Denver Ranks 4th of U.S. Cities with ENERGY STAR Buildings

April’s Green Tip: Mile High Million
Source: http://www.denvergov.org

In an effort to reduce residential energy costs and provide job training for military veterans, The Mile High Million has teamed up with Veterans Green Jobs to plant trees across Denver. Funded as part a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the City’s Greenprint Denver programs will strategically plant 4,600 trees. The 2-3 year program will target 35 neighborhoods with less than 18% canopy coverage, including the Washington Virginia Vale, Windsor, and Lowry neighborhoods in District 5.

Trees will be strategically planted in front yards on the west side of homes to provide optimal shade for cooling homes in the summer. Residents in eligible neighborhoods will receive information about the program by mail and via door-to-door canvassing. Trees will be planted only with prior approval from the homeowner, which includes a commitment to provide ongoing care.

For more details about this program, please contact The Mile High Million at (720) 913-0620, or at million.trees@denvergov.org.

Check out the new Water Week website that I designed with my programming partner,  Planet Media. The website was designed for the documentary film, Tapped, in their recognition of World Water Week 2010. Check out the site – complete with Flash animation, video clips from the film, and great articles written by environmentalists for each day this week: www.tappedthefilm.com

You can also take the water bottle pledge to reduce your water bottle use here:
http://www.tappedthefilm.com/Take-The-Water-Bottle-Pledge.php

Putting solar gardens in communities is an interesting idea to help neighbors share in the initial cost of solar panels, and the benefit of their ongoing use, while reducing the strain on our power grid. An interesting idea –  I would suggest that these “solar gardens” be added to existing parking lots using solar trees rather than install on open space. Read on:

Collectively-owned solar projects may get new tax credit.

Have you ever heard our U.S. states referred to as “laboratories of democracy”? It’s a metaphor that political scientists and occasionally policymakers like to use to describe the situation created in federal systems whereby states “experiment” with policies and provide signals and feedback to the federal government about the viability, desirability and effectiveness of said policies. Well that is sort of what’s happening in the case of the community solar gardens idea. Except in this case, the federal government might even take the experiment out of the democracy lab in Colorado before that state hasn’t even had time to pass it, let alone study its impacts and effectiveness.

With U.S. Senator from Colorado Mark Udall Wednesday unveiling the SUN Act, a bill that would extend solar incentives to group-owned solar installations, the community solar garden concept has gone from relative obscurity into legislative darling in just a matter of months.

Taken at its most basic level, the new rules would open up solar investing to way more people than ever before. People who previously thought they could not own solar panels (or a portion of them) because they live in an apartment, condominium or do not have a viable solar resource.  And that increased access to the tax benefit is a good thing.

But left unchecked,  the proliferation of community solar gardens could also contribute to ‘energy sprawl.’ Tom Konrad explains the problem (with the Colorado bill) at Clean Energy Wonk:

“My greatest concern with the bill is not that it will cause a move towards large installations, but that it will lead to more ground-mounted installations taking up open space, contributing to Energy Sprawl. No matter what you think about the economics of photovoltaics, one advantage that they have over almost every other type of electricity generation (both fossil and renewable) is that they can be placed on otherwise unused rooftops and other structures, giving a use to otherwise wasted space. Only energy efficiency and conservation have less physical impact on the environment than rooftop solar…”

“Any law which makes solar more likely to be ground-mounted than rooftop is a step in the wrong direction. I think the bill should be amended to prohibit CSGs from being ground-mounted, effectively limiting them to large rooftops and other structures such as awnings for parking lots.”

This strikes me as perhaps one of the reasons Udall has opted to restrict the tax benefit to homeowners, not renters, which is not the case in the Colorado bill where renters could still take advantage of the incentive as long as they could substantiate a connection between their property and the shared solar array. People would then essentially own shares in the installation, shares that the Colorado bill would allow you to sell should you move out of the utility’s coverage area.

What do you think? Should Community Solar Gardens be open to not just owners but also renters or would that open up a whole new can of worms that our federalist laboratories of democracy might have trouble sorting out.

Early Registration for Bike Share Program Has Begun

Here is another Colorado company who has adopted solar – the panels will provide 39% of the power needed to power Odell’s brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado. Pretty expensive system, though – they received a grant for $50,000, but the project cost total came to $410,000! I’m not sure how big their electric bill is, so I’m curious how long it will take to pay it off?

Source: www.denverpost.com
By David Young, Coloradoan
Posted: 01/17/2010

I am proud to announce the launch of the Girl Scouts Forever Green website, complete with a dynamic animated Flash tree that shows the overall progress of the Girl Scouts of Colorado  Forever Green projects.

The website encourages girls to implement take-action community projects. The goal is to bring sustainable, environmental change to their communities or schools. Projects examples include school compost bin creation, neighborhood recycling programs, reducing car idling and car use, creation of green space in communities and more. Check out this great project – businesses can also volunteer to help support participant projects, so let’s join together to make Colorado a greener place in partnership with the Girl Scouts of Colorado!

I designed the website and worked with my great development partners, Planet Media, who did all the backend development for a customized Content Management System (CMS), project management, blog, metrics database, and more.

Check it out: www.gsforevergreen.org

Recycle your old sponges in your potted plants. Especially good for keeping outdoor soil pots moist, old cellulose sponges make the perfect bottom component of planted pots.

1. Rinse the old sponge throughly to remove any soap residue.

2. Cut sponge to fit into plant pot, place in pot, then cover with potting soil, and add plant(s) and top off with soil. Compress soil gently with hands.

3. Water in!

The great thing about sponges is that they will absorb and hold excess water and slowly release it to the soil – so it essentially create a home made self-watering pot. The sponges also hold dirt in (for those pots with larger drainage holes).  Plus, now you finally have something to do with your old sponges!

The Flash developers over at Barkley did a great job on this charming interactive flash snowflake generator, called, “Make-a-Flake”. It’s an incredibly simple yet incredibly complex — everyone can in seconds create their own snowflake, then choose to save it for the gallery, and you can even email your flake to friends or save it out as an EPS file.

What individuality it captures – make sure to look at the gallery of over 2 million unique snowflakes!

I love it – Flash at it’s finest:

snowflakes.barkleyus.com

Here is a positive article written by By Gregg Easterbrook from rd.com:

So here’s the good news: Our air is cleaner, our lakes are purer, our forests are healthier, endangered species are recovering, toxic emissions are down, and acid rain has diminished dramatically. And yet, if you’ve looked at a newspaper or watched the evening news lately, you — like most Americans — might think our environment is under siege. Media coverage of the environment is heavy on doomsday, but the truth is not at all bleak: Nearly all environmental trends in the United States are positive and have been for years — if not decades.

Eco-legislation, green organizations, corporate cooperation and new inventions have all quietly steered our environment in a positive direction. We can’t afford to be complacent, though — especially when it comes to greenhouse gases, since global warming is the one huge problem we haven’t really tackled. But almost every measure taken by government agencies and grass-roots efforts to improve the environment has shown encouraging results — usually faster than expected and at a lower cost. Now that’s good news.

Scientists and environmentalists think that even the worrisome fact of global warming can be ameliorated. There is a strong scientific consensus that the global warming threat requires action, but if current environmental trends persist and the reduction of most pollutants continues to be accomplished faster and more cheaply than expected, we may be able to control and reduce greenhouse gases in both affordable and practical ways.

Consider some of the environmental improvements the United States has witnessed over the last three decades. (Most environmental trends in Europe are positive too; the developing world, however, is a different story.)

Improved Air Quality
Take a nice, big cleansing breath: According to the Environmental Protection Agency, emissions of the primary smog-causing chemicals from cars and trucks have declined 54 percent since 1970, even though the number of registered cars and trucks has more than doubled, from 108,407,000 to 230,428,000, and they are now driven one and a half times as far annually.

Keep breathing, because the fine particulates linked to respiratory disease, including those sometimes seen as soot, are down by about one-third since 1979 (though fewer cities were surveyed back then). The level of carbon monoxide, a dangerous odorless gas, is down 53 percent since 1970. And emissions of sulfur di-oxide, often the major culprit behind acid rain, are down 49 percent since 1970, despite the fact that the United States now burns far more coal, the main source of this pollutant.

These improvements have translated into better air quality for millions of Americans. Between 1976 and 1990, the Los Angeles area averaged some 150 days per year in violation of federal smog standards; in 2004, that figure dropped to just 27 violation days, the fewest ever for that city.

And, in case you are wondering, federal standards have become stricter, not weaker, during this period. Of course, there is more to be done — 27 smog days in Los Angeles are still 27 too many, and Atlanta, Houston and other cities continue to experience air-pollution problems. But overall, air-quality trends are strongly positive. Now, exhale.

Better Water Quality
Other environmental trends are equally encouraging. Water quality has improved, too, and rates of waterborne disease are also in decline. It’s hard to believe, but just a generation ago, factories and municipal plants actually discharged untreated wastewater directly into rivers; today, though some raw sewage often makes it to waterways, almost all wastewater in the United States is treated before discharge.

Even our largest metropolises have seen dramatic changes in their waterways. Remember when the filthy condition of Boston Harbor became a contentious issue in the 1988 presidential campaign? Today, Boston Harbor is sparkling again. The Potomac River, which in the 1960s literally gave off a stench, now boasts a thriving waterfront restaurant scene. And the Chicago River, a virtual open sewer in the 1960s, now hosts charming dinner cruises.

Animals Are Back
While air and water quality have been steadily improving, life itself has been making a comeback. One reason many rates of cancer are declining today may be the ever-lower level of toxic chemicals to which people are exposed; toxic emissions by industry have diminished by a dramatic 55 percent since 1988.

But humans aren’t the only creatures benefiting from an improved environment: Only one animal species is known to have gone extinct in the United States in the last 15 years, the dusky seaside sparrow. During that same period, numerous other species once described as certain to become extinct — including the Arctic peregrine falcon, the brown pelican, the gray whale, and the bald eagle, our beloved national emblem — have recovered sufficiently enough that they are no longer classified as imperiled. In the 1960s, bald eagles were rarely seen in the United States south of Alaska; now the great birds are commonly spotted in many states. Both the banning of DDT, which weakened birds’ eggshells, and strict hunting laws have contributed to this success.

Forests Are Growing Species are recovering partly due to the fact that the forested portion of the United States continues to remain stable, despite a recent real estate boom. High-yield agriculture has enabled millions of acres of farmland to be retired from cultivation and returned to forest.

For example, early in the 19th century, the state of Connecticut was 25 percent forest; today, Connecticut is fully 59 percent forested, though its population has increased twelvefold, from 275,000 to 3.46 million, since then. And Connecticut’s wooded area is up even as its agricultural production has risen. Many other states show a similar dynamic of higher farm production coupled with stable forest acreage.

Steep reductions in acid rain have also boosted forest vitality. Twenty years ago, some people speculated that acid rain would cause a “new silent spring” in the Appalachian Mountains. These days, the health of the Appalachian forest is greatly improved, with a promising return of wild animals, including deer and black bears, and a rebound in tree cover and heartiness.

Steady environmental improvements have taken place across the board, regardless of which party is in the White House or controlling Congress. During the last four years, air pollution has continued to decline, improvements in technology have reduced emissions, the amount of protected lands is on the uptick, and deadly pollutants like dioxin are trending downward. And even more improvement is likely since the Bush Administration has imposed strict new rules that will reduce air pollution from diesel engines and diesel fuel.

Read more here: rd.com