Talking Green

Trendwatching: Eco-Bounty (and Opportunities)

Trendwatching.com just released their report on the highlights of 12 eco sub-trends that entrepreneur or marketer can take advantage today. The 12 trends is followed by sub-trends. Take eco-frugal for an example. In this economy (read: recession) customers are looking for things that are 'cheap and worthy.'

The 12 trends, via Trendwatching.com.

1. Eco-frugal
2. Eco-status
3. Eco-stories
4. Eco-sturdy
5. Eco-feeders
6. Eco-generosity
7. Eco-superior
8. Eco-embedded
9. Eco-edu
10. Eco-transient
11. Eco-vertising
12. Eco-expectations

Judging from these 12 trends, it is clearly that opportunities are out there for those willing to take a little bit risk and take it to the next level.

The full report is available here.

O'Malley New Sustainability Initiatives

Washington Business Journal reports that Maryland Governor O'Malley pushes his new sustainable initiatives to control growth and pushing transit-oriented-development. In addition to the 6 related bills part of his "Smart, Green and Growing initiatives."

Via Office of the Governor.

The O’Malley-Brown Administration’s Smart, Green and Growing legislative agenda includes a number of smart growth initiatives, including protecting the integrity of Comprehensive Plans, modernizing the State’s Planning Visions, and developing Smart Growth Markers for state and local governments.  In addition, Governor O’Malley is proposing measures to revise and reauthorize and the Maryland Heritage Structure Rehabilitation Tax Credit Program and reinforce the Transit Oriented Development (TOD) bill from the 2008 legislative session.

Kaid Benfield, the smart growth expert over at NRDC, has this to say about O'Malley's green initiatives:

I hope that O'Malley will look at the "smart, green and growing" package as a start, but not as an end to his personal work on these issues.  I hope he also takes a hard look at the existing smart growth programs and ramp up their implementation and enforcement, with new legislative muscle if necessary. The fact that so much development is still occurring outside the designated growth areas, many of which were pretty generously designated by their municipalities, is alarming.

NRDC: Smart Growth Fairfax

NRDC has this cool 'Picturing Smart Growth' tool to help you visualize the possibilities, which is virtually unlimited - if there's a will. It has a featured scenarios for a couple different places in the U.S. for example transforming a wasted space to a gathering space in Honolulu. Then there's this Memphis neighborhood that can be transformed into a more pedestrian friendly hood, and more.

So I play around with the tool to see what the possibilities are for our area in Fairfax. Here are clips to help you visualize the possibilities for this specific local area of Fairfax, which currently is a typical strip development.

This is what the existing site looks like: plain strip development with nothing in it.

Visualize the same development with solar roofs.

How about green roofs? Urban infill with new side street and trees. There's more to see here in Fairfax...

Take a look at your own community to see what else can locals do to help create and build sustainable communities here and across the country. Uhm, think the possibilities are endless.

'09 Trending Green

It's a few days old, but still worth reading: seven green trends to watch this year.

Dept. Interior Completes its Green Roof Project

The seven-year green roof project is finally completed. The project is part of the six-phases renovation project slated for the Dept. of Interior, with completion date schedule for 2011, via DOI.

Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne today unveiled a “green roof” located on the 3rd wing of the Main Interior Building in Washington, D.C. The project is the culmination of lengthy planning and a successful partnership among Interior’s Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, the General Services Administration, and the Department’s National Business Center.

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The Main Interior Building green roof will help alleviate this problem and provide numerous other benefits:

• Improve water quality by neutralizing acid rain effects and filtering pollution from rainwater.
• Hold up to .7 inches of rain to reduce stormwater runoff entering the sewage system and reduce streambank erosion.
• Shield the roof from the sun’s direct rays, which extends the roof’s life span, insulates the building during the summer and saves energy as well as mitigates urban “heat island” effects.
• Improve air quality by filtering the air that moves across the plants and, through photosynthesis, convert carbon dioxide into oxygen.
• Provide habitat for songbirds and pollinators.
• Reduce noise transfer from the outdoors.
• Provide a visually attractive sight for employees and visitors.

Technorati Tags: green roofs,dept. of interior,washington dc

Green Links

First Hybrid Solar Power Under Construction [ENN]

How to Take Control of Your Energy Use, One Minute at a Time [Triple Pundit]

Eco-Friendly Wood for the Greater Good [Low Impact Living]

Study Finds Decline in American Driving [Bright Green Blog]

ReFab Now: We Can Solve It Gets Renovation [Tree Hugger]

Dow Corning Takes A Shine to Solar [Forbes]

Wind Beats in All Renewable Study [Carbon Positive]

Scheer: Ontario could go 100 per cent renewable [Clean Break]

Solar Power for Homes with Attitude [Solar Feeds]

Powered by Sun, Wind and Sea [Popular Science]

Mont. County Expanded Clean Energy Rewards Program

Maryland is doing something right here. From State and Stakeholder:

The Clean Energy Rewards program currently offers Montgomery County residents and businesses a 0.5 cent per kilowatt-hour rebate (reduced from prior years) on certain voluntary green energy purchases, offsetting 15-25% of the incremental cost of purchasing green energy. The program budget was also increased by $200,000 to $561,000 through June 2009.

Details on the program here..

How Building Sector Can Make A Difference..

 LIVE FROM ECOBUILD WASHINGTON

Just got back from High Performance Building Caucus Coalition meeting. Ed Mazria (with Architecture 2030) opened the meeting this morning. This is the second time I heard him talking. Very impressive. First he talked about Obama's transition economic package, the challenges facing building industry, and the opportunities for the industry to make a difference.

He says, that "with the economic package for all new buildings to be carbon-neutral, zero emission by 2030, there's a lot of opportunity for the industry pushing the envelope" since 76% of U.S. electricity consumption is for building operations. He says, that each year in the US, we build approximately 5 billion s.f., 72 billion s.f. of offices is potential for tear down, another 150 bil s.f. for renovation, so by 2038 three-quarters of buildings in the U.S. will either be new or renovated. The transformation for build environment is to dramatically reduce energy consumption and the need for coal-fired power plants.

Why efficiency? It saves consumer money. Simple as that..

Opportunity lies in energy construction reduction legislations, i.e. where Federal buildings targeted 55% reductions in energy by 2010, carbon neutral by 2030. Gave example of recent California legislation that require Net Zero Energy buildings.

The 2030 challenge calls for: 1) all new buildings and renovations to cut 50% of annual consumption, if we do this we wiped out the increase and aim for coal reductions. 2) There should be fossil fuel reduction standard for all buildings be increased to 60% in 2010, 70% in 2015, 80% in 2020, and carbon neutral by 2030.

Ed recommends ramping up the National Model of Building Energy Code Standard, with target dates by 2010 30% of buildings below code, 50% below code by 2016, 75% below code by 2022 and by 2028 will be carbon neutral or zero emission. He also mentioned about asking the Fed for $84.6 billion for building energy efficiency buildings that over 5 years will save consumer $170 billion.

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** Notes:
- There's a lot of detail that goes between the last paragraph. However, because he talks so fast, I couldn't even read some of my handwriting :-)
- Images pulled from Architecture 2030 website.
- EcoBuild suppose to have the video clip of the meeting sometime soon..

Resources:

* The 2030 Blueprint

* Meeting the 2030 Challenge Through Building Codes

Iceland's Big Test..

CNN has this post up about Iceland's geothermal economy. (and yesterday I had this Iceland post up). Iceland is in the middle of 'near melting' economy -  with housing related investments the kind of investments, which brought big bank like Citibank to its knees.. but in a much smaller scale; uhm, nationalized 3 of its largest banks! - this kind of conditions challenges the sustainability for much of its green economy like never before.

To understand how they got into this problem in the first place, watch this v-clip. (It tells how they got into this highly leverage game).

The severity of their financial crisis...via AFP.

The IMF recently forecast that the country's gross domestic product (GDP) was expected to contract by 10 percent next year.

The government has meanwhile forecast that the public debt would increase from 29 percent of GDP at the end of 2007 to just over 100 percent of GDP at the end of 2009.

The cost of the banking crisis could be as high as 85 percent of GDP, or 1.1 trillion kronur (7.2 billion euros, 9.4 billion dollars). - emphasis added

Although, the country have secured lifeline from the international community including the IMF, looking at the cost to service debt alone at over 100% of GDP by 2009? That sounds like a pretty high debt to income ratio..

So now, what the government has to do - first thing first - is to restore confidence. A tall order for small country like Iceland..

On the other hand, the country is rich with nature-based economy and renewable energy which could help sustain their economy.

At the Climate Institute's Washington, D.C., conference, Iceland President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson described how his country moved from a coal-based economy to one that uses renewable energy for all electricity and nearly all heating. Only transportation still depends on fossil fuels. In total, 70% of Iceland's energy comes from hydroelectric and geothermal sources, Grímsson said. (Chemical & Engineering News)

And if they pass "this" big test, we'll soon learn that Iceland will be a case study for the world's first green economy that survives a major financial blow...

Green Collar Economy

I was at the Green Collar Economy event hosted by Center for American Progress yesterday. The featured speakers are Congresswoman Hilda Solis (D-CA) and Van Jones, founder and president of Green for All. You can see that the mood for green is high. The room was packed with spillover to the side of the room.

Congressman Hilda Solis was just here for a few minutes to deliver her speech. She talks about the new 'green' industrial revolution and how the jobs created are jobs that can't be outsourced. Then she also talk about the vocational school for adults in East LA (her district). She's impressed to see how the classroom was full with adults looking to make career change.

Van Jones speaks about the green collar economy. He writes a book with the same title. (This was like his book tour). Van Jones talks about variety of topics among others, how the green collar jobs could help minorities to get into the pathway of self-suffiency. It's pretty much topics taken from his book.

He said that "..something bad must have to happen before you see what you can do." Because for the past 30 years, the economy model by definition was not sustainable. It was built on the premises of 1) consumption, 2) economy was based on debt, and 3) environmental destruction. Consumption is what made China produced the products cheap for U.S. consumers. We can't have sustainable economy if it's built on credit cards!

The easiest thing to do for green economy is retrofitting America, that will repower America. Retrofit buildings, homes, is the low hanging fruit, he says. We have off-the-shelf technology available out there, i.e. as simple as caulking. (It's funny how he talk about caulking. Because caulking is the most overlook retrofit technique anyone can do and it's cheap, too). Less energy equals to less energy production needed to heat and cool and thus the need to build coal plants. Retrofitting also will bring up the home value, so in essence pays for itself.
 
I agree with his view that retrofitting is the low hanging fruit and the easiest thing to do for people. There is so much we could do to retrofit a house from the low $50 (weatherstripping, caulking) all the way to thousands of dollars. The choice is yours. Whatever budget you have to work with.

You're right, Jones. With the way the economy is going, this is probably the best time to make the changes we need to create sustainable economy for the future...