The Oregon Wave energy Trust’s mission is “to promote the responsible development of wave energy in Oregon”. Their goal is to power two communities in Oregon with wave and/or tidal energy by 2025. They work to commercialize wave energy and create connections between companies, research institutions and stakeholders.
Organization Type: Non-profit Public-Private partnership
(503) 224-1966
The NW Energy Coalition advocates clean and sustainable energy. It also works in habitat restoration and low income energy assistance. It is active in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana and British Columbia and has 115 members, mostly environmentally conscious businesses.
Organization Type: An alliance of environmental organizations and businesses
(206) 621-0094
Friends of the Earth focuses on bringing people from all over the world together to work on certain issues that have to do with climate change. They are multi-faceted and deal with many different issues including promoting conservation of energy and the spread of clean energy. One of the projects they are currently working on is fighting the tar sands oil coming from the Boreal Forest in Canada.
Organization Type: Grassroots Environmental Network
(510) 900-3150
The David Suzuki Foundation is based in Vancouver B.C. with diverse range of interest and approaches to maintaining the health of (mostly Canadian) environments. The group is huge and far reaching and wishes to restore a Canadian connection with nature.
Organization Type:
(604) 732-4228
The official website states that the “PSCAA is special-purpose, regional agency chartered by state law in 1967 (RCW 70.94). While we work in partnership with the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Washington State Department of Ecology, we are a separate organization. Our jurisdiction covers King, Kitsap, Pierce and Snohomish counties, spans 6,300 square miles and is home to more than 3.5 million people — over half the state’s population.”
Mission Statement: We work together to clean the air we breathe and protect our climate through education, incentives and enforcement.
Strategies include:
“We also have certain mandates that are spelled out by the federal Clean Air Act and the Washington Clean Air Act. These include activities such as monitoring for air pollution throughout our region and regulating businesses that have the potential to cause air pollution.”
Organization Type: Government agency
(206) 343-8800
Climate Solutions has focused on showing that clean energy and economic prosperity can go hand in hand. Their programs “Business Leaders: New Energy Cities” and “Harvesting Clean Energy” have focused on developing local clean energy sources and gathering political force to do something about climate change.
Analysis of Climate Solutions Activities:
Climate Solutions Company Paper
Organization Type: Non-Profit Organization
(360) 352-1763
Sustainable Northwest’s mission is to bring “people, ideas, and innovation together so that nature, local economies and rural communities can thrive.” In the area of decarbonization they are trying to develop local energy sources, specifically biomass energy. They are working both for the development of biomass energy and the maximization of energy output from that biomass. One of the things they have done is to get a lumber mill to dedicate part of their trees to start producing wood based fuels. They have also worked to get the small diameter trees removed in forest restoration efforts made into wood pellets and bricks.
Organization Type: Non-Profit Organization
(503) 221-6911
As stated on the webpage, “City Repair is an organized group action that educates and inspires communities and individuals to creatively transform the places where they live. City Repair facilitates artistic and ecologically-oriented placemaking through projects that honor the interconnection of human communities and the natural world. The many projects of City Repair have been accomplished by a mostly volunteer staff and thousands of volunteer citizen activists.”
City Repair emphasizes sustainability through localization. With Placemaking as a sustainability strategy, they hope to foster engaged and active relationships between community members and the spaces they inhabit. They assist community members in creating communal and ecologically oriented places through educational or hands-on projects such as Intersection Repair and Village Building Conference.
Other City Repair fields include:
•Urban Planning and Design
•Ecological and Social Sustainability
•Community resource localization
•Nonhierarchical decision-making
•Equality, diversity and peace
•Cultural identity and Bioregionalism
Organization Type:
(503) 235-8946
Aquamarine Power is a European company that has developed a way of harnessing wave power that they call Oyster technology. Oyster technology consists of a near shore (around half a kilometer away from shore) device that uses a hinged flap to push high pressure water through a subsea pipeline to an onshore hydroelectric turbine, like the ones used with dams. They want to install a “demonstration array” of three Oyster generators on the West Coast by 2016. So far they have been given a $100,000 grant from the Oregon Wave Energy Trust to find out about suitable sites for wave energy on Oregon’s coast. They are also pursuing opportunities in Washington and California.
Organization Type: For profit corporation
44 141 524 1440 (international)
The University of Washington is responsible for tidal energy research and Oregon State University is concerned with wave energy research. These two institutions are doing research that looks at the potential of installing wave energy on the West coast and some of the possible consequences of doing so. Some key issues are: how the devices that gather wave/tidal energy will affect the distribution of sediment, how they will affect h actual pattern of currents, how they will affect the fauna, especially mammals and sea animals that depend on magnetic fields for navigation, how they will affect the food chain, and how to deal with he reduced efficiency that comes with accumulated bio fouling.
Organization Type: Government organization (partnership between the University of Washington and Oregon State University funded by the DOE)
(206) 543-7544