Project Permit simplifies solar permitting process
Derek Markham | June 14, 2013
Small-scale solar is easy. You can set up a small standalone PV panel and its battery storage just about anywhere you like, and pick it up and move it anytime you please, in order to get more solar gain or to placate a picky neighbor.
Installing a larger PV system, however, is altogether more complex. Aside from the much greater financial commitment and the added technical aspects inherent in a residential-sized solar electric system, navigating the confusing bureaucratic waters of permitting can be quite mystifying.
But a new community-based database and website aims to change some of that, by scoring the solar permitting practices in municipalities across the US, and helping permitting staff and local leaders to learn how to put 'best practices' in place in their local agencies.
Is the paperless office finally here?
Lloyd Alter |June 14, 2013
Three years ago, Leo Hickman of the Guardian said of the promised paperless office: " Its repeated failure to arrive is as big a letdown as the perennial office party." But for some, it has finally arrived. The Globe and Mail describes Idea Rebel, a digital marketing agency in Vancouver, that is absolutely doctrinaire about it. Brian Borzykowski writes:
Idea Rebel is a truly paperless office. Pay stubs are e-mailed to employees, notes are taken on tablet devices and whiteboards get heavy use. Designers are allowed to bring in a pad of paper, but they have to take them home with them at the end of each day. He [CEO Jamie Garratt] wanted to go paperless, he says, because his business is all about creating digital products, such as applications, websites and social media tools. Using paper is the antithesis of his company’s core values.
Trash to cash: Norway leads the way in turning waste into energy
Helen Russell | guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 June 2013 15.17 BST
For a country blessed with bountiful oil supplies, it may appear incongruous. But Norway is importing as much rubbish as it can get its hands on, in an effort to generate more energy by burning waste in vast incinerators.
The Eurotrash business may sound like an unpromising enterprise, but it's one that is increasingly profitable. The UK paid to send 45,000 tonnes of household waste from Bristol and Leeds to Norway between October 2012 and April this year. "Waste has become a commodity," says Pål Spillum, head of waste recovery at the Climate and Pollution Agency in Norway. "There is a big European market for this, so much so that the Norwegians are accepting rubbish from other countries to feed the incinerator."
