Kent Portney's "Our Green Cities" Blog

NRDC "Smarter Cities" Rankings

The Natural Resources Defense Council now has its own version of city rankings available on their web site.  The rankings are based on a number of measures of environmental and related performance that look an awful lot like sustainability measures, even if the NRDC doesn't specifically use this term.  The measures do not capture what cities are doing in their policies and programs to try to become more sustainable -- like most other rankings, they focus on air quality, water quality, etc.  Obviously, these are essential measures of sustainability.  But they don't tell us, as my rankings try to do, how much city governments are doing to affect those sustainability results.  To check the NRDC's rankings for large cities (250,000 people or more) go to http://smartercities.nrdc.org/rankings/large .  For medium sized cities (populations of 100,000-249,999) go to http://smartercities.nrdc.org/rankings/medium . And for small cities (50,000-99,999 people) go to http://smartercities.nrdc.org/rankings/small .  I will have more to report about this and other rankings in the weeks ahead.

Asheville (NC) has a new draft Sustainability Plan

If you'd like to get a sense of what a city of a little under 80,000 people can do to pursue sustainability, take a look at the relatively recently developed Sustainability Plan in Asheville.  This 200 page plan is very impressive both in terms of its breadth and its ambition.  I'd love to know more about the process that the city experienced in developing this plan -- both from the perspective of the city officials who have been involved and the residents and nonprofit officials.  If you have some knowledge of this, please take a few minutes and post your comments here. 

Sustainable Greensboro Gets Off to a Fast Start

I see that Sustainable Greensboro (NC), a relatively new nonprofit in that city, has gotten off to a fast start.  Thanks to the efforts of Brian Higgins and others, the organization seems to be generating lots of local interest.  To read more about this, check the Greensboro News and Record article.

I haven't been able to get much information about what the city's leaders think about this initiative.  Does it seem like the city government is poised to embrace this effort, or does it all sound foreign to the city's leaders?  If you have some insight on this, please post your comments here.  We'd like to know how things are progressing there.

And if you are in Greensboro, the next meeting of this organization is July 22.  Go to the Sustainable Greensboro web site and look under "calendar" for more details.

Climate Action Plan in Portland OR

Thanks to Matt Slavin, president of Sustainability Consulting Group, you can read about the latest efforts in Portland to update its Climate Action Plan.  Portland, of course, has been perhaps the most effective city in the US at reducing its carbon emissions and shrinking its carbon footprint.  As part of the update process, the city and Multnomah County have proposed creating new incentives for developers to do green building. In short, if new construction simply meets the Oregon state energy code, there will be a fee imposed on the development.  If the new construction achieves silver certification using the LEED green building standards, the fee will be waived.  For buildings that achieve gold or platimum certification would receive a rebate or payment from the city.  Read Matt Salvin's article "Climate Plan Debate: LEEDing the Way" from the Portland Daily Journal of Commerce.

New York Academy of Sciences Annual Energy Symposium

If you are in the NYC area, the New York Academy of Sciences is holding its annual Energy Symposium on July 8 and 9.  The 2009 NES will include the Clean Energy Investment Presentations, where competitively selected entrepreneurs pitch their business plans to a panel of investors and financial industry experts. This is a particularly exciting time for this symposium simply because there has been an explosion in interest in green and alternative energy, and a substantial growth in capital available for the development of new technologies.

Wind Energy in Urban Areas

One of the challenges confronting efforts to expand green energy in major cities is that it is often not appropriate to site typical wind turbines on downtown high rise buildings, especially in the northern climes.  Propeller-type turbines often cannot handle the swirling winds that occur in cities, and they frequently shed ice that builds up during periods of relative calm.  Fortunately, there are a number of different parties working on the design of new types of wind turbines that don't have these problems.  One of my favorites is the work of Aerotecture in Chicago, which has two designs -- a vertical shaft version and a horizontal shaft version -- that seem to be very effective where propeller turbines are not.  Although these turbines are only now being field tested, they have installed one of their larger horizontal turbines on the roof of the Mercy Lakefront project. 

Zero Net Energy Buildings

Last week, the New York Academy of Sciences sponsored a forum on "zero net energy buildings."  The forum was moderated by Michael Levi from the Council on Foreign Relations, and included Ron Dembo, founder of Zerofootprint, Inc. (see my earlier post about Zerofootprint), and Scott Muldavin of the Muldavin Company.  Much of the focus was on issues of valuation of green buildings, and the importance of financial incentives to such development. Much of Muldavin's comments focused on the operation of the Green Building Finance Consortium's Sustainable Property Performance Framework.

1st International Conference on Sustainable Cities

If you are looking for an opportunity to learn about or participate in an upcoming sustainable cities conference, the 1st International Conference on Sustainable Cities is going to take place in Mexico October 25 through 29, 2009.  To get a sense of the Conference, check out its web site. 

The Cost of "Going Green"

I saw a recent USAToday story that reports on how expensive it is for municipalities to "go green" especially with respect to energy. The story highlights a recent decision in Durango, CO, to drop its effort to purchase green electricity in favor of fossil fuel-generated electricity because it saved $45,000 a year in the process.  I found the story to be somewhat frustrating on two fronts. First, it provides a fairly accurate picture of the financial challenges faced by many municipalities. Second, the story does not discuss the myriad ways that municipalities could save money through energy conservation and alternative energy.  But most of all, the story does not explain how it is that fossil-fuel generated electricity continues to be cheaper (or at least the immediate nominal cost seems to be lower) than alternatives.  Of course, in many states we have created a system that heavily privileges non-renewable energy sources over alternatives, and we pretend that the result is purely market driven.  Thankfully, this is an issue that is being addressed in cities and states around the country, and the Obama administration has decided to tackle as well.  I will have much more to say about the role of municipalities in a national energy strategy in the weeks to come.  In the meantime, if you have a chance to read the article and post your thoughts, that would be great.

Solar Decathlon House at Tufts

Here’s something for you to check out. This is the design of the Tufts University-Boston Architecural College entry in 2009 solar decathlon. The house is small – 800 sq ft is the footprint, which is the limit imposed by the Decathlon competition – but it is really amazingly flexible space. And it is so energy efficient that it could operate off the electric power grid. And best of all, it is designed to be affordable – it costs about $200,000 to build this as designed.  It is designed for construction in the Boston area, where Medford MA mayor Michael McGlynn broke ground last Wednesday, Earth Day 2009. The house will be constructed on the Tufts campus, and then disassembled after which it will be transported and on display in Washington DC for the competition itself.  After that, who knows.  Maybe it will find a permanent location in Medford or Boston.