The LA Times ran a great editorial last week in response to Bush’s State of the Union address. It chided him for hyping research, spending, and technology over policy and implementation.

“By and large, it isn’t a lack of technology that keeps the nation so dependent on oil. It’s the lack of will to use it.

Engineers have produced a basket of new technologies for making cars burn less gasoline, yet fuel standards for passenger cars in this country haven’t changed in more than two decades, and fuel economy has barely budged. Brazil has shown the way to energy independence by powering cars with ethanol made from sugar. This country, meanwhile, continues to pour billions of dollars in subsidies into producing ethanol less efficiently from corn. Advances in solar energy have made it less expensive and more reliable, yet only California is making a significant bid to exploit the power of the sun....

Technologies that could make the U.S. more energy independent sit on the shelf while the automotive industry dithers about raising the price of a car by a couple of thousand dollars (money that could largely be recouped in savings on gasoline) to raise gas mileage by about 20 miles per gallon. Bush also talked about investing in zero-emissions coal plants. Yet, after a former EPA administrator said the technology existed to reduce mercury pollution at coal-fired plants by 90% within a few years, the Bush administration issued far weaker regulations.

The energy legislation passed last year provides individual homeowners with tax incentives to install solar energy units, but it does nothing to lure builders into solar, which would have a far greater effect.

How about importing ethanol from Brazil to put more fuel-efficient cars on the road now? That would mean dropping tariffs and ending protectionism for U.S. corn growers.”

I tried to make a similar point here a few months ago, though was not as eloquent.

(via Planetizen)

In November 2003, I blogged Edward Mazria’s analysis of the environmental impact of architecture in the U.S. Namely, that buildings are responsible for a whopping 46 percent of carbon dioxide production in the U.S.

Yesterday, Mazria and company launched a Web site to spread the word and promote a response. From the press release:

“www.architecture2030.org is part of an ongoing effort, initiated by architect Edward Mazria, to provide information and innovative solutions in the fields of architecture and planning, in an effort to address and reverse the destructive trend toward global climate change.

The website clearly illustrates, using the latest research, that the Building sector is currently responsible for about half of all U.S. and global emissions annually and that this sector’s emissions are increasing at an alarming rate.  Architecture2030.org outlines the steps necessary to address this situation.  As part of this effort, the website includes a variety of resources to help professionals, government officials, and those in the building sector, plan and design for a carbon-neutral future....

The website will report on the activities and progress in the building sector around the globe and critical information will be updated regularly.”

In particular, I liked the case studies.

Also of particular note is the organizing work of the American Institute of Architects, a professional association:

“The American Institute of Architects, representing 74,000 prefessionals, recently announced a bold initiative to reverse the environmental impact and greenhouse gas emissions of the U.S. building sector. The AIA... set a goal of reducing the fossil fuel consumption of buildings by 50 percent in four years, with additional 10-percent reductions every five years thereafter. The implications of this initiative are considerable and when implemented will transform the built environment in a way we have not seen since the time of the industrial revolution.”

AIGA where are you?

Folks in Maine have a plan to fight the war by saving jobs — and the environment.

Christie Toth reports in the April 1, Portland Phoenix about a statewide, grassroots campaign to convert Maine’s military manufacturing infrastructure to environmentally sustainable, non-military manufacturing:

“A year ago, Bath Iron Works, Maine’s largest private employer, had a contract to build seven DD(X) Destroyers for the United States Navy.

Now, the president’s budget proposal has slashed the destroyer order by more than half, and the Navy is considering giving the entire contract to a shipyard in Mississippi. As the Maine delegation fights what may be a losing battle on the Hill, economic conversion is beginning to look like more than an idealistic pipe dream. It is beginning to look necessary for Midcoast Maine’s economic survival.

With more than 6200 employees, BIW is Maine’s largest private employer; however, despite a robust shipbuilding schedule, the yard has been hemorrhaging jobs for years. Over the last six months, with 51 layoffs here, another 137 there, BIW has eliminated nearly 500 positions. And those layoffs barely register compared to what the company, a subsidiary of the Virginia-based General Dynamics Corporation, may be facing in the near future....

The Maine congressional delegation is doing everything in its power to push against the carrier-like momentum of Donald Rumsfeld’s vision for leaner, meaner armed forces. Senators Snowe and Collins warn of the grave dangers of single-source destroyer construction in Mississippi, citing everything from terrorist attacks to hurricanes. Congressman Tom Allen rails about the costs of the Iraq war, which he says could purchase a destroyer a week. None of Maine’s elected representatives has been above a little fear-mongering about China....

Peace Action Maine (PAM) is a nonprofit activist organization working to provide ‘a voice of education and a center for all people committed to disarmament and creative responses to conflict.’ On April 1, they will launch a two-year campaign to shift Maine’s manufacturing base away from reliance on military industry. While PAM would support the introduction of any socially responsible, ecologically sound nonmilitary manufacturing in Maine, their most treasured vision is to make Maine a national leader in the production of sustainable energy technologies, such as solar panels and wind turbines.

Domestic demand for windmill equipment is growing. ‘Maine’s going to be left behind,’ says Gagnon, ‘because the Maine delegation is clinging to a sinking boat.’”

The campaign kicked off with a parade in Portland, a traveling art exhibit, public presentations, and the commission of a feasibility study from Economists for Peace and Security.

Bruce Gagnon is blogging the campaign at Organizing Notes.

One of the few redeeming qualities of winter in New York City are those beautiful columns of steam that rise from the streets. Walking along, you catch these great clouds of vapor churning and billowing — particularly at twilight, through the headlights and street lights.

So what’s it all about?

Under the streets of New York City is the largest steam distribution system in the world.

On March 3, 1882, the first steam distribution plant of importance in the U.S. made its first distribution of steam from a central plant at to the United Bank Building on Broadway, sending steam to heat buildings in lower Manhattan.

The New York Steam Corporation, formed July 26, 1880, consolidated with the Steam Heating and Power Company of New York in September 1881. The company was sold in 1915, but when the parent company went bankrupt two years later it was reorganized as the New York Steam Corporation. It was merged into the Consolidated Edison system in the 1930s.

This article from the Gotham Gazette’s infrastructure series draws the broad contours of the current steam system.

Seven steam plants, five in Manhattan and one each in Queens and Brooklyn generate the millions of pounds steam that run under the city’s streets. The steam heats housing, offices, a few churches, and NYC landmarks like the Empire State Building, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the United Nations. It is used to press your shirts and in the central sterilization unit St. Vincent’s Hospital. I also note that the system stops south of 96th street.

Those plumes in the street may be releasing pressure or perhaps just a leak. The system moves steam at high pressures to maintain the temperature and push it through the system.

Three of the plants simultaneously produce both steam and electricity through a process called co-generation. At the height of winter, the system sends out nearly 10 million pounds of steam per hour. Sales from ConEd’s Steam Business Unit account for about 7 percent of total Con Edison revenues.

And because the steam is mass-produced, it is more economical, efficient, and environmentally friendly than the hundred thousand individual oil or gas boilers it replaces. Centralized steam eliminates the need for boilers in individual buildings along with million gallons of heavy fuel oil and traffic from fuel delivery trucks. The steam plants use low sulfur oil or clean-burning natural gas to produce steam. High tech burners further lower nitrogen oxide emissions.

Update 1/9/2010: Here’s a great piece on Urban Omnibus about the NYC steam system.

From Turning Down the Global Thermostat by Christopher Hawthorne in the October 2003 issue of Metropolis:

“Traditionally assessments of U.S. energy consumption have been broken down into four categories: industry, which consumes about 35 percent of the total each year; transportation, 27 percent; residential, 21 percent; and commercial, 17 percent. Significantly energy consumption usually tracks pretty closely with carbon dioxide production because most of the energy consumed is in the form of fossil fuels, which release greenhouse gases — primarily carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide. Thus a pie chart showing carbon dioxide divides along roughly the same ratios as one showing energy use. ‘In every study it’s always broken down the same way,’ [Edward] Mazria says, ‘so when you look at it and ask who the bad guy is — it’s industry.’

Mazria’s eureka moment came when he decided to redraw that pie chart with a separate slice just for architecture. He did this by combining the residential and commercial sectors, and then adding the portion of the industry sector that goes to the operation of industrial buildings and their construction. To get this last group of numbers Mazria used estimates of the so-called ‘embodied energy’ of industrial buildings. A key statistic for anybody hoping to build in a sustainable way, embodied energy is a measure of the total energy required to produce a particular material or building component and get it to a building site.

Mazria’s new math brought the architectural sector to a whopping 48 percent of total U.S. energy consumption. A similar rearranging of the chart for carbon dioxide production left architecture with 46 percent of the total. ‘I rounded the numbers down,’ he says. ‘I want to be careful about my numbers because people are going to attack them.’

What all of this means for Mazria is that the environmental movement has been scapegoating the wrong targets. ‘Look at SUVs,’ he says. ‘All the cars and trucks on the road account for about 6.5 percent of energy consumption in this country. If you figure SUVs as half of that, that’s 3, maybe 3.5 percent. So even if you doubled the gas mileage of every single SUV on the road, you’re talking about a marginal impact in a marginal area, all things considered. That kind of misguided focus actually keeps us from addressing the real issue.’ In other words, we’re worrying about cars when we should be worrying about buildings....

But is it fair to make architects responsible for the damage caused by the entire building industry? Mazria thinks so. He cites figures suggesting that architects design 77 percent of all nonresidential buildings, along with 70 percent of all multifamily and 25 percent of all single-family construction. And he argues that the percentage of architect-designed buildings is in fact higher than that because, as he writes, those figures ‘do not account for owner-supplied plans that were originally from architecture firms, designs by staff architects employed by building owners and developers, and single-family houses designed (but not stamped) by architects and interns.’

In Mazria’s mind, then, the architect is a perfectly legitimate new poster child for global warming: the leading part of the problem as well as, potentially, the solution. ‘Architects — and the government tends to forget this — specify every single material that goes into a building, from faucets to paint to carpet to wall materials to finishes to windows to roofing,’ he says. ‘Architects have the ability to change entire industries with the stroke of a pen. If we specify a material with low carbon dioxide emissions in its fabrication — say, floor tile, carpet, gypsum board — industry will respond. This is the American way. Architects are consumers; they’re not always aware of the incredible power they have to change the way products are manufactured.’...

He writes in his white paper: ‘We already know that buildings can be designed today to operate with less than half the energy of the average U.S. building at no additional cost. The design information needed to accomplish this is freely available.’...

The approach has also led the architect to criticize more quantitative and regulatory green initiatives, including the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED certification program, which is currently the most expansive one in use in this country. ‘LEED-type programs can actually be damaging,’ Mazria says, ‘because they shift decisions about sustainability out of the realm of design at the workplace and put it in a separate, purely technical category. So every firm needs to get one person LEED certified, and they usually send the technical guy, not a design guy. And then that technical guy becomes the guy who has to get your design in shape for LEED, and that process becomes divorced from design.’”

See Edward Mazria’s original article from Solar Today (1MB PDF).

Women in Eritrea are spreading a more efficient stove design across the country. The new design requires less fuel, retains more heat, and produces less smoke — dramatically reducing respiratory and eye diseases, conserving the forest, and requiring less time for gathering fuel and for cooking.

From IRIN:

“An innovative scheme to convert 500,000 traditional injera stoves across Eritrea will cut thousands of tons of carbon emissions each year and help to conserve the country’s precious supply of firewood.

For centuries, injera — a pancake-like food widely eaten in Eritrea — has been cooked on simple clay stoves, built over an open fire. However, the stoves are smoky, dangerous and require a substantial amount of firewood to burn effectively.

But scientists at the ministry of energy believe they have found a solution. By making a few simple design changes they have increased the efficiency and safety of the stoves — known as mogoggos — by over 100 percent.

‘We have added a chimney, so that smoke no longer fills the kitchen, and an insulated firebox to conserve heat,’ Afeworki Tesfazion, the ministry’s research director, told IRIN. ‘We have also improved ventilation, to allow the fire to burn better, so that it uses 50 percent less fuel.’ He said the new stove also burns a wider range of fuels, such as animal dung, twigs and leaves.

The ministry estimates that each new stove reduces carbon emissions by 0.6 of a ton annually and saves 366 kg of firewood per household each year. The government hopes that every one of the 500,000 households currently thought to own a stove in Eritrea will convert to the new style. If this happens the environmental savings would be enormous.

The health benefits are also significant. Without the thick smoke pouring into their kitchens, women and children are less likely to suffer from the respiratory diseases and eye problems that affected many who used the old stoves.

The new mogoggo is already proving popular. In a scheme run by the government and backed by small grants... dozens are being built in villages around the country every week. More than 5,000 households have already converted.

Under the scheme, village women are taught how to build the stoves themselves. They then teach other women, who teach others and so on. With free labour and free materials — the stoves are made of clay and rocks, which are easily available everywhere — the only cost is the accessories. Metal chimney caps, valves and doors, as well as clay fire grates and cement chimneys, are mostly made locally.

One village taking part is Mehiyaw, in Debub region, close to Eritrea’s southern border. Nearly half of the 160 households in Mehiyaw have already installed new mogoggos. Others in the village hope to do so soon.

Standing in her small, neat kitchen, Miriam Amman, proudly shows off her work. Miriam, a mother of six children, built the stove with help from women from another village one week ago. ‘I love it because there is no smoke in here anymore,’ she says. ‘My clothes are clean and the children can play in here while I cook. Before now nobody would come into the kitchen while the stove was lit. Also we use less wood, so I spend less time gathering it.’

The biggest challenge faced by the government now is to let people know about the new stoves — and persuade them to convert as soon as possible....

The government is setting up a credit plan, to enable families to borrow money to build the stoves now — about US $8 each — and repay the loan when they can afford it. It estimates that the next stage of the project, including training the women and the credit scheme, will cost a further $500,000.

But so far, customers appear satisfied. In Mehiyaw, a group of Miriam Amma’s neighbours and friends crowd into her kitchen to admire her stove . It is larger and more elevated than the old fireplace, which required women — who do all the cooking in traditional Eritrean households — to bend low while preparing food.

In the small outdoor kitchen the stove is alight, but the air is clear. One woman points out the smoke-blackened corrugated tin roof, a reminder of Miriam’s old stove.

‘At first nobody wanted these new mogoggos,’ said Miriam. ‘But now they have seen how well they work, everybody wants one.’”

via the Ashden Awards