Buffalo To Reduce Lake Erie Pollution With Grant from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded the City of Buffalo, NY, a $500,000 grant from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) that will be used in conjunction with another $500,000 in funding from Empire State Development to provide green infrastructure in an effort to minimize polluting stormwater runoff into Lake Erie.

Space view of the Great Lakes.

Empire State Development is New York State’s chief economic development agency that works to promote the growth of the state economy through loans, grants, tax credits, and other forms of financial assistance to projects and initiatives that will create business growth and job creation.

A major focus of this project will be building a green infrastructure along a one-mile stretch of Buffalo’s Niagara Street that’s part of the Great Lakes Seaway Trail and National Scenic Byway. This area currently accumulates untreated stormwater that drains directly into the Black Rock Navigation Channel and the Niagara River.

Northern waterfront of the Niagara River. Photo from Wikimedia.org.

The EPA says the project will include the installation of porous asphalt, stormwater planters, rain gardens, and the reduction of impervious pavements. The new project is expected to capture stormwater from about 15 acres along Niagara Street and result in the reduction of about 5 million gallons of stormwater runoff per year.

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Buffet Foundation Donates $23.7 Million to Combat Rhino Pouching in South African National Park

While pouching has always been a problem on the African continent, over the last several years, the decimation of rhino populations in South Africa’s Kruger National Park has accelerated at a frightening rate, and conservation groups as well as investment institutions are stepping up efforts to help.

Protecting the African rhino. Photo courtesy of South Africa’s Kruger National Park.

SANParks (the South African National Parks system) reported last year a total of 1,004 rhinos were pouched in country, up from 668 pouched in 2012, and 448 pouched in 2011.

The rampant pouching is increasing, and the latest report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) found that, “This year alone, 172 rhinos have been poached since January with 113 of those occurring in the Kruger National Park.”

To add to the significance, “Kruger is currently home to over 40 percent of the world’s remaining 22,000 rhinos, the largest single population of rhinos in the world,” says SANParks.

In response to the worsening situation, authorities have continued stepping up their prevention efforts. SANParks reported that last year, the number of people arrested for rhino poaching-related offenses climbed to 343, with 133 of them in the Krugar National Park. Since the beginning of 2014, six alleged poachers have been arrested.

SANParks says that Kruger’s poaching problem is fueled mainly by illicit criminal networks in Mozambique, South Africa, and East Asia, but evidence suggests that armed groups elsewhere in Africa derive significant funding from poaching activities.”

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NYC Progressing In Retrofit Project To Replace 250,000 Conventional Street Lights With LEDs

Picking up the torch from the Bloomberg administration, New York City is proceeding with plans to retrofit the city’s 250,000 standard street lights with energy efficient LEDs (light-emitting diodes) by 2017.

Upcoming work will involve replacing about 24,400 lights along all major corridors including as the Belt Parkway, Grand Central Parkway, Cross Bronx Expressway, and other highways.

New York City replacing conventional necklace lighting on bridges with LEDs. Photo courtesy of the G4 Report: Your Guide to LED Lighting.

This will be included in the first phase of a three phase plan to replace the city’s standard “cobra head” high pressure sodium street lights across the five boroughs.

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Conglomerate Plans New Solar Power For Israel, As It Brings CA’s Largest Solar Plant Online

As part of development in California’s Mojave Desert, the Ivanpah Solar Generating System, the world’s largest solar thermal power tower system, went online in September for its first energy output test as a jointly-owned project between BrightSource Energy, NRG Energy, and Google. Photo courtesy of Business Wire.

The global solar technology company BrightSource Energy has been partnering up with a number of high profile investors, among them Google, to create some of the world’s largest solar plants.

Megalim Solar Power Ltd., a company formed by BrightSource Energy and Alstom, a provider of equipment and services for power generation, will break ground in Israel within the next few months to build a 121 megawatt solar thermal power plant.

Megalim is now required to plan, finance, build, operate, and maintain the power plant throughout a concession period of 25 years, and then transfer it to the ownership of the State of Israel. The project is scheduled to come online in 2017.

Power Technology said in October that, “Megalim Solar is seeking a €150m loan from the European Investment Bank (EIB) to finance the planned Ashalim concentrated solar power (CSP) plant in Israel, while the EIB has listed the €575m project as ‘under appraisal’ since 27 May 2013.”

Power Technology added that, “Selected through a formal international procedure, the promoters are required to procure 20 percent of its investment domestically according to Israeli law.”

The Megalim plant will be one of three projects selected under Israel’s Ashalim 250 megawatt total solar tender located in the Ramat Negev Regional Council’s 3.15 square kilometer site in the Negev Desert.

BrightSource added that this “Ashalim tender includes two CSP plants and one photovoltaic technology power plant. Once all three Ashlim projects are financed and constructed they will generate approximately two percent of Israel’s installed capacity, and help Israel achieve its goal of having 10 percent of its electricity production from renewable energy sources by 2020.”

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LA Metro Authority Signs Deal To Install Kinetic Energy Harvesting Technology From Rail Lines

Looking for a solution to yearly increasing energy costs, the LA Metro Authority has signed a $3.6 million deal with the technology company VYCON to design a system for the city’s railways that will capture and store kinetic energy for reuse from train braking systems.

The Metro said in a committee report that it “annually spends approximately $26 million to $29 million for electricity with about $20 million for propulsion power” and for which it faults “the volatile and costly energy market.”

The Metro added that as the years have progressed, it has “seen electricity costs rise due to periodic utility rate increases,” and is now “embracing sustainability, energy efficiency, conservation, and installation of renewable energy sources” as a primary way of gaining control of, and reducing the transit energy usage, costs, and energy dependence.

VYCON designs and manufacturers high-speed energy storage flywheel systems, and plans to install into the transit system a “Wayside Energy Storage Substation (WESS) at the LA Metro Red Line Westlake/MacArthur Park Station” incorporating the company’s REGEN clean energy flywheel system.

To understand it a little better, VYCON explains that the “flywheel-based energy storage systems holds kinetic energy in a spinning mass, and converts this energy to electric power through the use of a high-speed electric motor generator.”

VYCON says that the technology used in the LA transit authority will recycle part of the energy in the system by absorbing and storing kinetic energy generated by braking trains, and returning the stored energy to the trains during acceleration.

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