Coconino County Sustainable Economic Development InitiativeSEDI news What's NewAbout CCSEDICollaborative PartnersEvents CalendarInformation Forum  
CCSEDI

home : contact us : site map
Better living through sustainability
Calendar of sustainability-related events

 

 
Resource-based development focus areaEnergy Efficiency & Renewable Energy focus areaGreen Materials & Porducts focus areaSustainable Tourism focus areaMicro-enterprises focus areaThe Green Triangle

2007 Archives

YouthBuild grant big boost for going green

AZ Daily Sun • December 18, 2007 • by Daily Sun Staff

Thirty-six young adults from Flagstaff's two poorest neighborhoods are about to get a little greener -- both in their wallets and in their job skills.

As for the community at large, it's about to get two new affordable houses and eight weatherized units.

The program is called YouthBuild, and Coconino County Supervisors are set tonight to accept a $1.1 million federal grant that will make it happen.

The program -- only the second in the state -- trains disadvantaged youth ages 17 to 24 from Sunnyside and Southside in green construction techniques by building or repairing housing for low-income families in their own neighborhoods.

The students will divide their time between the construction site and the classroom, and they will earn either a GED or a high school diploma, along with an Alternative Energy Technical Certificate from Coconino Community College. They will be paid a stipend of $175 a week, and at least a quarter of the group will be women. (read more...)

Entrepreneur hopes to create energy from wood waste

The Arizona Republic • Dec. 11, 2007 • by Ryan Randazzo

Arizona entrepreneur Robert Worsley once asked what would happen if he put sales catalogs in the hands of bored airplane passengers, offering them high-end motorized tie racks and garden statues.

The answer, after some adjustments, was a sometimes-turbulent company called SkyMall that was bringing in $82 million in annual revenue when he sold it in 2001. Its catalogs still are found on most U.S. flights.

Now Worsley has another idea that he's pitching, along withthe investors in Tempe-based Renegy Holdings Inc.

Worsley is asking what happens when the "green waste" from thinning forests and people trimming their trees that normally goes into a landfill is burned to make electricity. Throw in some free paper sludge from a newsprint factory and the singed wood from wildland fires that cook the western United States each summer, and Worsley predicts there's enough woody waste around North America to generate a gigawatt of electricity at dozens of biomass-fueled power plants. That's enough electricity to power about 250,000 homes in Arizona.

Worsley and Renegy plan to open a $53 million, 24-megawatt biomass power plant this spring near Snowflake. (read more...)

Welcome to Green-Collar America

E / The Environmental Magazine • Nov/Dec 2007 • by Brita Belli

The green economy is taking shape, bringing with it the promise of well-paying manufacturing jobs, of management and sales opportunities with huge growth potential and lots of niche positions for enterprising students and job seekers looking for alternative careers. On the upper tiers of the economic ladder, many CEOs and CFOs are already jumping into green jobs, and online green job directories are heavy with listings for those with established business experience. (read more...)

SEDI working to sustain economy

Arizona Daily Sun • Saturday, December 08, 2007 • Letter to the Editor by SEDI Board President Carl Taylor

I commend your editorial on Sunday, Dec. 2, regarding the importance of the community joining with NAU to create a more sustainable northern Arizona. What you omitted was that an organization to do just that has been working on sustainable economic development for nearly three years. This regional entity, the Coconino County Sustainable Economic Development Initiative (SEDI), has an active Board composed of "green businesses," governmental leaders, educators, chambers of commerce, economic development organizations and Native Americans, among others. NAU is well-represented by the Administration, The Centers for Sustainable Environments, The School of Hotel and Restaurant Management, the School of Life Sciences and Engineering, as well as numerous faculty and staff. The Coconino Community College is similarly integrated by faculty and Small Business Development Center involvement. (read more...)

Enlist community in NAU-led sustainability drive

Arizona Daily Sun Editorial • Sunday, December 02, 2007

What does it mean to be educated in an age of rapid climate change? For that matter, what are the duties of sustainable citizenship? Those are questions that Flagstaff, as a college town, is ideally suited to explore and even answer in the next few years.

Northern Arizona University, which has challenged itself to become carbon neutral by 2020, will be at the heart of the debate. But if its slogan, "NAU and Flagstaff: One community" means anything, campus leaders will include members of their host city in the challenge. (read more...)

Utilities join for major solar project

Arizona Daily Sun / Associated Press • December 9, 2007

PHOENIX -- A group of utilities wants to build Arizona's largest solar-thermal power plant, which could light up thousands of homes and help them meet the state's renewable-energy requirements.

Arizona Public Service Co., Salt River Project, Tucson Electric Power and several small companies have banded with out-of-state utilities in plans to build the major solar project. Also part of the group is the Southern California Public Power Authority and Xcel Energy Inc. of Minnesota, which provides power in eight Western and Midwestern states.

The companies announced Thursday that they are seeking proposals from companies interested in building the project and said that it could be located in either Arizona or Nevada. (read more...)

Home Depot offers solar system installation

The Home Depot has teamed with BP Solar to offer complete turnkey solar power packages that include:

  • Total project management from initial consultation to the six-month after-installation system check-up
  • Handling all the paperwork - taking care of the building permits and utility agreements; completing and submitting all rebate and tax credit forms
  • Custom system design
  • 25-year warranty on BP solar panels and system components
  • Guaranteed installation by contract professionals
  • Financing options

Not all Home Depots are participating, but the pilot program includes stores in Flagstaff, Prescott, Phoenix and Tucson. (Learn more...)

Green Collar Jobs: The New Cash Crop

A new report from the nonprofit American Solar Energy Society shows that as many as 1 out of 4 workers in the U.S. will be working in the renewable energy or energy efficiency industries by 2030.

This is the nation’s first comprehensive report on the size and growth of the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries – and the numbers are great news for American workers. This green collar job report shows that these industries already generate 8.5 million jobs in the U.S., and with appropriate public policy, could grow to as many as 40 million jobs by 2030.

“The green collar job boom is here,” said Neal Lurie, Director of Marketing of the American Solar Energy Society. “Renewable energy and energy efficiency are economic powerhouses.” (Read more...)

Four Corners Power Plant hoping to be greener

The Daily Times • Oct. 4, 2007 • Farmington, NM (AP)

The Four Corners Power Plant will begin experiments this fall using carbon dioxide produced by the plant to grow algae that could be distilled into biofuel.

Arizona Public Service Co., which owns the 2,040-megawatt coal-fired plant near Farmington, said it planned the experiment at the Four Corners plant after a similar experiment this summer at its Redhawk Natural Gas Power Plant west of Phoenix.

The utility and its partner, GreenFuel Technologies, said they were able to successfully grow algae at Redhawk at levels 37 times higher than corn and 140 times higher than soybeans - the main crops used for biofuel.

The algae at Redhawk absorbed between 258 and 450 tons of carbon dioxide per acre, said utility spokesman Steven Gotfried.

The utility said that once enough algae is grown, the algae are harvested, and the starches are turned into ethanol, the lipids or oils are turned into biodiesel and the protein becomes high-grade food for livestock. (Read more...)

Small trees no longer unmarketable

Arizona Daily Sun • September 21, 2007 • Flagstaff, Arizona

The small and even medium-diameter ponderosa pine used to be an unmarketable tree. That raised questions about how forest agencies in the Flagstaff region would ever afford to reduce wildfire danger in an overgrown forest if no one wanted the smaller wood. Logging mills wanted bigger-diameter wood. Builders wanted specialty beams. But forest managers on the Coconino and Kaibab national forests have seen an about-face in the last two years. Every timber sale that the Coconino National Forest has put up for bid in that time has sold, as opposed to the forest paying loggers to remove trees. (Read more...)

Handling the whole tree

Arizona Daily Sun • September 23, 2007 • Business

Logging is not a bunch of guys felling trees with chainsaws anymore, as it was just a few years ago for Southwest Forest Products. The company has invested millions into machinery to speed along forest- thinning projects, including current work off Woody Mountain Road. Workers there use logging machines that can bunch, hold and cut a handful of trees at a time. The machines looks like large forklifts with fingers, holding trees vertically as a sawblade cuts them off at the base. Another piece of equipment drags the trees to a clearing and stacks them. Then an excavator with a special attachment grabs each tree, removes all of its branches, cuts off the top and stacks it in another pile.

Southwest is removing about 120 log truckloads of logs per week from the Woody Mountain Road area, as part of a larger effort to protect Flagstaff from wildfires by thinning along the forest boundaries, particularly southwest of town. About 5,000 truckloads of wood will come out of this area in the course of a year. (Read more...)

National forest visitors have ecotourism potential

Arizona Daily Sun Editorial • July 22, 2007

It's a rustic scene right out of a Zane Grey novel: The tired travelers, passing through the forest, build a campfire for dinner, then break out their tents and bedrolls for a restful night in the peaceful forest. It's also a scene that, at least in the Coconino National Forest, isn't as common as it used to be. A recent survey found that just 17 percent of all visits to the Coconino included camping on the forest versus 65 percent that involved a stay at a local motel or rental house. In fact, the typical visitor to the Coconino -- white, middle-aged, upper middle-class with an interest in less strenuous recreational activities like walking, viewing nature, driving for pleasure and "relaxing" -- bears a strong resemblance to the typical visitor at another national attraction: the Grand Canyon. (Read more...)

Navajo-owned FlexCrete Building Systems receives Arizona Innovative Award

Navajo Hopi Observer • August 22, 2007 • Page, Arizona

Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano presented the Arizona Innovative Award to FlexCrete Building Systems, a Navajo-owned business, on Aug. 16. The award is to acknowledge the partnership of creating employment in the northwest Arizona community of Page by utilizing fly ash to create aerated block that has an insulating value.

Navajo Nation council delegate Leonard Teller, FlexCrete Building Systems chairperson, thanked Gov. Napolitano for taking note of the unique partnership between the city of Page and a Navajo Enterprise in creating employment and producing an environmentally friendly building product that he termed "a gold mine."

Gov. Napolitano offered accolades to the Navajo Nation FlexCrete Building Systems for creating an innovative building product that is composed of a waste product, and used in an environmentally friendly manner. (Read more...)

Navajo-owned Keya Earth builds green

Window Rock , Arizona • July 27, 2007 • Indian Country Today

WINDOW ROCK, Ariz. - All hands were muddy, caked in red dirt that had been blended with straw and water to create an earthen plaster. A dozen volunteers spread the blend across bales of straw stacked about 10 high, to insulate a home being built for a Navajo family. The 750-square-foot home being erected in the capital of the Navajo Nation is the first of what the Navajo-owned startup company Keya Earth hopes will soon become a trend across Indian country.

''We need homes. There's housing entities out there trying to do it, and there's constantly new, young families,'' said Gordon Isaac, 37, the president of Arizona-based Keya Earth, which helped coordinate the project. ''We're offering an alternative that is community-driven.''

A movement encouraging sustainable and renewable energy efforts has been spreading across Indian country, marking a return to tradition by harnessing natural forces like sunlight, wind and water. (Read more...)

New Renewable Energy Standard for Arizona

Phoenix, Arizona • June 18, 2007 • RenewableEnergyAccess.com

Arizona Utilities must generate 15% of their electricity from renewable resources by 2025 under a renewable energy standard (RES) approved by the Arizona Corporation Commission last October and approved by the State's Attorney General in June. The RES mandates that 30% of the renewable power must come from distributed generators, creating a huge potential market for photovoltaics (PV) in the state. (Read more...)

2008 News Archives

top

 
 

©2007-2009 Coconino County Sustainable Economic Development Initiative
All Rights Reserved.