Energy Efficiency

As if Tel Aviv doesn’t have enough sand, dust and smog storms already.

Looking out my bedroom window one can see a luscious landscape spanning with five miles of sandy beaches, which will lead, in one direction, to the oldest port on Earth, the Arab municipality of the Jaffa Port.

If one looks in the other direction they will see a giant smoke stack called the Reading Power Station, which is approximately five blocks from my apartment- where public access is limited due to the nasty hazards associated with production.

As if Tel Aviv doesn’t have enough sand, dust and smog storms to deteriorate its air already.

The Station consists of four units with only one working today. The other three have been shutdown slowly but surely since 1967.  The reason for these shutdowns is that over the year’s environmental groups similar to Green Equations have accused the Station of causing severe pollution to the airs of Tel Aviv, which is home to approximately 2.3 million inhabitants.

In 2006 this Station was completely shutdown due to the failure to meet environmental requirements, which resulted in the Stations shift from using fuel oil to natural gases.

The Israeli national government is the force behind this mess of a structure in the center of Tel Aviv. The government wants to increase the Station’s output and then, after, reduce its environmental footprint and keep it where it is.  I wonder how quickly those reductions will take place.

The city of Tel Aviv wants this structure rebuilt outside of the city limits. So the question is, why would a country that cares for its people, in the 1^st-world, want to keep a power plant, knowingly, in a place so harmful for city inhabitants.

These are the questions that continue to boggle the informed.

A country, like Israel, that already spends so much on its inhabitants through military protection, can afford to sprinkle a little more money on the long-run and protect the health and happiness of its citizens.

I say they shutdown Reading Power Station, and turn it in to one giant club, the one thing Tel Aviv may know how to do correctly.

The shipping industry is dirty. Really dirty. Unfortunately, it is also massive, if it were a country it would be the sixth largest in terms of carbon production. Fortunately, change may be coming to the industry soon. With the introduction of a new website by the Carbon War Room to inform people about the environmental impact of different ships and shipping companies.

Check out the website here: http://www.shippingefficiency.org/

Weekly Mulch: Fighting the Joe Millers of the World

by Sarah Laskow, Media Consortium blogger

Joe Miller, Sarah Palin’s choice candidate for one of Alaska’s Senate seats, does not believe in climate change. That didn’t bother Alaska voters: this week, Miller bested Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the state’s Republican primary. If that weren’t worrisome enough, it also emerged that the fossil fuel industry spent eight times more than environmental groups on lobbying in 2009, the year the House passed the climate change bill. It’s been a bad year already for environmental causes, and as the November election edges closer, progressives might want to start working overtime to regain momentum on climate and energy issues.

Murkowski was solidly against the idea of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulating carbon. But she was willing to talk about cap-and-trade programs, and at the very least, she was willing to admit climate change was happening. Depending on how November’s election shakes out, the shift towards climate-denial in Congress may only worsen. A slew of Republican candidates are convinced that, as one put it, “only God knows where our climate is going,” as Care2 reports.

A tougher tomorrow

Current political trends bode badly for the planet. If Congress couldn’t pass climate legislation while are in Democrats control of the House and Senate, there’s little hope that lawmakers will step up when facing opponents who don’t believe in climate change.

Carla Perez has a few ideas about how progressives and environmentalists can fight back — and they begin with accepting that, yes, giving up fossil fuels would mean sacrifice, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. Perez, a program coordinator at social justice group Movement Generation, appeared recently on National Radio Project’s Making Contact and imagined how life would look without fossil fuels:

No iPods. No iPads. No plasma TVs. No motorized individual vehicles. No plastic bags. No pleather boots for $9.99 from Payless…. Then again, no island of plastic twice the size of Texas. No plumes of sulfuric acid over Richmond, California. No skyrocketing rates of cancer and diabetes concentrated in native and people of color communities all over the world. No spontaneous combustion of flames off of contaminated rivers.

“How bad would it be?” she asked.

Target practice

To move from iPods to environmental justice, though, people like Perez will have to keep politicians like Joe Miller out of Washington. In an interview with Yes! Magazine, Riki Ott, a marine biologist and Exxon Valdez survivor, makes a good point about the challenges that environmental advocates face.

“This BP disaster, like the Exxon-Valdez, is more than an environmental crisis—it’s a democracy crisis,” Ott says. “Right now we’re playing the game: Going through regulatory arenas, tightening some laws. But that’s not good enough. The real question is, how do we get control of these big corporations?”

Electing politicians that don’t take corporate money or listen to industry lobbyists will help. Another way to move away from the dominance of fossil fuel companies is offering real alternatives to using their products.

Brave new NOLA

In New Orleans, in the five years since Katrina hit, the people rebuilding the city have worked to create greener alternatives, as Campus Progress reports. Here’s just one example:

Go Green NOLA encourages homebuilders to think small, since smaller homes use less energy. The group also makes suggestions such as installing windows and insulation systems with special attention to local weather and climate — think: humidity, and lots of it—and using shade trees and other landscaping to help beat back the southern sun.

Change can happen without devastation preceding it. In Massachusetts, the Green Justice Coalition worked to ensure that environmental justice provisions made it into the state’s $1.4 billion energy efficiency plan, The Nation reports. What’s more, the coalition made certain that Massachusetts citizens would feel the impact of the new plan directly:

There will be a financing plan to make energy-saving home improvements more affordable. Many of the 23,300 jobs to be generated by the plan will go to contractors who pay decent wages and meet “high road” employment standards. Finally, four pilot programs across the state will test a radically new outreach model by going door to door and mobilizing low- and moderate-income families in building greener neighborhoods.

Women lead the way

Progress doesn’t happen on its own, of course. At RH Reality Check, Kathleen Rogers suggests that female leaders make all the difference. “Women get the connections between climate change, public health and economic growth, because climate change is disproportionately affecting women,” she writes. “A new generation of women entrepreneurs, leaders and civil society, have demonstrated the potential for being the solution to the climate crisis. But they must be mobilized and given an opportunity to influence government and business.”

Rogers is right. Leaders are out there. Just listen to the whole of Carla Perez’ comments on Making Contact. The Green Justice Coalition’s Phyllis Evans also gets it. And even Sen. Murkowski was willing to work on climate change compromises, on some level.

Of course, it’s not just women who can lead the country and the planet away from current environmental and democratic crises. Paths forward are emerging; anyone can follow them.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the environment by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Mulch for a complete list of articles on environmental issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Davida Heller / June 23, 2010 On Tuesday, June 8, The Urban Land Institute Climate Change, Land Use, and Energy Initiative hosted a forum at the recently retrofitted Empire State Building entitled Energy Finance for Real Estate.  The event was held on the 61^st floor of one of New York City’s most treasured buildings, which is in the process of receiving an extensive energy facelift as an extensive retrofit is underway.  From 7:30am to 5:30pm, building owners, lenders, investors, sustainability executives, and public officials hashed out topics including energy efficiency initiatives, government regulation, risk calculation and how to access capital in the retrofit market, of financing.  Essentially, the question on everyone’s mind was how to make energy improvements financially viable. During the first panel of the day about the current state of the commercial real Estate industry with regard to energy efficiency, Charles Leitner, the global head of RREEF explained, “Capital is looking for something new…the next trend.  Everybody who manages money has the responsibility to demonstrate financial performance.  Capital is part of the solution, not the problem.” Gregg Saunders, CFO of Codding Enterprises, who later presented a case study of his company’s work in Sonoma Mountain Village, says “Owners are really struggling on how to survive.” Other panels included The State of Energy Efficiency Markets, Financial Strategy Implementation, New Tools and Rules for Market Transformation, Implementing Finance Strategies, The Empire State Building Story, An Energy Finance Case Study, Making Energy Districts Work and a Bankers Roundtable about Unlocking Capital Markets with Bankers hosted by Climate Community’s founder Dan Cashdan. Anthony Malkin, President of Malkin Holdings, discussed the retrofit project currently underway at the Empire State Building with over $4 million projected in energy savings per year.  Windows were actually retrofitted inside the building, rather than taken off-site or replaced. The building is now the largest wireless unity. Every louver, radiator, fan, pump are all linked wirelessly to a DDC system operated and monitored out of Milwaukee to provide constant, real-time commissioning. While no one walked away with concrete answers for how to effectively finance energy efficiency within the real estate market, the event generated active, thought provoking discussion among the forum’s attendees.  A common point of discussion during the event was the current need for and lack of tangible data on energy retrofitting results from retrofitting, which would push forward substantial lending in the area, but in the meantime the demand for green building must come from the user, not the investor or the lender.  But, why can’t the investor or the lender educate others on the value of green building and energy efficiency? It seems a new definition of the term “value” is what is truly needed.  As green building practices, holistic approaches to business development, triple bottom line accounting and health issues come to light the “value” of a property can no longer simply be defined in financial terms, nor can the financial value only be applicable to monetary income. www.uli.org

Came across this luxurious and Eco-friendly LEED certified home on DigsDigs. Using vertical design, it integrates energy efficiency such as LED lighting, Energy Star Appliance and abundant use of natural and raw materials. The house is incredibly breathtaking with very minimalistic furnishing that compliments the house well. Built on the hills of San Francisco, the architects worked with the natural surroundings as well as its limitation to build this green masterpiece. According to DigsDigs,

This contemporary residence LEED Platinum home that spans four levels on a hill of Mill Valley, California. It is designed by San Francisco-based SB Architects, and built by well-known green builder McDonald Construction. The total area of interior spaces is 2,116 square feet while balconies and decks took up 1,567 square feet. These outdoor areas features stunning views of the bay and the San Francisco skyline beyond.

Although I previously discussed the LEED certification limitation; this splendid design certainly makes up in terms of design, structure and space. 2,116 square feet of interior space is well thought out in terms of energy efficiency and broad use of exterior to make more living space is ingenious. You can see rest of this green house tour after the page break.

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