The Green Element

As Obama Pushes Green Technology, West Alabama Ponders Its Role

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:42:59 +0000

As the federal government focuses on a “green economy” thanks to President Obama, many regions across the country are trying to determine what their role and effect will be in this new future. Along with this comes the uncertainty in the field itself – will it be profitable, will there be adoption, is it temporary. Birmingham is considering an industrial park site meant for green industries that deal with construction.

A major recruiting point for Alabama’s industrial recruiters is the state’s lower energy costs compared with other parts of the country. Alabama — particularly Tuscaloosa County and north-central Alabama — is a coal producer, and the state’s electricity generation is based on a mix of coal, hydroelectric and nuclear power, Longgrear said. Attempts to replace that mix with something like wind farms, which need sustained winds that Alabama can’t offer, would hurt the state. Yet, under the umbrella of green technology, there are areas that could be tapped.

China Shows No Slowing Down In Renewable Energy Future

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 21:34:41 +0000

The race to develop green technology and energy is not just one of ecological importance but also of economic. The contenders are Chinese-style capitalism and the market-oriented approach used by the United States and Europe. China is certainly putting up a good fight.

The Chinese are coming on strong…Beijing’s top leaders have made clear their intention to have their nation dominate this new industry, up and down the value ladder…[T]hey are not burdened by concerns facing their Western counterparts — such as the impact of wind turbines on landscapes, higher energy prices for consumers, or investor returns…The recession has made it tougher for Europe and America to effect meaningful climate policy change…[P]oliticians likely will find it harder to earmark additional voter money for clean technology…Instead, recession-hit Western economies are hoping the private sector can plug an estimated worldwide $150 billion annual funding gap to avoid more extreme droughts and floods.

Sustainable Streetscape

admin — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 20:50:29 +0000

St. Louis is taking sustainability to the streets – literally. In a test program, the city redesigned the streetscape of six blocks on South Grand Boulevard. The redevelopment of the street is to create a more sustainable community – results benefitting the social, economy, and environmental character. The updates include: fewer lanes and shorter crosswalk distances (social), slower traffic which may then stop to shop rather than just drive through (economy), and at least half of the surfaces are porous (environmental). The 30-day testing was successful and will now be followed by the upgrading of four more city streets. The intention is to eventually use this model in other communities.

South Grand, the test site, is a busy street lined with restaurants and shops. But traffic, signage, and aging infrastructure are a problem. Drivers routinely speed, and the street saw 80 accidents and one pedestrian death in the first eight months of 2009. Alderman Jennifer Florida, whose ward includes the west side of the street, points out that one major intersection has no cues at all for pedestrians to cross.

California, Nevada Lead The Way In U.S. Geothermal Growth

admin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:22:15 +0000

Geothermal has surpassed wind as the most efficient energy source, finds a recent NYU report. With 144 new geothermal projects underway, the technology is experiencing a 50% increase in projects and doubling of production doubling in just two years. Currently 14 states have geothermal projects underway, with California and Nevada topping out the list. This is great news as states grapple with a looming energy crisis. These new projects will add the needed energy as well as competition for further growth and efficiency.

Research Associate Dan Jennejohn of Geothermal Energy Association said despite the sector’s growth, there’s been a decline in projects in phase four, or under construction. He attributed this to difficulty obtaining financing because of the recession and also receiving final permits.

Sustainable Housing And Recreation Space Of The Future

admin — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:53:42 +0000

There have been a flood of sustainable building and city concepts in recent years – brought on by increasing concern and sensitivity for the environment as well as respect for environmental form. These new concepts set the stage for new living standards and ways of life. From organic forms to lush gardens, the future looks promising for our urban centers. Hopefully the concepts follow through with more effort and integration than previous urban form concepts of the 20th century.

As urban spaces become more and more congested, architects are looking to unusual locations for green space – even bridges. Chetwood Architects proposed turning the London Bridge into a vertical farm with solar-powered spires topped with wind turbines. The concept includes vast platforms supporting a network of organic farms and a public organic market where the food grown on the bridge could be sold to the public. It also incorporates solar water heating, rainwater collection and greywater treatment.

“Green Roofs” Prove Even More Effective In Fighting Global Warming Than First Thought

admin — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 18:58:04 +0000

It’s time to garden. A new report out by shows that greening your roof can help the environment even more than we originally thought. For quite some time now, we’ve known that green roofs help to reduce heating and air conditioning costs, retain stormwater, and absorb carbon dioxide. Adding green to your roof though can have an even larger environmental impact – the amount of carbon absorbed exceeds original expectations. This effect can be compounded by establishing and installing more vertical gardens – greening your exterior walls.

The scientists found that replacing traditional roofing materials with ‘green’ in an urban area the size of Detroit with a population of about one-million, would be equivalent to eliminating a year’s worth of carbon dioxide emitted by 10,000 mid-sized SUVs and trucks. Their study is the first to examine the ability of green roofs to sequester carbon that may impact climate change and the findings are scheduled to appear in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

The Green Case For Cities

admin — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:31:32 +0000

Updating our homes, businesses, and cities using new sustainable elements and features is certainly a step in the right direction. But as Witold Rybczynski points out, the real change that is needed is a lifestyle change. He points out that while the LEED certification process certainly ensures certain qualities of a building are “green,” it’s focusing on new features. It does not evaluate changes of old patterns that are unsustainable. He sets up the example of a suburban and city office building. Both may receive high LEED ratings, but the city building is inherently more sustainable as it requires less driving and needs less infrastructure expanse established. Rybczynski’s main point – if you want to be sustainable, move out of the suburbs.

Putting solar panels on the roofs doesn’t change the essential fact that by any sensible measure, spread-out, low-rise buildings, with more foundations, walls, and roofs, have a larger carbon footprint than a high-rise office tower—even when the high-rise has no green features at all.

Urban Is Good

admin — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 11:18:42 +0000

The New Yorker staff writer David Owen has recently published a book that extols that positive points to living in a dense urban city. In Green Metropolis, Owen comments on the facts that many of the major urban centers like Manhattan and Hong Kong are actually far greener than less dense locations. This primarily relates to the fact that urban centers have less auto dependence (less gas consumption), dwellings have shared walls (energy conservation), and live in smaller spaces (space allocation). He even goes so far as to state that even the suburbanite with a hybrid or electric car and energy efficient home is still less green due to the fact that the suburbanite must drive to get anywhere. Any spent energy is waster energy, in Owen’s view.

More generally, Owen attacks the anti-urban bias of the American environmental movement, from Thomas Jefferson through John Muir to the modern Sierra Club. He delineates how the movement has encouraged sprawl — by demonizing cities and exalting open space — and argues that they need to shift emphasis toward making urban living more “appealing and life enhancing.” According to Owen, the most critical environmental issues in dense urban cores aren’t carbon footprints but “old-fashioned quality of life concerns”: crime rates, bad smells, education. The more pleasant the city, the more people will stay in it, rather than fleeing to car-dependent suburbs — as Owen and his wife did when they left Manhattan for a leafy Connecticut town more than 20 years ago.

Sustainable Cities Are The Solution

admin — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 12:03:57 +0000

The sustainable city may be what saves humanity from itself. Contrary to stats from President Obama, Bill Clinton, and UN officials, city dwellers actually have a smaller carbon footprint that non-urban residents. Many who study urban development have understood this but now new statistics are proving it. With these new numbers showing that urban living has less of an impact on the environment, we must not only focus on our cities but we must evolve them into far more sustainable “homes.” Energy and water efficiency as well as food production and distribution.

By 2050, some 70% of us will live in urban settings, and it will ultimately be well-managed urban environments, with smart, energy-efficient buildings, power systems, transport and planning, that will save us from ourselves. Seeking better ways to do precisely that, a constellation of designers, architects and academics gathered at a conference on “ecological urbanism” at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design earlier this year.

Home Green Home: Affordable Green Living

admin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 21:58:22 +0000

Sustainable home living is coming to Western Massachusetts thanks to Rural Development Incorporated (RDI) and the Franklin County Housing and Redevelopment Authority. Wisdom Way Solar Village is nearing completion, the end product will be 20 low- to moderate-income duplexes. These Zero Net Energy Homes are being built near the center of Greenfield each feature solar paneling for both energy and hot water. In addition to the environmental focus, two of the homes will remain under RDI ownership to be rented out to people with physical disabilities. The homes are equipped with meters that let the owner know how much energy they have produced and used over the course of the day as well as how much CO2 has been saved by not using fossil fuel-based energy.

These homes are designed to save money too. Owners can expect to pay $2,500 less each year for energy than owners of conventional homes, according to the builders. “If the families who buy these homes and live in them are reasonably conservative in their energy use, they will not pay an electric bill over the course of the year” says Anne Perkins, Director of Homeownership Programs, RDI.

New York Times video…