Association of Energy EngineersNew York Chapter www.aeeny.org

November 2008 Newsletter Part 2

In Times Square, a Company’s Name in (Wind- and Solar-Powered) Lights By Glenn Collins, NYTimes, Nov 15 08

THE FIRST ECO-FRIENDLY BILLBOARD is coming to Times Square, entirely powered by the sun and the wind — but there is one small catch: When there’s no sun, and no wind? The $3 million billboard goes dark: there is no backup generator.

“We think if that happens, it’s just fine,” said Ron Potesky, a senior marketing vice president for Ricoh Americas Corporation, the office equipment and document-storage supplier that owns the sign.

The billboard — traditionally called a “spectacular” on the Great White Way — weighs in at 35,000 pounds. It will be 55 feet off the ground at 3 Times Square, wrapping around the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street.

Fitted with 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels, the sign will be “a first for Times Square,” said Barry E. Winston, a Times Square billboard consultant not involved in the Ricoh project, who has been a sign expert for more than 50 years.

Wind turbines for the vast sign, which is 126 feet wide and 47 feet high, have arrived in a warehouse in Deer Park, N.Y., where preliminary testing is being done. Construction will begin this month, for a lighting ceremony on Dec. 4.

Ricoh would not say how much it was paying for its three-year lease, but based on recent deals, the lease would most likely cost in the low six figures, as much as $200,000 a month, according to sign rental experts who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are contractually forbidden to make public statements.

Such a cost would not be unusual for a sign across the avenue from 1 Times Square, where the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.

By generating its own electricity — enough to light six homes for a year — the sign could save as much as $12,000 to $15,000 per month, according to Ricoh, which estimated that the sign would prevent 18 tons of carbon from being spewed into the air yearly.

The “passive” sign is not studded with light-emitting diodes like so many others in Times Square, but will be lighted by 16 300-watt floodlights. It will feature custom-printed opaque vinyl sheeting bearing the red-and-white Ricoh logo. The sign will be green, nevertheless, a message “to customers, other companies and the world that resources and energy can be used creatively,” Mr. Potesky said. “The point is that there are ways of being environmentally friendly to the planet, even on a billboard.”

Unlike the tall propellers in a typical wind farm, the cylindrical Ricoh drum turbines have no sharp blades. They will provide 90 percent of the sign’s power; the rest will come from the solar panels on the sign, feeding electricity to eight collection batteries up in the sign. The drums are so perfectly balanced, Ricoh says, that their rotors could be turned by the wind from a single household electric fan.

Mr. Potesky said the turbines would most likely generate enough power to keep the sign lighted even after four days without wind or sun. But the company is prepared for the sign to go dark. Mr. Potesky said the only other such sign in the world is one Ricoh put up in 2003 in Osaka, Japan, “using somewhat less advanced technology,” he said, referring to its 26 small propellers and 39 solar panels.

“On dark and rainy days, that sign went dark during the night,” he said.Passers-by will be able to see the 26 blades spinning in each of the sign’s 16 turbine drums, piled in four

45-foot-high vertical stacks. When operating at their average speed of 10 miles an hour, they put out 22 kilowatts.

Stalklike propeller turbines require unidirectional, or “clean,” wind to function. But the revolving drums on the Ricoh sign can use turbulent, multidirectional winds common to Midtown, said Mary S. Watkins, chief executive of PacWind Inc. in Torrance, Calif., which makes the custom turbine arrays.

PacWind studied meteorological records and did a wind analysis, she said, determining that Times Square has 10-mile-an-hour winds, on average, ranging from no wind to gusts of 85 m.p.h. The turbines provide usable power from winds as weak as 5 m.p.h. and rotate safely in winds up to 100 m.p.h., she said, because the aluminum blades are aerodynamically designed to regulate themselves, slowing automatically in high winds.

The company has designed wind turbines for applications ranging from the sublime to the seemingly ridiculous — including a turbine created for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to capture 400-mile-an-hour winds for a lander on Mars, and a turbine that powers the 20,000-square-foot garage of Jay Leno in Los Angeles.

Ms. Watkins said the Times Square turbines were designed to keep ice from forming on the blades in winter. Birds have not proved to be a problem as the company has installed 50 of its drum turbines across the country, she said, “because they see the turbines not as spinning blades, but as a solid object.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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Association for Energy Affordability Con Ed Solutions Energy Curtailment Specialists EME Group Con Edison M-Core Credit Corporation PB Power Syska Hennessy Group

Trystate Mechanical Inc.

Gas Drilling in Upstate New York Atracts Foreign Investors

NEW YORK, NY November 13, 2008 —How valuable are upstate New York's untapped natural gas reserves? No one knows for sure. But as WNYC's Ilya Marritz reports, a new joint venture gives some clues.

REPORTER: StatoilHydro, a Norwegian company, will pay $3.4 billion dollars for a one-third share in Chesapeake Energy's northeast natural gas operations. Chesapeake has already leased a million acres in New York State.

At a hearing in Albany last month, Chesapeake executive Thomas Price said the company had stretched its capital reserves in the rush to lease land for drilling, and was looking for partners.

Now they're in business with a major. But Chesapeake will have to get drill bits in the ground and meet production targets to complete the deal with the Norwegians. It's unlikely there will be any drilling in New York until the state issues an environmental review, due out in Spring 2009.

©2008 WNYC Radio

Pickens Delays His Wind Farm PlanBy Kate Galbraith, NYTimes, Nov 12 08

FORMER OILMAN T. BOONE PICKENS said Tuesday that he was putting his wind power ambitions on hold. He is delaying his plans to build the world’s largest wind farm, according to The Arizona Republic, which cited his remarks at a conference on Tuesday in Phoenix.

The Texas oilman, who has created a stir by his endorsement of wind power as part of a national strategy to reduce dependence on foreign oil, cited the fall in natural gas prices, a competing source of electricity generation, as a deterrent.

Mr. Pickens insisted that wind remained part of a national strategy, however, and predicted that energy prices would go back up.

From The Arizona Republic: Until natural-gas prices rise, Pickens said his wind farm and most others in the country will not go

forward because electricity from gas plants will be more economical. Still, he was confident prices would rise.He said Americans haven’t understood the nation’s energy challenges because prices have been low,

until last summer when oil hit a record $147 a barrel.“You haven’t had the leadership in Washington to tell us what the problem was,” he said. “The

American people did not realize where we were. When oil went to $100, I had a story to tell.”According to Reuters, Mr. Pickens has already put in orders for $2 billion in wind turbines, which will

be delivered beginning in 2010. The credit crisis had already forced Mr. Pickens to delay an expensive power transmission project in the

Texas Panhandle. The fall in natural gas prices may be a boon to Mr. Pickens other goal, however — to get millions of

cars and trucks running on natural gas.Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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The Superintendents Technical Association (aka the Supers Club) is the first technical society of multifamily building maintenance personnel. For free e-mail edition of monthly newsletter, visit our Web site: www.nycSTA.org or ask Dick Koral, Secretary rkoral@citytech.cuny.edu

THE NEW CABIN CULTURE - Ditch the deer heads and moose antlers. Put away the caps with flaps. Around the country, cabins are being stylized in design-savvy and sustainable ways. The cabin of Junko and Sam Snyder near Hudson, N.Y., depends on wind and solar power for all its energy needs.

Photo: Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times

Water Laws May Be Used to Fight WarmingBy Andrew C. Revkin, NYTimes, Nov 13 08

CARBON DIOXIDE COULD ACIDIFY OCEANS and threaten coral reefs like this one, surrounding Heron Island on the southern Great Barrier Reef.(© Science) Environmental groups have sought to force the federal government to restrict carbon dioxide emissions using the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act (because of threats to polar bears from global warming) and other federal laws, and now they are poised to add the Clean Water Act to the list. The Center for Biological Diversity says it is prepared to sue the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to use the water law to respond to the threat of ocean acidification. This is the drop in seawater pH as the oceans absorb an estimated 22 million tons of carbon dioxide from the 80 million tons emitted each day by human

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activities. The result is a buildup of carbonic acid, which is lowering the pH of seawater. That trend toward acid conditions could threaten corals and plankton with shells containing calcium, biologists have warned.

The Bush administration has strongly opposed legal maneuvers aimed at limiting greenhouse gases with existing environmental laws. Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, has warned that such efforts constitute a “regulatory train wreck.”

The environmental group cited a paper in the journal Science in July that stressed the need for the E.P.A. to update its water-quality standards for pH, which have not been updated since 1976.

“The federal Clean Water Act requires the E.P.A. to update water-quality criteria to reflect the latest scientific knowledge,” the group said in a news release. “Since the agency developed the pH standard back in 1976, an extensive body of research has developed on the impacts of carbon dioxide on the oceans.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Would You Buy This Funny-Looking Bulb?By Eric A. Taub, NYTimes, Nov 4 08

WITHIN THE NEXT SEVERAL MONTHS, several of the world’s biggest lighting companies, including Osram Sylvania and Philips, will introduce LED replacement bulbs to various world markets, including the United States.

Credit: Lighting Science Group Corp.

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While the bulbs will be praised for their energy-saving characteristics and long lives, most consumers will immediately think, “These things look weird.”

And they do. Really weird. Here’s an example of one LED substitute for a standard reflector bulb used in many home ceilings. Those funny fins are a “heat sink.” Because LED light sources generate all their heat through the rear, manufacturers are adding heat sinks to dramatically increase the surface area and let the heat dissipate rapidly. Without them, the LED fixture would lose its color accuracy and have a dramatically shortened life.

That’s especially important for these reflector bulb substitutes. The “cans” in which recessed reflector bulbs typically sit in today’s ceilings were designed for standard incandescent light bulbs, which direct most of their heat forward. How they will fare with prolonged use of the new generation of bulbs that send heat back up into the ceiling is anyone’s guess.

Aesthetically, the bulbs’ odd shape will not be a problem if they are mostly hidden from view, either in the ceiling or under a lampshade. But what happens with other bulbs that are out in the open, like track lighting?

A company in Westlake Village, Calif., is embracing the design drawbacks and turning them into a feature. Journée Lighting has just started selling track lighting that emphasizes the heat sink.

Credit: Journée Lighting

Journée is marketing seven different colors of its LED-based Lotus Luminaires, from golden yellow to Bordeaux red. The fixtures look a bit like knockoffs of Ming the Merciless’s spaceship in the 1930s Flash Gordon serials. While you might find them a bit over the top, they’ve already been installed in the Chicago Center for Green Technology and Universal Studios.

Designed for the commercial market, the Luminaires are a bit pricey: each fixture costs around $400. But prices for LED technology are coming down dramatically. In February, the company will sell its newest generation, the Pentas, that ups the light output more than 60 percent per watt.

And home versions are coming. The company has been approached by Costco to design a track lighting kit. The company’s goal is to use less expensive manufacturing techniques and sell three fixtures and the track for around $200.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

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What Do Consumers Know about Energy?

Now in its fourth year, Energy Pulse® is Shelton Group’s annual national consumer market study that gives you unparalleled insight into the consumer mindset on energy, energy efficiency and consumer trends. This is an excerpt.

 90 percent of respondents think that the government should be doing more to solve our energy problems.61 percent say that the candidates’ energy policies are important when choosing whom to vote for president. 41 percent of respondents can’t name a single source of renewable energy, proving that education remains sorely needed.

To purchase a copy of this survey, contact the Shelton Group at 865.524.8385.

U. of Illinois Starts Construction of Sustainable Supercomputer Center

A new building at the U. of Illinois will house a high-powered supercomputer. (U. of Illinois image)

November 3, 2008: The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign will break ground Wednesday for an 88,000-square-foot building to house a new petascale supercomputer that it plans to bring online in 2011. The IBM machine, for which the National Science Foundation is giving the university a $208-million grant, will be called Blue Waters and “will have greater computing capacity than all the current Top 500 supercomputers combined,” according to John R. Melchi, senior associate director for administration at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, which will oversee the machine.

The $72.5-million building’s 20,000-square-foot machine room will have space enough for both the petascale machine and whatever machine comes after it. The building will also house about 40 staff members and will, the university says, “combine top-flight physical and cybersecurity with the open, collaborative research attitudes of a public institution.”

The building was designed by EYP Mission Critical Facilities — which had been a division of the architecture firm Einhorn Yaffee Prescott but was acquired last year by Hewlett-Packard — and by Gensler. It includes a number of features intended to save electricity. Like the new supercomputer center at the University of California at San Diego, the Illinois facility will keep its machinery cool by routing chilled water into the frame that holds the computer’s processors, rather than byusing chilled water to cool air and blowing that over the processors. IBM says a similar arrangement on another machine reduces energy consumption by 40 percent.

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About 60 percent of the time, three on-site cooling towers are expected to handle the facility’s water-cooling needs without drawing on the university’s main chilled-water system.

The facility is expected to earn a gold-level certification from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, known as LEED. —Lawrence Biemiller

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Nuclear Power May Be in Early Stages of a Revival By Matthew L, Wald, NYTimes, Oct 24 08

WASHINGTON — After three decades without starting a single new plant, the American nuclear power industry is getting ready to build again.

When the industry first said several years ago that it would resume building plants, deep skepticism greeted the claim. Not since 1973 had anybody in the United States ordered a nuclear plant that was actually built, and the obstacles to a new generation of plants seemed daunting.But now, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 21 companies say they will seek permission to build 34 power plants, from New York to Texas. Factories are springing up in Indiana and Louisiana to build reactor parts. Workers are clearing a site in Georgia to put in reactors. Starting in January, millions of electric customers in Florida will be billed several dollars a month to finance four new reactors.

On Thursday, the French company Areva, the world’s largest builder of nuclear reactors, and Northrop Grumman announced an investment of more than $360 million at a shipyard in Newport News, Va., to build components for seven proposed American reactors, and more for export.

The change of fortune has come so fast that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which had almost forgotten how to accept an application, has gone into a frenzy of hiring, bringing on hundreds of new engineers to handle the crush of applications.

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A nuclear plant in Flamanville, France, being built by Areva, which says it plans to make reactor parts in Newport News, Va

Many problems could derail the so-called nuclear revival, and virtually no one believes all 34 proposed plants will be built. It is still unclear how many billions they would cost, whether the expense can be financed in a troubled credit market, and how the cost might compare with other power sources.

But experts who follow the industry expect that at least some of the 34 will be built.Given rising public concern about global warming and a recent history of reliable operation among nuclear plants, “the climate for introducing new plants is probably the best it’s been since the industry started canceling plants” 30 years ago, said Brian Balogh, a history professor at the University of Virginia. Unlike most types of power generation, nuclear plants do not emit the gases that cause global warming, once they are completed.

In the United States, orders for new reactors essentially ended in October 1973. That was also the month that the Arab oil embargo began, inaugurating an era of economic problems that drove up construction costs and suppressed demand for power. In the end, more than 100 nuclear reactors, some in advanced stages of construction, were canceled, and tens of billions of dollars were squandered.

On top of that, the Three Mile Island accident in 1979 and the Chernobyl explosion in 1986 made nuclear power a hard sell. And cheap turbines were developed to burn natural gas to generate electricity. By the 1990s, even some nuclear plants that had been running for a few years were deemed too costly and were closed.

But nuclear power never went away. The United States has 104 commercial reactors in operation, and the industry has improved their reliability markedly, increasing their output. They generate almost 20 percent of the country’s electric power.

As concerns over global warming and natural gas supplies have worsened, strong support has developed in Congress and some states for new reactors. The governor of Maryland recently cited a “moral imperative” to build plants to counter the threat of climate change. Support for new reactors has long been strong in some localities, particularly those that are candidates for billions of dollars in construction work.

And investment dollars are starting to flow. “We have a long-term vision,” Anne Lauvergeon, chief executive of Areva, said in an interview here on

Thursday, explaining her company’s decision to join forces with Northrop Grumman at Newport News. To help spur a revival, Congress provided $18.5 billion in loan guarantees in a 2005 energy law, plus

operating subsidies similar to those available for solar and wind power, and insurance against regulatory delays.

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Little effective political opposition to new reactors has emerged so far. The environmental movement is spending its energy fighting new coal-burning power plants, with considerable effect. While few environmental advocates are enthusiastic about nuclear power, a handful acknowledge it could play a role in countering global warming.

“There is no question that some of the passion of the antinuclear movement has drained away,” said Professor Balogh, who is the author of a 1990 book on opposition to nuclear power.Worried about its ability to build coal plants, but needing new power plants to meet rising electric demand, the utility industry is determined to move ahead on nuclear power. While most spending so far is on engineering work and environmental studies, physical work is in the early stages, as well.

The Georgia Power Company wants new units adjacent to its two Vogtle reactors, finished in the 1980s, and workers there are tearing down old buildings left over from that construction to make space for new construction.

At the Port of Lake Charles, La., the Shaw Group and Westinghouse Electric, owned by Toshiba, are building a factory bigger than 10 football fields that will make components for new reactors in the United States and around the world. BWX Technologies, a subsidiary of McDermott International, is setting up a plant in Mount Vernon, Ind., to resume manufacturing reactor vessels and other big components. Both companies expect work for years to come.

The industry’s most intractable problem, what to do with spent nuclear fuel, has not been solved. The government was supposed to begin accepting spent fuel for burial in 1998 but now says it will be 2017 at the earliest, and it is not clear that the site under study, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, will win a license.

But companies that want to build say the industry could make do for the next few decades with an above-ground “interim storage” site. That might mean centralized storage in a remote desert facility.

Some skeptics argue that a technology that needs taxpayer help on a large scale should not be built. In fact, construction costs for power plants of all kinds have risen sharply in the last two years, creating special problems for nuclear power, which has more steel and concrete than other plants of equal output. By some estimates costs have more than doubled since 2000.

The critics argue that the same money spent elsewhere — on wind power, or on retrofitting buildings — could create bigger cuts in carbon dioxide output. Joseph J. Romm, an official in the Energy Department during the Clinton administration, pointed to a recent estimate by Florida Power & Light that a new reactor could cost a steep $8,000 for each kilowatt of capacity — enough power to run a window air-conditioner. That is at least double what a coal-burning power plant would cost, and Mr. Romm said that it was only the preconstruction estimate of an industry famous for cost overruns.

He said the plants would be hard to finance. “I just read that McDonald’s was having trouble getting money, and there’s not a lot of risk in building a new McDonald’s,” he said. “Obviously, the risks with a nuclear plant are enormous.” He predicted a return to the problem of the 1970s — high prices for electricity driving electric demand down so much that plants under construction were no longer needed. Some people say they believe more political opposition will emerge once some of the proposed plants move closer to construction.

At the Union of Concerned Scientists, an advocacy group in Washington that frequently criticizes the nuclear industry, David A. Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer, said it was too soon to say that opposition was weaker now than during construction of the older plants, when grandmothers tried to block bulldozers.

“We’ve got the grandmothers; we just don’t have the bulldozers,” he said. “There’s not the Kodak moment that a lot of these protests need.”

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Greenpeace: China's Coal Use Cost it $248B

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS (OCT 38 08): Coal use cost China 7.1 percent of its gross domestic product last year, report says Hidden cost of coal use includes damage to the environment, strain on health care Coal accounts for more than 70 percent of China's energy use Government's role in keeping prices low has become more expensive

BEIJING, China (AP) -- China's reliance on cheap coal to fuel its economy cost a hidden $248 billion last year through damage to the environment, strain on the health care system and manipulation of the commodity's price, according to a report released Monday by Greenpeace.

Coal-fired power plants and smelters have contributed to endemic respiratory problems from particulates.

COAL ACCOUNTS FOR MORE THAN 70 PERCENT OF CHINA'S ENERGY USE, helping to buttress the country's double-digit economic growth. But as demand for electricity has soared, supplies of coal have been strained -- and the government's role in keeping prices low has become more expensive.

Coal-fired power plants and smelters have also polluted China's water and air, resulted in massive loss of life in accidents, and contributed to endemic respiratory problems from coal dust and other particulates.

"Nobody has calculated the costs," said Han Xiaoping, senior vice president of Beijing Falcon Pioneer Technology Co., an energy consultancy. "We are shouldering the costs and the whole world is shouldering the costs."

The damages associated with use of coal cost the country 1.7 trillion yuan ($248 billion) last year, or the equivalent of 7.1 percent of China's gross domestic product, according to the report, conducted in collaboration with the Energy Foundation and the conservation group WWF.

Economists and other experts arrived at their figures by calculating, for example, the lost income from those sickened by coal pollution and the cost of their care.

The report did not take into account the economic costs of climate change caused by coal, however, which authors said was hard to quantify. China is the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, produced from coal combustion among other pollutants

←← Economic Miracle, Environmental Disaster ← Special: Planet in Peril

"Recognizing the true cost of coal would create incentives to developing cleaner, sustainable energy sources," said Yang Ailun, climate and energy campaign manager at Greenpeace.

"The government should introduce an effective price signal [price set by the market] for coal, which would ensure a massive improvement in energy efficiency," she said.

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Phones at the National Development and Reform Commission, which handles economic policy, rang unanswered after hours on Monday. This summer, the government raised prices for coal from 840 to 860 yuan ($123 to $125) per ton at China's three main markets to ensure supply.

If all the costs associated with coal use were reflected in its price, the commodity would cost 23 percent more, the study said. China's GDP would likely fall by less than a percent if coal's price rose to that level, it concluded.

Chinese miners already pay a heavy price for the use of coal, the report noted. China's coal mines are the world's deadliest, with numerous fires, floods and other disasters killing an average of 13 miners a day.

The death rate of Chinese miners per million tons of coal extracted is 70 times higher than for their American counterparts. Many accidents occur in small mines with low safety standards or in mines operated illegally.

The report urged China to phase in taxes on energy use and emissions, ease price controls on coal and create insurance funds for those harmed by mining accidents.

A fair price for coal would make sure it is being used more efficiently and increase the competitiveness of China's companies, but also spur development in renewable energy sources, the 63-page report said.

"The government of China has the opportunity to make a real improvement to the environment by reforming the current coal pricing system," it said.

Han said the report might help to bring such issues to public attention.If they knew how damaging coal was, "the Chinese people will be shocked, and if they are shocked, they

will take some action," he said. Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.

A Moving Skyscraper for N.Y.?By John Tierney, NYTimes, Oct 29 08

EACH OF THE FLOORS OF THE DYNAMIC TOWER ROTATES INDEPENDENTLY, giving the building different shapes throughout the day. (Dynamic Architecture/ David Fisher)

Would you like to see a building twisting itself into different shapes night and day on the New York skyline? Would you like to live in an apartment with a view that rotates 360 degrees? It may be a little hard at

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the moment to arrange financing for such tower — or any other new skyscraper in Manhattan — but the architect David Fisher is looking for a place to build it here someday.

He’s already designed such an edifice in Dubai called the Dynamic Tower, billed as the “world’s first building in motion.” Dr. Fisher, an architect based in Florence, he told me that he hopes groundbreaking for the Dubai tower will occur “within a matter of weeks,” and said that the problems in the credit market haven’t affected the project.

The tower is supposed to generate enough electricity to supply the power needs for itself as well as buildings nearby. The electricity will come from horizontal wind turbines tucked away between each of its 80 floors, and from solar photovoltaic cells on the roof each story. As the individual floors move, about 20 percent of each roof is expected to be exposed to the sun at any time of the day.

Dr. Fisher, who’s working on another of these towers for Moscow, was in town this week to discuss plans for New York. Where might it go? “We are currently looking at a few sites,” he told me. “It should be a place from where the view is attractive and also where people can stand and watch the building changing its shape.”

Any suggestions for him? Any predictions on how well those turbines and photovoltaic cells will work? And would you pay a premium to live in a room with a moving view?

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

An Interview With E.O. Wilson, Father of the Encyclopedia of LifeBy David Pogue, NYTimes, Oct. 23 08

THIS PAST SUNDAY, "CBS News Sunday Morning" aired my report on the Encyclopedia of Life project. (I'm campaigning hard for them to post the segment online.)

As usual, putting this story together involved conducting a number of interviews, which were fascinating--but I had time to use only a few sentences of each one in the finished story. It always seems such a shame to let the rest of these interviews go to waste.

So today, I offer a much longer version of my interview with E.O. Wilson (friends call him Ed), the two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, naturalist and Harvard research professor who's the father of the Encyclopedia of Life.

DAVID POGUE:  So how did this project come about?

DR. E.O. WILSON: I've been in systematics and the mapping of biological diversity all my life. And a little more than ten years ago, I thought the time had come to undertake a complete mapping of the world's fauna and flora.

Because remarkably--and this is little known even in the scientific community--we've only begun to explore this planet. It was 250 years ago this year that Karl Linneus, the great naturalist in Sweden, began what became the official form of biological classification: two names, like "homo sapiens" for us, and ranging the species in hierarchies according to how much they resemble one another. 250 years ago.

And in that period of time, we have found and given names to perhaps one-tenth of what's on the surface of the earth. We have now found 1.8 million species. But the actual numberis almost certainly in excess of 10 million, and could be as high as a hundred million, when you throw in bacteria.

Let me give you an example. Fungi. The world depends on fungi, because they are major players in the

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cycling of materials and energy around the world. They're necessary for the health of other organisms. (We should get rid of the idea that fungi are what gives you athlete's foot...feet.) Some 60,000 species are known, and it's been estimated by experts that more than 1.5 million exist. So we've just begun to explore it. And that's true, group after group. We're just beginning.

For a period of time, I was a voice in the wilderness, with a few others, wandering around and trying to raise a lot of money, unsuccessfully, saying, "You know, we need to bulk up the exploration of the planet, the living part." And finally, in 2003, I wrote a paper called "The Encyclopedia of Life." And I said, "What we need is to get out there and search this little-known planet, and then put all the information that we get on species already known into a single great database, an electronic encyclopedia, with a page that's indefinitely extensible for each species inturn, and that would be available to anybody, any time, anywhere, single access, on command, free."

We were about to enter the age of Google. We were about to enter an age where, technically, we could have everything available to everybody all the time. So I published that article and began to promote it. And some others picked up on it. The key, however, was the warm reception made to it by the MacArthur Foundation. [The MacArthur and Sloan foundations eventually contributed $12 million to launch the project. Later, Dr. Wilson also won the TED Prize, which brings with it $100,000 and, more importantly, a lot of exposure and contacts to help three visionaries each year make their wishes come true.]

DP: And what do you say to people who think, "Oh. Oh, how interesting. A database for scientists." I mean, is there a greater purpose to a Web site like this?

EOW:    The public will have this unlimited encyclopedia, where it can browse [at eol.org]. Where individual students can do their own research projects. Where you can make your ownfield guide wherever you're going. It will tell you what the butterflies are of Oregon, or maybe you're hoping to make a trip to Costa Rica and the whole family would like to see turtles. In time, you'll be able to do this with a few keystrokes.

DP: So I understand that the Encyclopedia will operate Wikipedia-style, with contributions from the public, which are then approved by experts?

EOW: The world is full of amateurs: gifted amateurs, devoted amateurs. You can pick almost any group that has any kind of intrinsic interest in it, from dragonflies to pill bugs to orb-weaving spiders. Anybody can pick up information in interesting places, find new species or rediscover what was thought to be a vanished species, or some new biological fact about a species already known, and can provide that right into The Encyclopedia of Life.

DP: Haven't there been previous attempts to catalogue every species in the world?

EOW:    Yes, there have been several. And if you have access to one of the great libraries and a LOT of time, you can, with great effort, pull out everything known about every species. But it would take an army actually to get all the information on all species, all 1.8 million species and on beyond, around the world.

For example, 30 feet from where we sit is the largest ant collection in the world. One million specimens, 6,000 species, and it's a wonderful resource. [DP notes: This collection represents Wilson's own life's work.] But any scientist who wants to utilize this collection--andthat's most of them who are doing research on ants--have to come here [to my department at Harvard]. But when The Encyclopedia of Life receives all the information that we

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have, like the superb photographs and basic data on the species, just a few keystrokes away, it'll be possible to do high-level, cutting-edge, real-time research, wherever you are.

Simultaneously, to speed things along even more, the Biodiversity Heritage Library Initiative has set out to scan and make available maybe 500 million pages published all through time, on all species. [They are literally scanning thousands of books and journals, converting thescans to text, and making it all available to the Enyclopedia of Life.] I just got a letter from one of the leaders of this who said, "We've just passed the eight million mark."

DP:  It sounds like this is going to be a major world resource. How is it gonna pay for itself? Are you gonna sell ads?

EOW:    This project has to pay for itself. We got our break through the MacArthur and Sloan Foundations to get started. But now we have to pick up funds to expand it to anything near completion. And right now, I don't have an idea of what that will take in funding. But I'm pretty sure of one thing. It's not going to cost more than the Human Genome Project, becauseit's way ahead. And it's gonna cost a lot less than our space programs--a lot less. In fact, if we could have a small fraction of one of a space program budget alone, we would see this project go way fast into the future.

It's a scientific moon shot--big science. But I think it's gonna turn out to be one of the least expensive. It doesn't take a lot of high technology to discover species and work out their characteristics.

DP: Is there a larger purpose to The Encyclopedia of Life?

EOW:    Oh, yeah. The Encyclopedia of Life is absolutely vital in saving the environment. Because we're losing the vast percentage of species; we are losing them. Whenever wefocus on a particular group, whether it's birds, frogs, whatever, we can just see them disappearing. So what happens among all these other groups, from beetles to ants to bacteria to fungi and so on? You know full well that they're disappearing, too. But we don't even know what's disappearing. And we don't know how to save most of them. And we don't know how this is going to affect the environment.

We need to have this information, this great database, in order to plan strategies that are maximally efficient, cost the least, square kilometer by square kilometer around the world, and save the most. And we can't do that without a thorough knowledge of what we're trying to save.

Listen: What would thrill people the most about space exploration? Surely it would be the discovery of life on another planet. Then, Congress, if it weren't busted, would be willing to put out billions to explore that planet--find out all of the life forms there. Why shouldn't we be doing the same for planet earth? It's a little-known planet. Ninety percent of the life forms unknown to us.

And this is gonna be fun. This is a return to exploring a little-known planet.

DP: What is your involvement with The Encyclopedia of Life these days?

EOW:    Here at Harvard, I've started a part of The Encyclopedia of Life effort: the Global Ant Project. I've obtained the funds. We've just had a meeting of ant specialists from around the country.

DP: That's gotta be a party.

EOW:    Yeah, it was. (LAUGHTER) The word for them is myrmecologists. And believe me, this was an exciting but, I have to admit, idiosyncratic clan meeting. (LAUGHTER)

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And for a skeptical audience who says, "Well, how could studying ants be very important?" Well, let me tell you, ants are the dominant insects. They make up as much as aquarter of the biomass of all insects in the world. They are the principal predators. They're the cemetery workers. Ants are the leading removers of dead creatures on the land. And the rest of life is substantially dependent upon them.

In many environments, take away the ants and there would be partial collapses in many of the land ecosystems. Take away humans, and everything would come back and flourish. But Idon't wanna go down that down that road for a broad audience. (LAUGHTER)

DP: I'm just curious: when you see an ant in the kitchen...Has your life's work caused you to reach a point where you wouldn't just stomp on it?

EOW:    Oh, no. (LAUGHTER) I've slaughtered more ants in my life than possibly any living person. Whole colonies.

DP: What is your sense of The Encyclopedia of Life's likelihood of success?

EOW:    Likelihood of success? Certain. Challenges? Large. Some unknown. But right now, those that can be imagined don't seem to be insoluble. It won't take a huge amount of funding. It'll be relatively a small "big science" effort. No. I think this whole effort has a great future.

DP: So you don't see it being derailed by people leaving, or money running out, or--

EOW:    What's to derail? I mean, we're not talking about the Hadron Collider, with people standing outside, wringing their hands thinking that the Earth will disappear into a black hole. We're not talking about religious believers trying to put the stop on the stem cells. We're talkingabout finding out about life on a little-known planet and making full use of that knowledge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/23/technology/personaltech/23pogue-email.html?8cir&emc=cir

Visit David Pogue on the Web at DavidPogue.comhttp://www.DavidPogue.com?8cir&emc=cir

NY Chapter AEE Board Members David Ahrens dahrens@energyspec.com 718- 677-9077x110

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Michael Bobker mbobker@aol.com 646-660-6977Timothy Daniels twdaniels44@hotmail.com 212- 312-3770Jack Davidoff jack-ecselectrical@verizon.net 718- 963-2556Fredric Goldner fgoldner@emra.com 516- 481-1455Placido Impollonia paimpollonia@dcas.nyc.gov 212-669-7628Dick Koral rkoral@citytech.cuny.edu 718- 552-1161 (NEWSLETTER EDITOR)John Leffler jleffler@goldmancopeland.com 212-868-4660x218Robert Meier meier@lime-energy.com 212-328-3360x502Jeremy Metz jeremy.metz@verizon.com 212-338-6405Chris Young c_young1@att.net, and 917-685-5365 (Interim)Asit Patel apatel@aeanyc.org 718- 292-6733x205Board Members Emeritus Paul Rivet energyx@verizon.netGeorge Kritzler gkritzler@aol.comAlfred Greenberg agpecem@optonline.net 914-422-4387George BirmanPast PresidentsJohn Nettleton (2006-8) jsn10@cornell.edu 212-340-2937Mike Bobker (2003-05), Asit Patel (2000-03), Thomas Matonti (1998-99), Jack Davidoff (1997-98), Fred Goldner (1993-96), Peter Kraljic (1991-92), George Kritzler (1989-90), Alfred Greenberg (1982-89), Murray Gross (1981-82), Herbert Kunstadt (1980-81), Sheldon Liebowitz (1978-80)

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