Green jobs don’t have to leave out women and minorities, according to a case study released by the Applied Research Center today.

The report, by senior research associate Yvonne Yen Liu, profiled the work of the community organization Strategic Concepts in Organizing and Policy Education and the Los Angeles chapter of the Apollo Alliance in helping to pass a green retrofit ordinance for municipal buildings.

The Applied Research Center, a racial justice think tank based in New York, said in “Greening Los Angeles” that women and minorities are often left out of the green economy. Of the people employed in green industries and occupations, blacks and Latinos make up less than 30%. Black women fill just 1.5% of energy sector jobs, while Latinas occupy 1% and Asian women take up 0.7%.

For more information about green jobs – where they are, how to prepare for them and how to land them – read this story from Sunday’s Business section.

The federal government gave out around $5.5 million in grants Wednesday to encourage green jobs training.

-- Tiffany Hsu

Photo: Jesus Rosales, a member of La Causa, works to replace a leaking window in a home that his group has renovated using green technology. Credit: Al Seib / Los Angeles Times.

Those standards would be tightened two years later to require a 50% reduction in the number of watts. Buyers of new TVs would save approximately $30 a year over the 10-year life of a set, the commission estimates, and statewide savings over a decade would be $8.1 billion. Additionally, the state would be relieved of the need to build a large power plant, saving approximately $600 million more.

"It looks like a very good deal for society," said Commissioner Arthur H. Rosenfeld, an energy efficiency pioneer who helped California put its first efficiency standards in place on refrigerators in the 1970s.

Some television manufacturers, notably market leader Vizio Inc. of Irvine, say they will have no trouble complying with the new standards. But, the Consumer Electronics Assn., an industry trade group, has complained that the California rules would stifle technological innovation and are arbitrary.

Read more on California's new standards for TVs.

-- Marc Lifsher

The funds through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will support job-training and labor-market information programs to help workers find jobs in green industries and related occupations, said Secretary of Labor Hilda L. Solis.

The Recovery Act has $500 million planned for green-jobs training grants.

Today’s grants, to be administered by the Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration, were given out in two categories -- $48.8 million for state labor-market information improvement and $5.8 million in green capacity building.

The information-improvement grants will go toward collecting and distributing information and squeezing out more space within the infrastructure for clean-energy careers while connecting job seekers with green job banks and post-training employment.

Thirty grants, ranging from $763,000 to $4 million, were given to state workforce agencies. The California Employment Development Department was awarded $1.25 million.

The green-capacity building grants will boost the ability of 62 current Labor Department grant recipients to train targeted communities, including American Indians, women, at-risk youth and farm workers.

Seven California groups, including Los Angeles-based Women in Non-Traditional Employment Roles and Coalition for Responsible Community Development, received $100,000 grants. Five others were given from $70,000 to $98,122.

-- Tiffany Hsu

In a milestone for the state's landmark plan to slash emissions by 15% over the next 11 years from today's levels, the Air Resources Board announced today that more than 97% of the state's 605 largest factories, cement plants, refineries and power plants have reported how much carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases they emit.

At the same time, California became the first state in the nation to accredit third-party professionals to make sure the polluters accurately report their emissions.The first 101 individual verifiers and 17 businesses completed a 40-hour course and final examination, the ARB announced.

Verification of all reported emissions will be required beginning next year, providing a key database for the state's proposed cap-and-trade regulations. A cap-and-trade system, which would take effect in 2012, would allow polluters to trade emissions credits among themselves so that facilities which can cut emissions for less money may sell their reductions to facilities which would have to pay more to install controls.

-- Margot Roosevelt

The Environment California Research & Policy Center concluded that launching a nuclear power industry nearly from the ground up is too slow and expensive a process. Energy efficiency standards and renewable energy options are better solutions, researchers said.

Currently, no new nuclear reactors are under construction in the country, and no U.S. power company has ordered a nuclear plant since 1978. All orders for nuclear facilities after fall 1973 were eventually canceled, according to the report.

Meanwhile, building a reactor would probably take around a decade – 2016 at the earliest, the study suggested. Without an existing infrastructure, manufacturing reactor parts with the dearth of trained personnel would be difficult.

But even if the nuclear industry managed to build 100 reactors by 2030, the total power produced would reduce total U.S. emissions only 12% over the next 20 years, which Environment California deemed “far too little, too late.”

The $600-billion upfront investment necessary for the 100 reactors would slice out twice as much carbon pollution in that period if invested in clean energy, according to the report. And given the costs of running a power plant, clean energy could deliver five times as much progress per dollar in lowering pollution.

Peter Bradford, a former U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission member, made this comparison in a statement: “Counting on new nuclear reactors as a climate change solution is no more sensible than counting on an un-built dam to create a lake to fight a nearby forest fire.”

-- Tiffany Hsu

In an interview, Mitzelfelt, whose district includes the Ivanpah Valley project site about 20 miles south of Las Vegas, said BrightSource’s proposed 440-megawatt, 4,000-acre Solar Electric Generating System, “should not go forward.” [Update: An earlier version of this post listed the project as having 100 megawatts.]

State and federal regulators said the BrightSource project is furthest along in the process and could break ground late next year. Conservationists, however, are concerned about its impacts on several rare bat, bird, plant and reptile species including the threatened California desert tortoise.

“Obviously, there is a lot of political pressure to get this project expedited and under construction,” Mitzelfelt said. “But its impacts in San Bernardino County and sensitive and scenic Mojave Desert environment are not worth the benefits.”

“I would do everything I could to advance a project that would provide jobs, induce economic investment and increase the tax base in our county,” he said. “This is not that project.”

BrightSource spokesman Keely Wachs disagreed.

"Considering the project has been going through a state and federal environmental review process for more than two years, and will generate 1,000 jobs, $250 million in wages and more than $400 million in local and state tax revenue, we're surprised to see the supervisor's press release," Wachs said in a statement.

"We look forward to meeting with Supervisor Mitzelfelt and his staff," Wachs added, "to clarify any misunderstandings they might have about the Ivanpah project."

-- Louis Sahagun

-- Bettina Boxall

Energy Star is run jointly by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy.

--Tiffany Hsu

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today went to a scruffy field in the San Fernando Valley to sign two pieces of water legislation passed earlier this week.

The setting was the Tujunga well field of the San Fernando Valley aquifer, part of Los Angeles' water supply.

One of the bills establishes a statewide program to measure groundwater elevations. The other adds 25 state enforcement officers to track down illegal water diversions.

Unlike other Western states, California has not monitored or regulated groundwater pumping, which has caused major subsidence in some regions.

In its early forms, the enforcement bill was much stronger. It called for increased penalties for illegal water diversions and gave the state water board more clout to stop them. But those provisions proved politically explosive and were dropped.

Schwarzenegger is expected to sign the remaining parts of the water package in coming days, including a $11.1-billion bond that will go before voters a year from now.

Surrounded by state lawmakers and local officials, the governor informally launched the bond campaign. "We want to invest in the future of California, and this is the best investment we can make. It's very important to vote yes," he said.

-- Bettina Boxall

Photo: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs water bills as Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, left, and other legislators look on. Credit: Peter Grigsby / Office of the Governor   

 

U.S. District Judge Neil V. Wake’s ruling follows a recent U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals order that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reconsider its earlier decision to deny the lizard protection under the Endangered Species Act. That decision rejected a Bush administration policy that environmentalists complained favored development at the expense of the lizard and many plants and animals across the nation.

In the meantime, the lizard’s population has continued to decline in Arizona, California and Baja California largely because its habitats of gravel pans and dunes have been taken over by farming, housing, off-road vehicles, geothermal leases, gravel pits, golf courses, military exercises and border fences between the United States and Mexico.

The Department of the Interior is expected to make a final decision about the status of the flat-tailed horned lizard by November 2010.

“The lizard is certainly as deserving of federal protection today as it was 16 years ago,” said attorney Bill Snape, who represented the Center for Biological Diversity in the matter. “Hopefully this is the final chapter in the lizard’s long and tortured legal history.”

Listing the lizard as threatened could potentially affect the ongoing rush to build huge solar energy facilities across the desert flatlands of Southern California, said Allan Muth, a plaintiff in the lawsuit and director of the Boyd Deep Canyon Desert Research Center, south of Palm Desert.

Anticipating a protection declaration, Stirling Energy Systems plans to mitigate the environmental impacts of its proposed Solar II facility on 6,500 acres of flat-tailed horned lizard habitat near the Imperial County city of El Centro by purchasing prime lizard habitat elsewhere and then donating it for conservation. [Updated at 7:51 p.m.: The name of that proposed facility was recently renamed Tessera Solar's Imperial Valley Solar Two by Stirling to reflect the name of its sister company.]

The group, Progressive Christians Uniting, is touting the proposal to congregants of dozens of San Gabriel Valley churches near the 650,000-acre range that constitutes about 70% of Los Angeles County's open space.

"We are helping to bring the moral compassion of people of faith to bear on an urgent public issue," said Rev. Peter Laarman, executive director of the Los Angeles-based group. "This is an ambitious effort. It involves public health, an important natural resource and millions of people who live near it. We want to be on board."

The designation would be made by the National Park Service, which is conducting an ongoing "special resource study" of the San Gabriels and the San Gabriel Watershed. The study includes three draft alternatives for new collaborative approaches to managing the range currently run by the U.S. Forest Service for purposes other than recreation.

A final recommendation could come in 2011. In the meantime, a coalition led by conservation groups and community organizations plans to present its "San Gabriel Mountains Forever" campaign to as many churches as possible.

"Religion and stewardship connect gracefully," said Sierra Club spokesman John Monsen.

Pastor Arthur Cribbs of San Marino Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, said his congregation recently forwarded a letter of support for the proposal to U.S. Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas), whose district includes a large portion of the San Gabriels.

"We are blessed to have such a natural resource," Cribbs said. "It is a place where we can step out of our everyday business in the metropolis of greater Los Angeles and find quietude and stillness, strength and magic."

-- Louis Sahagun

Washing machines account for 20% of an average household’s water use in California, but that may change now that the California Energy Commission has prevailed in a years-long lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Energy, which had prevented the commission from adopting a more water- and energy-efficient standard for clothes washers.

Currently, there is no standard for how much water a washing machine uses. It’s estimated that the average washing machine uses 39.2 gallons of water per wash, or 15,366 gallons a year for a normal household.

If California’s proposed standard goes into effect, an average machine would use just 6 gallons of water per cubic foot of washing machine capacity; the average washing machine would use just 21.1 gallons per wash, or 8,271 gallons per year.

On Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ordered the U.S. energy department to reconsider California’s request to set its own washing machine standard. While the U.S. energy department has not agreed to the state’s request, it could be granted next year, with the new standard going in to effect some time in 2013.

Jonathan Blees, assistant chief counsel for the California Energy Commission, said the standard does not require consumers to upgrade their machines; it merely requires manufacturers to apply the standard to all California washing machines that are made after the standard goes in to effect.

Blees said many washing-machine models, most of them front-loading, currently meet the 6-gallon standard.

Blees estimates that within the first year of the new standard, the state would save 4.76 billion gallons of water. Within 12 to 15 years, a time frame during which most Californians will have switched their existing machines to the more efficient standard, the state could save as much as 66.7 billion gallons of water – enough water to supply a city the size of San Diego every year. The new standard would also save the state 500 gigawatt hours of electricity and 50 million therms of natural gas -- energy that is used to pump water in to the home for washing machines and treat the water after it's been used.

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: Whirlpool

Wolf hunting in southern Montana is closing just after sunset today, only a day after the general season opened Sunday, after the 12-wolf quota for the region was quickly exceeded by one.

The Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks had suspended an early back-county hunt in a small, remote part of the region north of Yellowstone National Park after nine wolves were shot -- before  the general wolf hunting season, Montana's first in modern times, even opened on Sunday. That hunt raised controversy because four wolves from Yellowstone's Cottonwood pack who had ventured outside the park, including the pack's alpha male and female, were killed.

The brief opening saw an additional four wolves in the southern Montana region quickly shot, prompting Montana officials to close down all of Wolf Management Unit 3. Hunting remains open through Nov. 29 in northern and western Montana, where an additional 10 wolves out of the state's overall quota of 75 have been shot so far. Wildlife officials have held out the option of extending the hunt through Dec. 31 if the quota isn't met in November.

State officials said two of the four wolves shot in WMU-3 on Sunday were in Gallatin County, again not far from the border of Yellowstone National Park. The other two were shot in Sweetgrass County.

Conservationists have sued to stop the removal of Northern Rockies wolves from the Endangered Species list, arguing that wolf numbers could drop precipitously, especially since there are no assurances that wolves in discrete regions of Yellowstone, northwestern Montana and Idaho will be able to connect and share genes.

But Montana wildlife management officials have calculated that wolf numbers are likely to increase, despite the hunt. While there are about 500 wolves in Montana now, even if 75 are hunted this year, there are expected to be 590 wolves in established packs across the state, and 655 wolves overall (counting wolves that go out on their own) next year.

-- Kim Murphy

Map: Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks

Yellowstone's wolves are familiar to viewers of National Geographic and BBC documentaries, so there was more than a little mourning for the four Cottonwood wolves who died.

Yet in the gorgeous valleys around Yellowstone, there were few tears shed. Many residents there believe the 60% drop in the northern Yellowstone elk herd can be attributed to the reintroduced predators.

Read the full story here.

-- Kim Murphy

Photo: Wolf 527, killed on Buffalo Plateau on Oct. 3. Credit: Dan Stahler / National Parks Service

Members of 30 Santa Barbara and Los Angeles-area environmental groups and their supporters will gather at 3 p.m. on the Manhattan Beach Pier for the "Amazing Waving Human Tide Line" to highlight the the sea rise expected from climate change. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted last month to endorse the International Day of Climate Action. (Click here to download a description of the South Bay 350 Climate Action Group.)

In Orange County, the Irvine Ranch Outdoor Education Center will feature an International Day of Climate Action Festival from 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., highlighted by an aerial photo of attendees gathered to form the number 350 on a field. Other activities will include a nature hike, a 5K walk, tree planting and talks by Orange County environmental and religious leaders. The United Methodist Church in Costa Mesa will host a lecture on "creation care," a movement to protect the Earth from climate-related threats.

At 9:45 a.m. a group will meet at 6284 Mulholland Highway in Los Angeles to pose with a giant "350"  banner beneath the Hollywood sign. 

In Northern California, activists will rally at the Ferry Building in San Francisco at 3:50 p.m. for an aerial photo and to welcome cyclists who rode 350 km from Arcata, as well as surfers with "350"-decorated boards. At Mt. Diablo, 350 people will encircle the summit while a helicopter takes a photo. And vintners will gather in Sonoma Plaza to learn about the effects of climate change on wine growing and, according to organizers, "raise their glasses to a clean energy future." Outdoor enthusiasts will take a "350" photo at  Lake Tahoe.

The group 350.org advocates reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million from the current 390 parts. Before the Industrial Revolution, the atmosphere contained about 280 parts per million, but the concentration is rapidly heading toward more than 500 parts as a result of the burning of fossil fuels and the destruction of rain forests.

The group, which seeks to spur grass-roots consciousness of climate-change dangers, has its work cut out for it. Polls show that Americans are growing less, not more, concerned about global warming -- despite warnings from scientists that warmer temperatures, drought, melting glaciers, water shortages, species extinctions and sea rise will result from the buildup of carbon dioxide.

-- Margot Roosevelt

Photo: Activists gathered near the Golden Gate Bridge last year. Credit: 350.org

Psychologists call it the norm to conform. A well-known behavioral phenomenon that prompts people to mimic the actions of their peers, this subtle psychological trick is now used by utilities to cut their consumers’ electricity use.

Providing customers with information on how their energy use compares with their neighbors, along with specific energy-saving tips, has delivered dramatic results for the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which has used so-called comparative home energy information since April 2008. Of the 35,000 homes that receive Home Energy Reports from the utility, 75% are taking action to cut their energy use, the result being an annual average savings of $40 per household and $20 to $30 per customer for the utility.

"Most people say they try to save energy in their homes, yet next to none of us have any idea whether we’re doing a good job. The utility bill we get in the mail is inscrutable," said Alex Laskey, president and co-founder of OPOWER, an energy efficiency software firm in Arlington, Va., that works with utilities to engage their consumers and encourage conservation. "We thought there might be some opportunity to provide people with a better context for understanding their consumption and, in doing so, motivate people to take action."

The results OPOWER saw with Sacramento and other utilities formed the basis of a new state bill. Signed in to law by Gov. Schwarzenegger this month, SB 488 encourages California utilities to create pilot programs that use energy information-sharing by July 2010. It requires the California Public Utilities Commission and California Energy Commission to study the effectiveness of those pilot programs.

"These programs have been shown to be extraordinarily cheap and remarkably effective ways to increase conservation... If such programs were instituted statewide, [they] could have the effect of removing 300,000 homes from the electricity grid, and 4.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air annually," said the bill’s author, state Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills).

About 20% of greenhouse gas emissions come from the electricity used inside homes. If a nationwide home energy reporting system were implemented, it would be the equivalent of taking 6 million cars off the road, according to OPOWER’s Laskey.

At present, four California utilities are providing comparative home energy information to their consumers. In addition to Sacramento, which will be expanding its program in early 2010, San Diego Gas and Electric, Southern California Edison and Southern California Gas have pilot programs up and running. In November, Glendale Water and Power will start one with 25,000 of its 83,000 metered households; early next year, Pasadena Water and Power will also add its name to the roster of utilities that have partnered with OPOWER, bringing the total to 21 nationwide.

Currently, 1 million homes across the country are receiving the firm’s Home Energy Reports. The recipients are randomly selected by their utilities and targeted with personalized mailings that are separate from their regular bills in envelopes that are mailed from the utility. Comparisons are based on homes’ square footage and age as well as heating type. Customers who want to receive more accurate comparisons and targeted tips can provide additional information about themselves, their lifestyles and their homes on the OPOWER web site.

OPOWER’s program draws heavily on behavioral science research pioneered by Robert Cialdini, who is an investor in the company. Specifically, the program draws on two psychological concepts: "the norm to conform to what most other people do and the desire for social approval," said Yale Law professor Ian Ayres, who researched the impact of two OPOWER utilities and outlined the results in a study on peer comparison feedback’s ability to reduce residential energy use.

It’s the norm to conform that drives high energy users to reduce their use, Ayres said, and the desire for social approval, in the form of a simple smiley face, that keeps low energy users from increasing their power consumption.

Ayres noted that comparative information yielded the greatest conservation gains in low-value houses and households that used the most energy. It also found that low energy users are inspired to conserve even more when presented with the Home Energy Reports.

"If I said that relative to people in your neighborhood in similarly sized houses, you’re using 50% more water, you’d think, ‘I probably have a leak in my house’ or ‘I’m doing something wrong.’ It conveys powerful information about what’s possible," Ayres said. "It’s really the psychology and the informational economics that’s driving this behavior."

A water conservation component will be added to OPOWER’s Home Energy Reports some time in 2010.

-- Susan Carpenter

Photo: OPOWER

In the wake of President Obama's May 19 accord with California regulators, U.S. automakers, the United Autoworkers and environmental groups, the federal agencies will listen to public comments in Detroit today, in New York on Friday and in Los Angeles on Tuesday. 

Vehicles covered by the proposed rules account for 40% of U.S. fuel consumption and about 20% of the nation's carbon dioxide emissions, a colorless, odorless gas that is trapping heat in the atmosphere and disrupting the climate. The new standards would increase fuel efficiency by 5%, reducing U.S. oil consumption by 1.8 billion barrels over the lifetime of the vehicles sold from 2012 to 2016. They would would slash carbon dioxide emissions from passenger vehicles by 21% by 2030.

It was California's first-in-the-nation 2002 law requiring automakers to slash greenhouse gases that got the ball rolling. After lawsuits from automakers and years of push-back from the Bush administration, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 ruled that EPA had the right to regulate carbon emissions from vehicles. Lower courts upheld California's right to set its own greenhouse gas standards for cars, which had been adopted by more than a dozen other states."California's leadership paved the way for the national standards," said David Doniger, climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

According to the EPA,  the fuel economy rules now under consideration can be met with existing technology. 

But even with the Obama administration's agreement, the state is forging ahead with additional rules to meet the state's 2006 landmark global warming law.  The so-called "Cool Car" regulations passed in June would require automakers to reformulate paints and glaze windows to cut solar energy entering a vehicle by 45% by 2014 and 60% by 2016.  The California Air Resources Board says the rule will eliminate 700,000 metric tons of CO2 by 2020.

Last week, the Assn. of Automobile Manufacturers, representing Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai and other foreign manufacturers, released a letter objecting to the Cool Car rules, saying that they are not "consistent" with the proposed federal fuel economy standards.

-- Margot Roosevelt

Photo: Richard Hartog / Los Angeles Times