Jun 28, 2022 10 am CDT
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This webinar will discuss ways small business owners and building managers can ensure healthy indoor air quality for staff and customers.
Speakers
EPA and several co-sponsors have launched the Let’s Talk About Heat Challenge, a national competition to identify innovative and effective communication strategies that inform people of the risks of extreme heat and offer ways to keep safe during the hottest days.
Winners will share suitable messages and strategies used to reach target audiences with those messages, and proposed measures of effectiveness. The challenge sponsors hope to identify ways to monitor the effectiveness of heat risk campaigns and messages and share the best practices with communities across the nation.
The challenge will award up to 10 prizes from a total prize pool of $120,000.
Important Dates
Questions? Email heatchallenge@epa.gov.
Read the full story at Reuters.
The government of Canada on Monday published final regulations to prohibit “harmful” single-use plastics, with a ban on manufacturing and importing most of these items to come into effect in December.
The ban will be on single-use plastics including checkout bags, cutlery, food-service ware made from or containing plastic that is hard to recycle, ring carriers, stir sticks and straws, the Canadian government said in a statement.
by Tiffany Jolley, Prairie Research Institute
The Illinois State Water Survey (ISWS) is partnering with Waterly, an Illinois-based water sector operations data analytics company, to collect groundwater pumping data from South Elgin, West Dundee, Joliet, McHenry County, and Arbury Hills.
Leveraging Waterly software will allow the ISWS groundwater science team to acquire almost real-time water pumping data that will amplify the team’s ability to forecast aquifer changes and gain a better understanding of current and future water risks across Illinois.
The Illinois Water Inventory Program (IWIP), a statewide inventory of water use and withdrawals in Illinois, requires public water suppliers, self-supplied industry water users, and agricultural irrigation water users to report their water use and withdrawals.
While the legal mandate for data collection is limited to annual reporting, more frequent data can show valuable trend details that can make a massive difference in the forecasted availability of a water supply.
“If we had monthly pumping data as well as monthly water level data, we would be able to understand more of the variability between observed and estimated water levels,” said Daniel Abrams, associate research scientist and ground flow modeler at ISWS.
In the case of northeast Illinois, groundwater withdrawals become unsustainable when the deeper sandstone layers become dewatered. As an aquifer approaches the end of its lifespan, little details make a big difference, and little details go unnoticed with annual data collection.
The City of Joliet facilitated a pilot project in 2019 that provided monthly data to the ISWS to assess local and regional water supply. The actual observed groundwater levels changed significantly throughout the year at many facilities, an observation not apparent from just looking at the annual numbers.
The year 2030 is key for many at-risk wells in the region, because Joliet (the largest water user in the region) intends to find an alternative source by that date. Even still, modeling indicates that when Joliet switches from using the aquifer, many communities and industries will still have at-risk water supplies, particularly during peak pumping conditions. These peak pumping conditions could only be evaluated by efforts to collect monthly data.
This story first appeared on the Prairie Research Institute News Blog. Read the original story.
This updated version of ACEEE’s Local Clean Energy Self-Scoring Tool lets you score your community’s efforts to save energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions using the metrics from ACEEE’s 2021 City Clean Energy Scorecard.
The User Guide explains how to use the tool to evaluate community-wide initiatives, buildings policies, transportation policies, energy and water utilities, and local government operations.
Through the scoring process, you can compare your community’s clean energy efforts with median scores from the 2021 City Clean Energy Scorecard. By identifying both strengths and areas for improvement, the Self-Scoring Tool can help you create a clean energy roadmap that is designed to serve all members of your community.
Read the full story from the ARC Centre of Excellence in Exciton Science.
Researchers in Australia have been able to use trace amounts of liquid platinum to create cheap and highly efficient chemical reactions at low temperatures, opening a pathway to dramatic emissions reductions in crucial industries.
When combined with liquid gallium, the amounts of platinum required are small enough to significantly extend the earth’s reserves of this valuable metal, while potentially offering more sustainable solutions for CO2 reduction, ammonia synthesis in fertiliser production, and green fuel cell creation, together with many other possible applications in chemical industries.
These findings, which focus on platinum, are just a drop in the liquid metal ocean when it comes to the potential of these catalysis systems. By expanding on this method, there could be more than 1,000 possible combinations of elements for over 1,000 different reactions.
The results appear in the journal Nature Chemistry.
Read the full story at Utility Dive.
The Atlantic hurricane season began Wednesday and the White House seized the opportunity to launch a National Initiative to Advance Building Codes, aiming to encourage adoption of new construction standards, reduce energy waste and make communities more resilient to the impacts of climate change.
Through the initiative, the Biden administration plans to provide incentives and support for state, local, Tribal and territorial governments to adopt updated building codes and standards. The federal government will also “lead by example” and require its own new, large construction and modernization projects to have net-zero emissions.
Adopting stronger building codes can help the U.S. meet decarbonization targets while saving consumers money, say advocates. “This is exactly what the federal government needs to be doing to start the modern building transition,” Building Decarbonization Coalition Executive Director Panama Bartholomy said in an email.
Read the full story from North Carolina State University.
Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a computational model that can be used to determine the optimal places for locating electric vehicle (EV) charging facilities, as well as how powerful the charging stations can be without placing an undue burden on the local power grid.
Read the full story at Stateline.
Some local leaders are proposing or helping to finance plans to establish spaceports in their regions, hoping to cash in on the economic potential. Some states even have established space-focused agencies, tasked with supporting the industry’s development.
But as spaceport proposals proliferate in places including Georgia, Maine and Michigan—far away from long-established federal launch sites in California and Florida—they’re drawing pushback over fears they could harm sensitive habitats, public safety and even drinking water. Critics warn that the noise and light generated by launch sites could harm wildlife, and failed launches could spread toxic materials and debris or even cause wildfires.
Read the full opinion piece in the New York Times.
Over the past few years, I’ve been asked one question more than any other. It comes up at speeches, at dinners, in conversation. It’s the most popular query when I open my podcast to suggestions, time and again. It comes in two forms. The first: Should I have kids, given the climate crisis they will face? The second: Should I have kids, knowing they will contribute to the climate crisis the world faces?
Environmental News Bits 
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