We were trained to create something from nothing.”
In the basement of her home, Daphna began the Tipa Corporation. Funds raised from friends and family allowed her to hire bioplastic experts. Their job: to source flexible packaging materials that are biodegradable.
Nothing existed. Instead, Tipa had to develop its own. What it came up with looks like plastic. It acts like plastic. Yet when composted, the material naturally breaks down in 180 days or less.
“Plastic that turns into compost,” says Nissenbaum. “It’s a beautiful thing.”
Yet her extensive business and management background said that wasn’t enough to be successful. “If we want the mass market to cooperate and adopt compostable solutions, we have to make it easy to do,” she says.
For instance, Nissenbaum’s team engineered their patented bioplastic to meet manufacturers’ requirements and to adapt to production practices already in place. That way, there’s no need for companies to invest in new equipment.
Today, Tipa makes zippered bags, stand-up pouches and packaging for coffee, snacks and produce. Clients range from a London-based fruit-jerky company to fashion designer Stella McCartney, who’s replacing all her plastic packaging with Tipa products and recruited the company to make invitations for her 2018 runway show in Paris. Individual products like compostable sandwich bags and biodegradable garbage bags are also sold online through eco-conscious retailers like Reuseit.com.
No longer headquartered in Nissenbaum’s basement, Tipa’s 25 employees have offices in the U.S., U.K. and Israel.
Coming up with a solution to landfill waste that the world will want to adopt has been a challenge, Nissenbaum admits, but she believes compostable plastics are the answer. So do her kids. Nissenbaum has even visited their schools to share Tipa’s mission. “They’re very proud,” she says.
Fashioning Clothing in a Circular Economy
Through give-back programs, The Renewal Workshop partners with brands to source returned, damaged, defective, out-of-season or post-consumer clothing. In its own facility, these garments are cleaned, sorted and repaired — giving them new life and creating the new product category “Renewed Apparel.”
The Renewal Workshop sells all renewed apparel back to partner retailers or other merchandisers.
Saving the Earth By Dying
Situated just south of San Francisco, the small town of Colma, Calif., has become famous, or perhaps infamous, for its motto: “It’s Great to Be Alive in Colma.” Which is ironic, given that the town’s population of dead people far outnumbers its living residents by nearly 1,000 to one.
Among the living is Joe Stinson, 72, a funeral director and owner of Colma Cremation and Funeral Services. Over the course of his decades-long career caring for the dead, he’s seen a lot of changes the industry. The latest? A growing movement toward eco-friendly burials.
“Green burials are changing how we, as a society, look at burying our dead,” says Stinson, who believes that just as our own deaths are imminent, so too is the widespread adoption of environmentally friendly deathcare options.
In the past few years, a wave of eco-friendly startups have focused on how humans can continue to be good stewards of the earth even in our afterlife. At its core, a green, or natural, burial minimizes environmental impact by reducing carbon emissions and making sure no harmful substances leach into the ground. This can include biodegradable caskets, like those made from handwoven willow or seagrass, or simple cotton shrouds. And the use of the toxin formaldehyde to preserve a corpse is a definite no-no. After an unpreserved body is lowered into the ground, it eventually decomposes, mixing and nourishing the earth around it.
According to the Green Burial Council, which provides eco-certifications for burial practitioners and products, the number of GBC-approved providers in North America has grown from one in 2006 to more than 300 today. (To be sure, that number is certainly higher, as deathcare providers don’t have to be GBC-certified to offer green and eco-friendly options.)
The arguments for a more environmentally conscious burial are mounting, literally, as the concrete, steel and wood we bury along with our dead piles up. (According to one estimate, there’s 115 million tons of casket steel underground in North America, or enough to build almost all the high rises in Tokyo.) What’s more, the formaldehyde used in embalming is a known carcinogenic, putting funeral directors at a higher risk for cancer. Then there’s the pollutants — from embalming fluid to the toxic chemicals used in casket varnishes and sealants — that can seep into the groundwater. As for cremation, that takes an environmental toll too, as the burning of fossil fuels emits harmful carbon dioxide into the air.
“This, by no means, should be at the top of our environmental priority list, but it is something that can be easily dealt with,” says Phil Olson, associate professor at Virginia Tech who specializes in death studies. “What we need to be worried about is the crap we put in the ground with the body. We need to talk about the environmental impact of forestry and all the energy it takes to manufacture the metals in coffins.”
Most green deathcare providers are hybrid operations, offering both conventional and natural burial options, but there are a few in the U.S. that specialize solely in green funerals and burials. One such operation is Fernwood Cemetery, located in Marin County, Calif., about an hour’s drive north of Stinson’s funeral home in Colma. On any given day at the bucolic cemetery, which sits above the rolling hills above Sausalito, you’ll find people walking their dogs, riding bikes or just lounging about. The only clue that it’s a burial ground is the occasional boulder engraved with someone’s name.
“We had some people coming through who were lost and asked what park we were in,” jokes Cindy Barath, the funeral director for Fernwood.
As for costs, well, that depends on where you live — or, rather, where you die.
Anyone in the cemetery business will say that death is like buying a house; it’s all about location. And in cities such as San Francisco, where there is more space devoted to housing and mixed-use buildings, creating an affordable option for a green burial is still a ways off. Fernwood, for example, charges between $10,000 to $15,000 for a full funeral, with a large chunk of that money going toward buying a plot of land. Compare that to the national average for a traditional funeral and burial, which is about $8,500.
Still, the costs for a green burial can be significantly less than a traditional internment, since you’re not paying for body preservation, an expensive casket made of steel or exotic wood, or a concrete grave vault. And some in the green-burial movement are working toward a model where a separate plot for each grave isn’t even necessary.
In Seattle, Recompose — formerly known as the Urban Death Project — is designing a three-story human-compost facility that turns dead bodies into reusable soil. The ambitious project, started in 2014, is still years from completion. If it succeeds, though, the company plans to replicate the model all over the world.
“Things in this industry happen slowly,” says Olson, referring to the snail’s pace of getting conventional cemeteries onboard with green burials.
In this regard, both Olson and Stinson point to cremation, which was introduced in the U.S. in the late 19th century. But it wasn’t until almost a hundred years later that cremations became more popular than burials.
Stinson, for one, is ready for the sea change he believes will eventually sweep the entire industry. Noticing the uptick in people requesting greener options, he’s begun offering more eco-friendly options, such as caskets made of seagrass and biodegradable urns.
For years, Stinson says, burials have always been fairly black and white: Either you’re cremated, or you’re put into the ground.
Looks like now we’re finally seeing shades of green.
Bringing the Good Stuff
Hannah Dehradunwala moved with her family from New Jersey to Pakistan when she was 11. “Almost nothing here goes to waste,” she thought.
At her grandmother’s house in Karachi, every item had an alternate purpose. Furniture, electronics and clothes were re-used or given away. Throwing out prepared food was unheard of, says Dehradunwala, now 24. “It wasn’t difficult to find someone who wanted your extra.”
When Dehradunwala moved back to the U.S. to attend New York University, she took that mentality with her. Seeing homeless people eating from trash cans shocked her. Compared to what she’d seen in Pakistan, throwing away excess edible food seemed “an insult to people who can’t afford to eat,” she says.
In 2013, Samir Goel, a classmate, asked Dehradunwala to help pitch a business idea for a school competition. Almost immediately, she thought of her time in Pakistan and knew the question she wanted to answer: How could people with extra food share with others who needed it?
“I thought, ‘What if I could pick it up for you? What if I could take it to a shelter for you? Would that incentivize you not to throw it away?’ Hunger isn’t a food problem, it’s a logistics problem,” says Dehradunwala, “and logistics can be solved for.”
Dehradunwala solved for the logistics issue by creating Transfernation (think Uber for food.) She and Goel didn’t win the contest, but kept pitching the idea at different competitions. A year later, they finally won their first round of funding from the Resolution Project (disclosure: The Resolution Project is a paid partner of NationSwell).
From there, Dehradunwala and Goel created an app that allows corporate cafeterias and caterers to schedule a pickup of leftover, unused food. Within an hour, a driver transfers the leftover food (Wagyu beef steak! Wedding cake!) to a homeless shelter or soup kitchen.
“The same food a corporate executive was eating less than an hour earlier is now being eaten by someone from a drastically different walk of life,” Dehradunwala says. “When the food reaches the shelter, it’s usually still hot.”
Transfernation first relied on volunteers. Now, they’re a fee-based service. Clients pay a small monthly or one-time cost per pickup. That’s used to compensate delivery people, who aren’t always behind the wheel of a car. They ride bikes. Sometimes, they walk.
“We’re looking to change the way that people view acts of ‘charity’ and attempting to create a model that benefits the people doing the actual transporting of the food instead of relying solely on their goodwill,” says Dehradunwala. “Volunteering is a privilege that many people can’t afford to partake in. With our model, the pickup becomes more than just an opportunity to do good, it becomes an opportunity for part-time employment.”
And yet, “it costs us under 20 cents to redistribute a pound of food and less than 25 cents to make a meal,” says Dehradunwala.
Since October 2016, Transfernation’s rescued over 210,000 pounds of food. It serves nine shelters in the NYC area, and its donations fill the bellies of 4,000 people each week. Three of these food programs rely completely on Transfernation’s deliveries.
While dropping off food at a shelter on a recent day, a woman waiting for the doors to open recognized Dehradunwala – and the Transfernation bounty in her arms. “You’re the people who bring the good stuff!” she exclaimed.
“It’s one of my favorite moments,” Dehradunwala admits.
The entrepreneur (who only graduated college in 2016) will have many more moments to come. Next up: Expanding Transfernation to communities outside the New York City area. “The way people view their extra food,” says Dehradunwala, “is changing.”
The Creator of Forest Guardians
Topher White used to work as a software engineer at a power plant. “A nerd on a computer,” he jokes. And now? “I’m still a nerd on a computer,” he says, “but I’m up in a tree.”
White, 35, is the founder and CEO of the San Francisco-based nonprofit Rainforest Connection (RFCx) that transforms old smartphones into tools that fight illegal deforestation in real-time. Thanks to the organization, 110,000 hectares of rainforest — the size of more than 200,000 soccer fields — are being protected.
The idea came to White in 2011. As a volunteer at an ape sanctuary on the island of Borneo, he watched rangers spend the brunt of their time chasing away illegal loggers.
It made White think about the implications of worldwide deforestation. According to the U.N., up to 90 percent of logging in tropical rainforests is unlawful. Disappearing forests are a leading cause of climate change. Their vanishing act puts thousands of animal species in jeopardy, not to mention indigenous people who rely on them for their livelihood.
When a problem is so large, how can you stop it?
Enter: Rainforest Connection.
White’s solution starts with recycled smartphones. (“Even in a remote forest, you can often find good cell service, especially on the periphery, which are the areas most under threat,” he says.) Sound detection software is installed on the devices. Then, they’re hidden high up in trees, where they become “forest guardians,” able to detect a chainsaw or truck engine up to two-thirds of a mile away. A text, e-mail or mobile push alert pings rangers on the ground, who can quickly intervene.
To keep the phones running, White wanted to use solar power. The question was how. Trees under the rainforest canopy don’t get bright sunlight. Traditional solar panels wouldn’t work. Instead, White designed special solar panels with unique petal-shaped arrays and circuitry to harness the power of fleeting sun flecks.
Within the first few days after Rainforest Connection’s pilot project launched on Sumatra, an island in Indonesia, the growl of a chainsaw was detected. Just as planned, rangers came to the rescue.
In the years since, Rainforest Connection has branched out across the globe. White now spends up to nine months each year in the rainforests of Ecuador, Peru, Cameroon and Brazil. He’s gotten used to checking devices while 200 feet up in a tree — and for an occasional laptop to plunge to the ground. He’s not complaining.
Saving forests is only the start.
White’s forest guardians also hinder illegal animal poaching in protected spaces. The sounds they record 24/7 are an acoustic treasure trove of data. Every monkey howl and parrot call can help scientists track changes in some of the world’s most endangered areas.
RFCx’s free app invites the general public to listen to the sounds of a rainforest in real-time.
“I want to make nature interesting and compelling to the world,” White says. “I want people to be involved — not because they feel guilty about deforestation, but because they find nature so irresistible that they can’t look away.”
Highland Park Takes Power Back
Soulardarity is a nonprofit organization that puts energy control in the hands of the community.
After a utility company repossessed more than 1,000 streetlights in Highland Park, the Michigan-based group began raising money to install solar-powered streetlights on the town’s dark streets.
Soulardarity envisions a future where energy is cooperatively owned and the wealth it generates is used to make communities stronger together.
The 10 Most Powerful Documentaries of 2017
To say the year in politics has been a whirlwind would be an understatement. Expensive natural disasters ravaged great swaths of the country, immigration and tax reform provoked wicked political attacks from both the right and the left, and stark revelations from women exposed a culture of sexual assault that touches almost every industry. And that’s just been the last four months.
In film, though, it was a year of fantastic documentaries that moved, inspired and challenged us. Here, our top perspective-changing films of 2017.
“Chasing Coral”
Years of overfishing and boating have caused coral reefs around the world to vanish, as they transform from once-vibrant homes for a diverse array of wildlife to colorless rock devoid of life. “Chasing Coral” follows a team of scientists, photographers and divers as they try to answer the question: Why are the world’s coral reefs are disappearing, and what we can do about slowing their untimely death?
“The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson”
The rise of the LGBTQ movement is often talked about through the lens of gays and lesbians, but very little ink has been given to how the drag and transgender communities played an equally significant role. One of the most prominent names in the fight for equality was Marsha P. Johnson, a transwoman and activist who was well known in New York City’s gay scene for decades, beginning with her role in the Stonewall Inn riots of 1969. But her mysterious death in 1992 has been debated for years. Was it an inside job by the mob? The NYPD? Or was it all just a tragic accident?
“Heroin(e)”
In Huntington, W. Va., the opioid epidemic is killing people at a rapid pace. The small city’s fire department fields dozens of calls a day relating to overdoses, but it has few resources to help everyone who needs it. This short documentary follows three local women as they battle the crisis in the city known as the “overdose capital of America”: the fire chief who dispenses life-saving drugs, the church leader who helps get women off the streets, and the judge who keeps addicts out of jail and with their families.
“I Am Evidence”
Mariska Hargitay, best known for her role as Detective Olivia Benson on “Law & Order: SVU,” has been one of the most vocal activists for getting rape kits tested and prosecutions made across the nation. Her film, “I Am Evidence,” explores the widespread problem of untested, backlogged rape kits, and the thousands of women each year who don’t get to see justice because of it.
“I Am Not Your Negro”
This Rotten Tomatoes certified-fresh movie is wholly inspired by the unfinished work of writer and social critic James Baldwin, an openly gay black man and civil rights activist famously known for his debate in Cambridge against William F. Buckley in 1965. The movie, narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, is an intensely sobering look at race in America, and how far we haven’t come in mending racial wounds.
“Nobody Speak”
We all had our love/hate relationship with Gawker, the now-defunct website known for its dogged, and sometimes unapologetic, journalism covering (and skewering) anything celebrity- and media-related. But the company’s brash take on free speech was challenged in a lawsuit brought by Terry Gene Bollea, aka Hulk Hogan, after Gawker published a sex tape starring the former wrestler. The court case was a mix of jaw-dropping legal tap-dancing and dark money that traced back to Peter Thiel, one of President Trump’s earliest endorsers in Silicon Valley that had some major beef of his own with the website.
“Quest”
Filmed over the course of 10 years, “Quest” looks at the life of one family in North Philadelphia and juxtaposes the question of what it means to be a typical American family when gun violence and danger lurk everywhere in the neighborhood you call home.
“Rat Film”
Like it or not, rats are very similar to humans. Beyond genetics, we are just as filthy and opportunistic as the rodents that ravage our cities. In Baltimore, there’s not just a rat problem, “there’s a people problem,” as one of the film’s subjects points out. The documentary examines the rodent infestation in one small area of Baltimore — a city plagued by poverty and high crime rates — and how the issue speaks more to the divide in quality of life between white and black communities than adequate pest control.
“Strong Island”
In 1992, Yance Ford’s brother, William Ford Jr., was shot and killed in New York. Ford Jr. was black, the shooter white, and the jury refused to indict. Decades later, Ford has channeled his frustrations into a true crime documentary that questions the investigation into whether his brother’s death was a murder or an act of self defense.
“The Work”
Imagine being put into a prison for four days with hardened criminals. What would you learn about them? About yourself? “The Work” profiles three men from the outside who join a days-long group therapy event at California’s Folsom State Prison. The men get an inside glimpse into what it really means to be incarcerated in America, and the challenges inherent with rehabilitating oneself.
The First Fossil-Fuel Free Paradise
Not so long ago, Hawaii’s image as a sweet-smelling tropical paradise was masking a dirty little secret: Of the states most dependent on foreign oil, Hawaii had rocketed to number one. As of 2006, a full 90 percent of its energy came from imported carbon-rich fossil fuels, which had to be delivered in cargo ships. Not surprisingly, this resulted in the highest gas prices in the country, costing state residents some $5 billion annually.
It was clear Hawaii needed to take action. In 2007 its Republican governor, Laura Lingle, enacted legislation committing the state to take its place “among the nation’s leaders in efforts to effect a climate change policy.” In 2015 her successor, Democrat David Ige, took her vision a step farther, signing into law a mandate that Hawaii generate 100 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2045.
“Hawaii decided to lead by example,” says Mark B. Glick of the Hawaii Natural Energy Institute. “And the lessons we’ve learned show that a comprehensive energy transition is attainable.”
It’s a blueprint that can work for other states, energy experts say. Glick agrees, adding that of the initiatives undertaken by Hawaii, boosting its fleet of electric vehicles has been among the most crucial.
RIDING THE CURRENT
Following the Great Recession, Hawaii channeled $4.5 million in federal stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into building electric vehicle charging stations. At the same time, the Hawaii State Energy Office chipped in $2.3 million in the form of rebates to individuals and businesses that bought electric vehicles (EVs for short).
For a state that had not long before depended almost solely on foreign energy, the results were a game-changer: From 2015 to 2016, as sales of gas-powered vehicles in Hawaii dipped 4 percent, the number of EVs jumped by 26 percent. By the end of last year, Hawaii saw more than 5,000 EVs cruising down its roads. The state has also built an infrastructure of hundreds of public charging stations — widely considered the best such network in the nation.
But Hawaii wasn’t done. To become completely powered by renewable sources, the state also had to make changes to its power grid.
In an all-encompassing effort to cut carbon emissions, a state commission last summer approved a plan by three utility companies to transition to 100 percent clean, renewable sources by 2040 — five years ahead of the already-ambitious schedule set by Gov. Ige. The three companies, which provide power to 95 percent of Hawaii’s population, are on deck to expand the use of wind, biomass, water, geothermal and solar.
The utilities’ trajectory has already been dramatic. On the Big Island of Hawaii, for example, 54 percent of electricity generated in 2016 came from renewables, up from 49 percent the year before. It represented a benchmark in the state’s climate policy: For the first time, more than half of the energy consumed on any of Hawaii’s eight islands came from clean sources.
In addition, the state was able to curb its overall electricity consumption by nearly 17 percent between 2008 and 2015.
On a third front, between 2008 and 2015, Hawaii’s electricity consumption dropped nearly 17 percent, the result of a concerted state effort to become more energy efficient. State buildings were retrofitted with more efficient cooling systems, and standard light bulbs were switched to LEDs.
Capitalizing on this momentum, in 2016 Hawaii won the country’s largest ever federal Energy Savings Performance Contract from the Department of Energy. The contract gave the state $158 million to retrofit 12 airports. The refurbishments are expected to cut annual electricity use by 49 percent.
MONEY MIGHT GO, BUT MOMENTUM WON’T
Other states, however, have struggled to copy Hawaii’s success. In 2017, California, a progressive state with 15 times Hawaii’s population, considered a law that would similarly mandate all its energy come from carbon-free sources by 2045. Had it passed, it would have made California the largest economy on the planet to make such a sweeping clean energy commitment, but the bill failed in the face of opposition from public utility companies and union workers (it may be considered again in 2018).
In the face of the current administration’s reticence to push for climate change policies, “states and cities need to do more, not less,” says Fran Pavley, a former state senator who authored a 2006 law that committed California to the most extensive per-capita carbon cuts in the nation — that is, until it was eclipsed by Hawaii in 2015.
Since Hawaii enacted its ambitious law, a few states, including Oregon, Vermont and New York, have passed similar laws to source at least 50 percent of their energy from renewable sources by the 2030s. And dozens of U.S. cities have pledged to do even better. But some of the main tools that Hawaii used to turn away from fossil fuels are being phased out — namely, federal clean-energy subsidies.
Starting in 2009, more than $30 billion in Recovery Act funds went toward an array of clean energy projects. As a result, between 2010 and 2016, the percentage of American power generated by clean renewables doubled from 4 to 8 percent, says Stephen Munro, a policy expert who works for Bloomberg New Energy. If you add in hydroelectric sources, that number jumps to 15 percent.
“Much of that gain is clearly due to Obama-era subsidies,” Munro says.
The clean-energy subsidies Obama implemented, widely credited with lowering the cost of wind energy by two-thirds and increasing solar production tenfold, are scheduled to sunset in the early 2020s unless they’re extended — something the Trump administration has signaled opposition to.
But even if they’re allowed to expire, some climate activists believe that those Obama-era subsidies have already given clean energy enough momentum to overtake fossil fuels. Even in Hawaii, which benefitted greatly from federal money, the state still found ways to incentivize its residents to make the transition by giving EVs free and preferential parking, for example, as well as special access to express lanes.
In other words, what happened in Hawaii won’t stay in Hawaii. That is as long as other states, bolstered by that clean energy momentum, work to foster cooperation among regulators, government, business, activists and consumers — federal money or no.