Dan Haugen

I had an energizing conversation Thursday with the guys at Element Six Media, a green advertising and branding firm in Minneapolis that builds campaigns around sustainable earth materials and social media buzz. I’ll be unpacking my interview notes in the next couple of weeks for a story on The Line, but I wanted to share one snippet now that particularly lingered with me: This is the New Economy. If we’re waiting for things to turn around or resume to normal, we’re wasting time because this is the new normal. Here’s how co-founder Maikel van de Mortel put it:

“We don’t talk in terms of things turning around. This is the new reality, and we’re at ground zero. The question is: how are we going to build up. The problem is that not everybody has come to peace yet with that new reality, and as long as that doesn’t happen, if you’re not at that point, then you’re going to struggle. The truth of the matter is it’s not going to go back to what it was. We’re not going to see profit margins as high anymore as they used to be. We’re not going to be able to charge those dollar amounts anymore as we were used to. Every single industry is going to have to face some realities, because people are going to object. It’s just part of the new economy. Every day that we talk about how things were, we’re waiting for things to turn around, is time that we spend wasting. That’s what’s really unfortunate. We can’t waste our time. We can’t afford it.”

Way too much on my plate this morning, so I need to keep this brief. I’ll be unpacking my thoughts/notes today on last night’s Policy & A Pint on “Cities, Bicycling and the Future of Getting Around.” I’m also going to be talking/playing phone tag with a few more entrepreneurs I want to feature in next week’s issue of The Line.

I’m going to get straight into the links now:

SUSTAINABILITY
The Seward Co-op celebrated its new 32-kilowatt rooftop solar photovoltaic system with a “commissioning party” on Thursday. The array was installed by Solarflow Energy, a Seward neighborhood company that is trying to prove a solar leasing model. I wrote about ‘em this week for The Line.

MEDICAL DEVICES
ProUroCare , an Eden Prairie medical device startup, announced an extra infusion of cash from its existing investors. The company makes an imaging product that it believes can help doctors diagnose and document prostrate cancers. Thomas Lee wrote late last year that the company may have a hard time convincing reimbursers that the product is necessary. I was humming the Yeah Yeah Yeahs after reading this story in the Star Tribune this morning: an airline worker in Arkansas came across a container of human heads and head parts on their way to Medtronic that were apparently not packed or labeled properly. The state confiscated the body parts until it can confirm they were obtained legally.

ECONOMY
The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development announced May job numbers on Thursday. Minnesota employers created a net 5,600 jobs during the month while unemployment fell to an even 7 percent from 7.1 percent in April. It was the second consecutive month of job gains — a first since Jan.-Feb. 2008. U.S. Census hiring is responsible for a large chunk of the increase, but private employers in the state still created 2,600 jobs. Construction and financial services were the only sectors that didn’t see growth. I spoke with an official from an IT staffing agency in the Twin Cities, who told me that it’s placing a lot more web and app developers than it was a year ago, although much of the activity is temporary contract work.

Michigan’s attorney general announced a lawsuit Monday asking the U.S. Supreme Court to cut off a Chicago-area canal system that could allow invasive Asian carp to enter the Great Lakes.

Meanwhile, a group of Minnesota legislators says officials here must take “immediate action” to prevent the voracious invaders from devastating this state’s waterways and native fish populations.

“We’ve got to get moving on this,” said Rep. Rick Hansen, DFL-South St. Paul. “We know that these fish are a problem, and we know that they’re moving here.” Read the rest of this entry »

A student group at the University of Minnesota wants the school to set a time line for phasing out the burning of coal on campus.

Students Beyond Coal, part of a national Sierra Club campaign, will stage a rally today against the fuel, which is a major source of greenhouse gases and other pollution.

“We want to support what the University has done already” to reduce its coal use and energy consumption, said Siri Simons, a sophomore environmental studies student, “and we want to pressure them to keep moving in that direction.”

But is completely cutting coal from the equation realistic? Read the rest of this entry »

Greenhouse gases are trapping heat in our atmosphere and warming the planet at an alarming rate.

Climate scientists believe if we don’t respond appropriately in the next decade or so, global warming will cause oceans to rise, disease to spread, droughts to prolong, storms and wildfires to intensify, and scores of species to go extinct.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, foresees a different apocalyptic vision: a future in which American businesses are forced to do their part to help avert the crisis. (Continue reading…)

Tommy Creal builds motorcycles that are meant to catch the eye’s attention.

That effect is intensified here in this sprawling, basement shop room beneath Minneapolis Community & Technical College (MCTC) where a pair of Creal’s custom choppers and all their flashy chrome curves share the space with rows of dull, boxy fans and air ducts used by the college’s HVAC program.

Creal, 23, made a name for himself in Chicago teaching people how to build these bikes from scratch during a series of three-day boot camps. The motorcycles he and his students built over the past four years are one-of-a-kind bikes. And that will certainly be true of Creal’s latest machine. Its most distinguishing feature: It’ll run on purified water instead of gasoline. (Continue reading…)

It’s known as the Windy City, but its vehicle fleet could someday be powered by the sun.

Chicago unveiled its first solar electric-vehicle charging station this month as part of a campaign to bolster the city’s green cred in its bid to host the 2016 Olympics. The 2.4-kilowatt battery system is small, but it demonstrates how city vehicles might someday be powered by a completely carbon-free fuel source: the sun.

The station is among only a handful of solar-powered vehicle chargers in the United States, and perhaps the first in the Midwest. They’re few in numbers in part because electric vehicles are still few in number. Solar-powered charging stations are also more expensive than stations that draw electricity from the grid.

But the solar-powered chargers make a powerful symbolic statement: These vehicles run on clean energy, not fossil fuels. (Continue reading…)

The sun is rising on a new era for renewable energy in Gainesville, Fla.

Starting this month, residents and business owners with solar panels connected to the power grid will get a monthly check from their city-owned electric utility, the result of a first-in-the-nation policy called a feed-in tariff.

The new policy essentially turns privately owned rooftop solar panels into micro power generators for the utility. The city will pay up to 32 cents per kilowatt-hour for power they generate over the next 20 years, delivering their owners about a 5 percent profit over the equipment’s lifespan.

Feed-in tariffs like this have long been the primary tool for financing renewable energy projects in Europe, and they are a reason Spain and Germany have become world leaders in wind and solar. Advocates say the system is simpler, more effective and less expensive than traditional U.S. incentives for renewable energy, which are an often byzantine mix of tax incentives, rebates, state mandates and utility programs.

So what’s standing in the way of wider adoption in the United States? (Continue reading…)

Federal stimulus funds could turn New York City’s rooftops into a laboratory for urban solar.

Con Edison, which serves 3.2 million customers in the New York City area, is proposing a 12 megawatt solar energy pilot program that would add solar panels to the utility’s buildings and property, help customers pay for installations, and solicit developers to build larger rooftop systems in its territory.

While 12 megawatts might sound small, the potential is enormous.

If it succeeds, what New York City learns from the project will shed valuable light on how photovoltaics can help cities worldwide manage peak electricity demands on hot summer days. (Continue reading…)