Commercial PACE Financing: An Innovative Way To Scale Up The Building Retrofit Market In NYC
April 02, 2012
By J. Cullen Howe

Energy efficiency retrofits of the urban building stock have great potential to achieve two important goals: reduce overall energy use and achieve significant greenhouse gas emissions reductions. The U.S. building sector accounts for approximately 40 percent of our country's primary energy use and greenhouse gas emissions, with the commercial building sector accounting for about half this amount.

According to a December 2010 report by Johnson Controls, energy savings of 22% could be cost-effectively achieved in the commercial building sector through retrofitting, resulting in the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs and the avoidance of approximately 128 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually — equivalent to the annual emissions of 28 coal-fired power plants. Most importantly for building owners, these retrofits can reduce energy costs, resulting in an improved bottom line and an enhanced value in the marketplace.

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From MUSH To The City of Tomorrow: Taking District Energy To Urban Neighborhoods
February 02, 2012
By Christina Grace

Our urban environments need to simultaneously become more sustainable and meet greater resource demands, but can we evolve from the city of today to the sustainable city of tomorrow when, as the Urban Land Institute estimates, 80% of our existing building stock will still be in use in 2030? The issue becomes even more pressing when factoring in that by 2050, 70–80% of the world's population will be living in cities.

Living City Block (LCB) is grounded in the premise that the traditional urban block will be the key to making cities sustainable from the inside out. In 2010, founder Llewelyn Wells, spun Living City Block out of Rocky Mountain Institute to remove the barriers to fostering resilient neighborhoods — inefficient use of resources, waste management, green infrastructure gaps, and tears in a community's fabric.

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Inconvenient No Longer
January 03, 2012
By John Tepper Marlin

Who was prepared for the annus horribilis of 2011, when GOP climate-change deniers were at work opposing progress on environmental issues? They even challenged the EPA's right to issue regulations, repudiating the authority of the Clean Air Act signed into law more than four decades ago by Richard Nixon.

In December, the League of Conservation Voters called the current House of Representatives, dominated by Tea Party activists, the "most anti-environment in the history of the Congress". When President Obama overrode the EPA plan to lower the atmospheric ozone limit to 65 parts per billion from the Clinton-era 84 ppb, who could blame environmental advocates for feeling friendless in Washington?

However, I would argue, the night is darkest just before the dawn.

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The Sad Story Of The National Infrastructure Bank
December 01, 2011
By Joyce Miller

The idea of a national infrastructure bank was first introduced in Congress almost two decades ago, and, earlier this year, it looked like it might finally pass. The BUILD Act, which would create a non-political national infrastructure bank, was conceived by John Kerry (Dem-Mass), and had bi-partisan support in the Senate, where it was also sponsored by Senators Kaye Bailey Hutchinson (Rep-Texas), Lindsay Graham (Rep-SC) and Mark Warner (Dem-Va). It was strongly backed by President Obama, who had first talked about the concept during the 2008 Presidential campaign, and again in 2011. The BUILD Act and the bank also had the rarely-seen combined support of both organized labor and the business community. It was endorsed by both the AFL-CIO and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

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Faster, Stronger, Smarter: The Smart Grid's Informational Efficiency
September 19, 2011
By Dania Nasser

Lately, the calendar has been marked by noteworthy weather events. Subway-stopping snow, roof-raising tornadoes, and Saharan style haboobs are commonplace on the evening news. Technology now facilitates almost anyone reporting odd conditions — resulting in accounts at a greater speed and higher frequency than ever before (see FourSquare's Heatpocalypse [1] ). In this Information Age there is an undeniable value added in having information. The power of that value is the ability to predict, prepare, and ultimately perform better — and this is the goal of the smart grid. The smart grid seeks to usher the U.S. electricity system into the 21st century by creating a more efficient electricity transmission and delivery system — and possibly delivering the key to effectively managing energy as a whole.

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Over Our Heads: What Will Design Students Need To Know About The Revolution In Sustainable Roof Design?
August 01, 2011
By Lynn Phillips

Designing a roof in New York City isn't what it used to be. In days soon to be bygone, the New York City roof was merely a hard-working servant of the edifice it covered. Anything beyond its parapets was none of its business. But now, city planners and politicians, environmentalists and urban designers are asking the roof to solve environmental problems well beyond its individual footprint.

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