Author Archives: mspecht

A New Kind of Green at the Ballpark

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green-sports-stadiums-330

Fenway Park is home to the Green Monster, but it’s the LEED-certified Nationals Stadium in Washington D.C. that is the true green monster.

As National Geographic’s Green Guide points out, the Washington Nationals aren’t the only sports team building green.

The new Yankee Stadium and Citi Field (New York Mets), on the other hand, passed on the option to build sustainable venues, even though they were able to spend $1.5 billion and $900 million respectively to build their new stadia.  The green upgrades in Nationals Park, by contrast, cost but $2 million.

CEA Outreach – Summer Canvassing Results

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This Summer, the Cambridge Energy Alliance enjoyed the amazing work of eight undergraduate volunteers to reach out to Cambridge residents. The volunteers from Massachusetts Climate Summer trained for two day and canvassed 8 weekday evenings. They knocked on 2,700 doors and talked to over 500 Cambridge residents. We garnered 175 requests for free home energy audits, which are available to Cambridge residents living in buildings with 1 to 4 units. Volunteers traded 217 free CFLs (compact fluorescent lamps) for used incandescent bulbs, which will save those residents energy and money immediately.

If you did not have the pleasure of meeting one of our volunteers and you’re interested in receiving information on how to get an energy audit, please go the Cambridge Energy Alliance website, enter your contact info, and we’ll send you an email with all the information you’ll need to schedule a home energy audit.

The volunteers were real heroes. They were more often that not working in the rain. They rode their bicycles everywhere they went—including a volunteer stint in Salem when they finished at CEA—they stayed in church basements and other less-than-ideal housing for weeks on end, and were often very, very tired. We thank then for their amazing work and dedication to reducing the impact of climate change and global warming.

Our volunteers also collected answers to three survey questions so that CEA can better address the needs of Cambridge residents. Perhaps the most interesting is a graph that show that many people are already very conscious of saving energy and money through the various steps they’ve taken. But more needs to be done. Below is a graph that shows what some of the 512 Cambridge residents canvassed are already doing to save energy. Perhaps readers can gain ideas from the actions of their fellow Cantabridgians.

Efficiency Steps Already Taken

Click for larger image

Weighing in on electric cars

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Volt230 A recent issue of The Energy Report, featured a story about a new Michigan factory to supply batteries for the Chevy Volt and other vehicles in GM’s fleet. The Energy Report covers Energy and Environmental policy in the United States and globally on CleanSkies.com, a relatively new webcast.

While the article touts the benefits of getting higher mileage and lower CO2 emitting vehicles, we must keep in mind a few costs before running out to buy a new electric car (be it from GM, Daimler-Chrysler, or Tesla Motors). These costs include environmental, financial, and and the opportunity costs for using your money for other purposes.

Electric cars do have an impact on the environment, related to the extraction, manufacture, use, and disposal of the materials in their batteries; as well as the rest of the car. Tesla Motors does seem to be conscientious of its environmental impact and other car manufacturers like Toyota and Honda are promoting battery recycling. Because electricity must be created to charge the batteries, whether electricity comes from coal or nuclear, or wind, solar, or hydro, hybrid cars makes a substantial difference on one’s carbon footprint. Manufacturing an entire car has a huge environmental impact as well, particularly when compared to using mass transit, car sharing programs, occasional car rentals, bicycling, and walking.

Owning a car is very costly in financial terms: car principal payment, interest, gas, maintenance, and insurance. One of the best ways to be a good environmental steward: don’t own a car. Living close to work, school, and shopping nodes keeps money in your pocket, protects the earth’s resources, reduces your carbon emissions, exercises your body, and leads to a healthier life style.

Blueprint America

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Acknowledging that cities are planned, and understanding the designs with which we build them affect our environment and lifestyle, is important to understanding our lives on this planet Earth.

Blueprint America: Road to the Future focuses on a pair of American cities which were quite similar a few decades ago as they took very different decisions about how to grow. This documentary examines the consequences of yesterday’s decisions, in terms of urban sprawl, city density, and mass transit.

portland3

Decisions continue to be made by communities, city governments, state governments, the U.S. federal government, investors, and developers on what to do next for (or to) cities. Blueprint America looks at current steps being taken by cities like New York to make its environment more conducive to healthy living. An interview with Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood examines his willingness to commit to urban strategies such as mass transit.

New Diesel Engines: Cleaner, More Efficient

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“New diesel engines are more than 90 percent cleaner than a few years ago, far exceeding the emission reductions required by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency”

An Environmental Health News story has put context to a new, 158-page report from The Coordinating Research Council on the new standard diesel truck and bus engines that have been in use since 2007.

The new engines, implemented on a large scale, should reduce, smog, airborne carcinogens, and incidents of lung and heart problems.

To see a new short film on the air quality problems in the South Bronx, many of which emanate from heavy diesel traffic, see Breathe Easy by Jesse Ash and Sustainable South Bronx.

planetforward

Building to a Higher Standard

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You may be familiar with LEED, the U.S. Green Building Council’s green building certification standard, but now there is a new, more demanding system on the scene. The more stringent Living Building Challenge (LBC), endorsed by USGBC, strives to be the most advanced green building rating system in the world.

One of the first two buildings competing to become the first LBC-certified project is the new Living Learning Center at the Tyson Research Center, part of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

WUSTL Tyson Research Center

LEED and LBC differ in two substantial ways.  Whereas LEED operates on a point-scoring system, all sixteen of Living Building Challenge’s elements, in the categories of Site, Energy, Materials, Water, Indoor Quality, and Beauty & Inspiration, are mandatory.  And, while LEED designation measures anticipated performance, LBC measures actual performance over a building’s first year.  LBC features strict requirements on building material transportation distance, bans on certain chemicals, net-zero water and energy usage, among its sixteen requirements.

The Living Learning Center’s opening ceremony was May 29, 2009.  If the Living Learning Center succeeds, it will earn its LBC certification by June 2010.

The Story of Stuff

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Annie Leonard’s The Story of Stuff is an oldie but goodie. In it she passionately illuminates the root of many environmental problems: consumption. That is, using and disposing of ever more raw material. The Story of Stuff re-frames “environmentalism” beyond energy use and makes us truly think about where all our widgets come from and where those doodads go when we’re done with them.

The Story of Stuff website

Reducing product consumption typically saves energy as well. For instance, you are probably aware that recycling an aluminum can saves approximately 95% of the energy it takes to produce a can from virgin material; as much as a soda can of gasoline. To quote Amory Lovins, “The cheapest energy is the energy we don’t use;” something he calls nega-watts. But more importantly, everything we buy or consume has an environmental cost, and often a environmental justice cost. Click the image above to watch The Story of Stuff.