From Sunset, New Dawn Emerging
by Jane Dale Owen

The current period sun set on EPA financial participation in HGCAMP (the Houston Galveston Air Monitoring Project) on March 31. Those of us who are actively associated with the project are keenly conscious of its accomplishments, its worth and continued need in the Houston environment. Our air quality continues to be seriously challenged.

HGCAMP is an exemplary framework for citizens and the four levels of government concerned with air pollution to work together in a cause that is vital to the health of our community.

Project participants express unanimity of interest in maintaining the momentum and continuing to identify and analyze the contents of our air. Alternatives for implementing continuance of this air quality study are currently being explored. It behooves us to examine all options that can build upon the experience of the past year. It is obvious that the need continues for us to monitor and to mitigate the toxic emissions in our region.

As we glance over our shoulder to assess the project so far and note the environmental deficiencies that still need to be addressed, we ought also to examine some new and emerging measures that can improve the way we live, work and operate businesses. Recent advances in technology and design have created much higher-performance workplaces and factories where significant reductions in emissions are achieved, and they pay for themselves rapidly, often in under a year.

Cool Companies Cut Emissions, Boost Profits
In his book, Cool Companies, Joseph J. Romm, Director of the Center for Energy and Climate Solutions, presents case studies of more than 50 different “cool” companies that have boosted profits and productivity by increasing energy efficiency and cutting emissions. Applying the Center’s principles of design and retrofitting, they have substantially reduced emissions, achieved quick returns on their investment, and boosted long term profits.

Ancillary human dividends include reduced absenteeism and increased worker contentment. An experiment by Dow Chemical Company in the eighties is a noteworthy example of increased productivity through pollution prevention. In 1982 Ken Nelson, energy manager of the Dow Louisiana division, initiated a yearly contest to find energy-saving projects. The results were astonishing, and they paid for themselves in less than one year. Year after year, contest winners increasingly achieved their economic gains through process redesign to improve production yield and capacity. By 1988 these productivity gains exceeded the energy and environmental gains. In 1989 sixty-four projects costing $7.5 million saved the company $37 million a year.

British Petroleum is the third largest oil company in the world. In February 1998, CEO John Browne wrote to the 350 leaders who run BP’s business units to get their ideas on how BP could reduce emissions. They responded with 200 pages of detailed, serious common sense proposals. “Every single one reflected the view that we were doing the right thing in trying to tackle our own emissions and to make a positive constructive contribution to the public debate,” Browne said. The company is implementing energy efficiencies that cut emissions and reduce fuel consumption: reduced flaring; re-injection of carbon dioxide into existing wells to improve oil recovery; energy cogeneration and expansion of its renewal energy business. BP Solar, its photovoltaics company, has become one of the largest solar companies in the world.

Shell, one of the world’s most profitable oil companies, is a benchmark for corporate strategic planning. Shell has invested a half billion dollars in its new core renewable energy business. In the U.S., more than 25 million tons of nitrogen oxide pollution are emitted each year, the equivalent of 460 pounds per household. Health effects include damage to lung tissue, increased asthma attacks, and respiratory illness in children. Twenty-three percent of these emissions are caused by generating electric power.

Electricity generation is a bigger pollution source than any other industry in the United States. The electric power alternative that environmentally alert citizens currently are keenly interested in is Green Mountain Energy Company, a leader in offering to Texans, and consumers in other states, renewable alternatives to air-polluting fossil fuels. Wind generation is its current main power source, but the clean renewables also include solar, water, geothermal, biomass, and natural gas.

Through the state's Electric Choice program customers of other Texas Electric companies can switch to Green Mountain electricity service. A Texas A&M University study in the nineties is a milestone in innovative thinking which simultaneously increases the efficiency and the profitability of industries and mitigates their unfavorable impact on the environment. The study got major attention when it showed that it could identify annual cost savings exceeding $3.5 million in the unglamorous area of Operations and Maintenance. Cost reforms included insulation improvements, better control over all waste water, thriftier lighting and other electrical and energy utilization efficiencies.

As a growing number of leaders in architecture, engineering, industry, science and academia have recently been demonstrating, these reforms are achievable, and are being implemented in the instances reported here and others, with documented bottom line gains.

Waste: A Concept to Eliminate
The basic endowment that has made this country so great is our natural resources. Depletable resources are one asset that wise souls know you must never exhaust-you only “spend your earnings, while retaining your assets.” To waste or defile depletable resources needlessly is unacceptably delinquent stewardship.

The essence of good planning is sustainability. Since Nature is the most efficient system, sustainability results in the most efficient planning. It’s not about reducing waste-it’s about eliminating the entire concept of waste. When you eliminate the concept of waste, everything is nutrition. Waste equals food.”

All it takes is a slight change in how we think of things, as the slight change from being a discard & replace society to being a recycling society. Nothing is ever lost. It is just converted into usable technical or nutrient states.

By thinking this way we automatically reduce emissions that are harmful to our health--the emissions that we are working so hard now to reduce--the toxic emissions that Houstonians have become acquainted with: the rapid ozone precursors, the hrvoc's (highly reactive volatile organic compounds), ethylene, propylene, butene, 1,3 butadiene, that are the main pollutants that keep Houston out of ozone compliance.

One of the most heavily emitted compounds from the oil refining process is Benzene, a known carcinogen. There is more benzene above the ESL (Effects Screening Level designated by the TCEQ) than any other chemical in the area.

Houston’s Abundant Renewable Resources
Houston is endowed with an abundance of renewable energy resources that, considering their potential, are still relatively untapped. There is adequate solar energy, and with proper implementation, wind and, yes, even hydro (wave energy) can be made functional in our region. Fresh water resources can be put to use rather than drained away as it is now.

One of the most promising non-polluting fuels of the fairly near future is hydrogen. Clean water is its only by-product. Fuel cell technology is advancing to a point where hydrogen is becoming a credible, clean substitute for fossil fuels for vehicular propulsion and power generation. Houston’s refinery by-products include highly efficient sources of hydrogen extraction. Hydrogen can be extracted from the refinery sludge that would otherwise be a polluting waste product.

It is now axiomatic that businesses can make money by reducing pollution. Any company can do so and every company should. Over the long term it is more profitable to do the right thing for the environment than to pollute it.

The engineering and scientific minds that presently are occupied in environment-defiling activities should be prevailed upon to undo harmful legacy practices. The same technological innovation that increases production can be applied to increasing efficiency in use of our natural assets.

Emissions of toxic rapid precursors of ozone have been shown to be highly inefficient, and therefore worthwhile for the industry itself to eliminate. It is a concept that begs for a design project to effect elimination of those emissions because they are shown to be so precious, so valuable for business that they will not be emitted in the form of polluting waste--they will instead only be emitted in the form of products, or feedstocks for producing more products. . It is a matter of record that Houston has the largest number of scientific, engineering and technical professionals per capita of any major metropolitan area in our nation. There is, therefore, no reason why Houston should not lead both the country and the world in the development of processes to eliminate wasteful and polluting practices. Houston can be a showcase of energy and business efficiency for all major metropolitan areas to follow. We have only to consider health with wealth, and stop tolerating the unnecessary contamination of our air and water.

Most corporations want to be known as a green company, especially in a world where the foreign competition is becoming greener and more efficient, and you care about the environment. The transformation to a sustainable economy has begun. It includes architects, designers, manufacturers, engineers, individuals and companies around the world, looking toward the future. Houston’s future will contain these greener corporations, and perhaps Houston may become known as a “Green City” providing a home for greener corporations and setting an example for industries everywhere.

Most of our population is urban, and growing more so. The future of our planet and our children will depend on “green cities” leading to a safer, more healthful future for our children and for bettering the quality of life on our planet.