Archives
Getting Down To Work
Apr. 22, 2009
A Glass Act
Mar. 5, 2009
Don't Get Lost In Translation
Jan. 1, 2009
The Deep Green Quartet
Oct. 30, 2008
Memories of Next Summer
Aug. 26, 2008
Can't Wait
Jun. 26, 2008
If Climate's The Question, Is Sticky the Answer?
Apr. 30, 2008
When Starting Over Is Not An Option
Feb. 28, 2008
Knocking At Our Door
Dec. 28, 2007
Possible But Not Probable
Oct. 31, 2007
Rolling Up Our Sleeves
Aug. 31, 2007
"If We Don't Act Now, When? And If We Don't Act, Who Will?"
Jun. 29, 2007
In Dreams Begin Accountability
May. 2, 2007
How To Get What We Pay For
Mar. 9, 2007
Giant Steps
Jan. 4, 2007
Waiting for Godot in NYC
Nov. 29, 2006
Countdown for NYC's Green Building Law
Oct. 18, 2006
Measuring Up to Lord Kelvin
Aug. 16, 2006
Greener With Envy
Jun. 30, 2006
NYC.gov — A Modest Proposal
Apr. 17, 2006
"Que Sera" is Not the Answer
Feb. 24, 2006
Lost in Translation
Jan. 3, 2006
A Green Pulse Beats in NY
Nov. 23, 2005
A Green Pulse Beats in NY
Nov. 23, 2005
A Closer Look at NYC.gov
Sep. 26, 2005
How Sallan Fits In
Aug. 2, 2005
PACE Goes Poof!
July 31, 2010
PACE bonds — now you see them, now you don't. Property Assessed Clean Energy bonds are new power tools to provide upfront financing for improving energy efficiency or installing clean energy technologies in homes and office buildings. They were born in Berkeley, California, late in 2007, blessed by the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and Joe Biden's Middle Class Task Force, and have enabling legislation in twenty-two states. Now, it seems, this green dream crashed and burned in May 2010 when federal financial giants Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac, which hold more than half of the nation's home mortgages, publicly refused to grant new mortgages to homes that sought PACE bonds loans. In July, the Federal Housing Finance Agency went a step further and called the PACE program a safety risk.
Till Human Voices Wake Us
May 31, 2010
I am a lifelong New Yorker and I work in lower Manhattan. Perhaps that's why Rising Currents: Projects for New York's Waterfront, an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art haunts me. Rising Currents imaginatively grapples today with a not-too-distant future of sea-level rise resulting from global weirding, more delicately called global warming. It offers "new ways to occupy the harbor itself with adaptive 'soft' infrastructures that are sympathetic to the needs of a sound ecology... to dramatically change our relationship to one of the city's great open spaces." [i]
Home In The Dome
March 22, 2010
A new scientific study suggests that location matters when it comes to carbon dioxide emissions.i While it's been known for a decade that CO2 "domes" can form over cities, a Stanford scientist now reports that such domes increase the respiratory health impact of other air pollutants like ozone. Could this be a case of science having an impact on the public in real time? Here's why I ask.
Paving The Way
January 29, 2010
To amend the old adage, the road to hell is paved with good intentions that can't be financed. What does this have to do with making energy efficient building New York's "new normal"? Since the City's greener greater building legislation does not directly require building owners to undertake energy-efficiency upgrades beyond lighting systems, skeptics have said not much will change. Even optimists like me, who point to the new requirements for alteration work to comply with the energy efficiency code, have to admit that the Building Department's enforcement resources will be limited. But I'm still an optimist — grim real estate market and the great loan drought aside — because of the potential game-changing power of building benchmarking and PACE financing.
It's Not A Wrap
November 24, 2009
With the City Council vote on December 9 for the greener greater building legislation, a key promise made in Mayor Bloomberg's PlaNYC 2030 has been delivered to all New Yorkers.
Now the City can shrink its carbon footprint by expanding its energy efficiency and tuning up the operation of the buildings already on its iconic skyline. Just like the Statue of Liberty, New York now can shine its light as the gateway to a world of sustainable cities.
Readers are rarely surprised to find look-back and look-ahead musings in December's media. My final Torchlight of the year honors this tradition, although, with the very notable exception of the green building legislation, the issues most closely tracked during 2009 may lack closure or even legible milestones.
More Than Hope
September 24, 2009
Thumbing through a recent issue of The New Yorker magazine, I was riveted by the full-page ads trumpeting "A planet of smarter cities" courtesy of IBM, "You have the chance to power your own city" as Chevron introduces its online game called Energyville, and "1 billion people to feed. A changing climate. Now what?" Monsanto muses. "If 41 MPG doesn't charge you up, its battery will" Ford assures me. Of course, this is advertising tailored to attract a New Yorker reader, but the sociologist in me was alert to the cultural status signal that climate change and energy brightly blared across glossy magazine pages. And it's a signal with value for right now.
We The People
July 02, 2009
After long months of bill drafting, meetings and more drafting, the City Council held hearings on Mayor Bloomberg's green building legislative quartet in late June. Supporters, ranging from the expected — environmental and environmental justice advocacy groups — to the less expected — labor unionists and affordable housing activists, made their case and offered their proposals for legislative improvements. Opponents, particularly of Intro 967, the energy audits and efficiency retrofits bill, ranged from the Real Estate Board of New York to the New York Council of Cooperatives and Condos.