Strategic Design of the UIS Student Union

This is the part I like:

Environmentally Excellent

UIS is seeking a LEED Gold certificate (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design, awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council), both for the sake of the environment and in order to take advantage of energy saving measures. For this reason, the building will have a green, or “living,” roof with vegetation and a growing medium over a sloped membrane. This roof will provide insulation, help to lower air temperatures, and last much longer than other roofs—50 to 60 years rather than the 20 to 30 years most roofs last. The vegetation will most likely include wildflowers that will change throughout the growing season, adding to the building’s beauty.

To reduce storm runoff and eliminate water irrigation, the Student Union will have a rainwater reclamation system that takes advantage of the roof’s slope. Also in consideration of LEED approvals, lighting will be designed to meet the USGBC’s very stringent requirements.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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info@beyondextremeenergy.org

Beyond Extreme Energy

Get involved in BXE’s work

Take Action!

• Take direct action to stop Trump’s upcoming FERC appointments!
• Join the Organizational Sign on Pledge in opposition to Trump’s FERC appointments!

Stay Connected!

• Sign up for the BXEEkly, our weekly events e-mail newsletter.
• Endorse BXE!
• Check out our blog and press releases for updates!

Support our work!

• Make a financial contribution.
• Write to Actions@BeyondExtremeEnergy.org if you’re interested in being on one of our organizing working groups.

Questions? Need to contact us? Email info@beyondextremeenergy.org

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Go there and join, read and protest. More next week.

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http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-10-19/tepco-considers-return-to-japan-bond-market-as-profit-increases

Tepco Mulls First Public Bond Sale in Japan Since Fukushima

October 18, 2015 — 10:08 PM CDT
Updated on October 18, 2015 — 11:14 PM CDT

Tokyo Electric Power Co. is considering returning to Japan’s bond market next September in the first public offering since the disaster at its Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear power facility in 2011.

Tepco, as the utility is known, plans to raise a total of 330 billion yen ($2.8 billion) in the fiscal year starting April 2016, the Nikkei newspaper reported Monday. The company has hired five sales managers including SMBC Nikko Securities Inc., according to the report. Tepco spokesman Tatsuhiro Yamagishi said the utility is considering bond sales from September but couldn’t confirm other details when reached by phone.

A public debt offering would be Tepco’s first in six years after it halted bond sales following the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami that caused a triple meltdown at the Fukushima site. The disaster put Tepco on the verge of default, with the head of Japan’s biggest stock market saying in 2011 that the company should file for bankruptcy protection. Tepco was saved by a 1 trillion yen infusion from the government the following year, the nation’s largest bailout since the 1990s.

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Go there and read a little teeny bit. More next week.

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The post Remember Tepco – You know that little nuclear disaster thing appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

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These are conscious communities that try to wean themselves from hydrocarbon fuels. While they look to be like other commune movements such as the most recent “back to the land” movement of the 60s and 70s, they are purposeful in their reduction of greenhouse gas production. They are all around the world and have their own network of publications and even conferences. But as I was trying to dig my strawberry patch out of the grass attack that killed it this summer, I was thinking that I started “stoop” labor when I was a small child gleaning for corn and working in my great grandfathers truck patch. I thought then “when I grow up I will never do this again”. But look at me now. It can be a tough life. And if we had to get by on our strawberry crop this year we would be dead before winter even started. Still IF we had to depend on our strawberry crop we would have done a better job. So first up some of the bigger sites and some in odd places.

http://www.transitionnetwork.org/news/2011-08-31/august-round-whats-happening-transition

August round up of what’s happening in Transition

We’ll start down under in Australia where Transition Eudlo (NSW) held a talk in the wonderfully named Mullumbimby which means ‘small round hill’ in Aboriginal. It was presented by Sonya Wallace, founder of Transition Town Eudlo and Transition Sunshine Coast. Also in Australia, MINTI, the Melbourne Inner Northwest Transition Initiative, held a local food forum and asked ‘What’s Eating Australia?’

Over in Balingup, Western Australia, following a successful speaker event by a sustainability lecturer and member of Bunbury TT, public screenings are being held around town to raise awareness of the Transition movement. Balingup locals plan to spread the word and help make Transition as thriving in the west of Australia as it is in the east. Read more about it here.

In Japan, this August update (to the TN website) from Paul Shepherd in Tokyo on the emergence of a Japanese national hub is well worth a read. The headline is that following the existing TT’s in Fujino, Hayama & Koganei, there are now about 20 to 25 emerging Transition Towns in Japan.

Sara and Emilio (www.nu-project.org) would like to share their latest short film which includes an interview with members of Transition Barcelona, some footage of the 15M protest movement across Spain and how it’s connected with Transition.

Transition Town Kinsale in Ireland have been busy this month with a butterfly walk, a sanctuary walk and talk in a restored limestone quarry with Ted Cooke of The Woodland League (to help mark National Heritage Week) and a Kinsale Hub BBQ fundraiser on the dock. Check out this great poster…:

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Go there to read much much more. More tomorrow.

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What Louisiana Environmental Action Network has to say:

http://leanweb.org/donate/donate/donate-join.html

Louisiana Environmental Action Network & Lower Mississippi RIVERKEEPER© Helping to Make Louisiana Safe for Future Generations

E-ALERT May 6, 2010

Oil Spill Dispersants Update On May 4, 2010 the Materials Safety Data Sheets for the two dispersants that we had heard were being used on the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster were posted to the official DeepwaterHorizonResponse.com website. The two products are Corexit 9500 (as previously reported) and also Corexit EC9527A Corexit 9500 MSDS Corexit EC9527A MSDS The toxicity of Corexit EC9527A is quite high, here is an extract from the Corexit EC9527A Materials Safety Data Sheet: SAFETY DATA SHEET PRODUCT COREXIT(R) EC9527A APPLICATION: OIL SPILL DISPERSANT NFPA 704M/HMIS RATING HEALTH: 2/ 2 FLAMMABILITY: 1/ 1 INSTABILITY: 0/ 0 OTHER: 0 = Insignificant    1 = Slight    2 = Moderate   3 = High    4 = Extreme 2. COMPOSITION/INFORMATION ON INGREDIENTS Our hazard evaluation has identified the following chemical substance(s) as hazardous. Consult Section 15 for the nature of the hazard(s). Hazardous Substance(s) CAS NO % (w/w) 2-Butoxyethanol 111-76-2 30.0- 60.0 Organic sulfonic acid salt Proprietary 10.0- 30.0 Propylene Glycol 57-55-6 1.0- 5.0 3. HAZARDS IDENTIFICATION **EMERGENCY OVERVIEW** WARNING Eye and skin irritant.  Repeated or excessive exposure to butoxyethanol may cause injury to red blood cells, (hemolysis), kidney or the liver. Harmful by inhalation, in contact with skin and if swallowed. Do not get in eyes, on skin, on clothing. Do not take internally. Use with adequate ventilation. Wear suitable protective clothing.  Keep container tightly closed. Flush affected area with water. Keep away from heat. Keep away from sources of ignition -No smoking. May evolve oxides of carbon (COx) under fire conditions.

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Please go to their web site for more info and to DONATE…

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1CRXlG4g2Y )

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This from the Huffington Post by way of Yahoo:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20100507/cm_huffpost/566196

Gulf Oil Spill: A Symbol Of What Fossil Fuels Do To The Earth Every Day, Say Environmentalists

Dan Froomkin Dan Froomkin – Thu May 6, 11:57 pm E

The leading edge of a vast oil slick started to come ashore in Louisiana on Thursday night, a shroud of devastation falling on America’s coastline even as the blown-out BP oil well that produced it continues to belch millions of gallons of thick crude into the Gulf of Mexico for a third straight week.

At moments like this, it’s hard to see any silver lining here at all. But it’s possible there is one. Many environmentalists say that the wrenching and omnipresent images of filth and death are at last providing Americans with visible, visceral and possibly mobilizing evidence of the effects that fossil fuels are having on our environment every day.

Rick Steiner is horrified at the damage. A University of Alaska marine specialist, he’s watched cleanup efforts ever since the Exxon Valdez spill in 1989, and has learned some bitter lessons.

“Government and industry will habitually understate the volume of the spill and the impact, and they will overstate the effectiveness of the cleanup and their response,” he said. “There’s never been an effective response — ever — where more than 10 or 20 percent of the oil is ever recovered from the water. Once the oil is in the water, the damage is done.”

And most of the damage remains invisible deep below the surface, including the wide-scale destruction of essential plankton in the area and the wiping out of an entire generation of fish larvae. “This is real toxic stuff,” Steiner said.

But the damage that is visible — the vast and foul oil slick, the dolphins swimming through sludge, the birds coated in oil, the dead fish and sharks and turtles — is enough to thoroughly disgust anyone paying attention.

And that, Steiner said, makes it a “teachable moment” that “will hopefully serve as a wake-up call that we need to turn to sustainable energy.

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Much more there and video as well.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_AjuIWq05w )

Oh sorry:

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXp_sMam-Jc )

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Lastly, this from the AP

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100507/ap_on_bi_ge/us_gulf_oil_spill

Giant box getting closer to oil-spewing Gulf well

ON THE GULF OF MEXICO – A 100-ton concrete-and-steel box plunged toward a blown-out well at the bottom of the sea Friday in a first-of-its-kind attempt to stop most of the gushing crude fouling the Gulf of Mexico.

Douglas Peake, first mate of the supply boat that brought the box to the site, confirmed he had received a radio transmission from the nearby vessel lowering the device that it would be in position over the well soon.

The transmission early Friday said undersea robots were placing buoys around the main oil leak to act as markers to help line up the 40-foot-tall box. But seven hours later, BP spokesman Bill Salvin said the device was still being lowered and had not reached the seafloor.

Once it gets there, underwater robots will secure it over the main leak at the bottom, a process that will take hours. If the delicate procedure works, the device could be collecting as much as 85 percent of the oil spewing into the Gulf and funneling it up to a tanker by Sunday. It’s never been tried so far — 5,000 feet — below the surface, where the water pressure is enough to crush a submarine.

“We haven’t done this before,” David Nicholas, another spokesman for oil giant BP LPC, which is in charge of the Gulf cleanup. “It’s very complex and we can’t guarantee it.”

BP was leasing the drilling rig Deepwater Horizon when it exploded 50 miles offshore April 20, killing 11 workers and blowing open the well. An estimated 200,000 gallons a day have been spewing in the nation’s biggest oil spill since the Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska in 1989.

The containment device will not solve the problem altogether. Crews are still drilling a relief well and working on other methods to stop the well from leaking.

The quest took on added urgency as oil reached several barrier islands off the Louisiana coast, many of them fragile animal habitats. Several birds were spotted diving into the oily, pinkish-brown water, and dead jellyfish washed up on the uninhabited islands.

“It’s all over the place. We hope to get it cleaned up before it moves up the west side of the river,” said Dustin Chauvin, a 20-year-old shrimp boat captain from Terrebonne Parish, La. “That’s our whole fishing ground. That’s our livelihoo

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Sure hope it works

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDSnM2tgAa0

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Gob Nob was amazing. The wind was gusting to 40 miles an hour. The turbine was pumping at 25 rotations per minute and generating 75,000 kilowatts. That was still 20,000 kilowatts SHORT of its top capacity. It was real quiet contrary to critics. We got to go inside!!! More later.

Sunday was the Poker Scoot. The wind was gusting to 30 miles an hour. What a challenge. There we were at Grab-A-Java at 2:00 pm with the wind ripping the registration forms from our hands. Still it was a blast. 5 stops, 5 cards and a winning hand. Springfield to Rochester to Chatham and back to Springfield again. NO Casualities! We raised some dough and some consciousness and made the TV. Yahoo. No wait that is trademarked. Whooo Hoo…Much more later.

The post Gob Nob Wind Turbine And CES Poker Scoot – What a weekend appeared first on Community Energy Systems.

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Springfield Scooter Club ANNOUNCES

A POKER SCOOT

(formerly know as a Poker Run)

TO Benefit

Community Energy Systems

FOR COMPLETE DETAILS AND AN INTERACTIVE ROUTE MAP

Please See the Club’s website:

WWW.SPRINGFIELDSCOOTER CLUB.COM

We will start at GRAB-A-JAVA at 2:00 pm on Sunday April 26th – to Celibrate Earth Day. Ride Stops include:

1. Overturf’s Powersports

2. Phillip 66 in Rochester

3. Alamo Bar and Grill in Chatham

4. Mike Carter’s Westside Automotive

5. The Hoogland Art Center

This is a fun ride that we encouraged to be group oriented. The path will run from GrabaJava to Lincoln Park and then Overturf’s. From there we will go through rural Riverton and Rochester to Phillips 66 gas station. From there we take some amazing rural roads to Lake Springfield and on to the Alamo. Then through the country side again to Westside Automotive. From there we will go by Washington Park and downtown to the Hoogland where prizes will be award.

Prizes include:

50$ Gift Certificate from Overturf’s PowerSports

Hats and Tshirts from Farm and Home Supply on Dirksen

There may be more – we are still trying – Sir.

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