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Las Vegas: Mo' Green

Finding ways to turn Las Vegas's Consumer Electronics Show green should be like shooting khaki–clad fish in a barrel. Right? Everywhere you look, vendors are doubling down to waste more natural resources than the competition in the adjacent booth.

Exhibitors hand out small forests' worth of trade newspapers and press kits on one end of the aisle, only to have them thrown out at the other end of the aisle. Energy-hogging booths, covering 3.2 million square feet of exhibit and meeting room space at the Las Vegas Convention Center and 1.8 million square feet at the Sands, are awash in music and lights. Then, of course, there are the people -- all 140,000 who burned jet fuel to come to the show and gasoline once they arrived.

Where do you start? I'm tempted to say to start by eighty-sixing those plagues of blinking lapel pins. Their use of LED technology makes them somewhat energy efficient, but do we really need them? The Consumer Electronics Association made what was undoubtedly a wiser choice: It hired a carbon information management firm to help it get greener. That firm, Planet Metrics, made its official debut yesterday.

CEA says it began greening its CES show last year. Among the items in its green laundry list, CEA offers the following accomplishments for CES 2008:

• Recycled 51%(121.27 tons) of the total solid waste generated by show attendees.
• Implemented recycling bins, recycled carpeting and other enviro-friendly materials on-site.
• Offset more than 20,000 tons of carbon emissions through Carbonfund.org.
• Worked with the LVCC to replace more than 15,000 gallons of nonsustainable products, eliminating harsh cleaning chemicals.
• Diverted all light bulbs used by the show from landfills, as well as batteries and other electronics products.
• Put hazardous waste disposal programs in effect for waste oil, paints, and solvents, and instituted a gas recovery program.
• Printed all attendee flyers and CES literature on recycled paper using soy ink.

That's obviously a good start and CEA should be commended. Getting down to the nitty-gritty of environmental impact is no small task, however. It involves measuring and managing not only your energy use, but that of your suppliers and your suppliers' suppliers.

One of the chief suppliers to hotels and casinos is LV Energy (known until September as Nevada Power Co.). Early last year the utility agreed to spend $85 million on cleaner technology and pay a $1.1 million fine as part of a joint settlement with the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection, U.S. Department of Justice, and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The settlement resolves allegations of air pollution control violations at its Reid Gardner coal-fired electric generating plant located 50 miles northeast of Las Vegas. In July 2005, after a yearlong investigation, NDEP's Bureau of Air Pollution Control issued 56 violation notices to Nevada Power for alleged air pollution control violations at its Reid Gardner electric generating plant in Clark County.

NV Energy is now in the process of retrofitting its Reid Gartner plant with more energy-efficient technology. Moreover, its new owner, Sierra Pacific, announced recently that NV Energy, has issued a request for proposals (RFP) for renewable energy resources. Responses to the RFP were due on Nov. 11.

It will be good to see CEA offer the carbon-related details of its hotel partners in future reports.

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