I went to GreenBuildingsNY 2009 the other day and had a fine time. The show had everything from windows and doors, to toilets and garbage disposals, to solar PV and green roofs - and beyond. Knowledgeable vendors, great stuff. Green building, for my money, has nothing but upside. As I wrote in my article for the FPA on the international green building movement, the building and construction trade has “…111 million people directly employed with 75% employed in developing countries with the industry accounting for 10 percent of global GDP.” There is a growing emphasis on green building from groups like the World Business Council on Sustainable Development, the Clinton Climate Initiative, the World Green Building Council, UNEP’s Sustainable Buildings and Construction Initiative, the Union Internationale des Architectes and the American Institute of Architects, among thousands of other local, regional, national and international NGOs and firms.

GreenBuildingsNY 2009 was largely put together by the very good writers and editors at GreenerBuildings.com. Some of the interesting folks I spoke with at the expo included Helios Energy Systems who install solar modules, and Long Island Compost who had a hand in the exciting new High Line Park and who also work on green roof projects.

There were, to me, a surprising number of green roof specialists, including Roofscapes, Green City and GreenGrid. That this area of green building is burgeoning so is a wonderful sign. What’s in it for us? Radically reducing heating and cooling costs - and energy use, diminishing the urban heat island effect, dramatically lowering the impact of stormwater runoff in the urban environment, and, surprise, surprise, creating a whole new felicitous architectural aesthetic. Just look at the pictures at the websites of these two companies, or at this recent NGM article. Fun fact: There are over 100 million square feet of planted roofs in Europe today.

Energy companies were there, including the folks from the energy efficiency programs at National Grid and Con Edison. GDF Suez was also at the expo with some interesting takes on energy efficiency and renewables. New York State’s energy agencies were there as well. The NYS Public Service Commission has several relevant programs, including on Green Power and energy efficiency and conservation. The NYS Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) also has key programs including those on saving energy and renewables.

Energy efficiency is a recurring theme at the blog. It’s also one of the most prevalent targets for all the green stimulus packages that have been rolling out around the world. The folks at US Energy Group are focused on maximizing building energy efficiency, as are also the professionals at Sustainability Partners. There is so much bang for the buck in this - something now wholly recognized by everyone from energy policy wonks to contractors.

What other options are there for maximizing the sustainability of your new and old buildings? Lots. Paint, for instance. See this from the folks at Pittsburgh Paints. What about your cleaning products and systems? Those can have a big impact. One local vendor, Edmar, has a range of green cleaning products. Toilets and other fixtures? You bet. Moen and Kohler were there.

Green Seal, not incidentally, certifies a lot of these sorts of products and services throughout the country.

I had a nice chat with one of the folks from InSinkErator. Environmental benefits in garbage disposals? How about reducing the burden of wastes to landfills, for a starter, and then, because the organic waste is going to wastewater treatment plants, enhancing the flow of biosolids that can be put to beneficial use as fertilizer at the end of the process.

Renewable energy is never too far from my mind. Pfister Energy has a diverse portfolio of options, including architectural wind and daylighting. Wesco had a display that combines an Easco boiler with a Capstone microturbine giving 85-95% total system efficiency. You can’t beat that!

So, to make a long story short, while sustainability writers like me, and policy wonks and policymakers, and activists are all out here trying to save the planet, many of the very good folks who were at the green building expo are doing it, day by day, with increasingly greater effectiveness. Good on ya!

I hope to sit in on a couple of local events here in NYC in the next couple of weeks.  The first is Carbon Finance North America 2009, June 11 and 12.  The keynote speaker is Eileen Claussen, President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, and there will be worthy panelists from government, the private sector and from NGOs.  There will be plenty of discussion and insight into federal climate and energy legislation and Obama administration initiatives, what to expect from Copenhagen, what the investment communities are interested in and what projects they’re pursuing, and the prospects for fully integrating sustainability into the economic architecture of the future.

Another event that’s coming up is GreenBuildingsNY, June 16 and 17.  All of the major building supply companies will be exhibiting in what will likely be a pretty eye-opening experience.  This is being produced in part by GreenerBuildings.com, a consistently excellent resource.

Green Roofs - I have seen the future and it works.  (Well, in the case of the Soviet Union, it didn’t, but with green roofs, it definitely does and will.)  I’ve written before on this unbeatable approach to lowering the urban heat island effect, diminishing the troublesome problem of stormwater runoff, and providing a stunningly effective insulating layer, among other felicitous outcomes, here and, more recently, here, for instance.

The excellent “GreenerBuildings.com” has an encouraging article, Green Roofs Show Big Growth in U.S., Canada.  Some big news includes the fact that Toronto has “…adopted a mandatory green roof law yesterday, requiring 50 percent of the area of all new roofs be covered with greenery.”  See more at the article and from Green Roofs for Healthy Cities.

More Inside Baseball - The “Washington Post” had this about how Barack Obama really started to zero in on energy policy and climate change last summer.  How has he framed the issues to get some positraction?  He and his team have “…made them pop by packaging them as ways to create ‘green’ jobs and reduce U.S. dependence on imports of foreign oil.”  He’s also blitzed the Congress and industry with diplomacy to marshal some of the critical political backing that’s necessary for the breakthroughs that are needed.  For instance, the article reports that “…many environmentalists and corporate executives have praised the White House for taking a pragmatic approach to negotiations over the cap-and-trade bill. Duke Energy chief executive James E. Rogers, who promoted free allowances for local electricity firms, said Obama understands the need to protect key industries, states and consumers, and he praised energy and climate czar Carol M. Browner for marshalling congressional support without dictating terms.”  (See also next item immediately below.)

I’ve written about the Obama Administration a fair number of times in the past six months, so it’s good to get a little look inside how they’ve operating and how they’ve come to their thinking.

The Wonk Zone - Here is a slightly difficult bit of political economy from Harvard’s Robert Stavins:   The Wonderful Politics of Cap-and-Trade: A Closer Look at Waxman-Markey.  As he says at the outset:  “The headline of this post is not meant to be ironic.”  Why?  Because “…the political process of states, districts, sectors, firms, and interest groups fighting for their share of the pie (free allowance allocations) serves as the mechanism whereby a political constituency in support of the system is developed, but without detrimental effects to the system’s environmental or economic performance.  That’s the good news, and it should never be forgotten.”

Professor Stavins also makes clear that the deal on allocating allowances that was struck in the Energy and Commerce Committee is certainly not the corporate free lunch that many have characterized it as being.  He says “…the totals become 79.9% for consumers and public purposes versus 20.1% for private industry, or approximately 80% versus 20% - the opposite of the ‘80% free allowance corporate give-away’ featured in many press and blogosphere accounts. Moreover, because some of the allocations to private industry are - for better or for worse - conditional on recipients undertaking specific costly investments, such as investments in carbon capture and storage, part of the 20% free allocation to private industry should not be viewed as a windfall.”

The economics are the wonky bit here, not so much the politics, but it might be worth it for you to work through the article.  As is so often the case, the comments - and the responses by Stavins - are quite informative.

First of all, sorry to have been absent for a week (plus), but I’ve been wrapping up the end of semester with my great students at NYU, been to a conference (more on that next week), had a house guest with whom I did some local culture, and a few other odds and ends.  I’ll be back in the swing much more next week.

For now, here are some items to consider.

You Can’t Win ‘Em All Dept. - I’ve written several times about the extraordinary actions of some brave public officials in the American Midwest in blocking two coal-fired power plants, most recently in “We’re Not in Kansas Anymore.” Well, Governor Kathleen Sebelius left to become US Secretary of Health and Human Services and the new Governor, Mark Parkinson, did a deal in which one plant will be allowed in exchange for more emphasis on windpower.  The Kansas legislature jumped in with both feet.  See this from Reuters.  The Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign was disappointed but says they’ll fight.  I’m an old Sierra Club hand and know that when the Club says they’ll fight, you can take that to the bank.

World Oceans Conference - AFP reports here that this is a “first-of-a-kind meeting” to discuss “the oceans’ role in mitigating climate change and on the consequences of higher temperatures such as rising seas, extinctions and food shortages.”  The conference of relevant ministers from 70 nations will gather on Monday in Indonesia to work out an agreement that will influence the course of the talks in Copenhagen in December.  The conference website has a bunch of information including on what other parallel events and exhibitions will be up and running.

I wrote in January on some great resources if you want to dive deeply (pun intended) into the subject of our oceans and how they’re being effected by climate change.  I quoted “The Economist” in an excellent special report they did on the sea:  Humans could afford to treat the sea as an infinite resource when they were relatively few in number, capable of only rather inefficient exploitation of the vasty deep and without as yet a taste for fossil fuels. A world of 6.7 billion souls, set to become 9 billion by 2050, can no longer do so. The possibility of widespread catastrophe is simply too great.

Green Roofs - I’ve been noodling an article on green roofs and thought recently that maybe National Geographic Magazine would be a good venue, so I went to see if they’d done anything and, lo and behold, the May issue has a great spread.  The venerable Verlyn Klinkenborg beat me to the punch.  Characteristically superb photography.  See for yourself.  (I’ve also written about green roofs here at the blog if you want to see some other coverage, including an informative video on Chicago’s robust program.)

The Financial Times had a great series of articles the other day in a special report on Energy-Efficient Buildings.  The FT team on this, led by environmental reporter Fiona Harvey, covers topics from design, climate-proofing, and microgeneration to supply chains and waste reduction.  Look at the interactive graphic, as an amuse gul:  a blueprint for sustainability.

Even the ads are cool.  One is from the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) describing some of the findings in the new report from their four-year, $15 million Efficiency in Buildings research project, which they describe as “the most rigorous study ever conducted on the subject.”  Their release says the central message of the study is “…energy use in buildings can be cut by 60 percent by 2050 - essential to meeting global climate change targets - but this will require immediate action to transform the building sector.”

Meanwhile, over at the New York Times today, there’s a special section on the Business of Green:  Smarter Tools.  Matt Wald and Kate Galbraith lead the reporting here with articles on the smart grid, advances in solar PV, ocean power, and improving the performance of aircraft, among other topics.  There’s a nice smorgasbord of graphics, slide shows, and a podcast - the entertaining and informative “Back Story” feature.  (I’ve had some articles out there my ownself on the smart grid and on sustainability at airports.)

Get over to these special reports and dig in for some truly edifying stuff.

This world icon is getting a makeover.  The ESB is “…undergoing a major sustainability retrofit to become a leading example of economic and environmental revitalization.”  This is a critical milestone in the battle to lower energy use and thus lower GHG emissions because the building is so famous and glamorous.  The project partners have created an informative website.  You can “Solve the Retrofit Puzzle” in an interactive graphic and get a ton of more in-depth information.

There’s been plenty of media on this, as one would naturally expect.  Retrofit of Empire State Building to Slash Energy Use by 38% is the story from EERE Network News.  They report “Perhaps the greatest achievement of the retrofit project is the process used by the project partners, a process that can be applied to other building retrofits. The project partners used both existing and newly created modeling, measurement, and projection tools to analyze the Empire State Building and establish a full understanding of its energy use, as well as its functional efficiencies and deficiencies.”  The excellent GreenerBuildings says here that the five partners are heavyweights in real estate and sustainable building design.  They are the Empire State Building Company, Johnson Controls Inc., Jones Lang LaSalle, the Clinton Climate Initiative and the Rocky Mountain Institute.  (I’ve written about the RMI and its guiding genius, Amory Lovins, a number of times, including at Good Grief, More Efficiency last June.) 

As you know by now, energy efficiency upgrades, weatherization, and green building are on the agenda to stay.

Maldives - This island nation, about a thousand miles southwest of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean, has declared its intention to become the world’s first carbon-neutral country.  President Mohamed Nasheed made the announcement after a screening of the new climate change film, “The Age of Stupid.”  President Nasheed has also said that he will be looking for land to buy to move his people because of the distinct possibility that his country will be inundated by sea-level rise.  Where will they get the money?  From tourism, while their fantastically beautiful country still lies above the water.

This story from Reuters further highlights the zero-carbon initiative.  “The $1.1 billion plan would require 155 wind turbines supplying 1.5 megawatts each and a half a square kilometre of solar panels to meet the needs of the islands’ 385,000 people.”  Activist and author Mark Lynas worked with the government on their plan and thinks the payback period for the plan could be ten years.

Sicily - This island with its five million people has a similar ambition.  They hope to “…blaze a visionary trail based on intensive small-scale use of renewable energy sources and pinned on the concept that individual consumers of electricity will also become producers through their super efficient buildings.”  This article from the “FT” last week talks about how Sicily’s powerful and popular governor, Raffaele Lombardo, has embraced a plan that he devised in partnership with Jeremy Rifkin, like Mark Lynas, another noted activist, visionary and author.  Rifkin sees a future for Sicily - and the world, for that matter - “based on sun, wind, waves and biomass, and hydrogen technology to store saved electricity.”

This evokes what I wrote last summer about a little Danish island.  “My favorite journalist, Elizabeth Kolbert, has another minor masterpiece, at the ‘New Yorker’ this week, The Island in the Wind.  She’s writing about a nearly zero-carbon enclave of 4,300 people in a Danish farming community.  Using windpower for electricity and biomass for district heating, she uses this microcosm to show what’s possible in the world.”

Dongtan - This story is not as good as the others.  It started out that way, but has gone sour.  I wrote here a while back about Chongming, a 750-square-mile island near Shanghai that was going to be the site for Dongtan, the world’s first “ecocity.”  Well, “The Economist” reports that this City of Dreams has fallen victim to the vicissitudes of politics and real estate development in Shanghai.  It’s not pretty.  As Robbie Burns said:

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy.

Kipling had it right.

I was at an event recently at NYU’s Center for Global Affairs (where I’m teaching) and Elisabeth Rosenthal, the “NY Times” environmental reporter based in Europe, was being interviewed.  She touched on a number of important subjects including the talks in Poznań in December, some of the international politics of climate change, and an interesting approach to green building:  “passive” houses.  Passive houses employ fairly simple principles of ultraefficient insulation and heat exchange.  In the same vein - simple and easy - she had an article recently on the burgeoning practice in Britain of converting used cooking oil to transportation fuel.

During the Q&A, I asked her about black carbon and why the development aid community isn’t doing much more to promote clean cooking, something that can be done low-tech and inexpensively.  (See Black Carbon and Solar Cookers.)  I wondered why we are promoting nuclear power technology for India, but not low-tech alternatives.  She said it was a good question and that these sorts of solutions, in her opinion, needed more backing.  Rosenthal is a good friend of a good friend and so we talked about this some more after the program.

There’s a terrific article from another terrific environmental reporter, Fiona Harvey, in today’s “FT” about biochar.  This is a comprehensive look at a technology that has enormous potential to not only sequester billions of tons of carbon but also to reduce the need for nitrogen fertilizers that cost farmers all over the world boatloads of money and also cause massive environmental damage, including pouring nitrous oxide, a potent GHG, into the atmosphere.

I wrote about biochar in this post, The Earth, from last summer.  It has some extraordinary properties.  The idea is to infuse soil with biochar in order to enhance fertility and to capture and hold the carbon contained in the biomass that’s been used to produce the biochar.  As Harvey puts it:  “What is different about biochar is that the stability of the charcoal should make it possible to lock away the carbon it contains for hundreds of years. The carbon is mineralised, so it’s very resistant to breaking down. What’s more, the ancillary benefits - not just its soil-improving characteristics, but certain by-products of its manufacture - should be enough to make it economically attractive.”

Where do you get the biomass?  Agricultural waste and certain components of municipal solid waste are two excellent sources.  How do you make it?  Pyrolysis - “a form of controlled thermal decomposition of organic material in the absence of oxygen.”  (Long before I knew about biochar, I conceived of pyrolysis as an integral part of an urban solid waste management scheme that I’d noodled and promulgated to a great number of people in New York City.  See the last paragraph of this post from a couple of years ago for more on my “Urban Gold” concept.)

You can get so much bang for the buck out of low-tech, quickly and easily deployable approaches to energy production and distribution (solar hot water heaters and ground source heat pumps), energy efficiency (insulation), agriculture (no-till and biochar), green building (passive houses and green roofs), not to mention solar cookers for the developing world.  KISS - keep it simple, stupid - is the engineer’s way of saying what Kipling said in poetry.

Obama’s Team, Continued - Climate experts get key US posts is the headline from the BBC.  John Holdren, a physicist, Harvard professor, and director of the Woods Hole Research Center, has been named Obama’s top science advisor.  Holdren is a passionate advocate of early and decisive action on warming.  See also this from Woods Hole on the announcement in which Holdren says:  “None of the great interlinked challenges of our time - the economy, energy, environment, health, security, and the particular vulnerabilities of the poor to shortfalls in all of these - can be solved without insights and advances from the physical sciences, the life sciences, and engineering.”

Obama also named marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency that has critical importance in how we monitor the environmental changes that are occurring.  She is a professor at Oregon State and another outspoken member of the scientific community on the issue of climate change.  See her webpage here.   (Coincidence that Michelle Obama’s brother is the basketball coach at Oregon State?  Probably.)

Further Thoughts on Poznan - There were several important developments at these UNFCCC meetings worth noting.  (See here and here for previous posts.)  The road to Copenhagen will yet be tortuous and stony, but, for one thing, the idea of intensified efforts on “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD) has taken hold.  We are not only diminishing the capacity of forests to sequester carbon in cutting them down, but burning them increases carbon dioxide.  (I’ve written about forests a number of times at the blog.)

REDD is a full-tilt assault on the problem and there are victories being won aside from the more deeply energized commitment won in Poznan.  Brazil has made the battle against rainforest destruction its own and that has incalculable value in setting an example for others.  I heard Stephan Schwartzman from EDF speaking this past week at a webinar about this and other REDD-related matters.

Another milestone occurred in the launch of the Adaptation Fund.  Bloomberg News put it this way here:  “Poor countries at the United Nations climate talks in Poland may win approval to tap into a $990 million fund as early as next month to cope with the damage of global warming, their biggest victory in 11 days of debate.”

Another of the main developments was the firm commitment to an arduous work plan for the coming year.  See this summary from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the comprehensive coverage from the UNFCCC, which includes webcasts, and all the documentation.  Finally, listen to Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC executive secretary, at his final media briefing.

Smart Grid, Green Buildings - Further to my notes below on the smart grid, see Intelligent Buildings Meet the Smart Grid from “GreenerBuildings News” and the accompanying articles.  As Rob Watson, the executive editor, notes “Today, we recognize that a network of decentralized, building-level services connected through the grid results in a much more robust, and sustainable, alternative than the autonomous Earthships of yesteryear.”

In a related story, from RenewableEnergyWorld.com, titled Report Details Potential of Combined Heat and Power in US, we learn that if the US had 20% of generating capacity coming from CHP by 2030, we would realize a 60% reduction of the projected increase in carbon dioxide emissions.  I heard an energy consultant once say that not having CHP as a standard should be construed as criminal behavior.  You can see why.

Renewables Beat the Old Energy - In another item from the always excellent RenewableEnergyWorld.com, we get that a study from Stanford gives quantitative reasons why nuclear, coal and biofuels are very much the wrong path if we want “to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution”  You can read this important paper here, at “Energy & Environmental Science.”  (See also my reference to a terrific article, “Exajoules of Hope,” at a post from August.)

Federal Efficiency Initiative - As I think I’ve noted before, DOE and EPA have often struggled mightily against political headwinds and still managed to get some heroic work done.  (They’ve also, to be sure, caved, on more than a few occasions over the years, to pressure from on high, abdicating their responsibilities.  See under “California Standards” here for example.)

On a most positive note, DOE’s weekly newsletter “EERE Network News” reports DOE and EPA Release an Energy Efficiency Action Plan for States.  “If implemented by all states, the plan could lower energy demand across the country by 50% “  Pas mal, n’est-ce pas?!  See EPA’s webpage on the “National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency” for more.

By the way, I’m reading a great book now,  Energy in America - A Tour of Our Fossil Fuel Culture and Beyond, by Ingrid Kelley.  The book reminds us that we’ve come a very long way indeed in this country on energy efficiency since the Arab Oil shock of 1973 and the ensuing federal and state initiatives to improve our performance in this key area.  We have, of course, miles to go before we sleep.

Urban Heat - I love geothermal.  What’s not to love?  See “Drill, Baby, Drill 2.0” most recently, among many other references at the blog.

I am going to let my friend, Michael Vickerman, director of the highly effective RENEW Wisconsin, jump in here on a great “NY Times” story from last week:

“There were two excellent articles this week on a very ambitious ground-source heat pump system serving General Theological Seminary.  The later article delves into the regulatory headaches encountered by the engineering firms–agencies with overlapping authority, no single point of contact, etc.).  If any institution can plan for seven generations, it’s General Theological Seminary.”   See the articles here and here.

John Petrarca, an architect in NYC, designed a geothermal townhouse a few years back.  See the story from “Natural Home” magazine.  See also Do Geothermal Heat Pumps Have Mainstream Potential? (including the comments) from RenewableEnergyWorld and the informative DOE webpage on heat pumps.

So, architects and developers!  Let’s get on it.

There’s No Business Like Show Business - NYC’s Great White Way is going green, from “Crain’s NY Business,” notes “Ten theaters already have replaced some 10,000 bulbs with more energy-efficient ones. And within the next 12 months, all of Broadway’s theaters will have made the switch.”  In the press release from the Broadway League, we also learn that several serious commitments are being made, among them a high degree of information sharing among shows about what works.

Not surprisingly, the League has brought in NRDC for its considerable expertise.  See also the “Broadway Goes Green” website for more information and links to other initiatives like London’s green theatre plan and some fascinating websites.