Patel College of Global Sustainability

So, my final week in Australia was bittersweet because I finally got used to my schedule and work and all the people, but I definitely was excited to come home. Unfortunately, being excited on a 14 hour flight to Los Angeles does not reallt sit well. My traveling was such a long experience with delayed planes every step of the way. To top it off, my bags got left in Dallas for a couple days, but I eventually made it bag. I am also happy to say that nothing about my trip went badly with the exception of the last day.

Since I have been back, I have been focusing on wrapping up my paper with my USF supervisor and I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel, graduation! After things calm down a little bit and the jet lag subsides, I will begin my search for a job and I can;t wait for the next steps!

Thanks for reading about my journey, and I hope you enjoyed it.

-Ashley Sabol

Here in the District of Columbia Office of Policy and Sustainability, we have been continuing to work on the STAR Community Index, a new nationwide sustainability tracking program for local governments. Washington on DC is a number of pilot communities throughout the country.

Very similar to LEED, this program is designed to be a dynamic tool for identifying and eventually tracking and quantifying all aspects of community sustainability efforts, addressing multiple parameters within the three larger local government spheres of social economic and environmental components.

There are somewhere between 300 – 400 individual data entry points. At first the task was very daunting and even know many of the categories have embedded with them specific excel sheets for specific data tracking, it was necessary to create several very large excel databases of our own just to keep track of the status of each of the individual data entry points.

The program requires identifying and uploading many GIS maps, policies, working plan or budget, interagency MOUs, data tables and any number of other government documents. Identifying the correct one and accessing that requires interaction with a multitude of other agency points of contact, POIs. Our own excel sheets were necessary to record potential locational information of these above items inquiries sent to POIs, responses received, accuracy or completeness of data, and missing data for each data entry. In a city like Washington DC this involves massive amounts of research both very broadly across the city and the larger region and deeply within individual agency program information stores.

The developers of the STAR program (some of whom also developed LEED) are very open and receptive to feedback regarding all aspects of the program including specific language in their technical guide, confusing or vague expectations, degree of ‘fit’ between how the information exists in the community versus how they want it uploaded. They view this as a long-term development process, again like LEED, wherein the program will involve in response to community profiles and need, all with the single goal of encouraging and supporting community sustainability.

Ann Pierce

Edward Tian (L) Me (Brian Clair) @ TEDx PuntaPaitilla

This week has been very exciting as TEDx PuntaPaitilla license holder and entrepreneur Ezra Masri invited the Kalu Yala business interns to an exclusive presentation “Catalysts and Visionaries“. The talks were fantastic and the presenters were top notch with Hector Aguilar the CEO of GE Central America, Joshi Venugopal the GM of Novartis for Panama and the Caribbean, and Eldridge Bermingham the Director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute delivering some of my favorite  talks and providing global perspective from corporate viewpoints.  Leaders of the future Jong Hwa “Duly” Lee a Artist & Entrepreneur, Mayer Mizrachi a Tech Developer and founder of Jigl and #HASH, and Simon Zebede gave inspirational talks and show that Panama as a fantastic crop of innovators who are passionate about disrupting the status quo and creating social revolutions in art, technology, and marketing. The CEO of Kalu Yala, Jimmy Stice also gave a great talk on what goes into building a sustainable village and how real estate development and investment needs to be reconfigured and presented a solution based on a 7 pillar approach.  The talks will be listed online so you are only getting the quick teaser so you view them at a later date (http://www.tedxpuntapaitilla.com/speakers/).  Kalu Yala hosted a nice post talk mixer where we were able to have one on one time with the speakers making connections and having intellectual debate on many current topics such as technology, healthcare, and sustainability. Take some time to look at the speakers list posted above or right here.

Coast Eco Timber Mill - Alana Husby Giving a Tour - Giant Logs from Lake Bayano - The Milling Process of a Giant Log

One of my favorite entrepreneurs that I have met in Panama  is Alana Husby, a 5th generation Canadian logger and founder of Coast Eco Timber. Alana is the quintessential entrepreneur, hardworking, loves a challenge, and is a bold decision maker. She is currently rewriting the rules on sustainable logging operations as she builds her brand and guides the industry in new areas, building the equipment she requires, providing benefits unheard of to her employees, and pushing environmentally sustainable practices in a notoriously wasteful industry. It is a true triple bottom line operation. We had the ability to visit the mill in Chepo, Panama about an hour north of Panama City and it was amazing to see the quantity of wood and the size of the felled trees. Coast Eco Timber’s has clients worldwide as they have a blue ocean within the timber industry due to their sustainable approach, work with the Kuna people, and story behind Lake Bayano.  The wood is so unique and some of them have a “janka” (Hardness Rating) of up to 3,680 which is a very high rating.  I am currently helping another intern Scott who has a long history in the surfing industry develop a prototype surfboard out of some Cedro Espino wood and am assisting 2 others Palmi and Jo tweaking a business plan for a sustainable furniture line for Kalu Yala. Until next time… Brian Clair

@ Coast Eco Timber Mill

So time has a funny way of speeding up when you are busy and having a good time, today I realized that I am almost to the four week mark and way behind with my blog postings. Hooray for back-to-back postings! 

Week 3 at ZEBAU was really a great deal of data searching, scouring the internet and chasing around the office in search of relevant statistics.  In between was a noteworthy trip to the storage basement, which I was told was converted to a small bomb shelter during the WWII air raids.  I am not sure how relevant this is, but working in a 200 year old building, there is a lot of history ever-present. From the bomb shelter to the wenches and pullies still hanging from the ceilings, all you have to do is look.

So 2013 was the first time I have been out of the country on the 4th, a sad thing indeed… No fireworks, no BBQ, none of the beloved American traditions. Thankfully, I went out to dinner with my new German friends and had some nice German beer to dull the pain. While falafels may not be traditional 4th of July fare, and might in fact be the furthest thing from, the food and company were both excellent! 

Over the weekend I visited the lovely St. Michael’s church, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Michael’s_Church,_Hamburg, the view from the top of which was really quite remarkable looking over the entire city. The climb up all the steps was not as bad as expected, though, the way back down was a bit harrowing. The reason for this was not because of how many steps there were, or even a matter of how steep the steps were, but rather the steps were very narrow, something I had not previously noticed going up on my toes, but now something I was all too aware of going back down. After walking down cautiously duck footed, I thought to myself, perhaps I should have taken the elevator along with all those other people. I am glad I didn’t, but those were some seriously small steps, especially for someone who wears size 12-13 shoes.

All in all another good week with perfect weather and a healthy mix of work stuff, tourist stuff, and of course food!

Time is flying by. It seems like yesterday we arrived. Yet, its been almost 2 weeks. Tropical Storm Chantal narrowly missed us on Monday night through Tuesday. It was close but we only suffered minor winds and heavy rains. The next day, the sky was bluer than ever. Everything else on the island, radiant. Although our office was partly closed on Tuesday we still completed a lot of work for the project. It’s challenging and difficult at times to complete so much research and composition in such a short time but, I think we are well on our way to success.

Today (Friday), Chris and I will leave the office and head to Carlisle Bay where we’ll snorkel and explore more shipwrecks/reefs. Afterwards, our plan is to head further South to Oistins Fish Fry which, is a very popular event held every Friday. All of the fresh fish caught throughout the week are prepared and served for tourists, locals, and others to enjoy in a fun, friendly, and easy-going atmosphere. Apparently, Bajan weekends often entail a ‘no work’ policy. I’m slightly ok with that although I’ll most likely incorporate some field research into mine. Speaking of which, I need to get back to work at the office now so snorkeling can be had later. See you next week.

Week 2 in Hamburg entailed a lot research about the Efficiency House Plus with Electromobility, including lots of help from google translate. For those of you unfamiliar, like myself about a month ago, Efficiency House Plus with Electromobility is a new building scheme currently being pushed by the German government. Through the use of solar pv, highly efficient appliances and heating/cooling, and an impressive building envelope these houses are actually able to generate more power than their inhabitants and their inhabitants electric vehicles require! Also worth noting is that on-site battery storage and a nationwide feed-in tariff help to make use of excess generation. If project

s like these can be successful in Germany where the solar potential is only half that of the Contiguous United States, imagine the potential for us. This coupled with our nation’s reliance on the automobile and the fact that the project utilizes electric vehicles could really make for a good fit for the United States.   It is a really cool project that I look forward to visiting later this month in Berlin.

Now for everything that happened outside of the office! The weather this week was warm, well, Hamburg warm, not Tampa warm. The main difference is that here 80 something degrees is not coupled with air conditioning like back home. By the time the weekend rolled around, however, rains and cooler weather had already brought temps back into the 60s and 70. The cold and constant drizzle that cooled things off before the weekend, which actually felt reminiscent of the American northwest was a welcome  change from the heat, though no one in the office agreed with me. I even took that as an opportunity to further explore the district I was staying, which is really a beautiful area of Hamburg.

The highlight of the week was probably once again stumbling across yet another music festival. Taking some pictures along the Alster River I heard it. Well, technically I smelled the food first which drew me into earshot of the music. The Duckstein music festival, hosted by none other than the Duckstein Brewery. The music was surprisingly good, mostly in English too which was a pleasant surprise,  accompanied by good beer, good food, and lots of it. So, I feel the need to apologize, but I think talking about food will be a common theme in my blog posts. Blame it on watching too much Bourdain, or living with a roommate that is an extreme foodie, but to me good food is worth mentioning and this festival was full of it. I started with the crepe stand which turned out to be a bit of a struggle as they understood less English than anywhere else I had been in town, but after a series of pointing, exhausting what little German I knew, and being fortunate enough to have exact change for what I wanted, I ended up with the best crepe I have ever had.  By this point, 2 weeks in, I was also already craving a Hamburger and since I was in Hamburg, one of the alleged origins of the Hamburger, go figure… I had to get myself a burger. Well, it is a small world, turned out the dude running the stand was from none other than St. Pete. It kinda felt like home, eating a good burger and chatting with another American and listening to music in English. In the end the burger was good, the crepe was amazing, and I left full and happy filled with good food, beer, and music!

Have been working on a review of the DC’s Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS). Like many RPS policies in the nation, credits with significant monetary value are being awarded to less than ideal technologies; technologies that are not particularly new, innovative or environmentally benign and much less beneficial. The intent of most RPS policies is to create markets and drive new and inventive technologies, processes or material uses that promise significant climate/environmental benefits.

In many of these policies as currently written, basic combustion and incineration are being extraordinarily rewarded when they, in fact, are new and innovative in name only. The District of Columbia is a member of an 11 state Renewable Energy Credit( REC) trading consortium, as a result many of its RECs, paid for by taxpayers, are going to waste management companies that do nothing more than mass burn municipal solid waste, producing electricity and enormous amounts of waste heat. These RECs even go to numerous paper mills for simply incinerating a paper pulping residue called black liquor when these very same mills have actually been burning this material since the 1930s. The economic remuneration to these companies, in the many millions of dollars, is so large that Goldman Sachs has called it “Black Gold”.

Black liquor is a sub-class of the poorly defined and qualified RPS category of biomass. It was once automatically accepted that any biomass replacement of fossil fuels was always an environmental benefit, but that assumption has been seriously challenged. The state of Massachusetts recently published an extraordinarily detailed and in-depth study of woody biomass harvested from the state’s forests. The study (The Manomet Study) revealed two very distinct carbon balance curves: one that offset, in a relatively short time frame, the immediate carbon deficit that is produced upon biomass combustion; and another with a much longer rotational cycle.

http://www.manomet.org/manomet-study-woody-biomass-energy

The latter was characteristic of ’round wood’ or trees harvested through forestry thinning. Based on analysis of the specific characteristics of soil and plants throughout the state, utilizing this type of biomass to produce electricity created a carbon deficit that was only balanced by sufficient regrowth carbon sequestration over the course of 100 years… very interesting research with more to be done.

Ann Pierce

Panama Canal - Miraflores

Process of Passage Through the Canal

I have spent extensive time researching the Panama Canal’s history and the future implications of the expansion project that is expected to bring billions more in revenue to Panama. The canal is truly a sight to see and the entire process of a vessel passing through took no more than 30 minutes.  It was very difficult to capture the construction of the 3rd canal lane which is about a quarter of a mile away from the 2 current lanes but it is massive. While the country will reap economic benefits from the expansion it was amazing to see the destruction as so much land has been moved and the landscape carved up for the new lane.

Red Frog Beach in Bocas Del Toro

Housing in Bocas - Living like the Locals on the Water

Everything on Bocas Must be Shipped in - Even the Drinking Water

Bocas Del Toro was beautiful and the pictures do not do it Justice. I was able to go out on a private boat and view so much wildlife that it was overwhelming. I was able to snorkel, bird watch, view dolphins and sloths and much more. I was also able to vist Red Frog Beach which has Red Frogs (obviously) caiman alligators, and horrible sand fleas. Bocas Del Toro does not have clean drinking water and is currently in a strange limbo of high end real estate development and 3rd world living conditions. While I was there we had 12 hours without power or water and there multiple bouts of  power outages and a lack of water. The local guide Cristobal aka “Boy” took great pride in the flora and fauna of the island and was greatly concerned about the money and development moving in on the islands.  Unfortunately it seems that development will prevail as I hiked on some trails near Red Frog Beach and found a huge development of luxury condos being constructed using Western designs and planning. I am sure it will look like the neighborhood fell from the sky rather than cultivated from the ground with the local ecosystem in mind. I am glad I was able to see these islands before they change too much.

Local Homes in Bocas Del Toro

This week was a busy one. We moved to our new office and warehouse and spent all week organizing and getting things set up like they need to be. There is still much work to still be done, but it is nice to have the space of a larger warehouse so more products can be developed and produced. At the same time, I am starting to take over some of the US duties to have a smooth transition when I come back in a week to fall into my new job. It has been a very exciting week watching the business grow into a new location which will allow the team to focus more on business development in the new financial year.

Although my trip is coming to a close, I am excited to get back and enjoy some warm weather. When I get back I can focus on finishing up the final details of my paper and look forward to graduation!

I will talk to you one last time next week!

-Ashley