Urban energy density

Interesting and impressive analysis.

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

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

Twin Cities to put urban heat island to the test

A University of Minnesota project will examine urban heat with dozens of sensors, possibly leading to ways to reduce it.

• Article by: BILL McAULIFFE , Star Tribune 
• Updated: November 4, 2011 - 11:35 PM

It's long been known that urban areas generate and hold heat. But now two University of Minnesota researchers are trying to uncover the devilish details about the phenomenon, to help develop ways to reduce energy use and protect human and animal health.

Atmospheric science professors Peter Snyder and Tracy Twine are looking to place 200 temperature sensors around the Twin Cities -- in grassy back yards and bricked-and-paved downtowns -- where the devices will measure temperature every few minutes for the next four years. Snyder and Twine hope their results will show in detail where the metro area's warmest and coolest spots are, and perhaps why. They also hope to reveal the dynamics of urban heat in ways only guessed at until now -- tracking, for example, the differences between the temperatures of surfaces and the temperatures of air, and the southeastward drift of urban heat on prevailing winds.

Beyond that, they envision their study as pushing city planners, architects and others to find ways to make urban areas cooler, particularly in warm-weather months.

"We have a fairly good idea what causes urban heat islands," Snyder said. "I think the interesting part comes when you put that together with the impacts, which are poorly understood, on the urban ecosystem, energy consumption and economics."

Costs of urban heat

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the annual mean air temperature of a city with 1 million people or more can be about 2 to 5 degrees warmer than its surroundings. In the evening, the difference can be as much as 22 degrees. That means higher energy demand and utility bills for air conditioning, greater threats to the health of people unable to escape the heat, and increased risks to aquatic life due to warmed-up runoff. More than 700 deaths were attributed to the effects of record heat in Chicago in July 1995.

Snyder and Twine, whose project is funded by the University of Minnesota's Institute on the Environment, aren't limiting their research to the Twin Cities. They want to use satellite data to develop fine-grained pictures of heat in 100 cities around the world, in hopes of being able to determine the effects of landscape, land use, transportation, industry and other factors on temperature.

Cities occupy a small share of the landscape, "but we're concerned with them because that's where most people live," Twine said.

Heat waves and other phenomena "will continue to occur," Twine noted, "but when they occur in urban areas that already have higher temperatures, it can exacerbate the conditions."

The next step will be for policymakers and builders to figure out how to reduce urban heat. In the Twin Cities, vegetated "green" roofs at Target Center, Central Library and Minneapolis City Hall are major examples of efforts to convert what could be large, heat-absorbing surfaces into cooler ones. But there are other ideas out there that could change the way cities look.

White rooftops

Looking out the window of her Oakland, Calif., office recently, Lisa Gartland, a heat island mitigation consultant, could see white rooftops, now required under California law to reflect heat, rather than absorb it, ideally reducing air-conditioning needs. She has also been trying to persuade developers and even road builders that asphalt need not be black. With pigment, it can even be white, she said.

"Part of it is changing people's ideas of what a city should look like," Gartland said. "Lots of education is needed -- most of it at the level of contractors, municipalities and architects. "

The city of Sacramento realized a savings of $26 million in 1997 through cooling techniques -- mostly from tree planting, said city planner Erik DeKok. More recently the city has required that 50 percent of all parking lot surfaces be shaded. DeKok said developers have taken that requirement beyond trees and have been furnishing parking lots with carports, whose roofs in turn are covered with energy-generating solar cells.

Grass, trees and vines may be the simplest materials for reducing urban heat, Gartland said. Phoenix is one city that is cooler than its surroundings because people have planted so much greenery in what had been a desert, Gartland said. That isn't a panacea there, however, because the city also has water-use issues.

In the Twin Cities, residents might want to hang on to every degree they can in the winter, Snyder acknowledged. And Kathy Klink, a University of Minnesota geography professor who has studied urban heat in the winter, found in a recent study that Minneapolis in winter is already slightly more than 1 degree warmer than surrounding areas, because of a combination of heat from buildings and traffic, as well as plowed pavement.

But heat mitigation strategies would be unlikely to cool the cities in the winter, Klink said. Short days and reflective snow cover both limit the amount of radiation the Twin Cities might absorb and would probably overwhelm any heat-reduction efforts.

Urban American Gothic

Snyder and Klink are relying on volunteer property owners to accept a thermometer, from which students will periodically download data for the next four years. About 50 have been placed so far.

Snyder noted that a digital, urban temperature-reading network is likely to have different demographics from the far-flung collections of farmers and stay-at-homes in the standard picture of weather observers. In fact, the project's title, "Island in the Sun," was "loosely borrowed" from that of a song by the alternative rock group Weezer, Snyder noted. Twine added that being home to jot down numbers every day -- after milking cows, presumably -- won't be a requirement.

"People are busy. But this is easy. You just leave it alone," she said.

http://www.startribune.com/local/133280613.html?page=all&prepage=1&c=y#continue

Green roofs are taking root in American cities

Other cities push to take Chicago's crown

By Lisa Anderson | Chicago Tribune correspondent

September 19, 2008

Workers plant a green roof atop the parking garage of ParkView Condominiums in the East River neighborhood of Chicago. (Tribune photo by Zbigniew Bzdak / September 9, 2008)

NEW YORK — When asphalt-weary American city dwellers yearn for a bit of greenery these days, more and more of them head for the roof.

The concept of planted green roofs, which gained early popularity in Chicago, is beginning to take root in New York and other cities.

Construction of green roofs grew 30 percent in North America last year, according to the third annual Green Roof Market Industry Survey by the Toronto-based non-profit group Green Roofs for Healthy Cities. For the third time, Chicago topped the list of U.S. and Canadian cities in terms of square footage installed in one year. Although it polls only members of its group, the Green Roofs survey estimates it reflects about 60 percent of all green roof industry activity in the U.S. and Canada.

Due to cost, green roofs appear primarily on public and commercial buildings, such as the new Bank of America tower in Manhattan or the Apple Store on Chicago's Michigan Avenue. But they also are beginning to sprout on single family homes and other private dwellings.

Among Chicago's other high-profile buildings with green roofs are City Hall, Millennium Park, the Chicago Center for Green Technology, and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum.

What's in there?

Essentially composed of vegetation — often sedums and grasses—planted in soil or a lightweight growing medium above a waterproof membrane and drainage system, green roofing is more than a garden but offers the same aesthetic appeal. It also can assist in reducing storm water runoff and resultant water pollution, reducing energy costs, cooling urban air, improving air quality, extending roof longevity and even preserving habitats for plants, insects and birds—not to mention enhancing real estate value.

"Green roofs are a wonderful technology. They have the upside of handling storm water very well but the downside of being very expensive," said Rohit Aggarwala, director of the New York City Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability and chief architect of PlaNYC, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's environmentally focused program for preparing the city to absorb an estimated 1 million new residents by 2030.

Nonetheless, for the first time, New York—specifically the borough of Brooklyn—made it into the top five cities for green roofs last year. But with just more than 100,000 square feet of green roofing installed in 2007, it still lagged far behind the 517,633 square feet constructed in Chicago.

That may change due to a new law championed by Bloomberg and signed last month by New York Gov. David Paterson to encourage the construction and maintenance of green roofs in New York City. Under a pilot program that begins Jan. 1 and expires in 2013 unless extended, the law provides a one-year property tax credit of $4.50 per square foot of green roof to building owners who install them on more than 50 percent of their available roof space.

" Mayor Daley got it before anybody," said Steven Peck, founder and president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, referring to Chicago's Richard Daley, who instituted a grant program for green roofs and turned the City Hall roof green in 2001. "New York, I hope, will surpass Chicago in a couple of years because of this new tax incentive measure."

New York's tax credit program, believed to be the first such state-approved green roof initiative, is designed to defray about 35 percent of the cost of installing a green roof on a standard roof, according to the text of the bill.

The benefits

In general, green roofs cost about twice as much as standard ones but offer at least double the life span because they are less vulnerable to the wear and tear of temperature extremes, according to Stuart Gaffin, a research scientist at the Center for Climate Systems Research at New York's Columbia University.

There is no question that green roofs, which soak up and slowly release large amounts of rainwater, help prevent the storm runoff that causes water pollution in many cities with combined sewer overflow systems like New York's and Chicago's. When the volume of storm water in the sewer system overtakes the capacity of water treatment systems, the excess mixture of rain and raw wastewater from toilets and other sources is diverted into rivers and other waterways.

It also is clear that green roofs can help reduce the higher temperatures in cities, called urban heat islands. Less certain are the actual energy savings realized by the green roofs' ability to provide passive cooling and reduce heat loss in buildings.

To try to quantify those and other potential benefits, such as improvement in air quality, Columbia's Gaffin has embarked on an intensive monitoring program at a new green roof, featuring 21,000 plants covering more than a quarter-acre, just completed at a New York City facility owned by the power utility Con Edison.

Getting hard data on the efficacy of green roofs is key to moving the young industry beyond pilot programs to policy positions, according to several experts.

"That's the biggest obstacle," Peck said. "We have to convince policymakers, regulators and engineers that green infrastructure is worthy of investment on its own merit in terms of its ability to deliver the goods."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/features/lifestyle/green/chi-green_roofssep19,0,8529.story

Tuesday, September 9, 2008 - 12:27 PM PDT

Scientists develop formula to calculate CO2 savings from 'cool roofs'

Sacramento Business JournalGreen may be the color of money, but white could prove to be the color of savings when it comes to roofs.

California scientists announced today that they have developed a formula to calculate how much carbon dioxide (CO2) can be offset by using more reflective surfaces, such as rooftops, in urban settings.

“White roofs can cut a building’s energy use by 20 percent and save consumers money,” California Energy Commissioner Art Rosenfeld said in a prepared statement. “The potential energy savings in the U.S. is in excess of $1 billion annually. Additionally, by conserving electricity, we are emitting less CO2 from power plants,” he added.

The announcement was made at the California Energy Commission’s fifth annual Climate Change Research Conference at the Sacramento Convention Center this week.

In a study to be published in the scientific journal Climate Change, Rosenfeld, along withLawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Scientists Hashem Akbari and Surabi Menon, estimates that replacing nonreflective, dark roofing materials with white ones on an average house with 1,000 square feet of roof surface would result in an equivalent CO2 offset of 10 metric tons annually. With an offset value of $25 per metric ton, according to European CO2 markets, that could be worth $250.

Scientists have long known that putting white roofs on homes and buildings is a simple and effective way to reflect the sun’s rays. Similarly, cool-colored pavements aid in the reduction of “urban heat islands” which contribute to global warming, according to the energy commission.

Since 2005, commercial buildings with flat roofs in California have been required to have white roofs. Beginning in 2009, new residential roofs and retrofit constructions in California will be required to have “cool-colored” roofs which reflect more of the sun’s rays than current roofing materials of the same color.

In an effort to increase the use of reflective roofing and pavement materials, Akbari, Menon and Rosenfeld propose an international campaign to organize 40 of the world’s largest cities in tropical and temperate zones to develop programs to require white roofs and “cool pavements” when roofs are initially constructed and pavements installed.

The projected estimate for worldwide CO2 emissions in 2025 is 37 billion metric tons; a proposed global CO2 offset for cool roofs and cool pavements would be 44 billion metric tons, valued at more than $1 billion, and enough to offset more than one year of the total global CO2 emissions, according to the study.

“This idea of a ‘cool cities’ campaign could lead to significant energy savings, improved air quality, reduce the heat island effect in summer, and more importantly, cool the globe,” said Akbari in a prepared statement.

“This simple and effective idea can organize the world into taking measured steps to mitigate global warming. Our findings will help city leaders and urban planners quantify the amount of CO2 they can offset using white roofs and cool pavements.”

http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/stories/2008/09/08/daily28.html

Hot World? Blame Cities.

By Joel Kotkin and Ali Modarres
Sunday, October 14, 2007; B01

It's all the suburbs' fault. You know, everything -- traffic congestion, overweight kids, social alienation. Oh, and lest we forget, global warming and rising energy costs, too.

That latest knock against the burbs has caught on widely. With their multiplying McMansions and exploding Explorers, the burbs are the reason we're paying so much for gas and heating oil and spewing all those emissions that are heating up the atmosphere -- or so a host of urban proponents tells us. It's time to ditch the burbs and go back to the city. New York, Boston, Chicago -- these densely packed metropolises are "models of environmentalism," declares John Norquist, the former Milwaukee mayor who now heads the Congress for a New Urbanism.
But before you sell your ranch house in Loudoun County and plunk down big bucks for that cozy condo in the District, take a closer look at the claims of big cities' environmental superiority. Here's one point that's generally relegated to academic journals and scientific magazines: Highly concentrated urban areas can contribute to overall warming that extends beyond their physical boundaries.

Studies in cities around the world -- Beijing, Rome, London, Tokyo, Los Angeles and more -- have found that packed concentrations of concrete, asphalt, steel and glass can contribute to a phenomenon known as "heat islands" far more than typically low-density, tree-shaded suburban landscapes. As an October 2006 article in the New Scientist highlighted, "cities can be a couple of degrees warmer during the day and up to 6¿ C [11 degrees Fahrenheit] warmer at night." Recent studies out of Australia and Greece, as well as studies on U.S. cities, have also documented this difference in warming between highly concentrated central cities and their surrounding areas.

This is critical as we deal with what may well be a period of prolonged warming. Urban heat islands may not explain global warming, but they do bear profound environmental, social, economic and health consequences that reach beyond city boundaries. A study of Athens that appeared this year in the journal Climatic Change suggested that the ecological footprint of the urban heat island is 1 1/2 to two times larger than the city's political borders.

Further, urban heat islands increase the need for air conditioning, which has alarming consequences for energy consumption in our cities. Since air conditioning systems themselves generate heat, this produces a vicious cycle. Some estimate that the annual cost of the energy consumption caused by the urban heat island could exceed $1 billion.

This is not to say that big buildings can't be made more energy efficient by using new techniques, such as high-tech skin designs, special construction materials to reduce energy consumption, green roofs and passive cooling. But one big problem is that making large buildings green also makes them much more expensive, so that they're less and less affordable for middle-class and working-class families.

Low-density areas, on the other hand, lend themselves to much less expensive and more environmentally friendly ways of reducing heat. It often takes nothing more than double-paned windows to reduce the energy consumption of a two- or three-story house. Shade can bring it down even further: A nice maple can cool a two-story house, but it can't quite do the same for a 10-story apartment building.

Focusing on the suburbs has the added virtue of bringing change to where the action is. Over the past 40 years, the percentage of people opting to live in cities has held steady at 10 to 15 percent. And since 2000, more than 90 percent of all metropolitan growth -- even in a legendary new planners' paradise such as Portland, Ore. -- has taken place in the suburbs.
So we shouldn't be trying to wipe out suburbs. Even with changes in government policy, it would be hard to slow their growth. Europe has strict zoning and highly subsidized mass transit -- policies that are supposed to promote denser development -- but even so, their cities are suburbanizing much like American ones. "Sprawl cities," notes Shlomo Angel, an urban planning expert at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University, also are becoming ever more common throughout much of Asia and the developing world.

Here's an Earth-to-greens message: Instead of demonizing the suburbs, why not build better, greener ones and green the ones we already have?

One approach might be to embrace what one writer, Wally Siembab, has dubbed "smart sprawl." Encouraging this sort of development will require a series of steps: reducing commuters' gas consumption with more fuel-efficient cars, dispersing work to centers close to where workers live and promoting continued growth in home-based work. We'll also have to protect open spaces by monitoring development and establishing land conservation based on public and private funding, the latter coming from developers who wish to work in suburbs.
Building what we call "an archipelago of villages" seems far more reasonable than returning to industrial-age cities and mass transit systems. For the most part, the automobile has left an indelible imprint on our cities, and in our ever-more-dispersed economy, it has become a necessity.

This is not to say that transit of some kind -- perhaps more cost-efficient and flexible dedicated busways, or local shuttles -- can't play a role in serving those who can't or would rather not drive. But short of a crippling fuel shortage or some other catastrophic event, it's highly unlikely that we'll ever see the widespread success of heavily promoted strategies such as dense, transit-oriented developments or the wholesale abandonment of the suburbs.

We can accommodate our need for space and still leave ample room for a flourishing natural environment, as well as for agriculture. By preserving open space and growing in an environmentally friendly manner, we can provide a break from the monotony of concrete and glass and create ideal landscapes for wildlife preservation.

Such notions -- developed before the term "green" existed -- go back to a host of visionaries such as Ebenezer Howard, James Rouse, Frederick Law Olmsted, Frank Lloyd Wright and Victor Gruen. And they have already been put into practice. Starting in the 1960s in his development of Valencia, north of Los Angeles, Gruen envisioned a "suburbia redeemed" that mixed elements of the urban and the rural.

Valencia's elaborate network of 28 miles of car-free paseos -- paths designed for pedestrians and bicyclists -- helped make the natural environment accessible to residents. Gruen also recognized the commercial appeal of such an environment. A 1992 ad for the development featured a smiling girl saying: "I can be in my classroom one minute and riding my horse the next. I don't know whether I'm a city or country girl."

Similarly, The Woodlands, a sprawling development 27 miles from downtown Houston, is a model for a greener suburbia in a region not much celebrated for its environmental values. The Woodlands name, said its former president, Roger Galatas, was seen not as "just real estate hype" but as part of a plan to allow development without destroying forest lands and natural drainage.

In the Washington area, Reston and Columbia, the latter the brainchild of legendary Maryland developer James Rouse, have become far more than mere bedroom communities; they have become places, or villages, in themselves.

All these places evoke a more environmentally friendly suburbanism, which also can be promoted in areas that did not benefit from the foresight of a Gruen or a Rouse. Town centers, revived older shopping districts, even re-engineered malls can all be part of a greener, more energy-efficient future in a large number of communities. And this process is already well underway.

Dragooning Americans into a dense urban lifestyle that's attractive to only a relatively small minority isn't the best way to address concerns about energy and resource depletion or global warming. Instead, we need to take gradual, sensible, realistic steps to improve the increasingly dispersed places where most of us choose to live and work.

Joel Kotkin is a fellow at Chapman University and author of "The City:
A Global History." Ali Modarres is associate director of the Pat Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University at Los Angeles.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/12/AR2007101201884_pf.html

More people, more concrete, and lots more heat in Phoenix
An 'urban heat island' effect, fed by the city's growth, is trapping heat and making temperatures soar.

Faye Bowers
The Christian Science Monitor
August 30, 2007

PHOENIX

Arizona is poised to take another record. It's about as unwelcome as a couple of other firsts – No. 1 in the nation for most illegal immigrants crossing the border, or No. 1 in the nation for identity thefts. This "one" directly corresponds with another No. 1 – its status as the fastest-growing state in the nation. While news of global warming becomes as common as the wheeze of air conditioners here, Phoenix is fighting a different, if related, problem. In part because of heavy growth – particularly in the Phoenix metro area – heat is being reflected, trapped, and absorbed in concrete, rooftops, and a maze of buildings that blocks wind. At the same time, there's little vegetation to absorb the heat, and high energy usage generates more.

It's called the "urban heat-island effect," and whatever the impact of global warming here, this phenomenon is sending the mercury rising. On Tuesday, Phoenix tied the all-time record of 28 days at 110 degrees or greater in one summer, reached in 1979 and again in 2002. If the temperature rises to 110 degrees one more day this year, Phoenix will set a record.

"We're forecasting 111 for Wednesday, 109 for Thursday, and 110 again on Friday," says Keith Kincaid, a forecaster with the National Weather Service here. But if the temperature doesn't hit 110 on those days, he adds, "we have had 110-degree days in September before."

This summer is hot elsewhere, to be sure. But in few places can you fry an egg on a sidewalk as quickly and thoroughly as you can here. And you'd have to fry a lot of them: Experts say the main reason the number of 110-degree-or-higher days has risen so steadily – and steeply – is rapid growth. In the 1950s, for example, the temperature rose to 110 or higher an average of 6.7 days per year. In the 1960s it was 10.3 days per year; in the 1980s it was 19 days per year, and in the 2000s (through Aug. 21, 2007), 21.9 per year, according to the National Weather Service.

For Westerners living here, it's about as much fun as an earthquake, a drought, or, well, a 110-degree day. But it does have people's attention. True, it's not as difficult as this summer's devastating floods or fires elsewhere in the US. Many people have swimming pools, and most have air conditioning. But that, too, adds to the problem of the heat-island effect, experts say.

"Every time you use that mechanical air conditioner, you're throwing hot air back into the environment," says Jay Golden, an expert on urban climate and energy at Arizona State University in Tempe. "It's not only the sun and the pavement, but we're generating more heat because of human adaptation." And that's where global warming comes in: The hotter it is, the more we need to cool off; and the more we try to cool off – with air conditioning, for instance – the more heat-trapping greenhouse gases and "waste energy" we create, feeding both phenomena.

No escape in the Phoenix nights

The lows at night are rising, too. Three decades ago, the nighttime low here was about 30 degrees cooler than the days. Today, it is on average only 20 degrees cooler. That's because cities are slower to cool off at night, retaining their heat in roads and buildings. Dr. Golden points to differing temperatures between downtown Phoenix and a rural weather station at the Casa Grande National Monument, about 50 miles southeast. In 1950, he says, it was only six degrees warmer in Phoenix than at the Casa Grande Monument. By 2000, the temperature in Phoenix was 12 degrees higher. Now, it is almost 14 degrees warmer in the city than in the adjacent rural areas.

That has a huge impact on water consumption and electricity generation, he says. Researchers in his department recently calculated the correlation between nighttime temperatures and water consumption. "A one-degree nighttime [temperature] increase equals 677 gallons more on average per household per year," he says – due as much to evaporation from pools, irrigation, and agriculture as to human consumption. Golden and his colleagues study these rises in temperatures for urban areas from here to London and Beijing.

"We are trying to do two things," Golden says. "One is to quantify the impacts from this national trend of climate change in the broad context…. Then, we try to provide policymakers sound science and engineering to understand what the impacts are."

Looking toward solutions

Here in the Phoenix area, for example, 40 percent of the heat-island effect is due to paved surfaces, according to Golden. "We're trying to transition to pervious pavement, which would allow for water penetration," he says.
That, he adds, would support the growth of urban vegetation, which is typically removed for new building projects. And urban vegetation planted at intervals, as well as the water pervious pavement retains, would lead to cooler temperatures at night.

"If we were to take all the surfaced parking lots in this city and cover them with 50 percent tree cover," that would significantly decrease the surface temperatures, he says. His department is also studying the survival methods of this area's early inhabitants, such as the Hohokam with their earthen structures.

Today, two-story houses are popular, he says. But what if policymakers were to ban future building of two-story houses – or at least upper floors – in order to make buildings shorter, and less prone to trapping heat. Instead, housing plans could include basements, he says, which would naturally remain cooler – though the prospect of lower levels has long been considered too expensive or difficult, despite the plethora of inground pools. The good news about these rises in temperatures, if there is any, Golden says, is that local governments are beginning to pay attention to how they design cities, how closely they space houses, and how much forestry and agriculture they plan.

Phoenix, for example, is pushing for more open-space parks with trees downtown. And the city of Mesa is offering $500 rebates to residents who convert their yards from lawns to xeriscape, including desert trees that provide canopy shade.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0830/p01s01-wogi.htm

Ontario Government Helps Cities Plant Trees To Fight Climate Change Cleaner Air And Water, Energy Conservation Among Benefits

LONDON, ON, Aug. 22 /CNW/ - The planting of native trees in urban areas means cleaner, healthier cities that are fighting the effects of climate change, Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay announced today. "Trees clean the air and water, provide shade and wind protection, supply habitat for birds and wildlife and make our cities beautiful," said Ramsay.

"Supporting tree planting on publicly accessible land will expand our urban forests and reduce the effects of climate change on Ontario's cities." The province is investing $1 million over two years in a partnership with Evergreen, a national non-profit environmental organization that works with people to create and sustain healthy, natural outdoor spaces in cities. The province-wide program will support the planting of 100,000 trees in urban areas such as parklands, conservation areas, publicly accessible corporate lands and industrial parks, university campuses, hospital grounds, road allowances, boulevards and medians.

Evergreen will grant funds to groups for the purchase of trees native to Ontario, facilitate tree plantings, and provide education and outreach to involve community volunteers and citizens in tree planting. As well, the program will work with existing provincial partners involved in tree planting and environmental initiatives such as stewardship councils for advice and
support.

"Evergreen works with hundreds of communities and schools across Ontario to bring nature back to our cities," says Geoff Cape, executive director, Evergreen. "Evergreen focuses on educating people through direct participation: by planting a tree, individuals can see they are making a difference, which leads them to other ways they can improve their local environment. It's a sustainable model with long-term impact, which is why Evergreen is delighted to partner with the Province of Ontario to address climate change through individual and community action."

Proposals to Evergreen for grants will be required to demonstrate:
- Good matching of tree species to the site, good care of trees after planting, and regular monitoring of planting sites
- Significant numbers of native trees planted
- Engagement of the community in tree planting, and
- For tree planting around buildings, a focus on improving energy conservation, where feasible, through the placement of trees and choice of species to provide shade in summer and sun penetration in winter.

"The planting of urban trees is one more important element in our government's overall plan to fight climate change," said Environment Minister Laurel Broten. "Urban trees capture carbon, improve air quality and help prevent cities from becoming heat islands. It's a simple, natural strategy, yet it benefits us in so many ways over the long term." This is just one more example of how, working together, Ontarians are achieving results in ensuring a healthier natural environment and mitigating the effects of climate change. Other initiatives include:

- Planting 50 million trees in southern Ontario by 2020
- Making $220 million in loans and grants available to help municipalities reduce greenhouse gas emissions by improving and retrofitting buildings
- Setting ambitious but realistic targets to reduce greenhouse gases below 1990 levels - six per cent by 2014, 15 per cent by 2020 and an 80 per cent reduction by 2050.


Backgrounder
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
ADDRESSING CLIMATE CHANGE: URBAN TREE PLANTING PROGRAM

The Ontario government is committed to fighting climate change and greening the province. While 80 per cent of Ontarians live in urban areas, our urban forests are under increasing stress from expanding development, climate change and air pollution. Planting more native trees in Ontario cities will improve air and water quality, increase energy conservation, provide habitat for birds and wildlife, and moderate the urban climate and the stress of urban life. The program will encourage people to plant trees in cities across the province. It will foster a healthier environment while building awareness of the important benefits that trees and the urban forest bring to our daily lives among individuals, families, school groups and community organizations.

The Urban Tree Planting Program
Tree Planting
-------------
- Over a two-year period - 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 - the Ministry of Natural Resources will invest $1 million and partner with the organization Evergreen to enable 100,000 trees to be planted in Ontario's urban green spaces.

- Evergreen is a national, not-for-profit charitable organization whose mission is to bring people and nature together for the benefit of both. Evergreen has distributed nearly $2.5 million in direct grants, in addition to expert assistance, to help transform over 2,800 school grounds and public spaces across Canada.

- Tree planting activities will be done on parklands, school grounds, conservation areas, corporate lands and industrial parks with public access, university campuses, hospital grounds, rooftops and road allowances, boulevards and medians.

- Groups will be invited to submit proposals to Evergreen for funding to buy native trees. The trees will be about one metre tall to help ensure their survival in urban conditions.

Proposals will be assessed using four main criteria:
- commitment to good site-selection, post-planting care and site monitoring
- number of native trees planted
- level of community engagement, and
- improving energy conservation, where feasible, through tree planting activities around buildings that provide shade in the summer and sun in the winter.

- All planting plans must be reviewed by a qualified forester, landscape architect or equivalent professional.

- The program will engage the province's existing partners, such as the Trees Ontario Foundation, and tie into existing provincial initiatives including stewardship councils and the Community Fisheries and Wildlife Involvement Program grants. Evergreen will work with partners to identify suitable native species and to find appropriate sites for urban planting.

- The program is designed to involve people of all ages and backgrounds in planting a tree native to their part of the province.


Education and Outreach
----------------------
- Evergreen will host up to 50 workshops over the two-year period, to build the capacity of environmental stewardship groups, social service agencies, schools and others to plan, implement and steward successful community naturalization projects.

- Evergreen will support a province-wide media campaign to raise
awareness and encourage broad participation.

Contact:
Stuart Mallany
Regional Strategic Development
705-755-3205