Urban energy density

Interesting and impressive analysis.

http://theenergycollective.com/robertwilson190/257481/why-power-density-matters

Nest learning thermostats now saving a whole lot of energy

Dec 10, 2012

Katie Fehrenbacher

Gigaom

Nest’s learning thermostats have collectively saved over 200 million kilowatt hours of energy since they were launched back in October 2011, says the startup. That’s about the equivalent amount of energy to power the Empire State building for four years, and which Nest says is a figure that blew their minds when they calculated it.

It’s unclear how many Nest thermostats there are out there, but a few months ago Nest said it had sold in the “hundreds of thousands” of units. But the reason Nest’s collective energy savings are so high after just a year, even with its initial sales volumes, is because the thermostats can save 20 to 30 percent in a home’s energy consumption. Per home, that’s a really high figure.

In comparison software energy leader Opower, which processes data from more than 50 million homes, says it’s saved over 1.6 billion kilowatt hours of energy, or enough energy to power the Empire State Building for more than 33 years. But Opower saves much smaller energy percentages per home — or on average about 1.5 to 3.5 percent reduction on an energy bill.

That’s why Nest is smaller and newer than Opower, but is still managing to wrack up the energy savings, too. It would be awesome if companies got really competitive over how much collective energy savings they could deliver — energy savings FTW!

Opower is looking to boost its per home energy savings. Paper reports, mailed to the utility customer, still play a substantial role in its service — of the 15 million homes that are fully connected into the Opower platform, 7 million of those are getting paper reports. Opower has newer products including a Facebook app and a smart thermostat service with Honeywell, which could make that savings number rise.

If you’ve forgotten Honeywell hit Nest with a lawsuit earlier this year. So Honeywell’s connection with Opower, is kindof like its technology answer to Nest. Maybe these two venture-backed energy startups are becoming a little more competitive, albeit from different angles. Opower sells its software service to utilities, while Nest sells its thermostats straight to consumers.

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/nest-learning-thermostats-now-saving-a-whole-lot-of-energy/

Council reviews energy ordinance

By

• Jessica Lee

December 03, 2012

The ordinance would require buildings to report their energy use.

The Minneapolis City Council is reviewing a proposed ordinance that would require large commercial buildings to report energy use.

The proposal, headed by Councilwoman Elizabeth Glidden, follows a trend in major cities to drive down energy emissions and create new green jobs.

“We looked at what other cities were developing around the country, and we recognized that Minneapolis has a role to play in bettering the environment,” Glidden said. “It’s our job to make measures around that.”

The policy would make it mandatory for all owners of commercial buildings larger than 50,000 square feet to submit the building’s energy use, which would be calculated and scored by a government-backed program. The ratings would then be posted online for the public to see.

Building owners in San Francisco, where a similar action was implemented last year, were initially worried that a poor public rating would harm their business, Glidden said, “but they are finding out that isn’t really the case.”

“There are a lot of things building tenants have on their mind,” said project coordinator Brendon Slotterback. “I think energy usage is just one thing on a really long list, and we are pretty confident that this isn’t going to have a dramatic impact on lowering business.”

University of Minnesota aerospace engineering sophomore Thomas Georgiou said building owners should look at “the bigger picture” instead of worrying about whether or not the ratings would hurt their sales.

“Profits in business is important, but even more important is the well-being and future of the planet,” said Georgiou, treasurer for The Green Group, a University student organization that promotes sustainability.

Glidden said that in the cities the council looked at — San Francisco, New York and Chicago — building owners didn’t think negative ratings had a significant impact on their business.

“Even though property owners might be concerned about the ratings being disclosed, I think this is a step for Minnesota moving in a greener direction,” said Devan Grimsrud, journalism sophomore and vice president of The Green Group.

The building’s utility submissions would go through Energy Star, a government-backed program, and the city would publish its ratings on a scale of 1 to 100.

“The ordinance doesn’t require any action after they have benchmarked their use and reported it to the city,” Slotterback said. “We think that just the action of benchmarking, kind of figuring out their usage, will help some business owners understand their energy use a little better, and that might result in some actions.”

Besides looking to improve the environment, the project aims to stimulate the city’s economy by creating jobs in the sustainability field.

Ron Pilkington’s job in San Francisco, for example, is dedicated to ensuring building owners keep up with city ordinances.

“San Francisco certainly encourages green buildings without a question,” said Pilkington, air quality inspector for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. “I’m from a different perspective, though — it’s my job.”

Glidden said she aggressively promotes sustainability efforts, like the proposed ordinance, so the city can reach its goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In 2012, the city set a goal to cut emissions by 15 percent by 2015.

“We know the City of Minneapolis’ large commercial buildings contribute a lot of greenhouse gases and have an impact on the environment,” Glidden said. “There is more that can be done to make those buildings green or energy efficient.”

The ordinance will get its first public hearing in January. The policy, if passed, would apply to 551 commercial buildings larger than 50,000 square feet and all city-owned buildings bigger than 25,000 square feet, Slotterback said.

The official list of the buildings this ordinance would affect is not finalized.

http://www.mndaily.com/2012/12/03/council-reviews-energy-ordinance

Using Carbon Credits To Pay For Energy Retrofits

By Justin Gerdes

Forbes

9/25/12

One of the signal achievements of the Obama administration is a success hidden in plain view. Scorned by Republicans and rarely mentioned by Democrats, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), or simply “the stimulus,” was many things at once – tax cut, lifeline for cash-strapped states and local governments, and, as noted by Michael Grunwald in his important new book The New New Deal, “the biggest and most transformative energy bill in U.S. history.”

The stimulus directed $3.2 billion to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grants program. As I wrote at this blog in January and again in June, these grants have enabled dozens of California cities to slash their energy bills by investing in LED streetlights and other energy-saving upgrades.

The stimulus also included a one-time supplemental appropriation of $5 billion for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program. In December 2011, DOE announced it had reached its goal, three months ahead of schedule, of weatherizing 600,000 low-income homes nationwide. According to DOE data, as of January 2012, 612,390 homes or apartments had received energy retrofits courtesy of the stimulus.

Many states dramatically scaled up staffing and other resources to handle the surge of energy efficiency-related stimulus funding. What happens now that the ARRA spigot has run dry?

Weatherization and carbon trading

In a September 19 post at Home Energy magazine’s blog, Macie Melendez reported on a plan that could enable states to maintain their scaled up weatherization programs. A major topic of discussion at the recently convened annual conference of the National Association for State Community Services Programs (NASCSP), Melendez wrote, was how to keep weatherization programs relevant and funded in a post-ARRA world. Carbon markets just might be the answer.

One of the presenters at the NASCSP conference was the organization’s new Carbon Trading Project Director, Jo-Ann Choate. Melendez recounted Choate’s plan:

Weatherization reduces carbon but states/companies/organizations aren’t currently being monetarily rewarded for doing so. In order to leverage additional funding for WAP [Weatherization Assistance Program] and receive those ‘rewards,’ NASCSP is currently developing a national framework to measure carbon emission reductions from weatherization activities and sell carbon offsets in the voluntary carbon markets in compliance with the Verified Carbon Standard (VCS).

The NASCSP would verify, register, and sell carbon offsets for the participating states. After credits are sold in carbon markets, NASCSP would distribute the proceeds back to each state.

The plan is not without precedent. In December 2010, the Verified Carbon Standard approved the first new methodology for crediting reductions of greenhouse gases achieved through home weatherization. The methodology was developed by MaineHousing for the Efficiency Maine program. The operating assumption is that weatherized homes that perform better than a pre-determined benchmark are eligible for salable carbon credits.

The Maine program has been beset by controversy surrounding its cost and alleged conflict of interest among its key stakeholders, but many states are keen to press ahead. Melendez reported that 17 states have signed on to participate in NASCSP’s Carbon Trading Initiative.

Carbon metering

How confident can NASCSP or Verified Carbon Standard be that a weatherized home produces measurable energy and carbon savings? In search of an answer, I recently spoke with Mark Aschheim, Professor and Chair, Department of Civil Engineering, Santa Clara University (SCU). Aschheim and Jorge Gonzalez, a former SCU mechanical engineering professor now at City College New York, co-lead a team that developed a carbon metering method that quantifies real-time energy savings in buildings and associated carbon offsets. The technology, Carbon Meter, was developed to measure the energy performance of Santa Clara University’s entries into the 2007 and 2009 Solar Decathlon.

One of the goals of the Carbon Meter, Aschheim told me, is to be able to measure the gap in performance of a house or commercial building performing to a baseline (say, California’s Title 24 building energy efficiency standards) and one going beyond it. Once you quantify that differential, he said, it opens up other possibilities, including salable carbon credits. The meter also quantifies the benefit of electricity generated by photovoltaic cells.

With the ability to measure real-time energy performance, Aschheim said, you can quickly develop a thermal model for how the building is performing – as a system, not just individual components. “That can be useful because you can verify that performance met the intention,” he said.

LEED and other green building rating programs are good on paper, Aschheim commented, but not so good with verification. “This is a way to field verify that you’re getting the performance you intended,” he said. “It might tie into guidance as to what the best retrofit options are – given that your house is performing this well and you have these kinds of windows and insulation, here’s the best bang for the buck.”

California regulators have approved four categories of carbon offsets in its soon-to-launch cap-and-trade program: forestry, urban forestry, ozone depleting substances, and agricultural methane. On September 17, Reuters reported on an American Carbon Registry study finding that California’s carbon market could be 29% short of offsets in its pilot phase (2013-2014) and 67% short of offsets in its third phase (2018-20), unless regulators expand the categories of approved offset project types.

At a minimum, the Carbon Meter represents for California regulators a potential new offset category: carbon savings from retrofits. Coupled with NASCSP’s Carbon Trading Initiative, the Carbon Meter presents California and other states with the means to generate a source of salable carbon offsets that could help keep weatherization programs alive.

Aschheim conceded that he and his team have focused more on the technical demands of the Carbon Meter project than financial returns. They filed both an invention disclosure and patent application but have not marketed the tool.

The Carbon Meter is listed at the Stanford University Office of Technology Licensing portal. (Stanford handles intellectual property for Santa Clara University, Aschheim told me.)

“It’s out there waiting to be grabbed and used,” he said. Entrepreneurs, get on it.

This article is available online at:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/justingerdes/2012/09/25/using-carbon-credits-to-pay-for-energy-retrofits/

Can Energy-consumption Data Change Consumer Behavior?

By Knowledge@WhartonNov. 16, 2012

Time magazine

Do you know how much energy you consume every 15 minutes? Most would say that’s a hard — if not impossible — question to answer, but San Francisco-based utility provider Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) now has access to that information for 30,000 of its residential customers, thanks to its “SmartMeter” program. PG&E’s SmartMeters are its prime vehicle to fulfill its mandate from the state of California to get people to use less energy.

For 36 months (January 1, 2009, through December 31, 2011), PG&E has used SmartMeters to collect consumer energy-use data in Northern California. The devices measure residential customers’ electricity and gas usage at daily, hourly and 15-minute intervals. The goal of the program, according to PG&E, is to help customers better understand their energy usage and find ways to save on their energy bills. According to the PG&E website, customers who participate in the program have the ability to be notified by email, text message or phone when their utility use “is moving toward a higher-cost tier.”

The energy consumption data will supplement existing information on customers’ demographics, billings and payments, call center reports and utility pricing, among other variables. The company states that by studying all of this information, it hopes to gain insights into how its SmartMeter platform might be used “to engage customers, reduce energy consumption and offer customers appealing alternative pricing schemes.”

But with so much data to sort through, that’s a tall order. PG&E has partnered with the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative (WCAI) to lead the effort, which will help identify academic research groups across the world to study the data. Peter Fader, Wharton marketing professor and WCAI co-director, notes that the PG&E project has wider implications for businesses that increasingly use data analytics to extract business intelligence, by offering a model on how to determine the volume and quality of information they need to track in order “to change behavior in meaningful ways.”

“This is a unique data set, and we don’t know of any other that has this level of granular data,” noted WCAI research director Ben Adams during a webinar announcing the research project earlier this month. In addition to energy usage data, researchers will get information about PG&E’s energy efficiency rebates, demand response programs and special rate plans that were available to the customers covered in the data. PG&E will safeguard customer privacy and sign nondisclosure agreements with researchers, company executives said at the webinar.

Studying data collected by the meters will help the company figure out “which message to send to which household at which time in order to get them to conserve energy,” says Fader. “Our job is to find the right academics out there who will help them answer [these] questions.” Those who are selected will receive PG&E’s data sets, and are expected to spend a year studying them before they file their findings and recommendations.

http://business.time.com/2012/11/16/can-energy-consumption-data-change-consumer-behavior/#ixzz2CgwrzJfl

Energy Efficiency’s Next Great Leap: Predicting the Weather

By Hannah Miller | November 19th, 2012

Triple Pundit

A small metal box in the basement of the InterContinental Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco is thinking about the weather. And what time of day it is. And when the sun will rise and set.

This box, part of the first installation of the new Stem Energy system, is paired with a battery, and will be using all that atmospheric and environmental data to make a second-by-second decision about whether the hotel should pull from the meter for its energy, or run on battery power. It’s a new online, data-driven energy management system designed to reduce peak usage based on the type of multi-variable modeling used in the financial industry.

And best of all, these meter-battery hookups require no action by users to maintain it or to hook it up to the HVAC system – nor any behavioral change, no turning lights off or the thermostat down. They just sit there (there’s no charge to rent them) and mint money, the savings split between Stem and the customer. (In the case of InterContinental, a 50-50 split.)

On Thursday night, Stem CEO Salim Khan, founder Brian Thompson, and InterContinental‘s Harry Hobbs led tours and had a kickoff event for the installations in the two hotels in SF, one of them a razor-sharp new Gold LEED hotel, and the other an 85-year old masterpiece. Under Hobbs’ leadership, both hotels have instituted major efficiency measures over several years, but the Stem system “has really filled a gap,” according to Hobbs: Specifically, knowing to the second when to switch to battery power to save on peak usage charges.

For a hotel like the Mark Hopkins, with an average monthly electricity bill of $60,000, this is no small matter. (They get calls from the utility to turn down the AC during peak demand in the city). Hobbs said he expected the Stem system to cut their bill by 15 percent.

Stem was founded in 2009 by Thompson, whose background is in e-commerce and investment banking. One of the main problems in renewables is predicting when energy will be available – based on weather patterns, cloud cover, etc. – and Thompson sought to apply the sophisticated financial models developed for e-commerce to the field of energy. Reports of past demand in the buildings are combined with data from Weather Underground’s API, for example, to create a predictive model to run the system.

What he came up with was a cloud-based algorithm that applied not just to solar, but to all energy consumption, regardless of source. They partnered with LA-based CODA, manufacturer of EV car batteries and storage cells; based on mostly work of mouth, they are almost to their capacity for orders in 2013, mostly to mid-size commercial buildings like hotels, restaurants and gas stations.

“The Stem system… well, it’s a battery…and…” said Thompson, mic in hand at the event, speaking to a Greenbuild crowd. “This feels like the early days of the Internet when no nobody knows what it is and I am trying to explain what Mosaic is.”

Stem employs 45 people currently, and found its first customer through the SF Community Power, a nonprofit that runs efficiency programs with groups like small businesses and low-income residents, Thompson said.

The systems in the InterContinentals required permits and were treated like a solar system by PG&E, which has been very supportive, according to Stem staff.

Hobbs, who is on the Sustainability Committee for the InterContinental chain, hopes that sustainability and luxury can be seen as something to go together.

“I’m encouraging the rest of the hospitality industry to get on board,” he said. “There is a lot of room for improvement.”

http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/11/cloud-computing-energy-efficiency-stem/

San Francisco Sets Example by Publishing Energy Consumption Data for over 300 City Buildings

Green Building Elements

11/14/12

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) unveiled detailed energy usage information for more than 300 municipal buildings in a reportreleased today to demonstrate how the city’s new building energy benchmarking ordinance can help both public and private property owners find ways to save energy and money and better understand how buildings use energy.

“Just as owners of commercial buildings must take inventory of their energy use, the City is making sure we lead by example and provide transparency and accountability about our own operations, an essential component of San Francisco’s goal to reduce carbon emissions,” said Mayor Edwin M. Lee. “I’m proud of the progress we have made and will continue to capitalize on the opportunities ahead that will save energy and taxpayer dollars.”

The report details the energy use of 305 city facilities, including libraries, medical clinics, police stations and more during 2011. Altogether, these buildings comprise 37 million square feet of floor space.

“As they say, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.  While the City is doing quite well overall, we are always looking for ways to be more efficient.” said SFPUC General Manager Harlan L. Kelly, Jr. “San Francisco’s public buildings also have the additional environmental benefit of receiving their clean, greenhouse-gas-free electricity from the Hetch Hetchy Power system.”

“Tracking energy usage through benchmarking reveals which facilities are performing well, and helps agencies understand which should be prioritized for improvements.” said John Updike, Director of Real Estate for the City and County of San Francisco.

This benchmarking effort is part of the SFPUC’s larger energy efficiency and green building program. In fact, the SFPUC has completed over 150 energy efficiency projects in municipal buildings, which are saving the City approximately $4.6M each year.
Key benchmarking findings include:

• In 2011, the 305 buildings analyzed used just under 3.5 million MMBtu of energy (electricity, natural gas and steam combined) and were responsible for 91,454 tons of CO₂ equivalent emissions.
• The overall energy usage of buildings in 2011 declined 3.8% from 2010 and 1.1% from 2009. This translates into approximately $1 million less in energy costs in 2011 than the previous year.
• As expected, some building types are bigger energy users per square foot than others, for example hospitals and museums (higher energy intensity) vs. fire stations and libraries (lower energy intensity).
• Of the 30 buildings that were eligible for energy ratings from the EPA, 75% performed equal to or better than the national average for similar buildings; and 11 of those buildings performed in the top 25% nationwide – the threshold for the ENERGY STAR label. These top performing buildings include the Public Defender’s Office, Mission Mental Health Services, and Chinatown Child Development Center. The ENERGY STAR label has not yet created ratings categories for most other public building types.

“We are learning what some private property owners who are already benchmarking buildings have known for some time – that regular measurement of building energy performance helps identify opportunities to save energy, lower operating expenses and improve property values. We hope that other owners will see the benefits for themselves as they evaluate their buildings’ energy use under the city’s benchmarking ordinance,” said Melanie Nutter, Director of the San Francisco Department of Environment.

Passed in Jan 2011, the Existing Commercial Building Energy Performance Ordinance requires owners of commercial buildings 10,000 square feet or larger to annually measure the energy performance of their buildings – a process known as benchmarking – and report energy use information to the city. It also requires owners to conduct energy audits of buildings every five years. Owners of buildings 25,000 sq. ft. and larger are already benchmarking energy use and filing reports with the city; while owners of buildings between 10,000-25,000 sq. ft. will begin benchmarking in 2013.

San Francisco’s ordinance is unique among many green-building initiatives in that it provides owners with actual energy performance information on their buildings year-to-year, not modeled or hypothetical scenarios. It also provides a national energy score so owners can see if their buildings are over or under-performing compared to similar buildings. Audits then give owners specific direction as to which building energy systems need improving, if any, and clear analysis of the costs and benefits of making those improvements.

San Francisco is one of six cities and two states with building energy benchmarking ordinances, including Seattle, New York City, Austin, District of Columbia, Philadelphia and California and Washington State. San Francisco is the first city on the West Coast to release municipal building energy use information following New York City and Washington D.C. last year.

Source: SFPUC

http://greenbuildingelements.com/2012/11/14/san-francisco-sets-example-by-publishing-energy-consumption-data-for-over-300-city-buildings/

Development: Green, Yes; LEED, Not So Much

Paul Bubny

GlobeSt.com

11/9/12

NEW YORK CITY-Owners, developers and corporate occupiers are more likely to construct or renovate a building with sustainability in mind than they were two years ago, Turner Construction Co. said Thursday. However, the builder’s Market Barometer survey also found that less than half of respondents would pursue LEEDcertification from the US Green Building Council.

With energy efficiency and ongoing operations and maintenance costs each cited as key drivers by 84% of respondents, the appetite for sustainable building is greater than in 2010, when Turner last conducted the survey. Sixty-four percent said they expect to undertake new construction projects over the next 12 months, while 71% said they intend to undertake renovation projects during the same period. Those numbers are up from 46% and 58%, respectively, in the ‘10 survey, although concerns remain about the costs and the length of the payback period.

Going in the opposite direction, however, is the percentage of executives who said that going for LEED certification on new construction was “extremely likely” or “very likely.” The figure in this year’s survey is 48%, down from 53% in the ‘10 survey and from 61% in 2008.

Among survey respondents who said their companies weren’t likely to seek LEED certification for new builds, the cost of the certification process was cited by 82%. This was followed by staff time required (79%), time required for the process (75%) and the overall perceived difficulty of the process (74%).

However, 41% of executives thought it was at least somewhat likely that they’d consider certification under a rating system other than LEED, with 63% of those respondents preferring Energy Star. A USGBC spokeswoman did not respond to GlobeSt.com’s calls by deadline. 

“We’ve seen from our own work and the continuing growth of the green building market that in spite of this reduction in enthusiasm for LEED certification, respondents are still building green,” Michael Deane, VP and chief sustainability officer at Turner, says in a release. “While some respondents are relying on their own standards or are considering another rating system, LEED certification remains the most widely used third party verification of achievement that is recognized by consumers and that can be used to market and promote a property.”

From Rooftop to Alleyway, Chicago Fights Extreme Urban Heat With Greener Ideas

Midtown Developer Accuses Con Ed of Overcharging

By PATRICK McGEEHAN

New York Times

October 9, 2012

It is not easy being green and trying to keep the electric company from raising your rates.

The owner of the Bank of America Tower in Midtown Manhattan is learning that lesson. For the second time in less than a year, it has accused Consolidated Edison of trying to overcharge for the sophisticated power plant in the building, which it has heralded as the most environmentally advanced skyscraper in the country.

Last November, the developer, the Durst Organization, persuaded state utilities regulators that Con Edison had overbilled it by more than $290,000. Now, the developer is asking the regulators to prevent the utility from increasing the annual gas bill for the tower by more than $85,000.

The disputes provide a glimpse into the underbelly of a 55-story building that the Durst Organization has called an icon for its efficient use of energy. The tower contains a cogeneration system that produces electricity to run the lights and computers in its offices and trading floors.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo have called for more buildings to generate their own electricity to reduce demands on the power grid and reduce waste. The Durst Organization argued in its complaint to the state Public Service Commission that the tower was meant to serve as “a demonstration project” for such plants, but that Con Edison’s billing practices could have a “chilling impact” on the development of others.

The current dispute centers on what the building does with some of the fuel it obtains from Con Ed. Most of the natural gas piped into the building from beneath 42nd Street near Bryant Park fires the power plant. Rather than waste the exhaust from that combustion, the system feeds it into a boiler that produces steam to heat and cool the tower.

But that equipment, known as a heat recovery steam generator, is not always sufficient. When it is not, a gas-fired backup system produces additional steam to help with the heating or cooling.

Until now, Con Edison had been giving the building a discount on the gas used by the backup system. But after another customer proposed using a similar system, Con Edison executives said they should not have been applying that discount to the Bank of America Tower. The lower rate is only for gas used to generate electricity, relieving some burden on the citywide grid, not for producing steam, they said.

“If the machine is being used to do essentially the same thing as a boiler would, we think that is not eligible for this rate because it’s not helping with the electric system,” Margarett Jolly, manager of distributed generation for Con Edison, said in an interview on Tuesday.

She said a decision by the regulators in Durst’s favor would set a precedent just as in-building power generation is catching on in the city and could shift more cost onto other customers. Durst estimated that the loss of the discount would cost the building $86,129 per year.

The developer likened the billing dispute to the one that it took to the commission in November. Durst said then that Con Ed’s overestimation of the building’s peak demand for electricity had resulted in improper charges of more than $290,000. The regulators agreed, but Con Edison has asked them to reconsider.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/10/nyregion/con-ed-is-accused-of-overcharging-in-midtown-skyscraper.html

C40 Partners with Global Cool Cities Alliance to Tackle ‘Heat Island Effect’ in Cities

The urban ‘heat island effect’ is a term perhaps little known outside policy circles, but the phenomenon will be familiar to city dwellers the world over. Cities are up to eight degrees Celsius warmer than rural areas; this is because built environments absorb more of the sun’s heat, while also emitting heat from air conditioning and other building energy use. Warmer temperatures brought by climate change exacerbate the issue – and its knock-on effects on local air quality – posing a serious threat to the health and well-being of urban populations.

To tackle this issue, C40 has partnered with the Global Cool Cities Alliance to advance policies and actions in cities that increase the solar reflectance of building roofs and pavements. These measures tend to be low-cost, for example coating a roof surface white, but are highly effective, making them a viable solution for emerging cities in developing regions. By cooling cities, we not only reduce climate risks, but also cut greenhouse gas emissions through lower energy demand.

“C40 is excited about collaborating with the Global Cool Cities Alliance, a leader in its field, which brings a wealth of knowledge and experience, as well as a comprehensive tool-kit for tackling the heat island effect in global cities. Through our partnership, we will go far in helping C40 cities develop solution-oriented approaches to lowering urban temperatures”, said C40’s JT McLain who is leading the creation of a global network of C40 cities focused on this issue.

There is a great opportunity for knowledge sharing and collaboration among C40 cities – learning from the experiences of early-adopting cities and accelerating the worldwide dissemination of successful strategies to mitigate urban heat islands.

New York City has taken a comprehensive approach that includes volunteer efforts, a law requiring that new roofs be cool, and a program to monitor progress and results. To date, the city has coated more than 3.2M square feet of rooftops across 388 buildings and engaged nearly 4,000 volunteers. It estimates that every 1,000 square feet of coated rooftop reduces CO2 emissions by 1 ton; and these efforts could save residents $100 million per year in energy costs alone by reducing urban temperatures by as much as 1 degree. New Delhi recently announced that most new flat roofs would have to be reflective in order to qualify for a building permit. Other cities such as Houston, London, and Tokyo have also undertaken measures to reduce the impact of urban heat islands.

“These local efforts have a global impact,” said Kurt Shickman, Executive Director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance. The warming effect of 500 coal power plants-worth of carbon dioxide emissions can be cancelled by transitioning to white roofs where it makes economic sense to do so. Reducing urban heat with cool surfaces helps “These local efforts have a global impact,” said Kurt Shickman, Executive Director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance. “The warming effect of 500 coal power plants-worth of carbon dioxide emissions can be cancelled by transitioning to white roofs where it makes economic sense to do so. Reducing urban heat with cool surfaces helps mitigate the effects of climate change while making our cities more resilient, enjoyable, and healthy. We are very excited to support C40 cities’ efforts to deploy this strategy.”

The two organizations have already begun to work together. This week, they are co-presenting at a the Cool Buildings and Community Conference in New Delhi, India, hosted by the US Department of Energy and the Indian Bureau of Energy Efficiency, and drawing cities from the region to share best practices and experience. Going forward, C40 and the Global Cool Cities Alliance will provide interested C40 cities the tools and resources to assess the issue at the local level and design successful policies and programs.

http://newswatch.nationalgeographic.com/2012/10/04/c40-partners-with-global-cool-cities-alliance-to-tackle-heat-island-effect-in-cities/

LEED rating system for green building grows into global phenomenon

By Dana Hull

San Jose Mercury News

10/01/2012

Twelve years ago, the U.S. Green Building Council launched a rating system called LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, hoping that architects, engineers, designers and real estate firms would improve energy efficiency and increase the use of recycled materials and nontoxic paint in their projects to win LEED-certified recognition.

Now LEED has grown into a powerful brand and global phenomenon. There are 14,044 LEED-certified commercial projects, covering more than 2 billion square feet, in 140 countries. Another 34,601 projects are in the pipeline. Northern California is home to hundreds of LEED buildings, including San Jose City Hall, San Francisco International Airport's Terminal 2, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and the Oakland Public Library branch on 81st Street.

"Green building is not a curiosity anymore -- it's a huge market," said Aditya Ranade, a senior analyst with Lux Research in Boston. "The green building sector will be a $280 billion global industry by the end of the decade. LEED is dominant around the world, but there are other standards. Malaysia has its own Green Building Index, and China has developed its own three-star-rating system."

The Green Building Council offers four levels of LEED certificates. They range from certified, in which 50 percent of the requirements are met, to platinum, in which at least 80 percent are met. Facebook's data center in Prineville, Ore., for example, achieved LEED gold status.

But as LEED has grown and green building technology evolves, so has the need to update the rating system. The Green Building Council, a nonprofit with 14,000 member companies, on Tuesday will release proposed changes known as LEED v4 that member companies can comment on. The draft changes, which will be subject to a public comment period through Dec. 10, include increased technical rigor for energy performance and new categories that focus on integrated design, life cycle analysis of materials used and issues like indoor air quality.

"In order for LEED to be relevant, it has to evolve," said council spokeswoman Ashley Katz. "In 2000, people didn't know what low VOC (volatile organic compounds) paint was. Now it's what everyone uses."

Lux Capital notes that venture capitalists have pumped more than $4 billion into green building since 2000. Several Silicon Valley companies, including digital lighting startups Redwood Systems and Adura Technologies, are considered ripe acquisition targets for larger companies focusing on building sensors and controls.

The original idea behind LEED was to make buildings more energy efficient and reduce the carbon footprint of the built environment. But LEED-certified buildings, which are often filled with natural sunlight and access to fresh air, have proved to be popular with employees, improving concentration and boosting productivity.

Hospitals, schools and universities are increasingly turning to LEED standards: The University of California has 100 LEED-certified facilities, followed by Harvard, which has 75. And leading companies increasingly see LEED-certified buildings as a way to recruit top talent.

In June, the Green Building Council's Northern California chapter launched the "California Best Buildings Challenge." Thirteen companies, including Adobe Systems (ADBE), Genentech, Google (GOOG), Prudential Real Estate Investors, SAP and Zynga, have signed on and committed to a 20 percent reduction in energy, water and waste by 2014.

"Improving the environmental performance of our buildings not only helps us reduce waste, save energy and water and improve indoor air quality, but also positively impacts the health and productivity of our employees around the world," David Radcliffe, vice president of real estate and workplace services at Google, said in a statement. "Through our early participation in the California Best Buildings Challenge, we hope to inspire companies of all shapes and sizes to implement innovative approaches to reducing their environmental footprint."

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_21673213/leed-rating-system-green-building-grows-into-global

Debunking LA’s Urban Legend: “Green” McMansions

10.01.2012

DICK PLATKIN

City Watch

WHERE WE LIVE - New York might have alligators roaming its sewer system, but LA can now boast of its own urban legend: “green” McMansions.  Yes, that’s right; in Los Angeles, McMansions, those boxy, oversized, energy-demanding suburban houses plopped into the middle of older neighborhoods are officially considered to be sustainable development.

How could this be?  After all, McMansions require huge amounts of energy to assemble their building materials and move them to job site.  Furthermore, the houses themselves are massive, which means enormous heating and air conditioning bills, even if their windows are double-paned, their walls padded with extra insulation, and their restaurant-sized refrigerators and stoves Energy Star rated.

Then we need to consider their multiple bathrooms and heated outdoor pools and spas, the most energy intensive features of modern houses.

Other McMansion features also have their detrimental environmental effects.  During demolition they release dust and asbestos into the air.  After construction, their large patios, pools, spas, and double driveways reduce natural open space.  Combined with their elimination of parkway trees and landscaping for driveway cuts, the cumulative result is a heat island with less penetration of rainwater.

Last, but certainly not least, we need to factor in their transportation system.  All McMansions are built on single-family residential lots located away from bus stops and transit stations.  This is why McMansion residents rely on their cars to get around; the only difference being that most of their vehicles are large, thirsty SUVs.

Given this environmental profile, some advanced jurisdictions, like Marin County, require a full energy audit of all new houses larger than 3,500 square feet.  Many other cities, like West Hollywood, simply restrict the size of R-1 homes to prevent McMansions.

But, certainly not in Los Angeles where the treatment of McMansions has raced in the opposite direction.  Our city government offers a “green” incentive to contractors so they can super-size their McMansions.  Finally, all this is done through a misnamed ordinance, the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance.  It purports to stop mansionization, but, in fact, does exactly the opposite.

Just like the Patriot Act, that curbs civil liberties, the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, that stops the regulation of derivatives, and the Farm Dust Regulation Prevention Act of 2011 that bars the EPA from regulating soot, the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance -- despite it name -- is deliberately filled with enough exemptions and bonuses to permit McMansions to still be built by-right in most of Los Angeles.

Since 2008, after two years of detailed research and preparation by the Department of City Planning, public hearings and adoption by the City Council, and then signed by Mayor, mansionizers still have a free rein in most of Los Angeles.  This is why they are building McMansions at an accelerated rate as market conditions improve.

This fraud was deliberately and carefully crafted as follows:  Unlike large lots, the 77 percent of the LA’s single-family lots zoned R-1 grant homes have a Floor Area Ratio (FAR) of .5.  This means that in Los Angeles houses built on a typical 6000 square foot R-1 lot begin at 3000 square feet, already a thousand square feet larger than the average R-1 home.  Then, if the contractor adds such green features as extra insulation, double-paned windows, and new appliances, they get an additional 600 square feet through a 20 percent “green” LEED bonus, for a total of 3,600 square feet.

After that, the McMansions' attached garages, which are often surreptitiously used as play rooms or storage, are exempted for an additional 400 square feet.  This increases the McMansion total to 4,000 square feet.  Next are the exemptions for high entryways and semi-enclosed decks and balconies.  They legally raise the total to 4,350 square feet.  In some cases slip-shod plan check and inspections appear to allow even more massive structures.

Voila.  These tricks result in the same McMansions that were built before the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance was prepared and adopted under the pretense that it would stop McMansions.

How easy would it be fix this fraud?  The answer is that it is simple.  A minor amendment to the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance would stop mansionization in its tracks.  If R-1 lots were treated like large lots, and their by-right FAR became .35, most of the work would be done.

To put some frosting on the cake, if the exemptions and bonuses, especially the “green” bonus or the garage exemption, which are spurious to begin with, were ratcheted down to 900 square feet, McMansions would then be limited to 3000 square feet.  This is the size of the largest existing homes in most R-1 neighborhoods.

But the real questions are not technical because municipalities all across the United States have devised many effective legislative and administrative procedures to stop mansionization, such as design and environmental review.

In Los Angeles, the real question is political.  Do we have any elected officials who are willing to show leadership and prevent vast swaths of Los Angeles’s residential neighborhoods from being quickly wrecked by speculators bulldozing charming older homes and then building and flipping McMansions?

(Dick Platkin is a city planning consultant who teaches sustainable city planning at USC’s Price School of Social Policy.  He is a CityWatch contributor and can be reached atrhplatkin@yahoo.com) 

http://www.citywatchla.com/lead-stories/3843-debunking-las-urban-legend-green-mcmansions

Urban Green and the Cost of Progress: A Counterintuitive Book on Sustainability

James Grundvig

Huffington Post

Neil Chambers' book, Urban Green: Architecture for the Future, opens with the author gleefully test-riding a new e-bike on the streets of downtown Manhattan. Believing it would change the world, he rushed home to write a review on Ultra Motor's A2B electrical bicycle. As he finished the piece, doubt began to creep into his mind, until it prodded him to ask more profound questions about sustainability.

His vision that e-bikes would flood the streets of New York and San Francisco, akin to the swarms of bicycles zipping around cities in Vietnam, has not come to fruition since that day in 2009.

What happened? In a word, "green."

Like many of today's misused buzzwords, such as "cloud" and "collaboration," what Mr. Chambers would soon discover there is no a silver bullet to solve our energy, waste, and environmental problems. We simply can't accelerate into the future.

Change, like all manmade processes, takes time. It requires iterations, trials and errors, tinkering, and refinement before moving to the next phase of development. Even then, unintended consequences of successful end products have come back to challenge, if not haunt us.

Take the city of Youngstown, Ohio. It has seen its population collapse since the 1970s. As Chambers notes, with more than half its residents gone, today's city sewer system can't handle the lack of flow from the underutilized toilets, sinks, and showers. The city is now forced to pump clean water through the pipes to keep them from clogging.

Such nuggets not only populate the pages of this unflinching look at the human debris trail from our modern existence, but it does so convincingly that it will give the reader pause to contemplate our full impact on the earth, its myriad ecosystems, and the larger environment as a whole.

Had Mr. Chambers simply railed against all that is bad with modernity, he might have come off as an alarmist. But the second half of his book is brilliant. He pops bubbles in the euphoria of green building practices and sustainable design. Then he goes one step further by offering a grand version of what sustainable can be. But he feels that bright future, where we live in harmony with species and promote biodiversity, won't occur for another century.

The Challenge of a Sustainable Future

Progress is slow; change can't come fast enough. Not when the world, mired in the global economic slump, still produces more than 500,000 buildings a year. And all of them will consume massive amounts of energy and material, leave scars with their carbon footprint sprawl, while further encroach on habitats, wetlands, and grasslands.

Can earth's species and the environment sustain rapid growth when another 5 billion people come online in the global population of 2060? It's hard to say. But water wars are already taking place between states in drought-stricken southeast and southwest.

"Sustainable development is not a new concept. Rather, it is the latest expression of a long-standing ethic involving people's' relationships with the environment and the current generation's responsibilities to future generations," wrote Mir M. Ali, PhD, and Paul J. Armstrong for the University of Illinois in a white paper "Green Design of Residential High-Rise Buildings in Livable Cities."

That ethic involves three components: Environmental, economics, and socio-cultural.

But Mr. Chambers would only partly agree with that thesis, since he sees how green building design hasn't gone far enough. Tall buildings and megacities will push many animal species to extinction.

In chapter "The Cities of Tomorrow," he writes:

"If the goal is to have all buildings around the world save energy in accordance with LEED (Leadership Energy & Environmental Design) guidelines--say, the 14% it mandates--the overall savings is even less. A mere 3% reduction would be realized on the global scale."

That sobering fact, and we are nowhere near that optimum state, hits hard as hundreds of fossil fuel power plants come online this decade in India and China alone to provide more energy that will be consumed by the growing economic engine.

History and Habitat Fragmentation

What works in Urban Green is Neil Chambers' extensive research. It's deep, used just enough, and interwoven into his lively prose, which flows between nuanced detail (coal power plants waste 70 percent of energy due to inefficiencies in burning) and a broader macro view.

The book also does a good job of using life-defining moments through human history, from the collapsed civilizations of Hopi and Anasazi tribes of America's southwest, due to deforestation and to the 1973 oil embargo, which kicked off the green era in the energy-savings movement.

For every new roadway paved or community built in rural areas, another slice cuts into some habitat or wetland, impacting too many species, putting more stress on wildlife, while shrinking livable space and breeding grounds. Dams and trying to unnaturally quicken the flow of rivers by straightening out their natural bends and turns does more damage than we realize.

Glass in windows kills birds more often than big wind turbines unwittingly installed in migratory paths. In Mr. Chambers' view architecture needs to be blown up and radically reinvented.

In reaching the author via email, he wrote:

"One of the driving forces for me was to express my vision for the future and show that it is practical and achievable. I would like to see humanity move closer to being a keystone species in the next century. This would mean that we'd have to completely revamp the way we design and build our society from infrastructure to buildings. Redesign, well, everything."

Keystone Species Is Key to the Future

"Urban Green inspired me to push harder toward the goal of having us be keystone species. Two ways I'm trying to practice this is with my work with oyster restoration and building design. My company has been a major partner with an oyster project in Myrtle Beach, SC," he explained. "Over the last four years, the team of designers, biologists, policymakers, business owners, and residents has restored oysters to the large Withers Estuary. Since the book was published, we have been awarded funding to expand our work to two new estuaries in the region. We are now starting an oyster shell-recycling program."

On the future:

"I see buildings change along with how we occupy them. The building industry is seeing the enormous benefits from green building, while also seeing that radical changes are needed to curb energy consumption and reduce our carbon footprint. Cities will become very green places -- both in terms of what green means today, and, literally, being the place trees and wilderness grows.

I think the goal for us moving forward isn't to create a sustainable society, but to become keystone species on this planet. The difference is fundamental. Sustainability hopes to teach people how to have a smaller impact on earth. Being a keystone species means that the byproduct of our lives is a more rich and interconnected natural world. I believe this would lead to a more advanced society."

In reading Urban Green, growth can now be equated to a ticking time bomb. Something in society and nature has to give. But what? Other species? Us? Or can people as the keystone species lead the way to a better, truly sustainable world?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-grundvig/urban-green-and-the-cost-_b_1930449.html