GRAND RAPIDS - West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum will present a luncheon on the Governor?s Recycling Initiative on February 9 at Grand Rapids Brewing Company in downtown Grand Rapids. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder has announced a statewide plan designed to increase access to residential recycling throughout the state. He has appointed a nine-member Michigan Recycling
LANSING - The entire state of Michigan is now officially in compliance with federal particulates standards, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said in a final rule issued late Thursday. The rule designates much of the country, including all of Michigan, as meeting the PM-2.5 standard, which limits the concentration of particles 2.5 micrometers in diameter.
HOUGHTON - Research partners from the University of Michigan and the University of Hawaii joined Michigan Tech's Great Lakes Research Center scientists and engineers to deploy 17 last Friday afternoon under-ice research instruments 16 feet below the frozen Portage Waterway. The instruments included an underwater video camera, water testing equipment, a hydrophone and an underwater
ANN ARBOR - While some companies have been criticized for overstating their environmental credentials - a practice known as greenwashing - a new University of Michigan study has found that some do just the opposite. This lesser-known phenomenon of understating environmental efforts is referred to as brownwashing. "When we first saw the data, it took
LANSING ? Michigan Public Service Commission Chair John Quackenbush is targeting 2015 as the right year for the state to update its energy policy last overhauled in 2008, he told Gongwer News Service in an interview, with the intent being to, ideally, set a path beginning in 2016. In 2008, the state passed and then-Governor
LANSING - Consumers Energy has asked the Public Service Commission for an addition $160 million a year in part to cover the costs of shuttering coal plants and purchasing natural gas plants, the utility said in a filing on the rate case. The utility said the rate increase is needed to comply both with federal
LANSING - The more conservative of the two chambers of Congress has approved legislation authorizing the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which provides funds for various conservation and cleanup projects around the Great Lakes. The program has already seen some $1.6 billion in federal funds since 2010, but U.S. Rep. Sander Levin (D-Royal Oak), a co-sponsor
LANSING - A program designed to reduce heating and cooling costs for low-income residents by funding weatherization upgrades to their homes would see stable funding under a bill unanimously approved Wednesday by the House Appropriations Committee. HB 4544 would require, beginning with the current 2014-15 fiscal year, that the state's weatherization program to receive at
LANSING - Despite opposition from some environmental groups, legislation broadening what sources of energy would be considered renewable for the purposes of energy providers meeting the required minimum of energy generated from renewable sources cleared the Michigan House Energy and Technology Committee on Tuesday with bipartisan support. Under the H-3 substitute for HB 5205 ,
GRAND RAPIDS - West Michigan Sustainable Business Forum will present a luncheon program on Whirlpool?s sustainability and residential energy efficiency programs, plus Property Assessed Clean Energy financing December 8 at Kendall College of Art & Design in downtown Grand Rapids. Maureen Sertich, North American Sustainability Lead for Whirlpool, will talk about the company's ReNEWW project