Oh...my....God. I just received an email from a Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) vendor called Carbon Solutions Group (www.carbonsolutionsgroup.com) that took my already high (but controlled) blood pressure to new heights.

RECs represent clean energy and can be purchased by entities wanting to claim to be powered by renewable energy. The gist of the Carbon Solutions e-mail (posted at the bottom of this blog) is that there is a misconception about their cost. RECs, the e-mail argues, are portrayed as way too expensive. Further, the U.S. Green Building Council is providing a misleadingly high number for the cost of powering your building with clean energy to help with LEED certification. Actually, the e-mail says, RECs pretty darn cheap.

Hey, great, right? Wrong.

I have been writing and thinking about what it means to actually solve climate for many years. The problem is dire, so we need real solutions, not illusions of solutions. With regard to clean energy procurement, one of the key challenges is that there is a huge gap between what it takes to actually generate clean power, and the perceived cost of "clean power" as purchased through cheap RECs. I thought I put a knife in this horror show ghoul once and for all, but apparently not. So I guess I will have to rain down a rhetorical napalm strike on this argument again. Sigh.

As I've outlined numerous times -- for Climate Progress, twice in Harvard Business Review, in Chapter 7 of my book (Getting Green Done), and which Business Week's Ben Elgin has addressed many times -- the problem is one of basic economics. In order for RECs to drive any sort of change in the world, in order for them to enable new clean energy development and reduce carbon dioxide emissions, they must cost a lot. That's because the REC has to enable clean energy projects to happen by tipping their finances.

As an example, a solar project I helped develop required RECs at $170/megawatt hour of power produced over 20 years to have a marginally positive return on investment. Those expensive RECs, bought by Xcel energy, made the project happen. Without those REC sales, no project. (So there are good RECs, but they will cost you.) The US Green Building Council is actually right in dismissing cheap RECs -- they want you to buy RECs that actually make a difference, not RECs from existing projects or projects that would happen anyway.

Cheap RECs don't do anything to protect the planet because that price isn't sufficient to actually help reduce carbon dioxide emissions. In my view, companies that are selling $2 RECs are helping to delay real, tangible progress on climate change. Well-intentioned businesses that purchase cheap RECs are under the illusion that they have done what it takes to solve climate change with regard to their operations. They have not.

As an example: to zero out the carbon impact of my home this year, I could pursue one of two scenarios. One option would be to install efficient lighting throughout the house, upgrade appliances, and put in a solar array. Total cost would be in the tens of thousands, with lots of time and labor. Alternatively, using $2 RECs, I could drop about ten bucks a year and more than zero out my emissions. Figure it out: which is the real solution?

OK, but let's assume you're a manager who really wants to buy "clean power" in some form. You need to do your due diligence. That should lead you to what's called a forward REC from a high integrity business like Native Energy or Community Energy, now owned by Iberdrola. Here are the questions you need to ask of a vendor like Carbon Solutions Group (and I invite them to respond on this blog):

1) When I buy at $2 REC, does it do anything to change the world? Does it do any thing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions? (The technical way to ask this question is, "Are the RECs additional?")

2) Would the project I am buying RECs from not have happened if I didn't buy the RECs? (We already know the answer--$2/MWH isn't enough money; it's a meaningless addition to the project.) So what is my purchase doing? They will say "incentivizing the producer." Baloney. Will you clean my sink full of dishes for a nickel?

3) Do you sell "forward RECS" (RECs that are part of the economic model of a project and are required to make the project happen, economically) and if so, what might those cost?

4) Where are your RECs coming from, and explain to me the finances of how that project worked and the role the REC played in this. Actually, send me the pro forma for the development, so I can see how those RECs made the project possible.

Below is the e-mail that set me off. But let me conclude with some philosophy. As I've said before, solving climate change is going to be a bitch. If an easy solution presents itself, it is almost certainly too good to be true.

Dear Auden,

Since 2006, Carbon Solutions Group has helped numerous clients obtain Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) to obtain LEED points... Currently, we are running a 6 part series on some common issues in the REC market today. Through our extensive experience in the LEED market, we have frequently encountered misconceptions about the perceived high cost of Green Power. Below is an example of the cost-effective nature of RECs modified from the LEED NC 2.2 Reference Guide.

Reference Guide uses the example of a 50,000 sq ft restaurant, one of the highest energy consumption ratings per square foot. The process the Guide outlines is accurate, except for their pricing.

50,000 sq ft x 28.7 kWh/sq ft/yr = 1,435,000 kWh/year

1,435,000 kWh/year x 35% x 2 years = 1,004,500 kWh

The USGBC example uses a greatly inflated price of $0.02 per kWh or $20.00 per MWh for a total of $20,090!!!

Using conservative current CSG prices of $0.002 per kWh or $2.00 per MWh, this project would cost only $2,009 with Carbon Solutions Group.

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More work than anyone imagined -- watch a slideshow of the project unfolding.Leise JonesIt is worth noting that the original JP Green House budget for the first year of the project was $25k. In retrospect, this was woefully inadequate, but by no means out of line with the four previous rehabs I had completed. We now project that total expenses for the first phase of the rehab, from purchase (July 2009) through occupancy (January 2010), will come in over $200k, a cost overrun of Big Dig proportions. Like the largest public works boondoggle in U.S. history, we seriously underestimated the problems; in our case, the difficulties in rehabbing a poorly maintained structure which had been abandoned for five years.

Our first clue in this regard, uncovered during the first week of ownership, was that the sill plates -- hard pine beams resting on the stone foundation on which the building sits -- in more than half of the building were termite-ridden. The major structural work of supporting the building, pouring new foundations, and replacing the sills and lower framing was both beyond our own capacity and also precluded occupancy and the piecemeal rehab we planned.

Most anyone who has worked on an old building will nod knowingly in sympathy at our experience of grabbing hold of one problem only to find another, and then another. It’s like tugging on a loose piece of yarn and watching a whole sweater unravel. So to with the JP Green House, but the silver lining that was gradually revealed as we came to understand that no part or system in the 100-year-old, ill-maintained, former corner store could be left in place, was the opportunity to shoot for a truly revolutionary standard of energy efficient rehab.

Between purchase of the property last July and October, the scope of work and scale of our ambitions for the JP Green House were raised from a modest, homeowner conducted spiff-up to a full, down-to-studs demolition job, complete new wiring and plumbing, and, most important, the goal of passivhaus certification. Unlike most energy-efficiency investments, it is very difficult to determine what should be considered additional costs of aiming for passivhaus. Yes, we would have had to attend to the structural problems in the JP Green House under any remodeling plan, but neither would we have needed the massive (for a single family house) buttresses and footings to support thick concrete floors, which will serve as heat sinks, had we not gone down the route we chose. Thankfully, we had patient, expert guidance from a number of highly proficient advisers -- particularly Greg Caplan of Living Structures, Inc. in JP, my dad, Harold Ward, recently retired from teaching at Brown University, where he ran the Urban Environmental Laboratory and Environmental Studies Program, and Peg Preble, our neighbor and master electrician. We were also fortunate to connect with the just-founded design/build firm of Placetailor, headed by Simon Hare.

There will be no shortage of work left for Andrée and me. The schedule calls for completion of all rough carpentry, insulation, HRV system and ducting, electrical and plumbing, sufficient to meet Boston building code, by mid-January, with the first passivhaus blower test soon thereafter. This still leaves to us construction of all interior walls, completing kitchen and bath, all finish work, storefront exterior and a few other odds and ends like construction of the deck necessary to access the new front door.

We have had tremendous community support, with too many volunteers to name joining our crew for a few days to full weeks and 20+ turnouts for Saturday work days. We are looking to expand on this support with a contractor “barn raising” week in December, whereby our friends and other interested construction professionals gain hands-on experience with passivahus building techniques, while donating time and expertise to help finish off the project.

The JP Green House is almost entirely an expression of faith -- on our own part (Andrée and I are looting our retirement accounts to meet the nut), our families (both of which have given important assistance), and the generous volunteer hours, donations of supplies, tools and appliances of our community. What we have not received, thus far, is any support from federal, state or local “green build” programs, utility “renewable portfolio” funds or private foundation grants (other than an estimated $9k we expect in tax benefits and small rebates).

The JP Green House is a “pure” model, therefore: a demonstration of what may be done without relying on funding sources that are unavailable to all. On the other hand, we will occupy our home and start our JP Green House program work without any reserve or cushion, lacking the solar hot water and pv systems necessary to achieve < zero carbon impact, and with the old strorefront, to be used as community space, passivhaus education and outreach and “hub” for 350.org campaignign, still to be completed. More on this interesting state of affairs in the next post.

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For the last year and a half, Ken Ward and Andrée Zaleska have been rehabbing a 100-year-old former neighborhood store in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain. They're converting it into a home for their combined family, a community gathering place, and a zero-carbon demonstration home to inspire others -- and sharing their journey in the special series Coming Home: Chronicling the (re)invention of the JP Green House.

The firm overseeing the project, Placetailor, specializes in creating homes on the Passive House model, in which supertight insulation and careful use of passive solar create a building that requires no heating source. The JP Green House will be one of the first Passive House rehabs in the U.S. Photographer Leise Jones has documented the work of as it progresses, and shares some of her images here.

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USGBC/Booz Allen Hamilton Report Shows Green Construction to Contribute $554 Billion to U.S. GDP Between 2009 and 2013.

The U.S. Green Building Council is having its huge annual conference now — you can watch live streams and archived videos of the leading experts on clean energy and energy efficiency here.  And they just released a major new “Green Jobs Study” done by Booz Allen, which concluded:

The results of this study show that the economic impact from green building construction is significant and will continue to grow as the demand for green buildings rises. Green construction spending currently supports over 2 million jobs and generates over 100 billion dollars in gross domestic product and wages.  By the year 2013, this study estimates that green buildings will support nearly 8 million jobs across occupations ranging from construction managers and carpenters to truck drivers and cost estimators.

The study is well worth reading — or grab some PowerPoint slides.  Here’s more from the press release:

“Our goal is for the phrase ‘green building’ to become obsolete, by making all building and retrofits green – and transforming every job in our industry into a green job,” said Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chairman of USGBC. “This study validates the work that the 25,000 people gathered here at Greenbuild, and every member of our movement, do every day.”

The study considered the total value of green buildings and the results include workers from the architects who design them to the construction laborers who pour their foundations to the truck drivers who deliver the materials, in recognition of the how extensive the impact of green building is.

“The study demonstrates that investing in green buildings contributes significantly to our nation’s wealth while creating jobs in a range of occupations, from carpenters to cost estimators,” said Gary Rahl, Officer, Global Government Market, Booz Allen Hamilton. “In many ways, green construction is becoming the standard for development. As a result, it is expected to support nearly 8 million jobs over the next five years, a number four times higher than the previous five years.”

Kudos to USGBC and Booz Allen.  H/t Mnn.com.

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Norton hit Congress to testify about the value of green building in 2008.globalwarming.house.govA major investment in making affordable housing greener—a $4 billion investment, to be precise—was announced Wednesday. The injection comes courtesy of Enterprise Community Partners, a 25-year-old non-profit dedicated to community development and affordable housing. With heavyweight partners including NRDC, HUD, and the Home Depot Foundation, Enterprise—which was founded by the grandparents of actor Edward Norton, who sits on its board—has set its sights on overhauling the entire affordable housing stock in this country.

Well, in that pebble-in-a-pond sort of way. The actual $4 billion will be split, with $2.5 billion going toward the construction or retrofit of 75,000 units across the country, and $1.5 billion going toward research and systems reform work. Through its work with state and local governments, Enterprise Green Communities hopes to have an eco-influence on hundreds of thousands more units, and leverage lots of dough. If that’s not enough, its leaders are calling for the country’s entire affordable housing stock—around 30 million households—to be green by 2020.

It’s the kind of energetic, solution-y plan that makes you have real hope for a millisecond. Even if the 30 million households vision doesn’t pan out, there’s real progress to be made. As speaker after speaker pointed out in a conference call this morning (in which Norton was supposed to participate, but he wasn’t there, not that it’s the only reason certain people called in, ha ha, but where was he?), this isn’t greening merely for the sake of environmental progress—it has tangible effects on the health and quality of life of residents, as well as holding the potential for green job creation, energy savings, and significant carbon reduction.

In fact, Enterprise has just rolled out the results from its work over the last few years. In conjunction with its splashy announcement today, it released a report called Incremental Cost, Measurable Savings: Enterprise Green Communities Criteria. Not the hottest title, but it gets at the point that green builders and fans of retrofitting try to make day in and day out: choosing greener options doesn’t cost that much more, and it saves a hell of a lot over the long run.

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Traffic is the answer!richardmasoner via flickrMeant to mention these two pieces last week, but things fell apart, as they say. (Do “they” say that, or is it just me?)

Both relate to the connection between cars and public transportation, and both are a bit counterintuitive.

The first, an op-ed by David Owen in the Wall Street Journal, posits that traffic jams are a boon to public transportation because they piss drivers off and “turn [them] into subway riders or pedestrians”—and that congestion pricing is counterproductive because it makes driving a more pleasant (albeit expensive) experience:

Advocates of congestion-fighting strategies usually argue that traffic jams waste gasoline. That’s true, but the energy waste and carbon output attributable to idling cars is smaller than that attributable to the overall transportation network. There’s nothing green about fighting congestion if, by distributing traffic more efficiently, it results in an overall increase in traffic volume and extra miles driven by vehicles avoiding the fee areas.

I suspect squadrons of transit thinkers have plenty to say about this, but my quick reaction is this: never has a traffic jam made me want to go hop on a subway. When a traffic jam breaks, all I want to do is drive fast, and far, and reclaim the road. And I’m a fan and user of public transportation. I hope there are indeed people out there who think, “By gosh, this road sure is prone to traffic jams. I think I’ll walk next time.” But something tells me it’s not happening as often as Owen would like to think.

Or is it? Because the other piece is about parking garages in transit-oriented developments, and how more garages are being built—and in a sustainable way—so that people can drive to the train.

Parking garages have become key to the success of transit lines, developments that emphasize transit, and suburban town centers — all popular with environmental groups and others who support reduced dependence on the automobile.

Without abundant parking near transit stations in suburban areas, people won’t bother to hop on subways and trains, says Martin Stein, president of the 1,200-member National Parking Association, which is meeting near Washington, D.C., this week.

“The perception of convenience is very important,” Stein says.

So to sum up: Traffic jams are necessary to convert people to public transportation. And then cars and parking garages are necessary to make transit convenient. Partly that sounds like common sense, and partly it sounds like—well, we are just the teensiest bit addicted.

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Doug Letterman via flickrPop quiz: What saves money, saves energy, creates green jobs, fights climate change, can fix the economy, will make America great again, and is both a floor wax and a dessert topping?

Answer: It’s weatherization! And both the U.S. government and the European Union are embracing its potential.

In a report released today, Joe Biden’s Middle Class Task Force (which, hello: still a terrible name) recommends steps toward a national retrofit program, citing a potential $21 billion in annual energy savings and 40 percent cut in energy use. Specific proposals include: an Energy Star-style labeling program for existing homes; a national home energy performance measure; municipal financing that attaches retrofit costs to homeowners’ tax bills; and national standards for workforce training and certification.

“These recommendations can pave the way for a self-sustaining retrofit market, a market that can reliably cut energy bills while also creating good green jobs and saving consumers money,” says the report. Hear that? Weatherization will save us all.

Next step? Another task force! Yesssss. The interagency Energy Retrofit Working Group will submit an implementation plan to Biden in thirty days. At which point he will create a subcommittee to ... oh hell, just go add some insulation to your attic. We’ll let you know when the good stuff comes.

Meanwhile, across the pond, a draft EU report recommends retrofitting 15 million buildings in Europe over the next decade as part of an “energy efficiency action plan” aimed at cutting energy use by 20 percent. The European Building Initiative would generate about $19.7 billion in savings and could create 300,000 jobs a year, the report estimates: “Investing in energy efficiency in buildings can play a key role in the EU’s economic recovery.”

Hear that? Go on, repeat after me: Weatherization will save us all.

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This is part of a series of interviews with people working to make U.S. communities smarter, greener spaces. Got a suggestion for an interviewee? Send it our way or leave it in the comments section below.

Earlier this year, officials from sixteen U.S. cities gathered in Cambridge, Mass., to compare notes on a surprisingly hot topic: building retrofits. The meeting was held just as the Obama Administration announced the creation of a “Recovery through Retrofit” interagency working group, and hopes were high that federal funding, green jobs, and energy savings would flow forth. I dropped in on that event and spoke with Stockton Williams of conference sponsor Living Cities, a coalition of foundations and banks—including such heavyhitters as the Gates Foundation, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank—that aims to “improve the lives of low-income people and the urban areas in which they live.” Brimming with quiet confidence, he’s one of those people who leaves you feeling like good things actually can happen—and are happening. I decided to follow up with him to see what came out of the conference, what he thinks of Obama’s urban efforts so far, and what advice he has for the rest of us.

Q. Tell the good people: what is your occupation, and what does it look like on a day-to-day basis?

Stockton WilliamsA. I am senior advisor and director of green economy initiatives for Living Cities, a consortium of global foundations and financial institutions that invests in local efforts to expand opportunity for low-income people in U.S. cities. I work with cities and nonprofit organizations to design and implement building energy retrofit initiatives and other strategies to create clean energy jobs and foster more sustainable urban development. I also work with federal, state, and local officials to develop policies that will make the green economy work for low-income people and places.

Some of what we do involves making grants and loans, which is critically important to getting innovative efforts off the ground. Just as important, we think, is the role we play as a convener of leaders on various issues and source of unbiased expertise and real time market intelligence on the most promising approaches for strengthening cities.

Q. When we met earlier this year, you were at a “Boot Camp” for officials from several cities around the country. How was that experience, and what came out of it?

A. The Living Cities Green Boot Camp convened more than 100 senior local officials and their partners in the energy and workforce sectors from 16 cities for two days of discussion and peer networking on scaling up building energy retrofits. These cities are at the forefront of a growing recognition in communities across the country that building retrofits at scale can create substantial economic and environmental benefits, from progress on climate change to lower costs and new jobs.

At the boot camp we learned a lot about what cities are trying to do, and where they still face challenges. Ensuring that local retrofit initiatives create opportunities for low-income people is one of them. Since the Green Boot Camp, most participating cities have made a lot of progress. We are providing funding and technical support to a number of them individually and creating ways for all of the participants to learn from and support each other’s efforts.

Q. Which cities—either among those who attended the camp or in general—do you think are doing the best job of becoming smarter, greener places to live?

A new wind’s blowing in Cleveland.GCBL.orgA. There is an enormous amount of environmental innovation happening at the local level in all parts of the country. At Living Cities, we are focused on how cities are making the clean energy economy work for low-income people. On that score, Chicago, Cleveland, Minneapolis-St.Paul, Newark, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle are certainly among the national leaders.

Smaller cities like Babylon, N.Y., Charlottesville, Va., and Flagstaff, Ariz., are also doing leading edge work in the area of retrofits.

Q. We occasionally run a column called “Sexy Retrofits,” in which we take a look at high-profile buildings that are getting greener. What role does retrofitting play in fighting climate change, and do you think such splashy projects help the cause or are a distraction?

A. The homes, apartments, commercial properties, and community facilities all around us are a major opportunity for achieving greater efficiency and reducing global warming pollution. Buildings in the U.S. consume 72 percent of the electricity and 55 percent of the natural gas—and account for 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Off the shelf technologies and common sense construction practices can cut building energy use by as much as 40 percent. In the process, building retrofits save money, reduce carbon emissions, and create jobs. Critically, many retrofit jobs—from construction to audits to property management—offer opportunities to train low-income workers for long-term careers.

Splashy projects can be beacons of innovation and inspiration, as long as they are understood as such. But most of the climate benefit from better buildings comes from the less sexy improvements—unless you think a caulking gun is sexier than a solar panel.

Q. What are the biggest challenges that officials intent on creating more sustainable cities face?

Sign of the times.A. One set of challenges is related to the recession and foreclosure crisis, which has hammered city budgets, forced cutbacks in essential services, and limited many cities’ ability to make the progress they had hoped on climate protection plans. Another set of challenges flow from the reality that a true clean energy economy is only just emerging in this country, so local governments, like the rest of us, are still learning how to make the transition.

Finally, public policies are often a barrier to greener cities. These include federal transportation programs that encourage excessive road building and sprawl, housing policies that drive demand for larger homes on larger lots away from the urban core, and energy policies that underinvest in incentives for energy efficiency and renewable energy in the built environment. They also include local building codes, zoning policies, stormwater management procedures, and land-use requirements that undermine and sometimes prevent cooler, smarter, and greener growth and development. The good news is that public policy as well as consumer demand is clearly starting to shift; both are demanding greener cities, and as the economy recovers, we will see much faster progress at the local level.

Q. As you look at the current administration’s actions on urban and transportation issues so far, what jumps out as the most promising? What do you wish they’d put more emphasis on?

A. The administration has made a strong commitment to environmental sustainability as a central priority in its broader urban and transportation policies, stronger than any previous administration. We will see this reflected in the renewed debate this fall on cap and trade legislation and the forthcoming rewrite of the major transportation laws.

More broadly, there is an unprecedented degree of joint policymaking occurring between the federal departments of housing, transportation, energy, labor and the Environmental Protection Agency on sustainability issues. One example is the Recovery through Retrofit Interagency Working Group, which is developing a comprehensive blueprint for retrofitting the nation’s residential housing stock.

We are working with the administration to make sure policies to spur the clean energy economy also expand opportunity for low-income people. That cannot be an afterthought; it needs to be at the top of the list. The administration has very talented, dedicated people working on this, but prior experience and current budget and political realities underscore the need to be vigilant, relentless, and insistent on this point.

Q. If you could wave your magic wand and make one thing happen in every city right now, what would it be?

A. Cities would have the resources to meet the basic needs of their citizens, with a little left over—and more available from the federal government to reward the leaders—to accelerate their transition to being greener communities.

Q. Do you have any advice for how people can make change in their own communities?

A. Our economic and environmental future depends mostly on cities. Every citizen has a stake in their city’s plan—or lack of one—for responding to the catastrophic threat of climate change. Find out what your city is doing, ask how you can help, and send any message you can to your federal elected leaders that we can’t wait any longer to act as a nation.

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Arrrrr ye gettin’ more done now?Official White House photostream via flickr[UPDATE: A White House spokesperson called me to clarify that it’s parts of the White House complex, not the White House itself, that will be seeking LEED certification. Like many others in the blogosphere, I got swept up in the excitement of imagining hemp sheets in the Lincoln bedroom. Maybe next year—meanwhile, just mutter “complex” to yourself each time you read the phrase White House here.]

The benefits of green building are becoming clearer all the time: A study released this week suggests that employees in greener buildings are more productive and take fewer sick days than those in non-green buildings. The same day the study came out, news was spreading that the White House would pursue LEED certification—a goal that is, says U.S. Green Building Council president Rick Fedrizzi, “absolutely possible and viable.”

While the feds explore options including window films, waste reduction, and smarter energy use, I found myself wondering just one thing: If greener buildings mean more productive employees, will working in a LEED-certified White House mean Obama can finally get some shit done?

To find an answer to this carefully considered question, I decided to survey a few in the know. First I contacted Norm Miller of the University of San Diego’s Burnham-Moores Center for Real Estate, who co-authored the productivity study. He immediately answered my question in the spirit in which it was asked. “Clearly Obama is a slacker and he eats fast food and smokes, so just think what he could do in a greener White House,” Miller said.  “Our health-care system and budget deficit would probably have been solved by now if the President had clean air to breathe and better natural light.”

Bill Walsh, founder of the Healthy Building Network, echoed the importance of clean air and natural light where productivity is concerned—though he wondered, given the fact that LEED’s clean-air guidelines offer credit for banning smoking, if we might “expect to see the President huddled under the portico smoking a butt.”

Urban-planning expert Tim Halbur of Planetizen had his own thoughts on the clean-air connection: “The interesting factor in the productivity story is the effect of air quality on health and feelings of well-being. Just getting dust, mold, and germs properly filtered appears to mean that 45 percent of people have 2.88 fewer sick days each year. Who knows what Obama could accomplish with an extra 2.88 days a year? Maybe bring peace to Israel, just with a little better air conditioning.”

And then there was former Sierra Club press secretary Eric Antebi, now a VP at Fenton Communications: “Hard to say how much it will help productivity, but it certainly couldn’t hurt. Unless he were to trip over a low-flow toilet and fall head first into a stack of low-VOC paint cans. That could hurt a lot.”

And do these keen observers have any ideas for how the White House could be greener? You betcha. “As I said in a recent Grist interview, living densely is the easiest way to go green,” Halbur said. “So Obama already has that going for him—he’s got zero commute. He walks to work by going down the hall. So he’s already in great shape. As we know, the worst culprit in carbon footprint is air travel, so I suppose if he swapped Air Force One and Marine One (the helicopter) for some sort of zeppelin that runs on solar power he’d be better off.”

Obama, we’re just tee-sing. We know you work your putt off.Official White House photostream via flickrAlexander Lee, founder and director of Project Laundry List, says the answer is blowing in the wind: “A clothesline at the White House would herald a new age of leadership and demonstrate an understanding on the part of the Obamas that we need a new economy.” Lee says Americans’ post-War love affair with machines “has made us fat, kept us cut off from the outdoors, and chained us to a desk to earn enough money for all this stuff that is really detrimental to the environment and not necessary for a healthy, happy existence.”

Walsh of HBN had another innovative suggestion for the White House green team: “Maybe Van Jones can be brought back in order to get credit for using recycled materials.” (In fact, Jones’s former employer, the White House Council on Environmental Quality, is leading the LEED charge; at press time, I was still playing e-tag with a spokesperson to get their take.)

Whatever the upgrades, USD study co-author Miller concludes that a greener White House is long overdue: “Our prior President Bush probably did not realize why his brain functioned so slowly at times. We suspect now, after careful scientific study, that Bush’s vocabulary would have likely reached that of a tenth grader had he lived in a better environment.”

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Even as China overtakes the U.S. in the dubious category of “world’s leading greenhouse gas producer,” it is also well ahead of the U.S. in developing the technologies and policies to solve the problem -- and selling those solutions to us at massive profits which could have been ours.

On a recent trip, I saw entire Chinese towns powered by farm waste and enough windmills for jousts with ten thousand Don Quixotes. As you read this, China will have just surpassed the U.S. as the leading producer of wind turbines, many of which are exported at very high margins. And to get a sense of just how fast China is leaving us in their rearview mirror, consider this: the Golden Dragon has doubled its wind capacity every year since 2004.

Solar too. I wrote a speech for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005 when he visited China on a trade mission. He spoke at Tsinghua University in Beijing, "China’s MIT,” and held up the world’s most efficient solar cell, designed by Silicon Valley’s SunPower Corporation. The cells were being manufactured in China for export back to the states, but SunPower had to double capacity because of Chinese domestic demand. Schwarzenegger noted that a student in the audience might design the next/better solar cell someday -- and every head nodded with knowing smiles. So while we have already lost the battle for low-cost, high-tech manufacturing, we may soon lose bragging rights and IP royalties when our designs are surpassed by China.

One reason China is leaving us in the dust is a shrewd government that has invested 40% of its stimulus funding in green companies, compared to just 12% by U.S. taxpayers, ensuring the rapid growth of the economic gift that keeps on giving. They also get the money out the door -- compare our Department of Energy, which is still mired in communist-era bureaucracy and can’t ever seem to pull the trigger on loan guarantees/grants for projects that actually work. The secret is that the Chinese government fast-tracks projects that create economies of scale, recently approving a 25 square mile solar farm. That helps Chinese companies get costs down and become even more competitive globally.

The final ingredient in the fast-rising Chinese cleantech soufflé is finance. When I spoke in Hong Kong to investors, pension funds, and shoe shine boys with coins to invest, they are all putting money into these clean technology companies and looking for more. That includes real estate investors, who are looking for green development projects with LEED or other certified efficiencies. My firm, Pegasus Sustainable Century Merchant Bank, recently partnered with Ross Perot’s Hillwood Realty to host a US tour for the China Real Estate Chamber of Commerce and 30 of their investors. They’re looking at green projects, but also figuring out which energy efficiency and green building products they can take back to China for use in their own developments.

But never fear: everyone I spoke to in China’s government and private sector was very polite. They are willing to share all of this with the rest of the world -- at the right price, of course. See you at the race track!

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The Refract team recycled used billboards to create waterproof walls for the home.Courtesy Santa Clara University

Adjacent to a three-story parking garage on the Silicon Valley campus of Santa Clara University, workers are busy building a contemporary wood-clad home that wouldn't look out of place in the pages of Dwell or another shelter magazine for the po-mo, Tesla-driving, little-square-eyeglasses-wearing set.

Which is exactly the idea.

The home is California's entry into the U.S. Department of Energy's biannual Solar Decathlon and is a collaboration between undergraduates at Santa Clara University and the California College of the Arts in San Francisco. Twenty university teams are competing, and the winner, according to the Energy Department, will be the one whose design and engineering "best blends aesthetics and modern conveniences with maximum energy production and optimal efficiency."

"Most of the homes in the competition are boxes," Preet Anand, a senior majoring in engineering physics, says above the din of hammers on a sweltering afternoon. "A box is very efficient but the problem is that it doesn't embrace its environment."

"Our target market is Los Gatos," he adds, referring to an upscale Silicon Valley town nestled in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains. "It's not a very green area but it's a very trendy area. People in Los Gatos have the financial means to afford a house like this."

A conceptual drawing of the Refract House.In other words, style counts. In the 2007 Solar Decathlon, Santa Clara came in third, scoring high for technology but low on esthetics as evidenced by the boxy bungalow -- more tract home then trendy -- that now sits around the corner from the '09 model under construction.

Called the Refract House, it's shaped like a bent tube, wrapped around a deck and reflecting pool. The home is packed with green technology designed to be unobtrusive. It doesn't scream green, it just is.

Sort of like the Refract team. The environmental values are baked in and it takes some prodding to get Anand and project manager Allison Kopf -- a junior also majoring in engineering physics - to talk about the save-the-world aspect of the endeavor that has consumed the past two years of their lives.

Rather, they approach the contest in typical Silicon Valley fashion -- as a startup. And that's a good thing. As they enter the workforce in this epicenter of innovation, the members of Generation Green view sustainability as a basic business value.

"We're in Silicon Valley so we get the opportunity to take advantage of all the crazy technology because we have all the startup companies that are doing the most wild things and just have got funding and are open to working with you to get their technology out there," says Kopf, 20. "We're in a green revolution and we need as engineering students to take that on."

Among the companies collaborating with Team California, as the joint venture between Santa Clara University and the California College of the Arts is called -- are solar panel maker SunPower, solar equipment maker Applied Materials and Seattle-area bamboo wood company Teragren.

"The project is kind of a startup training 101," says Anand. "We wear so many hats. Allison first started helping with the solar loads and then changed to doing solar panel calculation. I was the head designer for the water systems in the house but help out with fundraising and with digital communication."

In fact, after graduation the core members of the 2007 contest team founded their own green tech startup, which remains in stealth mode.

Preet, 21, and Kopf give me a tour of the 800-square-foot, one-bedroom Refract House, the product of a 30-member team that typically spends 50 to 60 hours a week on the project.

The roof sports a massive 11.2-kilowatt solar array. That will produce about 11 times the electricity necessary to power a home of this size. But part of the contest brief is to generate as much power as possible from 800-square feet. The team also needed the extra juice for the radiant heat, hot water and cooling systems.

The house features a large number of windows to minimize the need for electrical lighting during daylight hours.Courtesy Santa Clara UniversityThe house faces south to maximize solar energy production, so the team installed triple-paned argon gas-filled windows to keep the interior cool in the summer sun. A weather-tracking gray-water system is used for irrigation and rainwater is harvested for the reflecting pool. The home's insulation is vegetable oil-based and the house has been weatherized with old highway billboards that clad the exterior under the wood siding. The kitchen appliances are high efficiency and the lighting is LED.

"We measure everything -- from how much hot water your shower is using to how much energy the house is producing to how much energy you're consuming room by room. This is all available in real time on a display," says Anand.

And there's an iPhone app, of course, to let the homeowner monitor that data and turn off lights and appliances by remote control. Forget to close a window before you left for that business trip to New York? No worries. Some of the windows are mechanical and can be operated from your iPhone.

So what does all this cost? Minus the extra solar wattage on the roof and the structural steel -- installed so the Refract House can be transported to Washington, D.C., for the Decathlon judging in October -- Anand and Kopf say the sale price would be around $440,000. That's minus the land.

The Refract House experience already has changed the duo's post-graduation plans. Both switched to majors more conductive to careers in green tech. Anand would like to work for one of the big international consulting firms involved in green projects like Masdar City in Abu Dhabi while Kopf wants to go into green tech or green policy.

"I'm looking at grad schools in Germany because they're the leaders in solar right now," she says.

In the meantime, they want to win the Solar Decathlon. The house will be finished by Sept. 1, when it will be opened to the public for tours for a few days before being dissembled and shipped to Washington.

--

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Innovation in progress. Excuse our dust. For more images from the JP Green House, visit Leise Jones Photography.I was bringing two new friends down the street for a tour of the JP Green House last week. "Now prepare yourselves," I warned, as I always do, "it's not bright shiny green yet. You'll need to use your imagination."

We rounded the corner and there it was: A hulking, gray house with a strange triangular shape on a prominent streetcorner.  Gray shingles were falling off the exterior. Plastic tarps covered the gaping window-openings. In the garden, the grass grew tall around the dumpster and a huge pile of brush at the back was waiting to be shredded. Pumpkins and squash vines were spilling out over the raised beds of vegetables, and my attempt at making a flower bed had revealed my feeble knowledge of plant-aesthetics. Weeding was overdue. A large hillside on the north side of the garden was covered with blue tarps, smothering out our nemesis, the pernicious invasive weed Vincetoxicum.

Inside, I showed off the newly repaired foundation with pride, though to the untrained eye it is merely a concrete floor. The interior is entirely gutted, with no interior walls and only the frame to show.  I verbally painted the vision for my guests: Picture the 12 inches of insulation and the polished concrete floors that will keep in the passive solar heat from the south walls; the solar panels and the mini wind turbines that will provide the minimal amount of electricity we’ll need for appliances.

Imagine a big open first floor with a kitchen and living room connected to the "community room," which we will open to our neighbors for meetings, book groups, potlucks, climate-action planning, meditation, songfests, and a homeschooling collective. Imagine groups of schoolchildren visiting for tours of a zero-carbon house and discussions about the meaning of sustainability. Imagine the deck outside the kitchen, an herb garden, a thicket of berry bushes.  Picture clean laundry waving in the breeze, and the Earth flag over the front door. I go on ...

Most people get it; they see the vision as we describe it; they get excited. We are careful to talk about process, because we know it will be endless. When asked, I will expand the vision to include our sense of what our three children will learn from living in a demonstration home, learning to give tours, raise chickens and vegetables, and contemplate the future without paralyzing fear. And I will talk about the trouble and the passion of building a dream with the love of your life: fighting over money and housework and the kids, the grief of climate change we face together, the spiritual work of building together.

There are occasionally cynics, who point out how far we have to go. It’s okay -- I am occasionally one of them.

It was an excellent week of climate news, much of it covered here on Grist. I watched with fascination as the comments accrued in response to Adam Sacks' post about the need to tell the full, horrifying truth about the coming ecological crash. The same tension between despair and hope is everpresent in our household as well. Elizabeth Kolbert’s wonderful article about No Impact Man and other successors of Thoreau brought up an issue I talk about constantly: The very American desire to "fix yourself," in this case "green your lifestyle" to degrees of near absurdity, usually as some sort of a time-limited personal project, which begs the question of whether these aren't just gimmicks. This despite the clear evidence that climate change cannot be solved by millions of people making relatively easy "lifestyle changes."

What makes us different? We have asked that question of ourselves and others and we are still answering it.

Part of the answer is just humility: A demonstration home is just that. We are trying to model a viable future, and be honest in the process about the difficulties and the compromises. (Ken insists on having a clothes dryer; I refuse to give up leather shoes; we have to drive all of our kids to school, because the schools in walking distance don't please us.)

Another part of the answer is action. We are committed to our political work on climate (we are the Boston "hub" for 350.org), to the point where we neglect the house itself to do it.

The most gratifying news of the week for me was the announcement of the new initiative by the Yes Men, BeyondTalk. Go to BeyondTalk.net and pledge to engage in civil disobedience for climate change.

Ken and I discussed it. We decided that we would have to take turns doing actions, so that we don't both get arrested at the same time. Someone has to take care of the house and the kids. And we considered whether we should set up a small fund for bail and other legal expenses. Then we went back to our discussion of our options for exterior siding: Should it be red?  Definitely not green.

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The cermonial urban-turbine installation.indigo12west.comTwo weeks ago in Portland, Oregon, a new 23-story building added something you don't usually see in an urban setting: a series of four Skystream wind turbines, with a total capacity of 9.6kW.

There are several reasons why wind turbines are a rarity atop highrises -- beyond the obvious one: our power infrastructure makes changing from traditional sources of electricity difficult, expensive, and seemingly unnecessary. (As long as you can convince yourself that the planet isn't really warming and that 15,000 Americans don't die prematurely each year from breathing in filthy air from coal-fired power plants, and that the price of energy is going to stay stable and ... you get the idea.)

Wind power in an urban setting comes with its own set of challenges.

A natural lack of regular winds forceful enough to generate meaningful amounts of electricity.

Most "wind farms" are located in areas with high, steady winds and use giant turbines. In fact, the trend has been to build larger windmills capable of generating ever more electricity.

In 2006, Technology Review ran an interesting piece about plans for a new turbine with a rotor with a 140 meter diameter.

Sometimes, however, smaller still is beautiful -- and more appropriate.

So some manufactures, like the Flagstaff, Ariz.-based Skystream, have been building scaled down wind turbines like the ones on top of Twelve|West.

One advantage of the Skystream 3.7 is its lower wind speed requirement. With its 12-foot diameter, the rotor can begin generating electricity with winds blowing at just 8 miles per hour. It reaches peak production (2.4kW) at 29 mph and will continue to operate at winds up to 60 mph. (The Skystream 3.7 is built to withstand gusts of up to 140 mph.)

Wind flow in urban areas is disrupted by other buildings.

Placing the turbines on top of a 23-story building, and then mounting them on 45-foot poles puts the blades at an elevation of 82 meters (270 feet), high enough to escape the distortions of the surrounding built environment.

Still, critics of the project have said that the expense of putting the four turbines into operation outweighs the financial payback delivered in energy savings.

The building's other eco-features include graywater in the toilets -- leading to this helpful warning.But Robert Packard, a managing partner of the architectural firm ZGF, which occupies the lower four floors of Twelve|West and also designed the building, thinks those critics are missing the point. Packard told the Oregonian newspaper, "[We're] trying something new. It's not a gimmick. Not only are we learning, but we can share it with the world, add to the body of knowledge that's out there."

Kind of like when solar photovoltaic panels were just getting popular. Not every idea that worked well in the lab made it in the real (rooftop) world.

I'm hoping the information they get from the four turbines helps the shift from a fossil-fuel to a renewable energy economy. But I have to admit, just the sight of windmills spinning on urban rooftops -- 20 or more stories up -- has an appeal all its own.

Osha Gray Davidson blogs regularly for Grist and edits The Phoenix Sun, where this post first appeared in a different form.

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This post is from my colleague Barbara Finamore (Director of our China Program).  It is a set of important first steps that China and the U.S. could undertake to help reduce global warming pollution.  Moving these two countries together will be critical to securing a strong global commitment in Copenhagen.  And there have been some important signs from China that they might be poised for a serious step to address global warming (as I discussed here).

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The recent high-profile visits to China by leading members of Congress and the Obama administration have made it clear that China and the U.S. are taking climate change seriously and recognize the importance of working closely together to find ways to reduce global warming pollution.  Although China and the U.S. are the largest greenhouse gas-emitting countries in the world, they also have the potential to be the most important contributors to solving climate change if they work together to combine their resources and experiences to promote widespread deployment of low-carbon technologies.

Based on NRDC's experience working in China on energy and energy efficiency, we have put together a set of three concrete proposals -- summarized below -- that we believe will benefit both countries and offer valuable opportunities for sharing technical and policy expertise and experience.  In addition, we offer here a fourth proposal -- sharing best practices on collecting and reporting emissions and energy data -- that can help both countries to improve their emissions and energy data and strengthen mutual understanding of and trust in each others' energy and GHG emissions reporting.

We believe these proposals are win-win opportunities and offer enormous potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  Although we have focused on projects that can take place in China, we believe that the U.S. would learn and benefit a great deal from participating in these projects, since both countries share many of the same challenges to improving energy efficiency and reducing emissions. 

1.  Using building energy rating and labeling systems that measure building energy performance to strengthen code compliance

The first proposal, working to develop and implement building energy rating and labeling systems that measure the energy performance of buildings, addresses two key barriers to achieving greater building efficiency: (1) the lack of compliance with building energy codes and (2) the lack of information about a building's energy performance.  By providing an objective, transparent measure of a building's energy performance, a properly designed building energy rating and labeling system would be a powerful tool for strengthening code compliance within China's massive and rapidly growing building stock. 

In addition, if the system for rating building energy performance in China can be harmonized with those in the U.S., Europe, India and elsewhere, it will allow for more accurate comparisons of building efficiency among countries and provide the basis for mechanisms that could provide carbon market-based financing for building efficiency initiatives by developing countries.  (Such mechanisms are being considered by the United Nations Environment Programme's Sustainable Buildings and Climate Change Initiative).

In China, we have been working with the the U.S.-based Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) (which developed the Home Energy Rating System index adopted by 16 U.S. states, as well as by the EPA and IRS) and the Shanghai Real Estate Science Research Institute (SRESRI) (the building standards development agency for the Shanghai government) to develop a building energy performance rating and labeling system appropriate for China.  Based on this cooperation, SRESRI published a voluntary building energy rating standard for high-rise buildings in Shanghai which the Shanghai government has approved.  The central government's Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has also developed similar building energy rating and labeling guidelines (Chinese only), which are mandatory for new government buildings and large public buildings.

While these efforts lay a good foundation, strong cooperative efforts between the U.S. and China could provide the necessary technical and policy exchanges that will enable scaling-up of building energy rating and labeling systems to help achieve the enormous opportunities for improving building efficiency in China, including:

2.  Capturing the "low-hanging fruit" of carbon capture and storage (CCS) opportunities by using existing sources of pure CO2 in China to conduct five large-scale demonstration projects

The second proposal focuses on how the U.S. and China can cooperate on CCS demonstration projects that take advantage of China's existing industrial sources of pure CO2 from fertilizer, liquid fuel, chemical, and petroleum refinery plants in order to rapidly gain experience with sequestering hundreds of thousands and even multi-million tons of CO2 in suitable basins.  Although there are already CCS cooperation efforts between China and the U.K., E.U. and Australia, and the U.S. and China both have large-scale plans to include CCS on the FutureGen and GreenGen power plants, taking advantage of China's existing sources of CO2 now would provide valuable practical experience and scientific knowledge by injecting large volumes of CO2 underground at reasonable cost and beginning to characterize key basins, and could set the stage for future larger-scale retrofits of existing power plants. 

The U.S. and China could cooperate to share capital costs and expertise in establishing five such projects in China, starting with a feasibility study, proceeding to a smaller injection on the order of hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 and, if successful, ending with a multi-million ton injection program. All this could be completed within about five years, and this experience could then be used to establish two large-scale, power plant retrofit projects within China.  U.S. and Chinese efforts and exchange could be coordinated  through a U.S.-China Carbon Sequestration Partnership, with an associated fund to conduct information exchange, compile technical best-practices expertise, and engage in outreach and education.

3.  Sharing U.S. experience with energy efficiency resource standards (EERS) to promote investment in efficiency as an energy resource

The third proposal seeks to share U.S. federal and state experience with energy efficiency resource standards (EERS) with China, in order to establish a sustainable mechanism for funding energy efficiency through China's grid companies, which are responsible for procuring electricity supply.  In the U.S., 19 states have adopted EERS that require their utility companies to offset a certain amount of their projected load growth through investments in energy efficiency.  For example, Vermont adopted an EERS in 2000 which allowed it to meet over 7 percent of its electricity requirements through energy efficiency by 2007.  The key goal of an EERS policy in China would be to set mandatory energy efficiency targets to be met by efficiency programs administered by China's grid companies, and to allow the grid companies to recover the costs of their energy efficiency programs through an increase in the retail electricity prices they can charge.  Such a policy would promote energy efficiency as a resource on par with new supply, help to reduce peak load and energy consumption growth, and serve to complement China's existing energy intensity target. 

4.  Sharing best practices on collecting and reporting energy and emissions data

In addition to the three promising areas for cooperation above, a fourth area in which both the U.S. and China could benefit greatly is in sharing best practices on collecting and reporting energy and emissions data.  Discussion and exchanges between the main bodies responsible for collecting such data in each country - DOE, EPA, and the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration in the U.S. and the National Development and Reform Commission and National Bureau of Statistics in China -- to share how they collect and report energy and emissions data could help both countries to improve their data collection systems and gain confidence in each other's energy data reporting.

Because energy consumption from fossil fuels -- coal, petroleum and natural gas -- constitutes the majority of GHG emissions in both countries, exchanges on best practices for energy data collection would lay a solid foundation for building confidence in each country's GHG measuring, reporting, and verification (MRV) systems.  Possible areas for discussion include: how data from the facility and local levels is reported up to the national level and methods for ensuring accuracy; how emissions data can be improved through better data on fossil fuel consumption and fuel-specific emissions factors; how continuous emissions monitoring systems on power plants and industrial facilities can provide improved, real-time energy and emissions data; and the use of common, sector-specific methodologies for reporting the energy performance of buildings, power plants, and energy-intensive industries, in order to facilitate sector-by-sector comparisons and sector-specific financing for energy efficiency and emissions reduction projects. 

Both China and the U.S. are continuing to improve their systems for collecting and reporting energy and GHG data: the China Electricity Council has recently begun reporting national electricity usage on a monthly basis, for example, while the U.S. EPA has prepared a draft rule to require reporting of GHG emissions from large sources starting in January 2010.  These efforts should be communicated and regularly discussed (for example, as part of the Climate Change Policy Dialogue both countries recently agreed to), to allow each country to learn from the other's experiences in improving the accuracy and reliability of their energy and emissions data.

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This marks the first of a series of interviews with people working to make U.S. communities smarter, greener spaces. Got a suggestion for an interviewee? Send it our way or leave it in the comments section below.

Tim Halbur’s career has included a stint as a journalist for NPR, co-producer of an environmental-justice driving tour of California’s I-5, and founder of an online media production company whose clients ranged from HarperCollins to the American Institute of Architects. With a masters in urban and regional planning, Tim puts his obsession to work every day as managing editor of Planetizen, which recently released a two-DVD set called The Story of Sprawl. It’s a weirdly compelling collection of short films from the 1930s through the ‘60s focused on cities and transportation, with commentary from the likes of Andrés Duany and James Howard Kunstler. We checked in with Tim to find out how the DVDs came about, which cities he thinks are the smartest, and what urban-planning changes he’d make if he could wave his magic wand.

Q. What’s your occupation, and what does your work look like on a day-to-day basis?

A. I’m managing editor of Planetizen.com, a news and information website for the urban planning, design, and development community. My average day involves trawling the web for news I think will be of interest to our audience, editing opinion pieces by experts in the field, and putting together our books and DVDs.

Q. You recently compiled and released a two-DVD set called The Story of Sprawl —how did that come about, and how is it being received? Were there any surprises along the way?

A. I found a film a few years back called “Give Yourself the Green Light.” It was produced by General Motors in 1954 to advocate for building more and better highways. And regardless of the propagandistic element, it struck me as a fascinating snapshot of the time. You can see that as the population grew and people moved to the outskirts of cities, the existing road network wasn’t very efficient. But the roadbuilding that GM was promoting led to a brutal system of transportation planning that effectively cut the heart out of many of our cities.

So as I collected more films like “Green Light,” I began to see a story emerge about how sprawl happened that was richer than the one I’d learned in planning school. Eventually, I chose eight films that I think explain in detail why so many people abandoned cities, why the spread of major freeways and suburban housing happened so quickly, and the price we’ve paid for this disinvestment.

Q. The films in The Story of Sprawl paint a pretty dark picture of urban areas—busy, dirty, violent, poor, unhealthy—but they seem to also convey a bit of hope. In one, the narrator says, “If we plan well, urban Americans will someday enjoy more of the advantages of a large city without many of the penalties they now are forced to pay.” Do you think we’ve seen that promise fulfilled? Or is it still in the works?

The Story of SprawlPlanetizen.comA. Well, I think the interesting thing about what these films show us is that the problems facing our cities are not new. The effect of the spread of suburbia and auto-oriented development was already dawning on urban thinkers by the early 1960s as they saw a disinvestment in downtowns and a growing lack of civic culture. Unfortunately, many of their solutions ended up being just as bad as the problem.

The picture of cities being dirty, violent, and poor is where I think the propaganda aspect of the films kicks in. Cities were certainly dirty with pollution through the period of the 1930s-‘60s, which these films cover. And health issues were a reasonable concern with crowded conditions in big cities back in the early 20th century. But I believe these films were edited to make things look much worse, and again, the solutions they proposed were well-intentioned, but wrong. The issue of cities being “clean” led to the creation of those depressing housing projects with empty stretches of grass around them, where residents would supposedly enjoy being surrounded by a healthier atmosphere. Today we know better.

As to being able to enjoy the advantages of a large city without paying the penalties, I think in some ways yes: we’ve learned more about how to make downtown urban areas work well. But I also believe that there are always tradeoffs. As David Sucher, who wrote a book called City Comforts, put it, people today want an “urban village.” And those terms are in many ways contradictory. Urbanity means accepting some chaos, anonymity and proximity to strangers. Village life is about stability and community. You can work to bring aspects of both to city life, but city living is really a choice to embrace vibrancy, which includes a little chaos and grit.

Q. Which cities in the U.S. do you think are doing a particularly good job of becoming more livable, greener places?

A. Portland is the obvious answer. It has managed to create an “urban village” more than anywhere else in the U.S. But David Owen, a writer for The New Yorker, has made a persuasive argument that Manhattan is the greenest city around in his new book, Green Metropolis. The average New Yorker consumes about one-fourth the electricity a resident of Dallas uses, just from the advantages of a dense infrastructure and effective transit.

For me, density really is the underrated way to get green. I get frustrated seeing the focus on green building, when the same sort of 3,000-square-foot tract housing is being built and declared sustainable. We need to be focusing on designing high-quality, comfortable but relatively compact spaces that are unlike the cheap ‘70s apartment buildings we’ve been plagued with so that people want to live together. There are tremendous social and environmental benefits to be had from living more densely.

Q. What has the Obama Administration done right so far for cities? What improvements would you like to see?

A. I think it’s too early to tell. The Administration has been a bit distracted by the end of society as we know it, so I don’t blame them for taking a slow approach to urban issues. The proposed high-speed rail corridors would be a big boon, and I hope they get built. Otherwise, they’re showing a good grasp of the issues and are rightly focusing on the regional perspective. Too many of today’s problems stem from the inability to create consensus among the various small governments in large metropolitan areas.

Q. If you could wave your magic wand and decree one big change in the world of urban planning and architecture, what would it be?

The City of Roses thinks regionally.A. Given my answer above, I’m tempted to change local governments to be more beholden to a regional elected authority. Portland has been able to make effective change ... because the voters created a regional authority with teeth that could do things like create metro transit and enforce urban growth boundaries.

But being a utopian at heart, I’d really like to sweep my wand and try something more dramatic, like taking this “urban village” idea to the extreme and refashioning America’s cities into more functional structures. The problem with sprawl is that it destroyed the city/small town framework that worked so well. City planning is a delicate balance when practiced correctly. You can see that in cities in Europe that retain their forms. Each part of the city, from the countryside where food is produced to the economic heart of downtown, has its proper place in the structure. For the last 60 years, we’ve ignored all of that because cars got us everywhere.

Q. Where do you live, and what do you love about it? What would you change? Any suggestions for what people can do in their own neighborhoods?

A. I live in a great neighborhood in Los Angeles now, near one of my favorite urban public spaces, the Fairfax Farmers’ Market. It’s a series of small stalls that house delicious food stands, produce, and knickknacks, and it’s been there since the 1930s. I’m new to L.A., and I’ve really fallen in love with it. Tom Waits recently said that L.A. is “like a battery. It’s always plugged in.” I feel that since I’ve been here.

As to what people can do to create change in their neighborhoods, I’d say seek out your local community non-profit group focused on land use issues, and support the creation of walkable communities and better transit. Groups like TransForm in the San Francisco Bay Area and the Michigan Land Use Institute are big enough to make change on the local level, but not so big that they lose touch with their communities.

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Carl M via flickrThose of you following our last post (Should Kuba Have a Puppy?) can see that both votes and comments on this question are running 9 to 1 in favor of the gratification of pet ownership. This is even though eco-curmudgeon Ken has made the point, with hard statistics, that keeping domestic animals essentially ensures the death of wild creatures that we would all heartily agree to preserve (indirectly, through habitat loss and overuse of resources).

So what?

Well, the JP Green House is meant to be a demonstration project. We aim to build a zero-carbon house on a low budget, grow veggies and raise chickens for eggs, cut our consumption to a level sustainable for the planet, and make it all public. This means full transparency of finances, building dilemmas, relationship agonies, parenting fiascos, and just the overall messiness of the thing. (Quick house and garden update: Foundation finished, windows and insulation are next, debating exterior options, many radishes, one pumpkin, fabulous dahlias, still short 50k.)

How does the utopian vision jibe with the fact that Kuba wants a puppy, the reality that Ken bought a motorcycle last week, the admission that I am writing this on a 95-degree day in Boston with my window AC blasting?

Are we a demonstration of hypocrisy? Or the immense difficulty of living within our earthly means? I'm afraid we're bound to reveal it all.

Fellow climate-organizer A., who does not own a car and rides his bicycle 12 miles from a prosperous Boston suburb to protests and meetings in our neighborhood, is one of the most sincere environmentalists I know. He writes brilliantly about the failures of major green groups to reckon with the true implications of climate change. He rants inappropriately at meetings, and never avoids calling people on their lifestyle failures. He’s more of a crank than Ken (and that’s saying something). And he smells a little funny.

A. enjoys bugging people. Last week out of the blue he responded to an email I sent from work about the economic crisis by accusing me of ignoring the true ecological disaster. Do you always address people you barely know this way? I snapped back. Basically, his answer was yes. In contrast, I try to walk a tightrope on which I avoid offending anyone by openly criticizing their consumption. I know I might regret my general affability and politeness in twenty years. Geez, we were all too busy to go to those climate protests and write our Congressman before Greenland melted...

I’ll leave you with all this hypocrisy, unresolved in my own mind.

But now for our next poll. I was over at Sue's house around the corner, today, drinking my third cup of coffee and bitching grandly about the past week, which has just been a slugfest for me, when I came up with a brilliant new question.

"How do you think the neighborhood would react if we raised rabbits for food?" I asked Sue. "I love rabbit--we used to eat it in Europe a lot. Delicious with garlic and spinach."

"Around here?! I don’t think so. You’ll have all the vegetarians and vegans picketing by the front door."

"Really? Do people realize where store-bought meat comes from?" I launched into a tirade about factory farming and got the evil eye from Sue, while her ten-year-old daughter turned pale across the room. (Point of fact: Our family is omnivorous, but we currently buy only meat raised humanely and organically on a local farm. We eat it with relish, however, the blood running down our chins. Also, I wish I had a picture of the day Eli ate a raw baby octopus, with the tentacles hanging from his mouth.)

So, the JP Green House question of the week is: Should we raise cute fuzzy bunny rabbits and slaughter them for their meat? Should we make moccasins and baby booties from their skins, sell rabbits-foot keychains for good luck, so as not to waste any usable byproducts?

Well why the heck not? Cause it's mean?

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This post is co-written by Benjamin Goldstein, Reid Detchon, and Kurt Shickman and reprinted with permission of the Center for American Progress.

Investments in building efficiency retrofits can simultaneously address the challenges of economic recovery, energy insecurity, and global warming by laying the foundation for sustained economic growth, driving demand in the construction and manufacturing sectors, and creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs across the country. Retrofitting our homes and businesses will also slash consumer energy expenditures, increase real estate values, and provide low-cost, near-term reductions in global warming pollution.

Today, buildings account for 70 percent of all U.S. electricity consumption and 40 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Yet much of our housing and building stock is old, inefficient, and unnecessarily wasteful. While building codes and green building standards offer a tool for achieving deep improvements in energy use for new buildings, half of the buildings that will be standing in 30 years already dot our landscape. Any strategy to capture the benefits of energy efficiency in our “built environment” must include a program to retrofit our existing stock of residential, commercial and industrial structures.

Deep building retrofits can cut energy use by 20 to 40 percent with proven techniques and off-the-shelf technologies. Best of all, they can pay for themselves from the energy they save. “Rebuilding America,” a national program to cut energy waste in buildings, could reduce energy bills economy-wide by hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Energy efficiency retrofits also create good local construction jobs across the country at a time when well over a million construction workers sit idle in a sagging housing market. Demand for the manufactured products needed to retrofit buildings will also result in jobs by revitalizing the manufacturing sector and contributing to sustainable, long-term economic growth.

If building retrofits can be profitable and offer so many additional social and economic benefits, why has a large-scale market not yet materialized? The short answer is that the market for energy efficiency faces many information failures and real market barriers. Without specific public policies to encourage widespread private investments in energy efficiency, the great value of this market will be left unclaimed. The U.S. economy will be worse off for this failure to act. So too will our planet.

The failures evident in the lack of a thriving nationwide marketplace for energy efficiency products and services include:

Congress and the Obama administration have a historic opportunity to ensure that investments made in weatherization and energy efficiency as part of the recently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act evolve into a sustainable clean-energy retrofit program and a linchpin of the American economy for years to come. Together, government policymakers can forge a strategy that pursues clean energy as a tool for local and regional economic development in states and communities nationwide, as well for U.S. global economic competitiveness.

Retrofitting our houses and office buildings cannot be accomplished by public programs alone, however. Rebuilding our “built environment” will require changes in our real estate markets, new energy efficiency financing tools, more skilled labor to handle the construction and inspection work, and new private capital investments in the industries, infrastructure, and workforce required for energy efficiency. A coherent and coordinated national strategy for unleashing the market for energy efficiency is essential.

“Rebuilding America” focuses on the challenge of dramatically increasing investment in residential and commercial building energy efficiency, with a goal of retrofitting 50 million buildings—40 percent of our building stock—by 2020. Reaching that goal will require $500 billion in public and private investment but will directly and indirectly generate approximately 625,000 sustained full-time jobs and save consumers $32 billion to $64 billion a year in energy costs, or $300 to $1,200 a year for individual families.

Clean energy and climate legislation recently passed by the House of Representatives calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 17 percent by 2020, and by 83 percent by 2050. Rapidly improving the efficiency of our existing buildings is essential to meeting these goals, and the House bill and a companion Senate bill now under consideration could help in some very specific ways by supporting:

All of these measures are necessary building blocks for a strong national energy efficiency strategy, but this paper also looks at what more is needed. We’ve identified five key areas where focused national policy leadership is required immediately to launch a nationwide energy efficiency retrofit industry:

This architecture must be created through a comprehensive national policy approach consisting of a strategic combination of incentives and standards, both of which are critical to overcoming the numerous obstacles that have thus far discouraged consumers and businesses from taking action on energy efficiency. To create the market conditions needed to stand up an industry large enough to perform deep retrofits of 50 million buildings, Congress and the Obama administration should take two key actions:

1. Mobilize major institutions that have strong customer relationships with building owners to market energy efficiency to every building owner in America, provide improved tools for financing and repayment through existing billing mechanisms, and provide a trusted point of access for energy efficiency services that are certified and guaranteed. These institutions include:

2. Encourage the growth of a high-performance, high-standards retrofit industry by taking early steps to ensure performance standards and verifiable energy savings, and engaging market participants at every level, including:

Without a strong public policy framework, the private sector acting alone will not invest to maximize the clear private and public benefits of encouraging comprehensive energy efficiency, and the harm to the global climate will continue unabated. Over time, however, the public-sector role in jump-starting these new energy efficiency markets can be reduced as the private sector develops improved business and finance models and once a price is established on global warming pollution. That is the path outlined in this paper.

Download this report (pdf)

Download the executive summary (pdf)

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Far from their sometimes musty, dusty reputations, many museums in the U.S. stand on the cutting edge of eco-innovation. Whether it’s behind the scenes (using recycled materials to build exhibits, renovating to LEED standards) or inescapably out front (a whole museum dedicated to wind power), museums are showing visitors the green light. Take our tour—admission is free!

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I’m thinking about reporting on this house as an example of sensible environmental design reproducible for the masses. Can anyone help me decide? This is a press release (emphasis mine):

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Home Economics of the JP Green House, Part 1

Wanted: Experienced couples therapist, preferably also with degrees in theology and law, for fractious, passionate pair riddled with apocalyptic anxiety, burdened with love for their children (all of them), acutely conscious of the finitude of time and resources, and fearful that the world has gone mad. Must take insurance.

Everyone told us that building a house could wreck a relationship. And we knew it was true. The rehab of a beautiful old house in Hull had been one of the final blows to Ken's marriage. I spent part of my childhood living in one room with my family of five, with our kitchen in the garage, while our house was torn down and rebuilt around us; fun for us, less so for our parents. But Ken felt that we needed to undertake something together. It was his insistence that the relationship be something more than just a safe place to retreat from the mad world. He was not wrong. Despite all the ups and downs this past year has brought, I have never regretted throwing my energy and resources into the JP Green House.

When I met Ken, he had thrown away almost everything he owned in the process of dissolving a marriage and selling the house he had rebuilt by the sea, a place he'd thought he would be forever. Ken had moved back to Jamaica Plain and was living in two rooms in the home of my friends Ginger and Susan. He spent his days writing about climate, puttering in the workshop he created in the garage, and shuttling Eli back and forth to his mother's. He appeared in the living room when I was taking my guitar lessons with Ginger once a week, a scruffy, handsome presence with a banjo or mandolin to add to the mix. He is the best finger-picker I have ever met.

I was in a more subtle crisis, raising my kids without much help from their father in a bubble of my own fear, which came out of my growing acquaintance with the writings of James Hansen, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Bill McKibben. And also out of my close observations of the weather.

Ken can't pay bills on time, keep his car registration current, or manage the location of his wallet and keys from hour to hour. He can quickly and accurately spin out a logo, a story, and an angle for a campaign. He can carve an ax-handle, mow a lawn with a scythe, and make sense of the Old Testament, cast aluminum in the backyard, and play anything with strings. He's a visionary, a man with vast talents, and deficits to match.

I am a humble and boringly rational person by contrast, but very reliable. I tend to know what's meant to happen, who is expecting us, what state the kids are in, and whether there is anything in the fridge for dinner.

Ken collects wonderful objects from the trash, planning always to create more wonderful objects from them ... at some point. I get into moods where I will throw away anything in my path. I clean when I'm frustrated; I shove things into closets. Ken spins in a complex arena of objects, projects, plans, and visions. I insist on a realistic vision of things that will actually happen. We are both idealists, and we are both uncompromising.

You might say we complement each other, but domestic life can be difficult around here: full of sturm and drang, and testosterone-ridden, as I grumble on bad days. We play subtle games of chicken, seeing how long we can each hold out before someone caves and does the shopping or the cleaning, resentfully, or steps up to the task of shutting down the video-game casino in the boys' room to toss them outside for a taste of real childhood, or waters the garden or cooks a meal ... heck, we can bicker over who should write the next piece for Grist!

At worst, you might say we are held together by sheer curmudgeonly self-righteousness (like some of the great homesteaders: Helen and Scott Nearing come to mind). At best this is a relationship of great passion: intellectual, emotional, spiritual, physical. Add to this the large, untamed personalities of our three children and the complexities of our household become apparent. We bring this into the story of the JP Green House because it is fundamental: we aim for transparency, to convey the inherent messiness of the great transitions we are all making.

This is a meeting of two raw souls, living in dark times: love in a time of cataclysm. To be continued ...

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