Climate Change

Deanne Upson, a consultant on climate change in Washington, posed a great question at my post below on soot and solar cookers. In a nutshell, she asked how would you design an energy-efficient home for low and middle-income people in the developing world or in economically distressed areas. I thought a reply rated a post of its own.

Off the top of my head I would say maximizing energy efficiency and deploying renewables are two great places for people in the developing world to start. The International Green Building Movement has been focused on urban housing design and commercial development. I wrote here about the “Masdar Initiative,” in Abu Dhabi, which will be a “… 6 million square meter sustainable development that uses the traditional planning principals of a walled city, together with existing technologies, to achieve a zero carbon and zero waste community.” Sweet. See the project plan and some graphics from the architects, Foster and Partners.

In Green Tech, Low Tech, Clean Tech, New Tech from a year ago, I noted a fascinating exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, on “Design for the Other 90%.” Here’s their section on innovative designs for shelter. Also, UNEP has a vigorous Sustainable Buildings And Construction Initiative. This particular section of their report on “Buildings and Climate Change” has excellent information on low-energy and zero-energy buildings and passive houses. The Rocky Mountain Institute, whose motto is “Abundance by Design,” has done a lot of consulting on buildings. See this section of their website. Of course, the U.S. Green Building Council and the American Institute of Architects’ Committee on the Environment (COTE) have been doing superb work for years. The USGBC has an extensive list of links. See also the work of their sister organization, the World Green Building Council.

There is truly extraordinary work being done in the area of green building. Human habitat is obviously a critical area in which we can achieve great things, sustainably.

Earth Day is this coming Tuesday, April 22. There’s an awful lot going on all over the world. Dating myself, I can tell you that my buddy, Donald, and I went to the first Earth Day in 1970 when we were teenagers. He claims it was primarily to meet girls. My rejoinder is “That’s natural.” Back in 1990, I was working in public affairs for the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation and we had a great honkin’ Earth Day in New York City for the twentieth anniversary, with hundreds of thousands of folks out, including for a big concert in Central Park. Earth Day didn’t have much cachet during many of the off years since its founding and today, but it’s beginning to pick up steam again. Check out the Earth Day website and see what’s happening in your community. You can also go to Earth Day TV to see some great videos.

The “NY Times Magazine” has its Green Issue this week. “Act, Eat, Invent, Learn, Live, Move, Build” are the sections of the magazine. This is a terrific compendium of articles on what we can do to make a difference, including a compelling piece from the excellent and thoughtful writer, Michael Pollan, who asks: Why Bother?

I’ve been thinking more about meat and climate change, I have to tell you, these days, with the news about the pressures on grain and the soaring rise in food prices worldwide. The section on how we eat gets into this quite a bit. We learn, among other things, that in January “… Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and a vegetarian), uttered four little words: ‘Please eat less meat.’ He continued: ‘This is something that the IPCC was afraid to say earlier, but now we have said it.’” I’ve written about this before, in an essay on how we treat animals – and ourselves. I’ll be writing more soon about animal agriculture and its implications for climate change.

You should also check out this terrific video on the Green Issue.

Echoing the “NYT” special section on the “Business of Green” that I wrote about on April 11 below, the “FT” (aka The Financial Times) had a special on Business and the Environment yesterday. This is pretty much about business in the UK, and it’s got some fascinating stuff, including an article on companies saving energy, Energy efficiency: Use less power to cut emissions, in which we learn the arresting news that “Dow Chemical claims to have reduced its energy intensity by 38 per cent between 1990 to 2005. The group invested $1bn to meet this target but says the initiatives have resulted in $5bn of savings.” Get it?!

In another article on green building in France, Energy Plus: Paris building to set new standard, we are told that “…in France, buildings account for 45 per cent of French energy consumption and 16 per cent of water use, and generate 40 per cent of the country’s waste. Their carbon dioxide emissions amount to 25 per cent of the national total, second only to transport at 28 per cent.” I’ve written about Green Building a number of times here. It’s a fascinating and important subject. See this terrific slideshow too from the FT on green building.

“No good times, no bad times,
There’s no times at all,
Just The New York Times” 

Here’s some good, recent stuff from the venerable “New York Times.”

The “Business of Green” is a special section from a few weeks ago. (I wrote at some length over a year ago on their special of the same name.) This latest one’s got some great articles, including one on jobs: Millions of Jobs of a Different Collar. Here’s an audio slide show too on a “net zero energy” home. I mentioned an article in this vein, For Carbon Emissions, a Goal of Less Than Zero, by Matt Wald in my review of Earth: The Sequel from last week. 

Wald, in addition to being on the energy and environmental technology beat, has been the aviation industry reporter for years. Here’s A Cleaner, Leaner Jet Age Has Arrived from Wednesday. It’s about new materials, engines, and systems for safer, more fuel-efficient planes. Who could be against that? (I’ve also written about aviation a couple of times, here and here, and I had a great time this past summer writing about sustainability at airports for “Planning,” the magazine of the American Planning Association.) 

As further evidence of the strain that biofuels, among some other causes, are putting on the land, as I’ve reported on recently at Krugman on Food Prices and Biofuels and Are Biofuels A Bummer?, there was a front-page article the other day, As Prices Rise, Farmers Spurn Conservation Program. The long and short of it is that farmers are taking millions of acres out of the hugely successful federal Conservation Reserve Program in order to cash in on profits that haven’t been available to them for years. Who can blame them? However, what’s driving so much of this is a biofuels policy that is, according to more and more food, energy and environmental experts, misguided. See more from the “NY Times” on “The Food Chain,” examining growing demands on, and changes in, the world’s production of food. This is an important series for any number of reasons and the paper is to be commended for being on it. 

Finally, I wrote about the failure of the NY State Assembly to bring New York City’s congestion pricing plan to a vote, let alone pass it. See “This is the way the world ends …” just below. Well, the paper, given the importance of the issue and the worldwide implications, has a special section, including this video from Andy Revkin on New York City and congestion pricing. Where do we go now that the Mayor’s plan has failed? Read the op-eds from Owen Gutfreund and Gene Russianoff.

I have been remiss, in the extreme, in my blogging.  I’m going tomorrow to what should prove to be an exciting conference, State of the Planet 08, at the Earth Institute at Columbia University.  I will report on that soon.  In the meantime, here are a couple of tidbits to keep you fed, if not sated.

Kansas and Coal – I wrote about the ambitious plans for new coal-fired power plants that were nixed by the State of Kansas here in October and then about the nefarious dealings of the plant’s proponents here in February.  Well, the update from Reuters is Kansas Government Vetoes Plan For Coal-Fired Power Plants.  Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed legislation that attempted to brush aside the decision made by her administration last fall to deny the permits.  Here is the good governor’s veto message and also an executive order establishing the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group.  (Can you say Vice President Sebelius?  I think she’s in the mix for the Democratic party running mate’s job.)

Green Building – Best Bang for the Buck – You know I love green building.  (See any number of posts here.)  Well the terrific folks at GreenBiz have an article telling us how effective it is at reducing GHG emissions - Green Building is Best Bet for CO2 Cuts in N. America: Report.  In addition to lowering emissions, the report they cite, Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges, looks at “… other environmental benefits to green building and its potential to improve worker health and productivity.” 

Green Building – I’ve written about the fascinating subject of Green Building a number of times here, including this special article I did for the FPA website.  The “Financial Times” had a useful update the other day, Greener bricks on the old block, focused on the retrofitting of existing buildings.  JPMorgan Chase, for instance, one of the largest financial services firms in the world, is renovating its 1.3 million square foot headquarters on Park Ave., an arduous task.  (They are also building a new building in the World Trade Center that will seek Platinum LEED certification.)  I also wrote about the Clinton Climate Initiative’s $5 billion program to retrofit buildings worldwide at More Climate Summit in May.

Smart Grids – Here’s an informative article from Forbes - Juicing the System which maintains, among other things, that “As the industry shifts from large central plants to a diverse collection of windmills and biogas generators, managing the complex balance of supply and demand will require fat communications pipes and complex calculations.”  If distributed generation is to be, as many of us devoutly hope, the wave of the future, then in order for it to be effective, there are many policy and technology changes that will be necessary.  Title XIII of the new energy bill is devoted to a considerable upgrading of smart grid research and development.  (This title begins at page 777.)  There’s a newsletter devoted to the smart grid concept, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Electricity Delivery & Energy Reliability which, among other things, was created “… to lead national efforts to modernize the electric grid,” and an industry-government association called GridWise that’s devoted to “… an entirely new way to think about how we generate, distribute and use energy.”  See also this from the BBC on microgrids.

Renewables – What’s going to feed the smart grid?  A lot more Renewable Energy, “the Good Lord willin’ and the crik don’t rise,” as my old mother used to say.  Even in the absence of a Renewable Electricity Standard (or Renewable Portfolio Standard if you prefer) in the new federal energy bill, we are going to continue to see an expansion of these technologies in this brave new world.

By the way, if you want to look back at where we’ve been, try my Year in Review.  Not incidentally, Happy New Year to one and all.

Hot off the presses, go here for my Great Decisions Analysis piece on some of the exciting developments in green building across the world. 

I’ve been preparing an article for the FPA on green building and coming up with some great stuff some of which I wanted to get out now.  There are some incredible projects out there and more on the drawing boards.  I’ve interviewed Kevin Hydes, chair of the World Green Building Council,  for the article.  (See Solar Boating and Green Building from May 14 for more about Kevin.)  He said that exciting projects are “blossoming” all over the world.

One of the ones that jazzed him the most was the reclamation - and vast improvement - of an area in Seoul that had been blighted for years by a freeway.  The Cheonggyecheon Restoration Project, described in this fascinating article, Buried Treasure, from “Civil Engineering  Magazine,” peeled the freeway away to restore a long-hidden stream and provide truly great access for the public.  It’s quite a fairytale – but it’s true.  “O brave new world…”

There is another exciting project across the Yellow Sea from Korea in Shanghai.  Dongtan is going to be built on Chongming, a 750-square-mile island at the mouth of the Yangtze River.  The world’s first “ecocity” is being built by the Chinese in partnership with international firms like Arup and Skidmore, Owings and Merrill.  Arup’s website has a discussion of the project with several informative videos with their director of sustainability, Peter Head.  SOM’s website has a great overview with some vivid graphics.  Great stuff.  Finally, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development has an article focusing on the project but also giving an overview of China’s quest for sustainable projects.  (WBCSD has a big initiative on green building that I’ll discuss in my forthcoming FPA article.)  Dongtan is one giant leap for China. 

My friend, Mike Vickerman (see his guest post from July 2), was in town and was walking around Midtown Manhattan and was impressed by the building site that is to be the BofA Tower at One Bryant Park.  The Bank of America headquarters will be the world’s “most sustainable skyscraper.”  This interview with the architect, Bob Fox, takes you inside the project.  (GreenerBuildings.com is a superb resource.)  I hope to get a look inside another major Manhattan green commercial development soon – The Hearst Tower. 

In the Middle East, there’s a lot of construction, to say the least.  Kevin told me he’d heard that 17% of the world’s construction cranes are in Dubai.  Here’s just one exciting project from W.S. Atkins & Partners in Dubai:  The Lighthouse.  Only on the drawing board at this stage – but check out the website for the stunning design – this tower will employ “… passive solar architecture, many low energy, low water engineering solutions, recovery strategies for both energy and water and building integrated renewables – including large scale wind turbines and photovoltaics.”  Yee haw!

Finally, for now, I’m going to leave you with another new sustainable city design – in the middle of the desert.  The first project of the “Masdar Initiative,” in Abu Dhabi, will be a  “… 6 million square meter sustainable development that uses the traditional planning principals of a walled city, together with existing technologies, to achieve a zero carbon and zero waste community.”  Sweet.  See the project plan and some graphics from the architects, Foster and Partners.

There’ll be more here on green building for sure.  I just had to get some of these out for your viewing pleasure today.  Enjoy.

On Wednesday, L.A.’s mayor, Antonio Villaraigosa, announced his city’s Green LA plan, which incorporates a commitment to 35% use of renewables by 2020.  The Green LA plan is not unlike “PLANYC” in emphasizing energy efficiency, renewables, mass transit and alternative fuels for surface transport, etc.

The afternoon session, “Cities Can Thrive in a Low-Carbon Economy,” was led by Steve Howard from The Climate Group.  They launched a new publication, Public Private Partnership: Local Initiatives 2007, that day and it was highlighted in the session.  Two panelists, the mayors from Berlin and Mexico City, both had initiatives in the publication:  Berlin’s partnership with Johnson Controls on energy efficiency in buildings, and Mexico City’s partnership with the World Resources Institute on transportation.  (For other case studies, see Climate Group’s publication above and the website of the Summit.  Some really, really innovative projects.) 

The big news of the day, of course, was the announcement of the Clinton Climate Initiative putting together a group of banks and industrial corporations to underwrite and perform a $5 billion program of retrofitting buildings to maximize energy efficiency.  Here’s a clip of Bill Clinton talking about the program.  Ken Livingstone said later, that when this is further funded and all up and running, the energy efficiency program could reduce carbon emissions by 10% globally.   Meanwhile, also on Wednesday, the heads of thirteen national Academies of Science, issued a statement, in advance particularly of the forthcoming G-8 Summit (see my post on “Meetings”), calling for an intensified focus on energy efficiency.  Beyond that, the 13 national leaders of their academies of science called for further efforts on reducing deforestation and also increasing technology transfer to the developing world, particularly of “leapfrog” technologies. You heard this expression often at the conference, from Ken Livingstone and others.

In a similar vein, IBM last week announced their $1 billion plan to upgrade their data centers and radically reduce energy use.  “Project Big Green” will address IBM’s needs at more than eight million square feet of data centers in six continents.  See this video for more. 

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On another note, I had the pleasure of talking with Mayor Rocky Anderson of Salt Lake City about his city’s approach to solid waste management.  Here’s their webpage on “Salt Lake City Green.”   I got a moment to discuss with him my thoughts about solid waste management and how productive a holistic approach can be.  I articulated my ideas, gleaned from the best concepts and practices in urban sustainable development, in a comprehensive proposal for New York City’s modest 25,000 tons a day of municipal solid waste a few years ago and called the plan, Urban Gold.  The heart of the strategy is to co-locate a materials recovery facility (MRF) and other waste disposal facilities, such as pyrolysis or gasification plants (mentioned by London Deputy Mayor Nicky Gavron at several points this week, I might add), with industries that would use the recycled materials as feedstock for their manufacturing.  Mayor Anderson was good enough to say that he’d look at the strategy.  

The Summit started in earnest yesterday.  Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, and Chair of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, had some opening remarks, including these which are very direct indeed.  (The C40 is in partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative.  I’ll have more to say about President Clinton and the CCI in a later post.)

In a separate panel later in the day, Livingstone gave considerable heart to NYC Mayor Bloomberg and other supporters of congestion pricing.  (I wrote about congestion pricing and New York’s big plans last month in Mike Bloomberg’s Earth Day.)  Livingstone cited the considerable success of the program in London and the acceptance by the public. 

It should be noted that in one year, the congestion charge has brought about a 38% drop in private cars entering London—twice the anticipated figure. There has also been a more than 80% increase in cyclists and a rise in bus passengers from four million to six million. This modal shift has been accompanied by substantial emissions reductions, including a 20% reduction in carbon emissions.

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, the Vice-Chair of IPCC Working Group on “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” reported on the state of the science and the good news and the bad news:  we are in very rough waters already with climate change and it’s going to get worse before it gets better, but we have the tools at hand to deal with the threat, if we apply the will and the energy.  I said it was up to political leadership and the publics they represent to address the problem.  He quoted Montaigne:  “Politics is the art of making possible what is necessary.”

George David, the CEO of United Technologies, had some fascinating things to say about using energy and the potential for radically reducing the amount of power that New York City consumes.  One chord that he struck that I heard later in the day is that the overall efficiency of power generation is 30% for central power stations and 70% for distributed generation.  You simply get much more energy output per Btu input when you locate the consumer close to the source of the power.  On the same panel, Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley noted they have three million square feet of green roofs and they have a “green technology permit system” to help expedite new and retrofitted smart green buildings.  (See my last post and the discussion of green building.)  Both Daley and Toronto Mayor David Miller emphasized the message that there is economic opportunity – I do love that word –  in green tech, and also that there are tremendous savings to be made by government, commercial interests and consumers in all of this. George David again came back to the idea of opening up power generation to small suppliers and suggesting that the federal government needs to promote net metering.

So, in the panel discussion I attended later on decentralized energy, there were some interesting tidbits.  Nicky Gavron, a deputy mayor of London, led the panel. Rotterdam and Copenhagen’s mayors talked about their district heating systems that are hugely efficient and comprehensive.  New York’s electric utility, Consolidated Edison, was represented by its CEO, and he talked about the highly efficient steam heating system we have.  Not incidentally, steam systems can also be engineered to provide cooling and are used this way.  The CEO of Britain’s largest electric utility, EDF Energy, also spoke.  They’ve got a considerable investment in renewables and are working with London to promote distributed generation through its new Climate Change Agency (LCCA). There were several folks in the audience who also spoke at Gavron’s urging, one of whom, Allan Jones, is with the LCCA, which is developing a number of important pathways for low-carbon energy.  Jones pioneered Woking’s innovative energy project where they’ve had nothing but success in saving money and cutting carbon use.  Tom Casten, head of Primary Energy, spoke rather passionately and well about local generation of power.  George David of UTC had earlier cited a number of 70% efficiency for local power.  Casten said 80%.  Here’s a convincing slide show from Casten that backs up his assertions.  See also this from the BBC on microgrids.  Finally, a consultant to Mayor Bloomberg on energy, Doug Foy, said that the City could be doing much more on locally generated power, as much as 2,000 mw or more.  Foy has had a distinguished career with 25 years as the president of the Conservation Law Foundation, and then he brought a new level of environmental thinking to Massachusetts, but resigned last year.

Thinking outside the box - or outside the grid - is what’s going to get us to healthy, low-carbon economies. 

The C40 Large Cities Climate Summit kicked off on a gorgeous spring day today in the Big Apple.  Thirty-two mayors are here with their delegations.  There are 46 cities represented, from six continents. There’s been considerable press on this, a couple of hundred by Google’s count, including this from Reuters “London mayor says cities lead on climate change” and this from one of our local radio stations, WINS “Clinton, Bloomy to Host International Climate Summit.”

JPMorgan Chase is the lead sponsor for this event and they made some news of their own with the announcement that they would make their climate change research publicly available.  Check out their climate change investment page.  This is good, solid, serious research that they’re putting out. 

I enjoyed going out today on the Swiss catamaran “Sun21” which just made the first transAtlantic voyage of a solar-powered vessel.  For a land-locked country, these Swiss are pretty good sailors!  You can go to the sponsoring organization’s website to see, among other things, a great little video.

But wait, there’s more:  The same folks, Transatlantic21, have created the “World Clean Energy Awards.” The jury for these awards, to be given in seven categories with the winners to be announced at the tenth annual Sun21 Energy Forum in Basel on June 15, included such luminaries as Amory Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institute and Nicky Gavron, a deputy mayor of London and one of the organizers for the C40 group.  London, as you know, has been going full-tilt boogie to avert a climate change crisis, along with the U.K. government, and the rest of Europe for that matter.  (See my post from March 14.)  For a further look at what the Swiss have been doing, see information at SwissEnergy, such as this on renewables, and, from a consortium of companies, Solar Impulse, an attempt to go around the world in a solar airplane!

On the boat ride, I had the distinct pleasure of talking with Kevin Hydes, the current chairman of the board of the World Green Building Council. Their mission, among others, is to help foster the creation of national councils all over the world.  Kevin is the past chair of the USGBC.  They are the parent of the LEED Green Building Rating System which is the national benchmark for high performance green buildings.  LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” and has become a critically important tool in the green building movement.  The American Institute of Architects also has a Committee on the Environment (COTE) that has done, and is doing, pathfinding work.  I mentioned Randy Croxton (who I interviewed many years ago about the NRDC building in New York) and Kevin talked about Bob Berkebile, founding chairman of the AIA Committee on the Environment and a driving force.

Here’s Kevin in front of the Solaire which bills itself as America’s first environmentally advanced residential tower.  Kevin, when he was president of the USGBC, presented the LEED plaque that adorns the entrance.     

We were taken on a tour of the building, including seeing the photovoltaic arrays, the water reuse system, the apartments with all Energy Star high-efficiency appliances and low-emissivity windows, and the green roof where water is captured and filtered and which also diminishes the ambient heat.

All in all, I had a hugely informative and enjoyable afternoon.  More to come tomorrow on the C40 Summit.