Energy and the Environment

Ensuring the Future Through Innovation, Science and Technology

Energy and Environment

The Foundation will promote the enlargement and application of innovative energy and environmental technologies that support: global sustainable development availability of safe water; and the adoption of industrial processes that minimize the effect of urban growth on local and regional environments.

Worldwide population growth is exponential. Over ninety-five percent of the world’s population lives outside the United States, the majority of those in rapidly urbanizing areas in developing countries around the world. This industrial-based growth, including urban sprawl in the United States, has created a tremendous demand for energy and energy resources, and is placing great stress on the environment and natural resources that threaten health and the quality of life.

Innovative energy production and industrial manufacturing processes exist today that impact the environment far less than conventional systems. In most cases, these systems are economically viable and provide comparable or better quality goods and services than currently exist.

The CTC Foundation promotes the development and application of innovative energy and environmental technologies and systems that promote cleaner production and support efforts to enhance global sustainable development. Together with its funders and partners, the Foundation helps to make these processes and systems available globally, promoting the continuous development of new technologies and their transition to the marketplace. In doing so the Foundation addresses a number of key issues, including:

Meeting the Growth in Energy Demand

The greatest growth in energy demand over the next few decades will take place in developing countries, particularly for fossil fuels, continuing the deterioration of urban air quality with negative impact on global climates. The Foundation promotes the use of energy efficient technologies on a global level and continues to develop innovative and cost effective strategies and systems with minimal environmental impact.

Ensuring Access to Clean Water

Access to clean water and treatment of municipal and industrial wastes is the number one issue for industrializing countries. According to the World Health Organization, over 80% of all disease and 30% of all deaths in developing countries are directly linked to the consumption of polluted water or the lack of clean water. Technologies exist that can effectively treat contaminated water for human use. Additionally, innovative technologies are continually being developed that diminish industrial water use and effluent discharge. The Foundation encourages and propels the process of developing new technologies and water consumption approaches that minimize the threat to global water resources, making safe water available on a global basis.

Achieving Sustainable Urban/Industrial Growth

Sustainable urban growth can only be achieved by the adoption of industrial processes that minimize the effect on the local and regional environment. The Foundation accelerates the development of "best practices," promoting the adoption of cleaner production processes on a global basis.

The Foundation has worked in this area in several contexts.

I. Acid Mine Drainage

Most notably, the Foundation has been involved in a unique multi-phased effort to have refuse pile coal removed from the landscape, combusted at a coal-burning electric utility boiler with limestone, such that the resulting alkaline ash can be injected to chemically offset acid mine waters that flow through an abandoned underground coal mine. This project in western Pennsylvania has the potential to remove the sources of acid-laden water from both the abandoned “gob” piles of coal (coal rejected when mined because of composition, sulfur content or BTU content) as well as underground mine sources. The validity of the Ninevah Mine Project has been bench-tested and proven. The project will proceed when the 100-plus acre site’s surface and sub-surface landowners agree that real-world development is worthwhile. The Department of Environmental Protection of Pennsylvania (DEP) is aware of this project and will support it when the landowners approve the implementation of Phase Two.

GOAL: Mainstream a niche technology that has applicability and replicability worldwide, wherever coal is or has been mined.

II. Pennsylvania Energy Leadership Conference

Pennsylvania has been and remains a leader in energy-environment progress. The first oil well was drilled in Titusville and the first commercial scale civilian nuclear power plant produced electricity in Shippingport. Pennsylvania is the home of wind turbines and underground coal mines.

The senior executives of the Westinghouse Electric Company asked the Foundation to organize a conference that would involve the University of Pittsburgh, civic leaders and the energy-environment community to participate in a major conference.

Speakers included the CEO of Westinghouse, the CEO of Duquesne Electric (DQE), Dominion Energy, the Director of the Energy Department’s NETL as well as senior DEP executives, energy associations, among others.

GOAL: To remind the audience that oil and civilian nuclear energy had their origin in the state and that many progressive policies (e.g., electricity deregulation) were spawned in the Commonwealth.

III. Environmental Scientific Instruments (Portable Monitoring Instrument)

Environmental Scientific Instruments, Inc. (ESI)

The portable environmental detection instrument will incorporate between 15 and 17 proprietary patents, and 8 to 10 new technologies and provide the technical capabilities to instantaneously detect, measure and monitor chemical compounds and contaminants contained in water, soil and indoor/outdoor air on site and in the field.

The portable instrument of Environmental Scientific Instruments (ESI) will commercialize the environmental technologies that are required for the detection and subsequent remediation of the most critical water-related problems. These include technologies for arsenic removal, water purification, and remediation of mercury and perchlorate throughout the United States and world. Additionally, ESI is collaborating with IBM Engineering and Technology Services (www-3.ibm.com/technology/) and Invent Resources (www.weinvent.com).

Currently, samples of air, water and soil are taken from the contaminated site to a laboratory for analyses. The samples can be lost as is time. To be able to test on-site and get simultaneous test results saves time, money and reduces errors. Follow-up site characterizations are expedited.

GOAL: To accelerate the introduction of environmental technologies that enhances the detection and remediation of existing environmental problems.

IV. CTC’s U.S. Energy Dept.’s National Energy Technology Laboratory Contract

When CTC responded to the RFP for this contract, a provision was inserted that indicated that all superior contract performance monies awarded CTC would be directed to the Foundation. The monies would be distributed by the Foundation to non-profits in those areas where NETL and CTC had a presence (Pittsburgh, Morgantown, Tulsa and Anchorage).

Over time, more than $300,000 was distributed to
Libraries, universities (WVU Engineering School, Pitt), various non-profits with energy-environment concerns:

Awardee selection involved senior DOE/NETL executives. Award Programs included the NETL Director and Assistant Secretary of Fossil Fuels
High-minded outreach effort of both the Contractor and Client, involved giving back to the community in which each is a neighbor

V. Public Television (PBS) Programs on Energy-Environment Topics

This Is America
with Dennis Wholey

The CTC Foundation has worked with Dennis Wholey, the Host of a weekly one-hour Public Television (PBS) known as This Is America. The format of This is America (http://www.thisisamerica.net/viewing.html) includes 6 Guests (three males and 3 females), who sit around a dining room table and discuss the topic of the particular program. Every program is congenial and has a running time of 57.5 minutes. The 60-minute program is edited to 30 minutes and is carried by the majority of the PBS stations in either the 30 or 60-minute format. Here in Washington, it is broadcast on Saturday evenings in the 30-minute length and Sunday evening in the one-hour length. As his website states, the program is also carried by various national cable systems and broadcast internationally by the US Information Agency's WorldNet, reaching some 250 foreign cities, in 160 countries.

The three programs were entitled ENERGY: AN OVERVIEW; ELECTRIC POWER; and, ENERGY & THE ENVIRONMENT and included John Drosdick, President, Sunoco, Inc.; Margaret Kriz, Reporter, National Journal; Elizabeth Thompson, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF); U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV); Tom Casten, Chairman and CEO, Private Power LLC; Josephine Cooper, President, Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers; John Holdren, Ph.D., Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, among others.

A three-part Future of Energy Series is being promoted by the Foundation. The first of the three programs will examine Oil. This will examine the prospects of a near-term disequilibrium in oil supplies. Because of the possible near-term difficulties of oil producers to meet the burgeoning demand for oil from India, China and the industrialized countries, energy conservation and demand side management are, by subtraction, the pro-active measures we, as a nation and individuals, can take.

Our intention is to assemble a panel to discuss not only Climate Change, but also Emerging Technologies. These two programs will have a public event (townhall meeting) before being converted into subsequent documentaries.

The “live” programs can occur in a studio (WETA, as an example) or at a "townhall" on a university campus. These programs can start as a Townhall Meeting and be readily converted into 57.5 minute long documentaries, complete with crisp cover shoots and supplementary interviews. The producers and I would like to develop these ideas in conjunction with you and your colleagues as well as the related budget. Without question, each one hour documentary program would be exhaustively researched and accurately reported, with the resulting fact-based product of high educational value.