Behind the Bright Lights of Vegas: How the 24-Hour Party City Is Greening Up Its Act, The Guardian
It may be known as Sin City, but that doesn’t mean the indiscretions taking place in the Nevada desert must include harming the planet. A new leafy oasis now offers vacationers a respite from the bright-as-the-sun neon lights that illuminate the Strip all night long. The Park, which features native Southwestern plants, a 40-foot-tall statue originally from the Burning Man festival and large metal structures that keep visitors shaded and cool, might be the only actual green space amongst the seemingly-endless stretch of casinos, but it’s one of many ways that Las Vegas is reducing its environmental footprint.
How to Bet Big on the American Dream, The Atlantic
Despite politicians’ proclamations, the American Dream isn’t dead or even on its last legs. But how much philanthropic investment is necessary for low-income residents to have a shot at upward mobility? The nonprofit advisor Bridgespan Group examined how impactful $1 billion dollars invested in each of 15 different philanthropic ventures would be at reducing poverty. As with any investment, the payout isn’t certain. But with returns estimated at being between $3 and $15 for each $1 spent (not to mention a high probability of drastically increasing program recipients’ lifetime earnings), these are bets that seem to be worth taking.
New MOOCs for Rising Leaders, Stanford Social Innovation Review
Why is it that things are usually out of reach to those most interested? Social entrepreneurs often can’t afford or get to leadership development programs. But now, educational seminars are going to them, thanks to the release of two new MOOCs (massive open online course). Free video classes from Philanthropy U provide students insights from social enterprise greats such as the cofounder of Kiva.org; Leaderosity, which charges tuition, touts among its instructors leaders from The Presidio Institute. Both programs provide access to personnel development that’s desperately needed in this sector.
MORE: Big Bets: How a 12-Month Boot Camp Transforms Low-Income Youths into Whiz Kids
Tag: solar power
The Forecast for These Veterans’ Career Prospects Is Sunny
In a sunlit office building in northwest Austin, Texas, former Marine Corps electro-optical technician Logan Razinski greets his boss, a one-time sailor who maintained naval nuclear reactors. The day’s work ahead between the two soldiers won’t involve military operations, however. Both are now employees for SunPower, a solar energy company.
Razinski, a lance corporal (not “one of those movie star ranks”) who was previously stationed at Camp Pendleton near San Diego, found the job through a Department of Energy-sponsored program, Solar Ready Vets (SRV), which prepares former service members to work in the solar energy industry. Living in California, where utilities will get one-third of their energy from renewable sources by 2020, Razinski saw the field “growing like wildfire” and joined SRV’s first cohort. After receiving four weeks of intensive training (since expanded to six) covering photovoltaic panel installation, electrical grids and local building codes, Razinski interviewed and landed a job with SunPower, where he now remotely controls utility-scale arrays.
“There is still an alarming mix of veterans, who, as soon as they get out, look for work or try the college thing, and, for some reason, that doesn’t work out. Next thing, you know, they’re living on the street,“ Razinski says. Nationwide, in 2014, close to 50,000 vets lacked housing, and 573,000 lacked jobs. With SRV, “I went from somebody who was in the Marine Corps to being a far cry from the poverty line,” he adds.
So far, Solar Ready Vets has trained nearly 200 soldiers at five pilot bases: Camp Pendleton, Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Fort Carson in Colorado, Fort Drum in New York and Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia.
While the connection between military service and solar power might seem tenuous, Razinski says it’s about transitioning workers with proven leadership skills into industries that need talent now. As the solar industry adds new jobs 12 times faster than the overall economy, America’s veterans are a natural fit for various positions. “In an industry that’s growing as rapidly as the solar industry, you need somebody to actually be promotable. You need somebody who’s going to understand the magnitude of the situation and say, ‘Holy cow, this is growing faster than anybody anticipated,’” he says.
“This is definitely a path that I believe in,” Razinski adds. “I see it going nowhere but up.”
MORE: Going Solar Is Cheaper Than Ever. Here’s What You Need to Know About Getting Your Power from the Sun
The Future of Housing Is Now. What Sustainable Homes Look Like
Every time your air conditioner or furnace rumbles on, greenhouses gases spew into the air. All those volts —about 10,900 kilowatt-hours per person — used to charge laptops and phones, light rooms, and keep the refrigerator running don’t come without an environmental cost. American electricity generation contributed 2.04 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2014, clouding the earth’s atmosphere with emissions and worsening climate change.
A hot new trend in architecture may offer one of our best hopes for significantly diminishing that pollution. “Passive house” construction — usually built without central heating or cooling systems — can reduce energy usage to net-zero or even net-positive, meaning a building generates more energy than it consumes. Applicable to both commercial and residential properties, passive construction centers on five key design elements: heavily insulated walls (sometimes up to 15 inches thick), an extremely tight envelope, triple-paned windows and doors that are outfitted with high-performance locks, high-tech ventilation and moisture-recovery systems filter the air and solar panels on rooftops.
“There are no drafts in the winter. And in the summer, it stays cool without strong air conditioning blowing on you,” Jane Sanders, a Brooklyn architect, tells the New York Post about her home. “This morning, there was jackhammering two doors down from me, but I could barely hear it. It’s so quiet that I feel like I live in the country.”
Some homeowners will take objection with the boxy design; others will balk at the price tag. But as more passive homes are built, architects are experimenting with chic design and developing cheaper construction methods. NationSwell looked into five of the most interesting passive houses in America today.
The Smith House, Urbana, Ill.
American designers first pioneered passive construction — then known as “superinsulation” in the early 1970s — after the oil embargo caused wild swings in energy prices. When conservation fell out of fashion during the Reagan years, the idea caught on among Germans in 1988, but it took until 2002, for the idea to return across the Atlantic. Katrin Klingenberg, a young German architect, and her now-deceased husband Nic Smith broke ground on the first American passive house prototype in Urbana, in part, because they could test the house against the harsh Midwestern climate. “I believe that climate crisis is real and that buildings need to do their part of reducing carbon emissions. The good news is that buildings have a lot of potential to do just that,” Klingenberg tells the Chicago Tribune. “We have to work a bit harder to get those reductions and invest a bit more upfront. But the reward is huge with long-lasting payback.”
Kiln Apartments, Portland, Ore.
Portland is undeniably at the center of the American passive house movement, with more than 100 certified buildings in its metro area, according to some counts. The Kiln Apartments, in North Portland, are one of the largest mixed-use buildings — 19 apartments above ground-floor retail — to meet passive house standards.
The Oregon city already has one of the strictest building codes in the nation, but these units save up to 75 percent more energy than equivalent ones. With many south-facing windows, the buildings is heated largely by the sun during the winter. Thick metal sunshades that look like modernist awnings block the sunlight during hotter months, when the summer sun rises higher in the sky. The four-story building does have an elevator, but because everything is about energy efficiency, residents are encouraged to take the stairs.
Habitat for Humanity Townhomes, Washington, D.C.
Demonstrating that passive house principles can be readily implemented, volunteers in the nation’s capital are building six townhouses for poor homeowners. Located in Ivy City, a portion of the structure was originally designed for the U.S. Solar Decathlon, a competition for college students to build the most energy-efficient home. Students from The New School and Stevens Institute of Technology put the one-bedroom together on the National Mall for under $230,000. After being moved northeast in 2012, a second story was added and Habitat for Humanity built a copy next door. Now, as the neighborhood gentrifies, the families in the six brick rowhouses have affordable rent and a a minimal utility bill. “I just remember thinking, we did it: a non-profit, affordable house developer can do this, even using volunteers with no construction experience,” Orlando Velez, manager of housing services at Habitat for Humanity’s D.C. chapter, tells ThinkProgress. “I started thinking, what’s everyone else waiting for?”
Uptown Lofts, Pittsburgh, Penn.
This 47-unit housing affordable project, provides greener living spaces to those who can’t afford a market-rate home. Split into two buildings across the street from each other, 18- to 23-year-olds who aged out of the foster care system live in the northern building’s 24 one-bedroom apartments; to the south, 23 affordable units go to people who make less than 60 percent of Pittsburgh’s median income. The $12 million project was also notable for being the first time any state subsidized a passive house with tax benefits.
At the ribbon-cutting ceremony this February, the project was praised for realizing its ambitious goals with limited dollars. “How proud we are to help bring these buildings to reality,” said Stan Salwocki, manager at the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “This project shows how cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, energy-efficient affordable housing can be done.”
Cornell Tech, Roosevelt Island, N.Y.
Still in the works, the world’s tallest and largest passive house began construction this June. Rising 26 stories above Roosevelt Island, a sliver of land between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, the apartment tower will house about 530 grad students, professors and staff for Cornell University’s new 12-acre applied sciences campus. Since nearly three quarters of the carbon emissions in New York City’s come from heating and cooling its skyscrapers, school administrators hope this project will set a new standard for energy efficiency and gain the attention of engineers and designers across the Queensboro Bridge in midtown.
The construction “is a clear signal that in today’s era of climate change, it’s not enough to simply build tallest. To lead the market, your tall building will need to be a passive house,” Ken Levenson, president of NY Passive House, an advocacy group, tells The New York Times. The $115 million project is expected to open in 2017 and will save 882 tons of carbon dioxide annually — the equivalent of planting 5,300 trees, according to the university.
4 Startups Revolutionizing How Food Is Produced in the U.S.
Ask city dwellers what an American farmer looks like and it’s likely that they’ll describe an image reminiscent of a Norman Rockwell painting: a man sporting overalls and a John Deere hat, bouncing his daughter on his lap as he steers a combine through his corn fields. In truth, today’s agrarian ideal is much different. Instead of rusty tractors working the land, fields are hooked up with the same modern technology used in Silicon Valley.
As part of our continuing coverage of FarmNext’s nationwide listening tour on food and young farmers, NationSwell talked to a few tech-savvy individuals building systems that can more efficiently feed America.
Drones
Trevor Witt, a third-year student at Kansas State University in Salina, spends most of his days flying unmanned aircraft systems, or drones. He’s involved in a project in the school’s entomology department — with “the bug guys,” as he says — studying techniques for early detection of invasive species. Witt spent the summer mapping sorghum fields, looking for evidence of an aphid that can ruin an entire harvest in just a few weeks. “If you can detect that aphid early on, you can spray that specific area to get rid of it,” Witt explains. With a camera shooting in high-resolution visuals and near-infrared imagery, Witt’s drone flies over fields of crops, looking for a shiny, sugar-dense resin on the top of leaves and a black underside — the telltale sign of this aphid’s infestation.
Witt, who dates his interest in unmanned aircraft to his high school shop class, says the primary goal of his research at K-State is “dealing with information overload.” His team is “translating all this data that we can collect and make actionable solutions,” he says. “Earlier, using satellites, the data pixel had a 15-acre resolution; now data pixel resolution is sub-centimeter. It just gets significant amounts of data even in the smallest field.”
For now, the farmer must take action against the infestation himself. But eventually, perhaps a decade from now, a grower won’t have to do a thing: he’ll have another drone or self-driven tractor that can automatically spray the area. “That’s the end goal when it comes to mapping,” Witt says. Unmanned aircraft systems aren’t the end-all solution, he concedes, but it’s “an extra tool in the toolkit.”
Solar Power
To lay the optimal number of eggs, a hen needs a full 16 hours of light. That’s an impossibly high bar for small farmers to reach during the winter, when a December day at California’s Riverdog Farms, for example, only receives eight and a half hours of sunshine — causing production to drop anywhere from 30 to 60 percent. (During that time, chickens continue to consume the same amount of feed.) Most large farms employ artificial lighting to stimulate production, but the cost can be prohibitively high for small-scale farmers to invest in the technology.
Egg producers “take those seasonal changes pretty hard,” says Edward Silva, who developed a solar-powered supplemental lighting system called Henlight as an undergraduate at University of California, Davis. Programmed by software, the Henlight “comes on in the morning hours, a little before sunrise. The very darkest days, it comes on earlier,” he says. “It doesn’t wake [the chickens] up. Eventually they rustle up, but what’s happening is that laying hens receive the okay to reproduce through a gland on the top of their head.”
According to Silva, who grew up on a farm in the Central Valley, field data from one coop using the Henlight in Capay Valley, Calif. saw a 20 percent boost in egg production — laying an additional 2,253 eggs — compared to a control group. Sold at $3 a dozen, the farmer made $563, meaning that he got a return on the $450 investment in the first year.
“There’s this movement where tech in ag is becoming much more democratic,” says Silva. “Smaller farms can optimize their operations as well. With Uber, anyone can be a taxi driver; with Aribnb, anyone can open a hotel. In agriculture, with a lot of precision sensors, with smartphones and drones, the systems are allowing small-scale guys to be competitive with what’s existing on a bigger level.”
Genetics
Donald Gibson is trying to grow a better tomato. A graduate student at University of California, Davis is using cutting-edge biotech that would allow tomato plants to grow with far less phosphorous, a vital nutrient (along with nitrogen and potassium) that’s increasingly costly and environmentally damaging to extract for fertilizer. When lacking phosphorous, a tomato expends much of its energy expanding its root system. By identifying and switching off the gene that activates that response, the fruit could grow with much less of the nutrient.
Genetically modified organisms, or GMOs, have earned the wrath from the organic crowd for altering a plant’s fundamentals, but Gibson argues his research will make agriculture sustainable. “Today we’re seeing a major shift in advances in plant breeding. There’s been a boom in the biotech field in the last 20 or 30 years, a technology revolution and also a biological revolution. Now finally, we’re using brand new technology and adapting that to select better and better plants,” he says. “When it comes to GMOs, it’s actually getting a lot better from the consumer perspective.” Most of the innovation in the field has benefited farmers, but the next generation will benefit consumers with products like a potato that doesn’t bruise or an apple that doesn’t brown as quickly.
Data Analytics
FarmLink is employing analytics to help farmers decipher big data and turn it into actionable items, moving agriculture from maps on paper that tracked annual yields to create more precise information. “There is plenty of data out there, and the data increases every day. It’s not that we need more data,” says Kevin Helkes, FarmLink’s director of operations. “Farmers are saying they need to know what to do with that data.”
Helkes compares the farmers’ fields to a front lawn. “There’s always that part of the yard that’s higher, where the grass grows taller. It’s the same thing in the field. Farmers know that year over year, this area is higher and this area is lower,” he says. What’s new, though, is that data analytics will be able to tell a farmer how productive those high and low areas could potentially be. Instead of a grower learning the hard way that he’s been wasting money on a fallow spot of land, FarmLink can communicate in advance how much he can expect from an area.
Agriculture’s first great revolution was switching from a donkey towing a plow to a tractor trailer. Now, agriculture has reinvented itself with new improvements in genetics and feed. This is called Ag 3.0.
(Homepage photograph: Courtesy of Gregory Urqiaga/University of California, Davis)
Obama Promised to Make the Environment a Main Policy Issue. Did He?
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.” That’s what Barack Obama promised in 2008 upon winning the Democratic nomination. Seven years later, he’s returning to his pledge as he ponders his legacy and his final 500 days in office.
Was this really the moment when climate change reversed course? NationSwell asked dozens of scientists, historians, jurists, former EPA administrators, legislators and presidential candidates a simple question: How will future generations judge Barack Obama’s record on energy and the environment? Not surprisingly, the responses vary. Some were glowing (“Barack Obama is destined to go down as the greatest climate change-fighting president in history,” says Ed Chen, national communications director for the Natural Resources Defense Council), while others were hesitant to issue a verdict: “It’s a very unfinished climate legacy, full of steps forwards, sideways, and back,” says Bill McKibben, former staff writer at The New Yorker and founder of 350.org, a grassroots climate change movement.
Indeed, the 44th president faltered on environmental legislation in his first term, preferring to expend his political capital on the Affordable Care Act. But Obama’s use of regulatory authority and his agreement with China likely ensure his place in the pantheon of modern environmental champions.
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BACKPEDALLING FROM CAMPAIGN PROMISES
It’s taken nearly two full terms to bring his labors to fruition. Shortly after defeating Sen. John McCain in the race for the Oval Office, Obama set two bills in motion on which he would stake his legacy: the health care law in the upper chamber, and in the lower, a comprehensive environmental bill that included a market-based carbon cap-and-trade system and renewable energy standards, co-authored by Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat whose amendments strengthened the Clean Air Act in 1990.
In June 2009, Waxman’s bill narrowly passed the House by a vote of 219-212. “There was an apparent window of opportunity” in that moment, says D. James Baker, a scientist who headed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) under Bill Clinton, but by December, “the administration was eager for a quick victory and opted for health care.” The climate change bill became Obama’s “stepchild,” a senior official told The New Yorker.
Offering concessions to earn goodwill from the Republican caucus, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agreed to delay implementation of carbon regulations for another year. Soon after, the president announced huge sections of U.S. waters along the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico open for drilling and withdrew support for the versions of Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill being negotiated in the Democratic-led Senate.
“Whether with Obama’s support [a nationwide cap-and-trade law] could have happened is a good question,” says Baker, “but there is no question that the decision to back off was demoralizing to the environment and climate change community.” Days later, as oil bubbled up from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Democrats hung their heads in defeat. “The missing piece of his legacy is national climate change legislation, which he and Congress failed to pass,” says Kenneth Kimmel, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
MAKING USE OF REGULATION, NOT LEGISLATION
That’s not to say Obama failed completely during his first term. The 2009 stimulus bill designated $90 billion for a bevy of green initiatives: retrofitting homes for energy efficiency, fueling development in wind and solar power, modernizing the grid, training employees for green jobs, building high-speed rail, researching carbon capture for coal-burning plants and manufacturing cleaner cars.
“The stimulus package gave President Obama a chance to invest in renewables early in his first term, allowing him to make progress on the issues unlike most other recent presidents, who have been forced for political reasons to leave critical environmental issues to their second terms,” says Baker. If anything, the president’s preference for working outside the legislature set the standard for his later environmental accomplishments. After the bruising battle over healthcare and the Republican sweep of the 2010 midterm elections, Obama took the path of least resistance.
Waxman retired last year after 20 terms, but you can still sense his frustration with the gridlock that killed his legislation. In an email, he tells NationSwell that Congress “refuses to learn from the overwhelming scientific consensus on the dangers we are facing.” He applauded President Obama for circumventing the increasingly partisan legislature by using “the power to act domestically and internationally based on existing laws on the books, even without Congress passing new laws.” Bolstered by a Supreme Court ruling in 2007 that George W. Bush’s administration had shirked their duties, Waxman’s Clean Air Act amendments provided all the authority Obama needed.
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In the past month, much of the focus has been on the Clean Power Plan, which will reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants 32 percent by 2030. But that’s only the latest in a long series of administrative actions. During Obama’s first term, the EPA and the Department of Transportation set new fuel efficiency standards: All cars built after 2025 must get at least 54.5 miles per gallon. This summer, those same agencies proposed raising standards for medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles as well. Despite litigation that’s made its way all the way to the Supreme Court, the EPA slashed the acceptable levels of ozone that clouds city skylines, mercury released by coal-fired plants and methane billowing from oil fields, landfills and farms. When it comes to conservation, Obama’s designated more land and water as national monuments under the Antiquities Act — 260 million acres total — than any other president.
In creating “the first-ever framework for the United States to achieve long-term emissions reductions,” says Richard Revesz, former dean of New York University School of Law, these achievements will outlast Obama’s two terms — regardless of whom the next president is. “Even if the Democrats lose the White House in 2017, the new greenhouse gas regulations will still need to be implemented,” says Steven Cohen, executive director of Columbia’s Earth Institute. Those guidelines, along with states’ actions, “will probably end the use of coal as a source of energy in the U.S.”
Despite the likely positive outcomes, several Republicans interviewed chastised the president for his reliance on regulations, instead of legislation. “It will be seen as a failure that he wasn’t able to get anything through that is enforceable,” says Christine Todd Whitman, the former New Jersey governor who was George W. Bush’s first appointee as EPA administrator. She argues that using the “heavy-handed tool” of the EPA “will make things more difficult for the agency going forward.”
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Others had even harsher words. “President Obama has dogmatically used energy as a political tool rather than a building block of renewed economic vibrancy,” says Mike Leavitt, former governor of Utah and Whitman’s successor as EPA administrator. Luke Popovich, spokesman for the National Mining Association, agrees. “He was the president who deepened the partisan divide between Republicans and Democrats over these crucial intersecting issues” of energy and the environment.
CONFRONTING CLIMATE CHANGE HEAD ON
Perhaps because the president has been “hamstrung by politics,” as one historian phrased it, he’s not staking his legacy on any one bill or rule. Instead, as his recent photo-ops in Alaska demonstrates, Obama seems to be focusing on perceptions. His prominence on the global stage — including his role in negotiating the limited Copenhagen Accord in 2010 and the recent deal with China to curb their emissions by 2030 — “helped move the issue of global environmental sustainability to the center of the American and international political agenda,” says Cohen.
As the commander-in-chief prepares to convene with leaders from 196 countries to sign a treaty at the United Nations Climate Change Conference this December, his legacy on climate change “lies in his success in making climate change a central policy obligation,” says Carol M. Browner, Obama’s advisor who directed the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy from 2009 to 2011, when Waxman’s cap-and-trade bill foundered. If the president can get millions of Americans, industry and other stakeholders to think about it while also facing opposition from Congress, he’ll be remembered for changing how climate policy is developed and implemented.
As the effects of climate change become more visible, the challenges facing Obama aren’t disappearing like glaciers are. Perhaps surprisingly, some of the president’s loudest critics are on the left. They’re fuming over the Keystone XL pipeline and off-shore oil and gas exploration in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.
“With the president’s permission, Shell is now drilling for oil in the Alaskan Arctic, and his administration has authorized the future sale of 10.2 billion tons of coal,” says Annie Leonard, Greenpeace USA’s executive director. “It’s clear that President Obama is serious about cementing his climate legacy, but until he takes steps to ensure the vast majority of fossil fuels remain in the ground, his legacy is as vulnerable as an Arctic ice sheet.”
Tomorrow’s Energy-Saving Neighborhood Is Being Built Today in Texas
America’s most futuristic neighborhood is being built, perhaps surprisingly, in Texas.
Under construction in Austin, the Lone Star State’s liberal enclave, is a residential development boasting rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle charging stations and meters to measure the electricity usage of every appliance. Known as the Mueller neighborhood, the community is “smart grid experiment” where the Pecan Street research consortium brought together experts from universities and utilities alike to provide real-world data for one of the most important ecological questions of our time: How can we reduce our energy and water consumption?
“There was virtually no data available on appliance-level electric use. We were trying to determine if testing certain things out, like electric cars or home energy-management systems would affect people compared to how they used electricity before they got access to this stuff,” says Brewster McCracker, Pecan Street’s president and CEO. “There was not only no data on that but nothing on the market that would measure that. We spent a long time working with suppliers and configuring things to measure appliance use every minute 365 days a year.”
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Energy usage by homeowners and businesses fluctuates wildly, accounting for 41 percent of all consumption. To be more environmentally friendly, McCracken says, we need to think about reducing our use during peak times, as well as what will use less total energy. That’s why Pecan Street’s live data is so important for measuring exactly what appliances are putting heavy demands on the system. Its analytics can tell you that an electric vehicle charger puts the same load on the grid as a clothes dryer — both far less than an air conditioner. Previously, no one tested the kind of impact that a dozen electric vehicles on one block, let alone an entire neighborhood.
Through a mobile app, the research team informs customers of specific ways to reduce energy like, say, unplugging the microwave. Those suggestions have led to a 10 percent reduction in electricity use, McCracken, a former two-term member of the Austin city council, says. Overall, the Mueller neighborhood uses 38 percent less electricity on heating and cooling than their less green neighbors.
The stats help plan better infrastructure for an entire region. Conventional wisdom, for instance, holds that south-facing solar panels will absorb the most sunlight. Which is true generally, McCracken says, but energy companies should know that west-facing photovoltaic panels will absorb more energy during late summer afternoons when need is greatest, his team found.
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Additionally, Pecan Street can detect when something seems amiss on an individual home. “We found that people who have solar panels have minor maintenance issues, but they didn’t have any way to learn about them,” McCracken says. “By having that data, we were able to isolate the solar panels that are turned off. Other things could be more subtle. A single fuse that’s blown could produce at a reduced level. We have the data analytics running to detect that. It’s not something that you could stare at a rooftop or look at the electricity bill to see that happened, but better data helps.”
The research institute’s data collection has been so unique that other energy companies throughout the country have invited it to study their neighborhoods. Pecan Street now gathers stats from more than 1,200 homes, primarily clustered in Texas, Colorado and California, and ships the data out to 138 universities in 37 countries.
“We have strong reason to believe that access to better data and better information enhances our ability to solve problems,” McCracken says. “If we have better data on weather patterns, we can help people be safe in storms. If we have better data on car performance, we can make cars that work better.” With a hotter planet, drought in the West and superstorms along the East Coast, this Texan neighborhood couldn’t have arrived at a more opportune time.
5 Cities That Are Making Eco-Friendly Living a Reality
Darker winters and blazing heatwaves, higher floods and months without rain. It’s undeniable that our climate is changing. But some American cities are lagging behind; only 59 percent have a mitigation plan, the lowest rate for any global region.
There are are bright spots, however, as some municipalities are adapting with the weather’s fluctuations — and their early efforts are showing results. Last year, for the the first time on record, the global economy grew without an accompanying rise in carbon dioxide emissions. Cleaner energy sources and conservation are proving more effective than even most experts predicted.
Here are several American projects leading the way into a new century of climate consciousness.
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New York City
The largest metropolitan region — the Tri-state Area, which consists of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut and is home to nearly 20.1 million Americans — found itself taken off-guard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The devastating, 13.88-foot storm surge flooded the city, shuttering the subways and leaving the New York Stock Exchange, along with most of Lower Manhattan, dark for several days. One hundred and six people died along the East Coast, and thousands were displaced from their homes. Spurred into action, the Big Apple took immediate measures to stave off destruction from another nor’easter. A few days after, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, “Our climate is changing. And while the increase in extreme weather we have experienced in New York City and around the world may or may not be the result of it, the risk that it may be — given the devastation it is wreaking — should be enough to compel all elected leaders to take immediate action.”
Following suit from Southern cities like Galveston, Texas, and Miami, which have built storm barriers and restored wetlands, The City That Never Sleeps proposed a $20 billion, 430-page plan to protect its coastline. A central aspect involves beautifying neighborhoods with miles of parkland wrapping around the island, placing some buffer between city and sea. Offshore, oyster beds could break the storm surges, an innovation Kate Orff, a Columbia University architecture professor, calls “oyster-tecture” or “living breakwaters.” She was awarded a $60 million grant by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to plant millions of pearl-producers off Staten Island. The artificial reef is bringing biodiversity back to New York’s harbor and using the water as an advantage before the next storm strikes.
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Chicago
From the 1871 inferno that burned 3.3 square miles to the 1979 airline flight that crashed seconds after takeoff from O’Hare International Airport, Chicago has been no stranger to its own tragic disasters. But the Second City is taking proactive measures to prevent the next climate change crisis. As part of the Chicago Climate Action Plan started by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2008, the city is preparing for hotter heat waves and wetter downpours. Researchers have studied ways to combat the “urban heat island” effect, a phenomenon that can increase temperatures by as much as 10 degrees during already scorching summers. In response, the city council passed ordinances requiring more trees in and around empty parking lots as well as reflective covers on most roofs. And at City Hall, landscapers planted nearly 20,000 plants in a rooftop garden.
When it comes to preventing floods, Chicago is once again at the forefront. Almost all public alleyways (and in some districts, concrete sidewalks) have been replaced with pervious pavement, concrete mixed with fine sand that enables water to flow straight through. Under heavy traffic, this paving deteriorates faster than normal, but it also reduces stormwater runoff into the city sewer system by 80 percent, preventing flooding and pesky potholes. Rain or shine, the Windy City’s ready.
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El Paso, Texas
The pipes in this Southern city were running dry after years of drought, so researchers turned to another source: already-used water. Faced with an arid climate in the mountains along the border, El Paso launched the nation’s largest potable-reuse program. Derided by some critics as “toilet to tap,” the technology can seem icky, but most city residents were more worried about running out of water. “In an area where it doesn’t rain you have to explore every viable option, and that’s a viable option,” one resident said at a recent public meeting. While there are some worries about chemicals being poured down the drain, most experts say it’s completely safe since the water’s sent through a body of water, like a lake or aquifer, and then purified an additional time before being mixed in with the regular drinking water supply. The $82 million technology will be fully functional in 2018.
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Los Angeles
This sprawling metropolis is far from the City of Lights, but it’s trying to emulate its European counterparts. Notorious for smog and light pollution dimming out the night sky across Southern California flatland, L.A. has established itself as the definitive leader in smart street lighting, drastically cutting its carbon emissions. In concert with the Clinton Climate Initiative, the city has replaced 157,000 lampposts, more than two-thirds of the total stock. The lights, which used to emit an orange glow from high-pressure sodium vapor, will now be powered by brighter, white light-emitting diodes, or LEDs.
The city has cut energy costs from lighting by 63.1 percent and is saving $8.3 million annually, according to recent figures. To put it another way, by changing out all the bulbs burning through the night, L.A. cut down 94.3 gigawatt-hours — the equivalent power of four dozen Hoover Dams. “It’s a shining example of how green technology can be both environmentally responsible and cost-effective,” says Ed Ebrahimian, the director of the Street Lighting Bureau. Even better? It’s making streets brighter and safer at night: overnight incidents like vehicle theft, theft and vandalism declined by nine percent.
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Honolulu, Hawaii
Not only are its residents enjoying the constant sunshine, they’re also harnessing it for their electricity. The most populous city in the Hawaiian chain, Honolulu also claims the country’s highest per capita rate of homes outfitted with photovoltaic panels, with solar power being generated on at least 10 percent of rooftops.
Because much of Honolulu’s power currently comes from burning pricey diesel fuel, the savings from launching one’s own power source attracted many customers, so many in fact that the local utility fought to cap the energy customers could sell back to the grid. Lawmakers ensured solar power would continue to thrive by removing any caps. Last month, in a 74 to 2 vote, they approved a long-term plan that will have Hawaii running entirely on renewable energy by 2045.”Our state is spending $3 [billion] to $5 billion annually on importing dirty, fossil fuels, which is not good for the environment, our future sustainability, or our pocket books,” says Sen. Mike Gabbard, the bill’s sponsor. “Our islands are blessed with abundant, renewable energy. We should be using these resources for the benefit of our people.”
Mayors on the Rise: Shane Bemis
“One of the reasons that I love local government,” says Mayor Shane Bemis of Gresham, Ore., “is that it doesn’t matter if you’re an ‘R[epublican]’ or a ‘D[emocrat]’, it matters on what’s best for this community.
That statement sums up Bemis’s governing style in Gresham, where his economically-focused initiatives have enabled the town of about 110,000 people to enjoy revitalized business corridors and a nearly energy-neutral wastewater treatment plant, as well the largest solar installation in the Pacific Northwest.
Bemis was born in Billings, Mont., and moved to Gresham with his family when he was 15 years old — just one day before starting high school. Introduced to politics by his mother (who was very involved in the Montana political scene), Bemis, as he put it, “caught the bug” while working at a family-owned department store, which happened to be a popular spot with local government officials, during his high school years.
In his late 20s, Bemis opened a Bellagio’s Pizzeria franchise in Gresham, which soon led to his belief that the town would benefit being governed by someone with more of a “business sense.” In 2002, he was elected to the city council, and in 2006, voted into the mayor’s office. When he assumed office in 2007, Bemis was just 34 years old — making him the youngest person to hold the position in Gresham’s history.
Although the city’s population has ballooned by more than 75,000 people since 1980, city government positions — including the office of mayor — remain unpaid. Bemis still works as a restaurateur in Gresham, now owning an independent Italian restaurant called Boccelli’s. He splits his time between managing his business, conducting his responsibilities as mayor and spending time with his wife and their three sons.
In response to the many shuttered storefronts in the city’s commercial areas, Bemis (along with the city council) created one of his signature initiatives: the “Garage to Storefront” program, which waived all start-up fees and charges for any business that opened in a space of 5,000 square feet or less and provided assistance from city advisors. Lasting for three years (after which time it was no longer needed), 144 new businesses opened under the program — occupying 200,000 square feet of retail space.
Bemis also quickly recognized the economic potential of going green. Shortly after taking office, he signed the Mayor’s Climate Protection Act and went to work looking for places where environmental responsibility could make economic sense. Gresham changed all of its streetlights to energy-efficient LEDs, repurposed its wastewater treatment plant to produce energy via the recycling of cooking oil and other environmental technologies. Bemis understands Gresham is a conservative city, saying that he never talks about climate in regards to green initiatives, preferring instead to focus on the economic benefits of environmentally-friendly measures. This practical approach has reaped large benefits, something Bemis attributes to the non-partisan nature of local governance.
Bemis hasn’t ruled out the idea of someday seeking higher office, but for the time being he doesn’t seem to be too interested. “Right now, there’s not a lot of glory in being an ‘R’ or a ‘D’ and being in gridlock,” says Bemis, “either at the state level or the federal level. Here we can get things done and it’s a whole heck of a lot of fun.”
How People Power is Helping the Midwest Join the Solar Boom
When you think about the country’s solar revolution, the Midwest probably doesn’t come to mind.
In fact, as we previously reported, if you look at the top 10 solar states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Delaware, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico and North Carolina — they are spoiled with year-round sun or have lawmakers that embrace and promote renewable energy.
But in places where solar has been dismissed as expensive or impractical due to weather, many residents have been clamoring to tap into the clean power of the sun, and more and more forward-thinking communities are happy to oblige.
In Midwestern states, such as Kansas, Wisconsin, Michigan and others, residents are tapping the sun’s rays without installing a single panel on their roof, Midwest Energy News reports.
MORE: Going Solar Is Cheaper Than Ever. Here’s What You Need to Know About Getting Your Power From the Sun
According to the publication, Connexus Energy (a nonprofit co-op consisting of 128,000 members) allows residents of the northern Twin Cities suburbs in Minnesota to purchase single or multiple panels (at $950 each) from a massive, football-field sized community solar garden located at the Connexus headquarters in Ramsey. A Connexus customer then receives a credit on their power bill based on how much power their panels produce. Patrons usually sign up for a 20 to 25 year long contract with the payoff kicking in after 14 to 16 years.
“We didn’t do this to make money, we did this to fulfill a need of our members,” Don Haller, vice president of marketing and member services for Connexus, tells Midwest Energy News. “We found there is a small number of our members are who are definitely interested in community solar and wanted us to provide it.”
Solar co-ops have become an increasingly attractive and popular method for people who want to make the switch to clean energy, but don’t live in the right location for a rooftop installation or cannot afford its large sticker price. If As this map illustrates, solar communities have popped up in 34 states, located on farms, schools, military bases and more.
So what happens when states make it difficult for communities to go solar? Communities find solar instead.
DON’T MISS: How This Coal Capital is Going Solar
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Who Needs Gasoline When You Have the Sun?
What’s greener than an owning an electric vehicle (EV)? Owning one that’s powered with your home’s solar panels.
There’s a growing number of these extra eco-conscious do-gooders. The Associated Press reports that more people own both panels and an electric car, based upon findings on the growth of electric and plug-in hybrid car sales (97,563 were sold in the U.S. last year, up 83 percent from the prior year), as well as the sharp increase in residential solar installations (up 21 percent in the second quarter of this year).
This new trend is encouraging because it might convince more people to make the switch to solar or purchase an EV, or both. The biggest reason why people don’t buy electric cars or install panels is because it’s expensive. But as the AP illustrates with the story of Chevrolet Volt owner Kevin Tofel, having solar on his roof and also an EV in his garage pays for itself over time.
MORE: This Amazing Home Creates More Energy Than It Uses
Tofel, a Telford, Penn. resident, powers his plug-in hybrid with his home’s 41 solar panels. He tells the AP that he paid $51,865 for his solar array, but that expense was reduced to $29,205 after state and federal tax credits. He found that his panels can generate 13.8 megawatt hours of electricity, but since he only needed 7.59 megawatt hours for his household, he decided to trade his gas guzzling Acura RDX for a Volt to help suck up that excess solar power. The $250 he used to spend each month on gasoline for his Acura is now down to only $50, which he only buys when he’s not near a charging station for his EV. Tofel adds (we imagine very happily) that his Volt will help reduce his break-even point on his solar investment from 11.7 years to only six years.
Naturally, he says he and his family “will never go back to an all-gas car.”
We’ve said before that home solar systems have hit the mainstream: the number of homes and businesses in the United States that are powered by the sun’s rays is now more than 500,000. And now that more consumers are open to eco-friendly cars (and the fact they’re about to get much cheaper), the future looks brighter than ever.
DON’T MISS: Going Solar Is Cheaper Than Ever. Here’s What You Need to Know About Getting Your Power From the Sun