Kirk Heinze, host of Greening of the Great Lakes, was awarded the Michigan Chapter Soil and Water Conservation Society 2009 News/Media Award on March 10. The award recognizes the “dedication to and promotion of natural resource issues in the news and media.” Full story »

The Phoenix is the mythological firebird that regenerates itself from its own ashes—and the Phoenix House, near Saline, has arisen from the ashes of a 5th generation farmhouse that was lost to a fire in 2008. Kirk Heinze takes a walking tour of the Phoenix House and learns how special solar panels, geothermal heating, windows and other advanced “Green Building” features make the Phoenix House one of the most energy efficient homes in the U.S.  Full story »

Geoff Horst, chief science officer of Algal Scientific Corporation, is a doctoral student at Michigan State University. Horst is also part of an award-winning team that has developed a process that uses algae for wastewater treatment and nutrient recovery. Full story »

Adam Carver and his team, Enertia, are generating good vibrations through their prize -winning invention — the Enertia Energy Convertor E2C. Enertia was awarded first place and $50,000 in the 2009-2010 Clean Energy Prize business plan competition, sponsored by DTE Energy and the University of Michigan. The competition was established to encourage entrepreneurship and clean-energy technology development in Michigan. All universities and colleges in Michigan were eligible to participate. Full story »

Written by Lauren Talley Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, visited Michigan recently as county farm bureaus kicked-off their membership drives. He talked with Kirk Heinze about the agricultural issues President Barack Obama discussed in his State of the Union address. Full story »

David Joos is President and CEO of CMS Energy and CEO of Consumers Energy. Joos believes that Michigan’s energy portfolio of the future will be – and should be – a mix. “We’re making major investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency,” Joos says. “You still have to have real power plants that are reliable on a real-time basis. “We don’t think it makes sense for our customers to become overly dependent on one fuel or one technology, which is why we call our plan the Balanced Energy Initiative.”  Full story »

My wife and I recently returned from two weeks in Costa Rica. The primary purpose was vacation, but, while there, we learned that Costa Rica is among the world’s leaders in the “2010 Environmental Performance Index” rankings--#3 in fact, out of 163 nations included in the study. We also had a chance to observe, first-hand, some of the country’s sustainability initiatives.  Full story »

Skip Pruss is Michigan’s Chief Energy Officer and Director of Michigan’s Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth. Pruss tells Kirk that alternative energy jobs are growing in Michigan. “We’re turning the corner,” Pruss says.  “We’ve put policies in place and the Legislature has cooperated on many of them, like on the Renewable Portfolio Standard. “In 2010 we’ll see... Full story »

Generation Y is taking an environmentally friendly approach when choosing its automobiles, along with considering the benefit it may have to their bank accounts. The study found that Gen Y considers the environment in their selection of a vehicle, but need to see the economic benefit their purchase will bring in the long run.  Full story »

Of Michigan's original 11 million acres of wetlands, about 5.5 million remain. Chuck Nelson, a faculty member at Michigan State University, and an expert in recreational land use sat down with Kirk Heinze to discuss wetland restoration. Wetlands, literally, are like filters and sponges they filter out nutrients and sediment so our surface waters are cleaner, says Nelson. Full story »

The dress design of Jillian Granz, a Michigan State University senior, will soon come to life on the red carpet at the 2010 Academy Awards when the wife of a well-known movie producer and director wears Granz’s creation. Suzy Amis Cameron, wife of movie producer and director James Cameron, chose Granz as the winner of her first annual “Red... Full story »

Jeff Riedinger is Dean of International Studies and Programs at Michigan State University. “The opportunity to build on MSU's international legacy and to work with faculty and students and staff across the university to see how we can address some of the world’s really difficult problems that are not uniquely Michigan problems on economic growth, the next generation of energy, or health problems is what attracted me to MSU as a faculty member in the first place and certainly what has kept me here over the years,” Riedinger says.  Full story »

Business and academia usually function in different worlds, but Bryan Ritchie is working to link them together to develop biobased products and processes and bring them to the marketplace. Ritchie, associate director for external strategy at MSU’s Office of Biobased Technologies, sat down with Kirk Heinze to talk about Michigan State University’s relationship with corporate research institutions. “We still have a land grand mission, which is to take what we do inside the university and make it practically applicable. So we want to take our good research, our good discoveries, our good findings and we want to make them useful for the average person,” Ritchie says.  Full story »

The recent revelations about significant errors in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) influential report have raised doubts in my mind about the overall accuracy of the data contained in the study. For those of you who may have missed it, the Associated Press reported last month that the original data related to Himalayan glacier melting predicted 2350 as the year the glacier might disappear.  Full story »

The Detroit we remember in the 1950s is not the Detroit we see today. As a thriving city of two million people, Detroit’s 139,000 square miles of land worked. Flash forward 60 years and Detroit still has an infrastructure designed for two million people with a population just under one million. What should be done with all the extra space? Full story »