Vulcan Logic and the Missing Sink

By: David Richardson

The daily carbon dioxide emissions report probably doesn't come up very often at America's dining room tables, but Kevin Gurney and researchers from the Vulcan Project hope to soon see that change.

Gurney leads Purdue University's Vulcan Project , which has produced the nation's first county-by-county, hour-by-hour snapshot of CO2 emissions. With Vulcan — named after the Roman god of fire and funded by the federal government through the North American Carbon Program — it is possible to peer, literally, into your own backyard (or your neighbor's) to see how your local area is contributing to the global problem that ultimately leads to global warming.

A little goes a long way
The gases nitrogen and oxygen account for 98 percent of the Earth's atmosphere. As one of the alphabet soup of trace gases naturally present in the air, CO2 accounts for a mere .038 percent of the atmosphere by mass; however, it has a disproportionate impact on warming.

As Gurney , the associate director of the Climate Change Research Center at Purdue University, explained, "It comes down to how we look at the atmosphere. If we look at it in terms of mass — just the weight of things — then CO2 is very small, but if we think about it in terms of the amount of infrared radiation it would trap, then CO2 would look huge."

Although the oceans remove one-third to one-half of the carbon dioxide produced each year, "the bad news is, their ability to do so appears to be diminishing," Gurney said. Meanwhile, the thousand-year atmospheric lifespan of CO2 means levels will continue to ratchet up even if emissions ended immediately.

Nevertheless, given what is known about carbon dioxide sources and sinks (locales or processes that remove CO2 from the atmosphere), scientists say CO2 has not accumulated as fast as one might expect, leading to the ironic question, "Why is the atmosphere not more polluted?"

Gurney and Daniel Mendoza, a graduate student with the Vulcan Project, suspect the answer may lie in an unrecognized carbon sink somewhere on the planet, and in light of the diminishing CO2 capacity of the seas, they believe this "missing sink" will play an important role in the carbon policy equation.

Though Gurney said CO2 concentration varies by no more than a few parts per million from pole to pole, he believes that mapping these barely perceptible peaks and valleys in CO2 levels could lead the way to the missing carbon sinks.

"In effect the weather map is a great analogy," he said. "Most people know that the air has temperature everywhere, but we know that in some places it's a bit higher and in some places it's a bit lower just like a weather map shows. CO2 is kind of like that. It's everywhere but it definitely has little bumps and valleys depending upon what's happening at the surface.

"The absence of the gas, where it would otherwise be expected, would indicate the possible location of the missing sinks."

To find the hidden sink, Gurney explained, research must first pin down where the observed carbon dioxide in the atmosphere originates. But that is not easy. CO2 mixes thoroughly with air as it travels over the planet. "You can find CO2 at the South Pole that was generated by industrial activity in the Northern Hemisphere."

Nonetheless, Gurney said, "We've known at the national level how much is coming from the U.S. as a whole," but prior to the Vulcan Project, the best estimates of emissions at the state level were based on fuel sales figures and shipping records.

Drilling down to the local level the math gets even fuzzier. Gurney says "the gold standard" of CO2 emissions estimates merely apportioned total discharges among jurisdictions on the basis of population density. Noting the obvious flaw in that approach, he points out that major CO2 emitters such as interstate highways and power plants, which alone account for 40 percent of U.S. emissions, are often a considerable distance from the population centers they serve.

To get a more accurate view of emissions sources Gurney turned to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and its network of local air pollution monitors . "Emission monitoring has gone on for 40 years — since the 1960s — which is an amazing legacy of information and infrastructure built and perfected over four decades," he explained. "In fact it is so good that we almost take it for granted now."

Reverse engineering
Although the EPA monitoring system was never intended to record CO2 levels, Gurney said their reports can be reverse-engineered to quantify the CO2 component of the exhaust that produced the pollution, "provided you know the type of device and fuel."

Mendoza is using data recycled from transportation studies picked up by "the thin wires that you can see that run across the road."

"They're the Federal Highway Administration 's weight and motion sensors," he said. "They classify vehicles as either light duty or heavier duty" as they pass over the counter. Mendoza says from this and similar data, Vulcan can generate CO2 emissions figures along major roads.

Although Vulcan collects no original field data, Mendoza says an incredible amount of detail can be coaxed from archival sources. Looking back to the year 2002, he says, Vulcan provides a sector-by-sector breakdown of CO2 emissions from the power plant sector, residential, commercial sectors, and the cement sector. "We can bring it down to a 10-kilometer-by-10-kilometer grid and provide a temporal pattern for most sectors," he said.

"We were a little bit floored by how much emissions actually come out of very unpopulated areas — a lot of that is due to electricity generation, which is such a great part of the economy here," Mendoza noted.

He said Vulcan delivered an additional surprise, revealing large cities to be "much more" CO2 efficient than smaller communities. Aside from the efficiency of urban mass transit, Mendoza believes lifestyle plays a role in the disparity. "Here in rural Indiana, we have large houses out in the middle of two acres, so the heating cost are much larger, but in the city you have the urban heat island effect keeping costs down."

The Vulcan Project Web page offers animated displays that show local CO2 emissions ramping up and down in response to heating and cooling needs, traffic patterns or other cycles of daily American life for the year 2002.

International Appeal
Gurney said U.S. government officials asked him if Vulcan can be used for "verification purposes" for an eventual climate treaty. It's an idea he finds appealing: "It would certainly be better to have an independent scientific body perform that function than a government."

He believes the average citizen can benefit from a dialogue with Vulcan as well. (You can take a look immediately using Google Earth .)

"I was pretty amazed at how interested people were when we released the maps and the movies," he said. "It's always been difficult to communicate the essence of this problem because it's very abstract in a certain way. One of the things that Vulcan has done is start to make this problem a bit more real and at least make it recognizable to people's lives.

"It brings the discussion down to the human scale, to the scale people live, in their state, their county, in some cases, their city. It brings it into their living rooms."

Mendoza said his next tasks will include adding data from Mexico and Canada so the Vulcan grid covers the entire continent.

Gurney, who predicts Vulcan eventually will produce emissions forecasts three months in advance, said he has received funding for a global version of the project and is currently exploring partnership opportunities with candidates in Europe, Asia and South America.

Despite the detour down the public awareness road, Gurney says he has not wavered from his initial quest to discover the missing sink. However, with a better grasp on where the CO2 originates, he says it will take direct observation, on a global scale, to determine where it might be going, and that job he said, is best performed from space.

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Intelligent Lighting Controls Deliver ROI in 3 Years

October 16, 2009

More building owners and managers are considering intelligent lighting systems to cut energy use because lighting, on average, accounts for approximately one-quarter of a building’s overall electricity use, rivaled only by HVAC and office equipment, according to Gary Meshberg, LEED, AP, and director of sales for Encelium Technologies .

State-of-the-art lighting systems reduce costs, demonstrate an overall commitment to being environmentally friendly, as well as contribute toward higher building values, higher tenant retention rates and overall end-user satisfaction, said Meshberg.

As an example, Encelium Technologies’ Energy Control System (ECS) uses addressable networking technology in combination with advanced control hardware and software, which can be integrated with HVAC, security and irrigation systems.

ECS uses a universal I/O (input/output) module to connect to standard lighting components such as low-voltage non-dimming ballasts, and occupancy sensors or photo sensors for digital control capabilities. The system allows each person to control his or her own workspace light levels from their desktop computer, and provides facility managers with energy management capabilities.

Installation of an intelligent lighting system also provides a significant return on investment (ROI), said Meshberg. He cites the following example. ECS installations, which cost between $3.00 and $3.50 per square foot for existing space, are designed to reduce lighting-related energy costs by 50 to 75 percent, so the projected savings of 75 cents to $1.25 per square foot per year means that the installation cost is amortized in less than three years.

As an example, the Rogers Centre sports and entertainment complex in Toronto, with approximately 7,000 light fixtures, cut its energy use by 77 percent, or by 3,731,000 KWh annually, with an ECS installation, according to Meshberg. The complex also achieved a 39 percent reduction in energy demand and a savings of 76 percent for energy costs. This translates into a cost savings of about $300,000 per year for the complex.

Meshberg also said ECS installations ease the way for buildings to earn the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental (LEED) certification, contributing up to 18 points needed for certification, as well as facilitate a building’s compliance with ASHRAE 90.1, EPAct, Title 24 of the California Code of Regulations and various utility rebate programs.

Spinning flywheels said to make greener energy

Sep 21, 2009
Associated Press Online
By JAY LINDSAY

TYNGSBOROUGH, Mass., Sep. 21, 2009 (AP Online delivered by Newstex) -- Spinning flywheels have been used for centuries for jobs from making pottery to running steam engines. Now the ancient tool has been given a new job by a Massachusetts company: smooth out the electricity flow, and do it fast and clean.
Beacon Power's flywheels -- each weighing one ton, levitating in a sealed chamber and spinning up to 16,000 times per minute -- will make the electric grid more efficient and green, the company says. It's being given a chance to prove it: the U.S. Department of Energy has granted Beacon a $43 million conditional loan guarantee to construct a 20-megawatt flywheel plant in upstate New York.
"We are very excited about this technology and this company," said Matt Rogers, a senior adviser to the Secretary of Energy. "It's a lower (carbon dioxide) impact, much faster response for a growing market need, and so we get pretty excited about that."
Beacon's flywheel plant will act as a short-term energy storage system for New York's electrical distribution system, sucking excess energy off the grid when supply is high, storing it in the flywheels' spinning cores, then returning it when demand surges. The buffer protects against swings in electrical power frequency, which, in the worst cases, cause blackouts.
Such frequency regulation makes up just 1 percent of the total U.S. electricity market, but that's equal to more than $1 billion annually in revenues. The job is done now mainly by fossil-fuel powered generators that Rogers said are one-tenth the speed of flywheels and create double the carbon emissions.
Beacon said the carbon emissions saved over the 20-year life of a single 20-megawatt flywheel plant are equal to the carbon reduction achieved by planting 660,000 trees.
Flywheels also figure into the emerging renewable energy market, where intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar provide power at wildly varying intensities, depending on how long the breeze blows and sun shines. That increases the need for the faster frequency buffering, Rogers said.
Dan Rastler of the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry research group, added that if a carbon tax is passed by Congress, flywheels start looking a lot better than fossil-fuel powered alternatives.
Beacon's flywheels, massive carbon and fiberglass cylinders, have already been tested on a small scale in New York, California and the company's Tyngsborough offices. Chief executive officer Bill Capp hopes the Stephentown, N.Y., plant will be up and running by the end of 2010.
Flywheels are rotating discs or cylinders that store energy as motion, like the bicycle wheel that keeps rotating long after a pedal's been turned. That energy can be drawn off smoothly depending on the needs of the user, such as when the speed of a potter's wheel is adjusted to shape the clay as desired.
The basics of Beacon's flywheels seem simple enough as they spin silently in their chambers in a small facility outside Beacon's Tyngsborough plant. But the technological challenges to create them were immense and have cost Beacon $180 million, so far.
For instance, the one-ton flywheel had to be durable enough to spin smoothly at exceptionally high speeds. To avoid losing stored energy to friction, the flywheel levitates between magnets in a vacuum chamber.
"We've pretty much demonstrated that it works, it's just a question of scaling," Capp said. "The more we run, the more people get comfortable with us."
Beacon's flywheels are powered by the excess energy they take off the grid. When demand for electricity surges, the flywheels even things out and return the energy to the grid by slowing down.
Flywheels have some clear benefits in energy storage, including the durability to store and release power hundreds of thousands of times over a long, 20-year life, said Yuri Makarov, chief scientist in power systems at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, which tested Beacon's system for the DOE. Chemical batteries being developed for the same job wear out after a couple thousand charge-and-discharge cycles.
Flywheels use less energy than fossil-fuel powered generators because they adjust more quickly to the ever-shifting demands of the electric grid by simply slowing down or spinning faster, Makarov said. Fossil-fuel generators are slower and less efficient as they constantly fire up and down.
The disadvantage of flywheels, Makarov said, is that they can only store a limited amount of energy for a limited amount of time. That can shut them out of numerous other services the grid demands -- and that other storage technologies can perform -- such as long-term power storage.
Regulations in many markets are also lagging. Beacon will bid against other power generators to provide frequency regulation, but in some markets, the bidding system doesn't even exist yet for energy storage.
Beacon's reward for taking on the technology is that it's the first flywheel company in the nation ready to provide utility-scale frequency regulation in the electric grid. Rogers said the New York project will help show whether the flywheels can do the job:
"If they're successful in New York, we'd expect this kind of technology to be picked up in many other markets around the country," he said.

Superefficient Solar from Nanotubes

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Carbon nanotube photovoltaics can wring twice the charge from light.
By Katherine Bourzac

Today's solar cells lose much of the energy in light to heat. Now researchers at Cornell University have made a photovoltaic cell out of a single carbon nanotube that can take advantage of more of the energy in light than conventional photovoltaics. The tiny carbon tubes might eventually be used to make more-efficient next-generation solar cells.

"The main limiting factor in a solar cell is that when you absorb a high-energy photon, you lose energy to heat, and there's no way to recover it," says Matthew Beard , a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO. Loss of energy to heat limits the efficiency of the best solar cells to about 33 percent. "The material that can convert at a much higher efficiency will be a game-changer," says Beard.

Researchers led by Paul McEuen , professor of physics at Cornell, began by putting a single nanotube in a circuit and giving it three electrical contacts called gates, one at each end and one underneath. They used the gates to apply a voltage across the nanotube, then illuminated it with light. When a photon hits the nanotube, it transfers some of its energy to an electron, which can then flow through the circuit off the nanotube. This one-photon, one-electron process is what normally happens in a solar cell <http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23459/> . What's unusual about the nanotube cell, says McEuen, is what happens when you put in what he calls "a big photon" -- a photon whose energy is twice as big as the energy normally required to get an electron off the cell. In conventional cells, this is the energy that's lost as heat. In the nanotube device, it kicks a second electron into the circuit. The work was described last week in the journal Science <http://sciencemag.org/> .

There's evidence that another class of nanomaterials called quantum dots can also convert the energy of one photon into more than one electron. However, making operational quantum-dot cells that can do this has proved a major hurdle, says Beard, whose lab, led by Arthur Nozik , is working on the problem. One of the challenges with quantum-dot solar is that it's very difficult to get the freed electrons to leave the quantum dot and enter an external circuit. "The system is teasing you; you can't get those charge carriers out, so what's the point?" says Ji Ung Lee , professor of nanoscale engineering at the State University of New York in Albany. "McEuen's group has shown this in a system where you can get the extra carriers out."

McEuen cautions that his work on carbon nanotube photovoltaics is fundamental. "We've made the world's smallest solar cell, and that's not necessarily a good thing," he says. To take advantage of the nanotubes' superefficiency, researchers will first have to develop methods for making large arrays of the diodes. "We're not at a point where we can scale up carbon nanotubes, but that should be the ultimate goal," says Lee, who developed the first nanotube diodes while a researcher at General Electric.

It's not clear why the nanotube photovoltaic cell offers this two-for-one energy conversion. "It's mysterious to us," says McEuen. However, the most likely reason is that while conventional solar materials have only one energy level for electrons to move through, carbon nanotubes have several. And two of them just happen to be very well matched: one of the energy levels, or bandgaps, is twice as high as the other. "We may have gotten lucky, and it has very little to do with the fact that it's a carbon nanotube," says McEuen. This means, McEuen hopes, that even if it proves too challenging to make arrays of nanotube solar cells, materials scientists can look for pairs of materials that have these kinds of matched bandgaps, and layer them to make solar cells that do with two materials what the single nanotube cells can do. "Maybe the answer won't be in nanotubes, but in another pair of materials," McEuen says.

Copyright Technology Review 2009.

Panels of Light Fascinate Designers

September 7, 2009
By ERIC A. TAUB

LED light bulbs, with their minuscule energy consumption and 20-year life expectancy, have grabbed the consumer’s imagination.

But an even newer technology is intriguing the world’s lighting designers: OLEDs, or organic light-emitting diodes , create long-lasting, highly efficient illumination in a wide range of colors, just like their inorganic LED cousins. But unlike LEDs, which provide points of light like standard incandescent bulbs, OLEDs create uniform, diffuse light across ultrathin sheets of material that eventually can even be made to be flexible.

Ingo Maurer , who has designed chandeliers of shattered plates and light bulbs with bird wings , is using 10 OLED panels in a table lamp in the shape of a tree. The first of its kind, it sells for about $10,000.

He is thinking of other uses. “If you make a wall divider with OLED panels, it can be extremely decorative. I would combine it with point light sources,” he said.

Other designers have thought about putting them in ceiling tiles or in Venetian blinds, so that after dusk a room looks as if sunshine is still streaming in.

Today, OLEDs are used in a few cellphones, like the Impression from Samsung, and for small, expensive, ultrathin TVs from Sony and soon from LG. (Sony’s only OLED television, with an 11-inch screen, costs $2,500.) OLED displays produce a high-resolution picture with wider viewing angles than LCD screens.

In 2008, seven million of the one billion cellphones sold worldwide used OLED screens, according to Jennifer Colegrove, a DisplaySearch analyst. She predicts that next year, that number will jump more than sevenfold, to 50 million phones.

But OLED lighting may be the most promising market. Within a year, manufacturers expect to sell the first OLED sheets that one day will illuminate large residential and commercial spaces. Eventually they will be as energy efficient and long-lasting as LED bulbs, they say.

Because of the diffuse, even light that OLEDs emit, they will supplement, rather than replace, other energy-efficient technologies, like LED, compact fluorescent and advanced incandescent bulbs that create light from a single small point.

Its use may be limited at first, designers say, and not just because of its high price. “OLED lighting is even and monotonous,” said Mr. Maurer, a lighting designer with studios in Munich and New York. “It has no drama; it misses the spiritual side.”

“OLED lighting is almost unreal,” said Hannes Koch, a founder of rAndom International in London, a product design firm. “It will change the quality of light in public and private spaces.”

Mr. Koch’s firm was recently commissioned by Philips to create a prototype wall of OLED light, whose sections light up in response to movement.

Because OLED panels could be flexible, lighting companies are imagining sheets of lighting material wrapped around columns. (General Electric created an OLED-wrapped Christmas tree as an experiment.) OLED can also be incorporated into glass windows; nearly transparent when the light is off, the glass would become opaque when illuminated.

Because OLED panels are just 0.07 of an inch thick and give off virtually no heat when lighted, one day architects will no longer need to leave space in ceilings for deep lighting fixtures, just as homeowners do not need a deep armoire for their television now that flat-panel TVs are common.

The new technology is being developed by major lighting companies like G.E., Konica Minolta, Osram Sylvania, Philips and Universal Display.

“We’re putting significant financial resources into OLED development,” said Dieter Bertram, general manager for Philips’s OLED lighting group. Philips recently stepped up its investment in this area with the world’s first production line for OLED lighting, in Aachen, Germany.

Universal Display, a company started 15 years ago that develops and licenses OLED technologies, has received about $10 million in government grants over the last five years for OLED development, said Joel Chaddock, a technical project manager for solid state lighting in the Energy Department.

Armstrong World Industries and the Energy Department collaborated with Universal Display to develop thin ceiling tiles that are cool to the touch while producing pleasing white light that can be dimmed like standard incandescent bulbs. With a recently awarded $1.65 million government contract, Universal is now creating sheetlike undercabinet lights.

“The government’s role is to keep the focus on energy efficiency,” Mr. Chaddock said. “Without government input, people would settle for the neater aspects of the technology.”

G.E. is developing a roll-to-roll manufacturing process, similar to the way photo film and food packaging are created; it expects to offer OLED lighting sheets as early as the end of next year.

“We think that a flexible product is the way to go,” said Anil Duggal, head of G.E.’s 30-person OLED development team. OLED is one of G.E.’s top research priorities; the company is spending more than half its research and development budget for lighting on OLED.

Exploiting the flexible nature of OLED technology, Universal Display has developed prototype displays for the United States military, including a pen with a built-in screen that can roll in and out of the barrel.

The company has also supplied the Air Force with a flexible, wearable tablet that includes GPS technology and video conferencing capabilities.

As production increases and the price inevitably drops, OLED will eventually find wider use, its proponents believe, in cars, homes and businesses.



“I want to get the price down to $6 for an OLED device that gives off the same amount of light as a standard 60-watt bulb,” said Mr. Duggal of G.E. “Then, we’ll be competitive.”

The Next Evolution in Economics: Rethinking Growth

1:30 PM Wednesday August 19, 2009
by Stan Stalnaker

The credit crunch has forced people across many sectors to rethink their assumptions about how they do business, the roles of the individual in the larger system, and the very future of the system itself.

These reflections are beginning to bear fruit. We've begun to see a shift from the old, linear transaction-based approach to business toward a new, circular view, in which shared resources can better benefit all in a way that adds depth (and value) to this future economy.

Economists describe this new model in many ways. One way is to use human cellular structures as a metaphor for economic growth. Call it cellular economic theory.

What do cells tell us about business? Well, consider that cells that grow continually and exponentially (like we've been taught our economies should grow) are a form of cancer. We know intuitively and logically that continuous growth can't be sustained in living things. It's likewise unsustainable (and undesirable) in business.

But that's our current model--to just keep growing. And in this model there's no alternative to growth, only stagnation which leads to death. The result of this is policy at every level (micro, macro, corporate and public) that champions growth at all costs.

Cellular economic theory suggests an alternative to linear growth: circular growth. In the body, cells grow. Cells die. New cells grow. New cells die. On and on. We sustain ourselves through regeneration. In business, a form of staged, regenerative growth could become the norm. The growth may not even change the size of the "economic body."

Here, growth is not seen as the ultimate byproduct of an economic life cycle, but just an important one. Growth becomes one of several life cycle stages that are primarily about replenishment. Instead of growing in size and scope, companies grow in capabilities, processes and offerings. New ones come along. Old ones dies. Just like cells, growth becomes regenerative--only what needs replacing is replaced, reducing waste and improving society along the way.

For example, a brewery in India is using cellular economic thinking to grow its bottom line without producing and selling more beer. Instead it's using chaff and grain detritus to create fertilizer and biofuels--regenerating resources to lower their own production costs while widening the life cycles of their inputs.

KATIKA, a Swiss wood furniture maker, is reforesting at a rate greater than their production, using profits from their sales today to ensure the availability of resources later. In the meantime, their reforestation projects create local jobs and other sustainable benefits (home for wildlife and food, CO2 reduction) while increasing the value of formerly degraded land holdings.

In a cellular economy, key metrics change. GDP growth is less important than GDP regeneration. Successful growth takes into account the sustainability of that growth.

The most profound change in a cellular economy is the devaluation of the transaction. Today, economic value is determined primarily by the value of the transaction. To grow (even just to survive), we must keep trading, keep consuming--no matter how wasteful the process becomes--because success is creating more transactions. This keeps us locked into a linear, growth oriented paradox.

Fortunately, (if not painfully), the Internet is exposing the impossibility of sustaining a transaction-based economy. As the net drives the cost of certain goods and services toward zero, it strips profit from transactions.

In publishing, for example, the cost of information is falling while sources multiply. Same for music and other creative enterprises. Same for micro-lending versus traditional banking. Fashion and retail. Oil. Anywhere there's a middle man between the natural resource and the end consumer, the Internet is obviating the need for the middle man.

And, in place of transactions and supply chains (which are, essentially, series of middle men), communities are gaining leverage and power from these shared commodities like news and gas.

A low-level web of constant relationships, circular, cellular systems where shared, collaborative contributions are the norm, is developing. Here, the value resides with relationships, not transactions. Maybe, instead of buying and selling more and more in a mad race for grabbing the most growth, the future will be about a collaborative, community-oriented regenerative growth model.

This "economy of shares" relies on crowd-sourced contributions, a free market, and a fair dose of incentives for sustainability. When it becomes bad business to waste resources in pursuit of profit, then the regenerative model takes hold and we can kiss goodbye to the things we know we don't need but can't seem to give up. Wasteful packaging. Super-sized food portions. Environmentally damaging newspapers. Gas-guzzling SUVs.

Eventually, in a regenerative economy, we learn to focus on kaizen --constant improvements, as opposed to an ever expanding volume of low-quality transactions and markets. Call it the co-op economy. It's the kind of economic system we always say we want but can't bring ourselves to build.

If the experts are right and we do indeed need to find more sustainable ways of living, and the bankers are right in saying that we have to live within our means, and the technologists are right saying that collaborative systems are the future, then it stands to reason that the next evolution in economics is to a more natural, life-like system.

We are moving to a world where transactions will happen instantly, on demand, for free. We are moving to a time when transactions can't sustain an economy. We are realizing all systems are like biological systems--even economic ones. Growth-at-all-costs business is malignant.

It's time to apply that broad realization in new ways to the situation at hand.

http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/hbr/hbr-now/2009/08/a-new-approach-to-economics.html

Stan Stalnaker is the Founder and Creative Director of Hub Culture Ltd , a social network that merges online and physical world environments.

Keeping it local

Jul 30th 2009 | AUSTIN
From The Economist print edition

A rising vogue for shopping near home

IN 2002 the city of Austin planned to extend about $2m in incentives to a developer who wanted to build a new Borders bookstore on a prominent downtown corner. This was an unpleasant prospect for the owners of two local independent businesses, BookPeople and Waterloo Records. If the deal had gone through they would have faced a big competitor located directly across the street. Steve Bercu, the owner of BookPeople, says that he always assumed that local businesses were better for Austin for sound economic reasons. But in the circumstances, he wanted to test the proposition.

So BookPeople and Waterloo called in Civic Economics, a consultancy. They went through the books and found that for every $100 spent at the two locals, $45 stayed in Austin in wages to local staff, payments to other local merchants, and so on. When that sum went to a typical Borders store, only $13 went back into circulation locally.


Although the study was part-funded by BookPeople and Waterloo it gave a boost to the growing “buy local” movement in America. For years business and community leaders have been full of reasons for people to do their shopping close to home. They say that local and independent businesses have more individual character, and that they are owned by your friends and neighbours. Some stores, particularly grocers, point out that it takes much less carbon to haul a truck from a few towns over than from halfway across the country.

At the moment, the economic argument has special traction. Dan Houston, a partner at Civic Economics, says that in recent studies he has found that locally-owned businesses put about twice as much money back into the community as the chains do, not three times, as the Austin study found. But that is still enough of a “local multiplier” to catch people’s attention. Stacy Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance in Portland, Maine, reckons that some 30,000 local independents have joined about 130 independent business alliances around the nation.

Big companies are taking note that customers are rooting for the home team. Ms Mitchell points to a telling development in Seattle, Washington, where Starbucks got its start. On July 24th the company opened a new coffee shop there. The newcomer is not called a Starbucks; it is called “15th Ave. Coffee & Tea”. It promises “a deep connection to the local community,” and its seats are recycled from a local theatre.

There is an insular element to the trend. “Is it pure local protectionism? Sure, to some extent it is,” says Mr Houston. But the advocates are not zealots. One national campaign is asking people to shift a mere 10% of their spending to local outfits.

The Borders project in Austin eventually fell through, and the proposed site is now occupied by the flagship of Whole Foods Market. The chain was founded in Austin and is local in a sense, although it is now publicly traded. Throughout the shop, produce advertises its credentials: local, organic, fairly traded, made in-house, vegan, and so on. This week its customers faced an ethical dilemma: is it better to buy the organic watermelon from California, or the conventionally-grown kind from Lexington, Texas?