Responsible Industrialization

The public got a glimpse of the inter-workings of the Foote Dam Hydroelectric Plant, Saturday, during a centennial celebration held over the weekend. Consumers Energy allowed 240 visitors to tour the dam at no cost on Saturday, Aug. 11, for 30 minute guided tours.

"I always like to say that if someone stops for a cup of coffee on their way into the plant," Easterday said, "then they have put more trash into the landfill than we have for the entire year."

Autonomous, or “self-driving,” vehicles might get a larger share of the headlines for their future potential, but electric vehicles (EVs) look to be ready for the fast lane right now. While plug-in EVs make up less than 1 percent of auto sales in the United States, their sales are growing at nearly 30 percent year over year. Last year, EEI and the Institute for Electric Innovation forecast that up to 7 million EVs will be traveling on U.S. roads by the end of 2025.

Water is on executives’ minds these days. More and more, business people realize that water scarcity is the new normal, and if they want to put their companies in a position to keep growing, they have to adapt. I can confirm that much after living out of suitcases for most of the month of June and, at conference after conference, meeting numerous business leaders who expressed their sense of urgency about the topic.

Now that clean energy has gone mainstream, there is an array of existing and emerging opportunities to scale up clean energy investments while also meeting investors’ risk-return requirements. Across asset classes, clean energy opportunities are available that align with investment fundamentals such as long-term risk diversification. Savvy investors are now moving to understand the expanding opportunities in the clean energy sector, recognizing that this market is growing in terms of the breadth and quality of available opportunities.

As part of Bechtel’s commitment to contribute 100 ideas to support the United Nation’s 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we examine the opportunity of utilizing permeable concrete and other associated materials to help control flooding in developed cities.

If ride-sharing and driverless taxis reduce individual commuting, parking facilities could be repurposed as office space, apartments, gyms and more.

The 2018 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid took home two titles from the Northwest Automotive Press Association’s (NWAPA) 2018 Drive Revolution green vehicle competition, including the Northwest Green Vehicle of the Year, and for the second year in a row, the Northwest Family-sized Plug-in Hybrid of the Year.

In most brewing facilities, nitrogen is used in several phases of the beer making process from purging tanks between uses to keeping wort, beer and residual mash from oxidizing and contaminating the next batch of beer. Nitrogen can also be used to push beer from one tank to the other, and in the final stages of the brewing process, it’s used to pressurize kegs prior to shipment and final use.