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Entries from February 1, 2008 - March 1, 2008
Vampower
Want to hear something really scary? Some estimates say that up to 25% of your energy bill goes to phantom power, or what Good Magazine calls Vampire Energy. You know your DVD player -- the one that has the clock blinking the wrong time because you don't know how to set it? Well that DVD player isn't actually off. It's sucking power even though it's in "stand-by" mode.
Vampire Energy, or what I've dubbed Vampower, means that a whole bunch of your electronics and appliances are using energy even when they are "off." Good Magazine has a clever graph-ic that shows how much energy is being sucked out annually by various appliances in your home [click the pic]. Vampower is estimated to cost U.S consumers $3 billion a year.
Atlanta - Our Future is Green
This video, released in January 2008, was produced by the City of Atlanta and references major green initiatives like the Sustainable Brownfield Redevelopment Program, the BeltLine, the Atlanta Streetcar, Bellwood Quarry/Westside Park, city urban forest and tree canopy policies, Earthcraft and LEED construction, the City Hall green roof, and Atlanta-to-Lovejoy Commuter Rail.
Atlanta's EcoCity Evolution
The city of Atlanta began 2008 with the declaration that "Our Future is Green." This video represents bold vision-casting by our city's leadership and makes this little ol' EcoBroker proud to call Atlanta home.
It got me to thinking: how green could our city be? Atlanta already has more LEED certified buildings per capita than any other U.S. city. With the BeltLine we are underway with the largest green redevelopment project in the country. A good start as Mayor Franklin says, but what would it take to achieve her goal of becoming the greenest city on earth?
I speak often about the greenovation of personal properties, but our homes are systems within a system. We can green them up all we want but if they aren't part of a larger, greener system then how ecological is the end result? EcoHomes need to be embedded within EcoCities. What if we took greenovation to a whole new level -- say a block of downtown Atlanta. What would that look like? Richard Register, author and artist of EcoCities: Rebuilding Cities in Balance With Nature, provides us a triptych illustrating the evolution.
We begin with a slice of typical downtown America, like the picture below. We'll call this EcoCity Night. Look familiar? Bring any places in Atlanta to mind?
This could be any downtown with it's auto-dominated, concrete-covered landscape and big boxes of steel and glass. Nothing is built to human scale and it is not very pedestrian-friendly.The streets are congested and the citizens are choking on car exhaust.
Step two is EcoCity Dawn. Here we re-vision the built environment and get busy with the heavy lifting. We deconstruct and rebuild, beginning the process of creating a livable city center. Old waterways are uncovered, materials are recycled, out-dated and underutilized office towers are converted into vertical villages, parking is reclaimed, and mixed-use zoning is established. Alternative energy and water conservation strategies are planned and implementation begins.
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Finally we have EcoCity Day. Richard Register describes the achievement:
An EcoCity downtown with waterways restored, bridges between buildings, pedestrian streets, solar active and passive energy technology and design, rooftop access to elevated “streets” and bridges between buildings. Slowly, people are moving in from the suburbs toward city and town centers using development profits to help pay for buying and removing buildings in automobile dependent areas. Now the city center runs on a fraction of the energy as before, has streets filled with fruit trees, is extremely friendly to the pedestrian and the whole city takes up much less room, making room for more agriculture and natural land.
Burke Sisco
I've had some rich email exchanges with Richard Register since I made this post. Richard is the EcoCity Guy. He is one of the world's leading theorists and authors in ecological city design and planning. He is the Conference Convener for EcoCity 2008, a world summit to be held in San Francisco, April 22-26. He also has a thriving seedling in his window box whose parent is the world's oldest living organism -- the celebrated Methuselah Tree -- a 4,700 year old bristlecone pine! Fascinating!
Burke Sisco
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Here comes Suniva
A few weeks back I told you about Nanosolar, a company poised to make solar much more affordable through thin film technology. Now it appears that Atlanta will have it's own star in the thin film solar field. Suniva has burst on the scene with an announcement that they have raised $50 million to begin producing proprietary "wafer-thin" solar cells. The technology is being licensed from Georgia Tech's University Center of Excellence in Photovoltaics. UCEP's Director, Ajeet Rohatgi, is the founder of Suniva along with John Baumstark, a tech industry veteran. Rohatgi was awarded a patent in September 2005 for a new way to manufacture more efficient solar cells at reduced cost. The plans call for the opening of a manufacturing facility in the metro Atlanta area, employing up to 100 green collar workers. Solar cells could be shipping as soon as October of '08.
