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L.A. may have bested the rest of the country when it comes to green job creation, but other regions can still be considered green tech hubs.
CEO Neno Duplan’s Entrepreneur Profile
There is a saying from the book and movie Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) “Water is powerful. It can wash away earth, put out fire, and even destroy iron. Water can carve its way through stone. And when trapped, water makes a new path.” There is also a famous Chinese proverb about water: “not only can water float a boat, it can sink it also.”
And with global water shortages on the horizon, climate change supporters say an extreme response will be needed from international governments to provide enough drinking water in some parts of the world. The World Bank in a report said that 1.4 million people could be facing water scarcity by 2025. But the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) forecast is even gloomier. It estimates that 47% of the world’s population could face water stress in the same period–equivalent to more than three billion people.
The issue isn’t restricted to countries that typically see temperatures soar like ones in the Middle East. Northern hemisphere nations like the U.K. are also finding themselves in the midst of a drought in some regions, forcing governments to start to take action. The U.K. government, for instance, plans to issue a Water White Paper this December (2011) that will focus on the future challenges facing the water industry and measures to increase protection of river flows during summer months. No one really knows whether this year’s snows and rains in California are providing only a temporary respite from a long dry spell or signaling a return to normal—or at least what much of the developed world considers normal.
Maybe Israel’s entrepreneurial approach to the issue is the way forward. In the recent book “The Big Thirst” Mr. Charles Fishman, makes an interesting argument for a market-based approach to water’s distribution and usage… But the fact remains that water scarcity is now firmly on the agenda of the world’s governments, and isn’t going to evaporate overnight.
“The Big Thirst” offers a torrent of statistics. It is overflowing with stories large and small about water: The average American flushes the toilet five times a day, the author says, using 18.5 gallons of water. That comes to “5.7 billion gallons of clean drinking water down the toilet.” An Australian rice farmer with 10,450 acres uses six gigaliters of water—that’s six billion liters, or enough to hand almost everyone on the planet a bottle of Evian.
Water is a local problem. The wastefulness (and water conservation) has little or no effect on people in other watersheds because water is so difficult to ship. Shipping consumes energy. Energy production generates GHG. Hence a close relationship between water and climate change. Compared to other big problems facing society today, such as finance, climate change, and energy consumption, they are all interconnected in some way. No way out. And water will move to the top of agenda during this decade.
Mr. Fishman predicts that we will arrive at a water solution by putting a market price on water, because in most places today, neither farms nor industry nor residents pay what it costs to develop, purify and deliver water to their faucets. Rather than pay a market price for their water—which would direct the resource to where it provided the most economic value—most users pay a rate set by the government or their water utility, a rate usually aimed only at recouping the portion of the cost not subsidized by the general taxpayer. This distortion tends to keep the retail price of water lower than it would otherwise be where water is scarce, encouraging consumption rather than conservation.
Mr. Fishman asserts that pricing water beyond a basic ration for all would “help fix everything else,” including scarcity, unequal distribution, misuse and waste. Putting the right price on water would stop us from using purified water to flush our toilets or water our lawns, and it would lead us to more aggressively tap our own wastewater—the water from your shower could be used to wash the car or water the lawn. “The right price changes how we see everything else about water.”
At a legislative hearing on the status of California’s cap-and-trade system yesterday, the Chair of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), Mary Nichols, indicated they are proposing to start the program in 2012 but delay the first compliance period to 2013.
Cap-and-trade is a cornerstone of California’s approach to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This reduction is preserved in AB32, the state’s climate change legislation. Cap-and-trade is also a key component of the state’s participation in the Western Climate Initiative, which involves a number of US states and Canadian provinces and aims to reduce carbon emissions across the partner jurisdictions.
Nichols said the quarterly auctions of emissions allowances that each large emitter in the state must turn in would begin in the second half of 2012, rather than February 2012 as planned. The first three-year compliance period, which originally covered 2012-14, will be shortened to two years.
CARB indicates that the one-year delay will provide flexibility and allow them to “stress test” the market mechanisms. They intend to release a draft of regulations covering allowance distribution and details on offset protocols within the next two weeks. Nichols indicated the agency is also on track to finish its regulations by the end of October.
Keep checking Locus or CARB’s website for more information.
The Environmental Protection Agency is delaying issuing final regulations aimed at cutting pollution from factory boilers until April 2012.
The delay is one in a serious of slowdowns in regulatory agenda to curb carbon dioxide emissions using the Clean Air Act and several rules aimed at reducing emissions from coal-burning power plants.
Although the federal court has ordered the EPA to implement the boiler standards, the agency has said it needed more time for public input. This latest delay would push the deadline for compliance to 2015 from 2014.
The EPA’s delay has frustrated environmental and public-health groups, which cite evidence that the rules would save lives and avert thousands of heart and asthma attacks.
Industry, on the other hand, has said that the rules would be extremely costly and difficult to implement.
Boilers are on-site generators that can provide energy for apartment buildings and shopping malls, as well as refineries and factories.
The EPA rules also would affect incinerators at industrial facilities. Small boilers located at universities, hotels, hospitals and other commercial buildings also might have to comply, though the EPA has sought to limit the impact on smaller emitters.
Texas is now the first state with a law requiring upstream oil companies to publicly disclose the chemicals they use when extracting oil and gas from dense shale formations.
The natural-gas industry, bowing to longtime pressure, will disclose more information about the chemicals it uses for hydraulic fracturing.
Several other state agencies have regulations forcing some disclosure, but none have made it law. Texas’ law will force oil and gas companies to post the chemicals and the amounts used beginning in July 2012.
The relatively new drilling method for natural gas extraction—known as high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing, or hydrofracking—carries significant environmental risks. It involves injecting large amounts of water, mixed with sand and chemicals, at high pressure to break up rock formations and release gas deposits. Anywhere from 10 to 40 percent of the water sent down the well during hydrofracking returns to the surface, carrying drilling chemicals, very high levels of salts and, at times, naturally occurring radioactive material. The issue has taken on national importance as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, is used in more states to extract once out-of-reach hydrocarbons from impermeable shale formations.
Locus designed its Environmental Information Management (EIM) software specifically to meet the hydro fracturing industry’s needs for managing subsurface and water quality data.
Locus expanded our software offerings to manage and visualize water, waste, wastewater, drilling fluids, radionuclides and air emissions more effectively online. With Texas law in place and other states probably to follow soon, Locus felt that the market needed an off-the-shelf tool to manage hydrofracking data. Locus’s software provides any natural gas production site that has a need for data management and reporting—and almost all have—the necessary functionality to meet these requirements.
Environmental groups worry the chemicals could contaminate aquifers and water supplies while the industry says the process is safe. There is only one way to prove it and that is to disclose data. And that is what Texas law will require. The Texas law will require companies to make public the chemicals they use on every hydraulic fracturing job in the state. Texas law is significant because oil and gas drilling is a key industry in the state and the industry vocally supported the measure.
Earlier this year many big gas producers said they would begin voluntarily publicizing the chemicals online at FracFocus.org. The site states that groundwater protection is the “Priority Number One”. Oil and natural gas producers have stringent requirements for how wells must be completed to protect groundwater. The genesis of these requirements is water safety. Casing is the first line of defense used to protect freshwater aquifers. Locus’ EIM database stores groundwater chemistry information for over 400,000 groundwater monitoring wells that can be easily screened online for contaminants of concern and prove the case that hydrofracking is safe when used properly.
The hydrofracking industry has been in the spotlight in recent months and Locus wanted to provide this sector with a tool to prove its case to the public and regulators that natural gas production using hydrofracking can be done safely and transparently without jeopardizing drinking water supplies.
SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 15, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based water, energy, and environmental software, announced today that Dr. Todd Pierce rejoined the company in their newly established office in Asheville, NC. Dr. Pierce will lead Locus’ Web-based Geographic Information Services and Augmented Reality Group.
Dr. Todd Pierce returns to Locus as Director of Geographic Information Systems. Dr. Pierce has over twenty years of experience in geographical information systems and Web programming and holds a doctorate in geography from the University of Oxford, U.K. He previously worked for Locus from 2003-2007, when he developed the mapping components of Locus’ EIM application. Dr. Pierce is now coming back to Locus to manage the implementation of all R&D for Locus GIS applications. He will lead efforts to develop subsurface 3D visualization, Augmented Reality (AR), and real-time sensing into Locus’ GIS-based applications.
Locus believes that GIS technology coupled with AR creates a new framework for studying water, energy, and global climate change issues by allowing users to inventory and display large, complex spatial datasets. GIS can also be used to analyze the potential interplay between various factors, getting us closer to a true understanding of enterprise sustainability.
While GIS is already widely used by planners, engineers, and scientists to display and analyze all forms of location-referenced data, it has not been used effectively to link subsurface, surface and atmospheric data in a single system on the Web. Since every aspect of climate change and sustainability affects or is affected by geography and geology, be it at a global, regional, or local level, interplay among geography, geology, hydrology, and atmosphere is very important for a holistic view of enterprise environmental impact. Web-based GIS linked to large data sets in Locus EIM is the single most powerful integrating tool for inventorying, analyzing, and ultimately managing and reporting this extremely complex problem. The key to understanding our dynamic climate and related energy and environmental issues is creating a framework to take many different pieces of past and future data from a variety of sources and meshing them into a single system. That is exactly what Locus has done.
Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus, commented, “Our company’s strength is directly related to our innovative and experienced environmental professionals. I am pleased that Dr. Todd Pierce has re-joined our firm to lead our Asheville operations. Todd’s previous work as a research scientist with UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center (NEMAC), where he developed Web mapping tools for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the U.S. Forest Service, and state and local agencies, is relevant to work he will lead at Locus.”
“We have a growing technology cluster here in Asheville. The presence of a highly sophisticated workforce was a critical factor in establishing a Locus base of operations in this community. I am excited to be back to Locus and to continue my work to bring the power of GIS and Web-based visualization to Locus’ cloud applications. We are at a point in the evolution of the technology and its broad application where the next logical step is development of a GIS-based framework for earth systems modeling that includes subsurface, surface and atmospheric information in a single system. Such a system that Locus pioneered crosses academic, scientific, and industrial domains to serve as a platform for a comprehensive water, energy, climate, and sustainability management system,” said Dr. Todd Pierce.
“Our world faces unprecedented challenges, and GIS technology is poised to provide enterprises the necessary tool to collect, manage, and analyze the myriad of analytical, biological, and regulatory data in a very transparent and visual way. GIS technology has proved to be invaluable in driving intelligent decision making. Todd will continue building on extensive work that has already been done to integrate Locus’ many applications, from hydrogeology to climate science, and apply GIS technology to address complex subjects such as water quality management, GHG inventories, data model development, waste management, carbon accounting, and climate change visualization. Every organization that is looking to be credible with respect to all their environmental reporting needs will need a tool like this,” added Duplan.
SAN FRANCISCO, California, June 6, 2011 — Locus Technologies (Locus), the industry leader in Web-based water, energy, and environmental software, announced today that it has been awarded a contract to manage environmental data for Roca Honda Resources, LLC (“RHR”).
RHR, headquartered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is a joint venture between Sumitomo Corporation, Sumitomo Corporation of America and Strathmore Resources, US Ltd. Located in the Grants Mineral District of New Mexico, the Roca Honda uranium development project is one of the largest and highest-grade proposed uranium mines in the United States in more than 30 years.
“Locus’ software is a powerful tool for organizing, evaluating and visualizing large volumes of environmental data,” said Dr. Neno Duplan, President and CEO of Locus. “We are very pleased that Roca Honda Resources recognizes the value of EIM in managing its environmental data and is incorporating it as an integral part of its operations.”
“Developing our resources prudently and efficiently, while identifying and managing potential environmental impacts related to our operations, are critically important to Roca Honda Resources. Locus’ software will allow us to share information more quickly and efficiently between our field operations and our scientists, and evaluate data faster, ultimately contributing to a more environmentally sound management practice and efficient operation,” said Mr. John DeJoia, Senior Vice President of New Mexico operations and Manager of Roca Honda Resources, LLC.
Initially, Locus will be deployed to manage data for the Roca Honda site. However, Mr. DeJoia also expressed an interest in investigating the potential use of Locus’ software at other sites in the future.
New York Times reported that scientists have been using small variations in the Earth’s gravity to identify trouble spots around the globe where people are making unsustainable demands on groundwater, one of the planet’s main sources of fresh water.
They found problems in places as disparate as North Africa, northern India, northeastern China and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Valley in California, heartland of that state’s $30 billion agricultural industry.
Jay S. Famiglietti, director of the University of California’s Center for Hydrologic Modeling, said the center’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, known as Grace, relies on the interplay of two nine-year-old twin satellites that monitor each other while orbiting the Earth, thereby producing some of the most precise data ever on the planet’s gravitational variations. The results are redefining the field of hydrology, which itself has grown more critical as climate change and population growth draw down the world’s fresh water supplies.
According to the findings from October 2003 to March 2010, aquifers under the California’s Central Valley were drawn down by 25 million acre-feet — almost enough to fill Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir.
For decades, groundwater measurements in the United States had been made from points on the Earth’s surface — by taking real-time soundings at 1,383 of the United States Geological Survey’s observation wells and daily readings at 5,908 others. Those readings are supplemented by measuring water levels in hundreds of thousands of other wells, trenches and excavations. But now the satellite technology allows the real time monitoring from space. This may be the best data about groundwater that is available. Harvesting and disseminating all of the information about aquifers as they dry up and shortages loom is the best use of space technology.
Separating groundwater from other kinds of moisture affecting gravity requires a little calculation and the inclusion of information on precipitation and surface runoff obtained from surface studies or computer models.
Because the climate change is first going to be felt on water shortages the groundwater needs to be managed carefully. We have population growth, we have widespread groundwater contamination, and we satellites showing us we are depleting most of groundwater.
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Locus Technologies provides cloud-based environmental software and mobile solutions for EHS, sustainability management, GHG reporting, water quality management, risk management, and analytical, geologic, and ecologic environmental data management.