Archive for April, 2009

Here is Van Jones, Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, with  Sara Loveland of DC Greenworks, on the site of a green roof installation. They introduce green roofs and discuss the grant funding the work. If building owners along a corridor who already have to replace their roof membranes put up the money for that, the city will add on a green roof, cutting energy expenses some 30%, cooling the city, mitigating stormwater, and training people in how to do the work.  Green roofs in this case mean green jobs, environmental, economic, engineering and energy-saving benefits, and a potential food source: one solution to many problems.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iYIY9XHOUg&feature=player_embedded]

Don Voigt has a question:
Hi, I’m a resident of a city which is struggling to get a resolution passed at the city council level wherein the city states that it wants to be a “green” community. We attempted to get a resolution passed last week but it failed to get a majority on the basis that it was too general in nature and that it did not have any specific items or targets in it.

What do you find as the first level of “position statements” for communities who are going green?

Don Voigt,
Port Washington, WI

What’s your advice?

The Green Cities Conference has exceeded attendance projections by about two times, with up to 750 attendees, and enthusiasm and interest are very high, at least in our conversations with attendees. Several people from across the country have told us their cities are getting going on their sustainability plans, and we were pleased to learn from one council member that his Tennessee city hired a sustainability coordinator based “99%” on our article, What’s a Sustainability Coordinator? in the October 2008 issue of CitiesGoGreen.

In an interview with us, Don Borut, Executive Director of the National League of Cities, calls the conference a “home run,” especially for a first event. He went on to talk about sustainability as a new lens through which to look at city management, an alternative or replacement for the long-accepted “growth at all costs” view, without sacrificing the economic benefits, and indeed producing more potential in many ways.

Hi, Daimon here, in Portland Oregon at the Green Cities Conference and Expo. We’re setting up our booth (120 – come see us if you can) and I just ducked out to write this. I’ll be posting now and then, as I can. Feel free to add your own comments, whether you’re at the show or not. So far it’s a big hall with antsy (both antlike in comparison to the size of the hall and busy-like) people scurrying around creating stuff to show the city folk when you/they show up at 4:30.

My business partner Judith and I had a nice 5 hour ride down from Bellingham (I look forward to the high speed rail connection) on a beautiful sunny, warm day, and we’re looking forward to what happens. See you soon, I hope, if you’re at the show.

A “National Town Hall on our Energy Future” is happening nationwide this Saturday on college campuses across the US. Sponsored by Focus the Nation, it will focus on identifying regionally appropriate energy solutions and accelerating their deployment. Building on last year’s successful gatherings, they will incorporate students, local residents, local businesses, and government officials, with both educational and interactive events. The ultimate aim is to energize citizens to take part in determining the future of their communities in the areas of green jobs development, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.

You are invited to participate. Here’s a map of all the events. Click to read the article in full.

Green the Grounds, subtitled Bringing Nature into the Public Realm, sprouted from an inquiry by First Lady Michelle Obama’s office to author Susan Harris about ideas she had put about for a kitchen garden at the White House. Susan offered to pull together some suggestions. Thirty-four experts were consulted and the result is the illustrated 19 page Greening the White House Grounds (pdf). It summarizes ideas and discussion on all facets of the project. One conclusion it would be hard to argue with is, “… the prettier and the more people-friendly, the better.”

Susan provides number of resources on how to think about such projects here. Being a prolific writer, blogger, garden maven, and networker, the new blog is a further outcome, aimed at greening executive mansions at all levels, those being governor’s mansions and mayoral abodes. The  idea is that examples at the top will inspire many others.

The mansions of New York and Maryland’s governors are presently featured. How’s your local executive manse? If there’s something to crow about, let Susan know.

SightlineDaily reports on a potentially good idea: Washington state Representative Hans Dunshee proposes that the state issue bonds for $3 billion, which would employ some 90,000 people to make “safety, health, and energy efficient improvements to public facilities in all public K-12 school districts, community and technical colleges, state universities, regional universities, [and] The Evergreen State College.”

The bonds would be paid back from energy savings. Besides the health and learning benefits of green schools to the occupants, the lower carbon footprint, permanent savings on energy costs, the tens of thousands of jobs and increased business in the state, the sales and business taxes earned back by the state both directly and indirectly, the economic stimulus to any number of local businesses in every community statewide, the green skills gained by workers and contractors statewide, and the great example, would it work? Ah, the pesky bureaucratic details.

“As large property owners and civic leaders, cities are in a unique position to make something happen in high performance buildings,” said Dave Hewitt, executive director at New Buildings Institute (NBI). “And many of them already have or are getting ready to.”

Buildings are responsible for about two thirds of U.S. electrical consumption and nearly half of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. Fewer than one in 1000 new buildings meet readily achievable high performance standards. Cities and counties wanting to go green can take a good look at their policies related to commercial buildings and start improving this score by understanding the high performance building continuum.

Read the whole article: The Spectrum of High Performance Buildings

This article on bike corrals was one of our most popular. We’ve made into a freestanding piece you can read by clicking the image. It will open in a new window, where you can check out all the controls along the top row. You can control the zoom size, send it to friends, post it to popular linking sites to let it become more visible, and much more.

Click (maybe doubleclick) to zoom in on the part of the page you want to see, so you can read it, click again to zoom out, reclick to zoom in on a different part of the page. Hold down the mouse key and drag the page around to see different parts.

We also gave it a Creative Commons copyright. That means you can freely forward the piece and even republish it. You can link to it, put it on your blog or site, and so on. That is, so long as you don’t change anything, add to it, or use it for profit. Click the “Creative Commons” image in the article to read the official statement.  We’ll be adding more like this and in a variety of areas to create a useful collection.