Carbon War Room founders — Sir Richard Branson, Jose Maria Figueres, Strive Masiyiwa, and Vladas Lasas share the stage at BusinessClimate 2010 during New York Climate Week on September 21

Suzanne is serving as a Senior Advisor to the Carbon War Room (CWR). The CWR was founded by Richard Branson in 2009 “to harnesses the power of entrepreneurs to implement market-driven solutions to climate change.” Suzanne is leading their efforts in Aviation, Renewable Fuels, and Biochar. Their approach is to bring together successful entrepreneurs, business leaders, policy experts, researchers, and thought leaders to identify the barriers that are preventing market-based scale up of climate change solutions and thereby perpetuating the status quo. In addition to technology and policy gaps, these barriers include principal-agent problems, information gaps, and lack of common standards or metrics.” In March the CWR co-hosted a day-long charrette to explore the potential for biochar to provide a solution for poultry manure problems in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed which would also help jump start the biochar industry. Suzanne will be co-hosting a renewable fuels workshop in Hawaii with the US Navy and the Biotechnology Industry Association.

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Our new Windspire vertical axis wind turbine is up and spinning on the hill at Hunt Country Vineyards! I will be at the winery on October 9th for the dedication of the Windspire. We will also be introducing the newest winery addition, which features heavy insulation, in-floor heating capability, automated tank cooling, and energy efficient lighting, and has already resulted in a substantial drop in energy usage.
Our 30 foot tall Windspire produces 1.2 kW of power. Mariah Power manufactures Windspires in Michigan, in a refurbished auto parts plant employing former autoworkers using American materials. The turbine produces 110 volt 60 cycle current, which feeds directly into the residential grid.  It has an automatic safety feature whereby it cannot produce power unless the grid is operating. As one of the first Windspire models in operation in New York State, it will be used to demonstrate not only its unique advanced design, but also that small wind turbines can be a graceful part of the farm landscape and can contribute to local self-reliance and regional sustainability.

If you are not familiar with vertical-axis turbines (VAT), they have several appealing attributes: they can produce energy in lighter and shifty air and at less cost than the more common horizontal axis propeller turbines, they are very quiet, and they are not hazardous to birds as the turning blades give the appearance of a solid object for birds to avoid.

Climate-altering pollution — normally invisible and out of mind — will now be highly visible to hundreds of thousands of people in NY City near Penn Station and Madison Square Garden.

I made sure to go to the launch and luncheon since the project was managed by a friend and colleague on the Deutsche Climate Team. It was great to see the financial community discussing climate change and its implications for business in depth and with urgency.

Now I’d like to see banks all over the US and the world have the Carbon counter on their signs next to the date, time and temperature.  And… I’d like a personal carbon counter app for my iphone. I just looked, and yes, they already exist!

Of the nine technologies they studied — Biofuels, Building efficiency, Concentrating solar power, Construction materials, Geothermal, Nuclear, Plug in Hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVS), Solar photovoltaics, and Wind – they found that seven are “ready to scale up aggressively today.” Wind is on track to produce a gigaton reduction in GHG emissions by 2020 at its current growth rate, but the other technologies would require a 3x expansion in investment, bringing clean energy investment up to the current level of investment in fossil fuels. They point out that many of these technologies have been widely deployed and proven, but rapid scaling will require stable policy support and long-term thinking on the part of the government.

They determined that these technologies would then be able to meet more than 60% of global energy demand and the scale-up would create more than 4.5 million jobs, a vibrant new sector in the U.S. economy, and a clean energy policy that ensures domestic security.

The full report and additional materials are at: http://www.gigatonthrowdown.org