NYU Earth Matters is throwing a party for Earth Day’s 40th birthday, and you’re invited! Check out a fabulous exhibit of eco-art from the NYU community and beyond, eat delicious food from the Dosa Man and check out some exciting live entertainment from MC Andrew WK, Cold Cave, Oberhofer and North Highlands, plus a Special Secret Guest so exciting we won’t be able to reveal their name until Saturday morning!

This event is free and open to the public, rain or shine! We hope to see you there!

Check out these stats from WIRED Magazine comparing

artificial trees to the real thing

ARTIFICIAL TREES

-There were 8.9m artificial trees imported to the United States in 2008.

-A typical artificial tree contains 7.3lbs of plastic, mostly poluvinyl chloride (PVC).

-It takes 20 years of re-use for an artificial tree’s carbon footprint to be lower than that of an actual tree’s.

-In an entire year, approximately 600,000 U.S homes could be powered using the energy required to run decorative lights during the holiday season.

THE REAL THING

-In 2008 there were 28.2m real trees sold in the U.S.

-Each year, 5.8lbs of pesticides are sprayed on real holiday trees in North Carolina.

-There are approximately 4,000 tree recycling centers in the U.S.

-It is estimated the average conifer tree can absorb 1 ton of carbon dioxide over 60 years.

TIPS FOR KEEPING YOUR HOLIDAYS GREEN!

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Check out www.greenpromise.com/resources to find organic, pesticide-free tree farms near you.

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Switch to long lasting LED holiday lights and use approximately 90% less energy per string. Visit the New York Energy $mart Lighting Page for more info on LEDs. Visit www.holidayleds.com to recycle your old incandescent lights.

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To find out where your tree can be turned into compost or woodchips, go to www.earth911.com.

]]> http://solar1.org/2009/12/08/the-greenest-tree/feed/ 0 http://solar1.org/2009/12/01/follow-us/ http://solar1.org/2009/12/01/follow-us/#comments Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:31:10 +0000 Jamie http://solar1.org/?p=4485 Well, we could only hold out so long before we caved to the allure of Twitter.  All the jokes have become cliche, so we’ll just put the link out there and ask you to follow us and pass it on.

http://twitter.com/solaronenyc

We will use this for quick links,  announcements, event updates, stray thoughts and anything we feel is worth passing along.  We also will have Chris Neidl posting updates from the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen beginning December 14th.  He will also have more detailed video updates posted daily in this space.

Thurs Sept 17: A Sea Change, 2008, 85 mins.
Fri Sept 18: The Garden, 2008, 80 mins.
Sat Sept 19: Burning In the Sun, 2009, 65 mins.
Rain Date for any of the above: Sun Sept 20

For trailers and descriptions, please visit http://solar1.org/events/film.

Saturday September 19th

Short: Blue Marble Ice Cream (from From Elegance to Earthworms)

Feature: Burning In the Sun
WORLD PREMIERE! 26-year-old Daniel Dembele decides to return to his homeland in Mali and start a local business building solar panels – the first of its kind in the sun drenched nation. Burning in the Sun tells the story of Daniel’s journey growing the shaky startup into a viable company and of the business’ impact on Daniel’s first customers in the tiny village of Banko. Taking a controversial stance on climate change, poverty, and African self-sufficiency, the filmmakers shed light on progress in Africa, and infuse optimism across culture. This 2008 IFP Documentary Lab selection will be shown in collaboration with Rooftop Films and IFP.

Speakers: Cambria Matlow and Morgan Robinson (Directors)

Cambria Matlow is a founding filmmaker of Birdgirl Productions, and Burning In The Sun marks her debut as a documentary feature director. She began production of the film in 2005 and has garnered national support from LEF Foundation and the Brooklyn Arts Council. Before her work with Birdgirl, Cambria directed and lensed several short narrative films which crossover styles lending a ‘documentary’ feel to fiction filmmaking. Cambria’s abilities are anchored by her dynamic background in filmmaking, foreign language ability, rich intercultural experience and political awareness.

Morgan Robinson worked as field producer and cinematographer for documentary filmmaker John Halpern. Previously he worked in the production department of Spike Lee’s HE GOT GAME andSUMMER OF SAM. Currently, In addition to co-directing Burning in the Sun, Morgan works for Punched in the Head Productions making MTV True Life documentaries. Morgan wrote, directed and produced the award winning short film CATABASIS, and JI DUMA: BRING THEM WATER.

Tonight’s Event is full. Space is still available for the 1/25 Green From the Inside Out.

Solar One in partnership with the Office of Recycling Outreach and Education will be touring Green from the Inside Out, a three-part workshop on recycling, energy efficiency, and rooftop possibilities for multifamily buildings, throughout New York City.

These workshops are designed to give building owners, shareholders, and managers the tools, resources, and information they need to green their multifamily building.  Look below for the workshop descriptions, to see the date and location of the next workshop, and to reserve your spot.

If you would like us to bring these workshops to your neighborhood, contact Celia Salgado at celia@solar1.org, or 212-505-6050.

A Survey of Solar Energy Roof Applications for NYC: Solar Thermal, Photovoltaics, Green Roofs and White Roofs

In this workshop Solar One will introduce, define and discuss the economic and quality of life implications of three solar rooftop applications that have considerable promise in the five borough area: solar thermal technology, photovoltaics and white roofs.

Navigating NYC’s Recycling Landscape

Hear about new recycling laws and old misconceptions. Find out how to avoid fines, improve your recycling program and get your tenants to recycle.  Learn about other ways to reduce waste, recycle more and help make NYC a little greener. OROE is a program of the Council on the Environment of New York City.

Combating Rising Energy Costs with Energy Efficiency for Multifamily Buildings

Find out how to reduce fuel and utility costs while improving resident comfort and building performance. Solar One’s NYSERDA Energy $mart Communities Coordinator will present cost-effective ways for residential building owners and managers to make lighting, appliances, heating and cooling more energy efficient. Learn about the government and utility incentives that are available for your building, as well as the Community Preservation Corporation’s new Neighborhood Energy Loan Program that provides financing for retrofitting multi-family apartment buildings for energy efficiency.

WHEN:  Wednesday, January 20

6:00pm to 8:30pm, plus post-event mixer!

WHERE: Central Park Arsenal

830 5th Avenue, Suite 318, NY

RSVP’s required.  Send email to celia@solar1.org to RSVP.

And from 8:30-10:00pm we are hosting a special event! Only on this special evening we will be hosting a Winter Networking Mixer overlooking Central Park! Invite your clients and business partners to partake in this unique networking evening. Find out what’s going green, and who’s going green in the Upper East Side! Entrance is free and drinks can be purchased.

RSVP’d guests can arrive at 6:00 to speak with Vendors about products. Presentations will start at 6:30pm and run until 8:30pm. There will be breaks in between presentations to talk to Vendors.

Free!  Refreshments will be served.  Vendors will be available to answer any technical questions about energy audits, different roof applications, and recycling.

GREEN FROM THE INSIDE OUT is a product of Solar One, in partnership with the Office of Recycling Outreach and Education. This series was made possible by a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Solar One would like to thank all who attended last night’s screening of Earth Days, as well as Rooftop Films, Nevette Previd, Yellow + Blue Wines and Living Librally for helping make the event a success.

The film debuts theatrically today at Quad Cinema in Manhattan.

Photo: Erik Martig

The urban built environment simultaneously shapes and contributes to many of our most persistent quality of life challenges while also embodying our greatest potential for achieving a sustainable society. In this lecture Jean-Loup Msika, the founder of Sustainable-City-Project, and Dan Heyden AIA LEED AP, will lay out ways in which we can begin to rethink the relationship of the city’s built structures to one another and to the enormous energy resources of the sun with passive solar design at an urban scale.

Artist Talk: Ecoartspace, Solar One and Ronald Feldman Gallery are pleased to present an Artist’s Talk with collaborative team and Eco Art pioneers, Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison. They will speak in New York City at the Ronald Feldman Gallery on Tuesday, January 13th at 6pm in conjunction with their new exhibition Global Warming (opening on January 10th).

SPACE IS LIMITED: TO RSVP contact Sarah Paulson at (212) 226-3232 sarah@feldmangallery.com
or amy@ecoartspace.org

Where:  Ronald Feldman Gallery | 31 Mercer Street (at Grand Street)

When: January 13th | 6pm

About the Artists: Among the leading pioneers of the eco-art movement, the collaborative team of Newton and Helen Mayer Harrison (often referred to simply as “the Harrisons”) have worked for over thirty years with biologists, ecologists and urban planners to initiate collaborative dialogues to uncover ideas and solutions which support biodiversity and community development.

The Harrison’s concept of art embraces a breathtaking range of disciplines. They are historians, diplomats, ecologists, investigators, emissaries and art activists. Their work involves proposing solutions and involves not only public discussion, but extensive mapping and documentation of these proposals in an art context. (From www.greenmuseum.org)

The potential of wind turbine technology to provide for our growing electricity needs on a utility scale increases every year as technology improves and its costs decline versus rising fossil fuel prices. However, wind power is limited by two key factors: time and location. Put simply, the wind doesn’t always blow and the areas with the highest wind resource are often located far away from population centers or in areas where development is controversial.

Developing turbines miles off shore along coastal shelves, where wind is more constant, speeds are higher and the imposing 30-story scale of today’s turbines are minimized to the size of thimble from land, may help mitigate both of these obstacles going forward. In spite of these advantages, recent large scale project proposals to develop offshore wind in the the Northeast have either succumbed to local opposition or escalating project costs. However, new proposals, including a few in the New York City harbor area, are again on the table, and important allies – including Mayor Bloomberg – have come to advocate for its development in the region.

KC Sahl, the New York Project Director for Bluewater Wind, one of the nation’s leading developers of offshore wind projects, will speak about offshore wind turbine technology and potential in the local context. 

In a surprise move that has potentially seismic ramifications for the energy industry, the EPA issued a ruling last Friday that will essentially halt the development of any new coal-based power plants in the United States. The ruling was issued by the agency’s appeals panel as they denied a permit to Deseret Power, an energy conglomerate looking to build a 110 MW coal-burning power plant on the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation in Utah. As a result, more than one hundred other plants in various stages of development and construction now face an uncertain future.

Claiming that they would no longer grant permits for projects that do not adequately consider the mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions, the appeals board overturned a permit recently granted by the agency’s Denver office and cited a 2007 Supreme Court decision giving the EPA federal authority to regulate CO2 emissions. The decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, ruled 5-4 in favor of 12 state plaintiffs that the agency had shirked its responsibilities under the Clean Air Act and was widely perceived as a critique of the current administration’s environmental policies.

Environmentalists have hailed the new move as a harbinger of a green-friendly administration-in-waiting, though many are surprised that it has come under the aegis of a lame duck and environmentally obstinate commander-in-chief. Ultimately, whether this decision signals a belated acknowledgement of accepted scientific fact or a raise-of-the-white-flag by defeated leadership is less significant than the implication that, however we choose to meet our future energy needs, clean and renewable sources should finally get their chance.

Sources: PSD Appeal No. 07-03, Environmental Appeals Board, United States Environmental Protection Agency;“EPA ruling over climate jeopardizes coal plants”, Reuters; “EPA Blocks Coal Plant, Could Change Power Landscape”, The Huffington Post (Nov. 14, 2008);“EPA Coal Decision Levels Playing Field for Wind, Solar”, Wired Science; “EPA Coal Decision Could Pave Way for Renewable Energy”, EcoGeek; “EPA ruling halts all new coal-fired power plants”, Scientific American; “Massachusetts, et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency, et al.”, Supreme Court of the United States, #05-1120; “Supreme Court: Heat-Trapping Carbon Dioxide is Pollution”, National Resources Defense Council (press release); “Justices say EPA Has Power to Act on Harmful Gases”, The New York Times (April 3, 2007).

Imagine a technology that not only generates energy with minimal greenhouse gas emissions, but that can even remove existing emissions sources while also solving the problem of garbage disposal. If St. Lucie County in Florida proves correct, plasma incinerators may be one more option in our growing sustainability portfolio. Instead of dumping its trash in landfills, St. Lucie County hopes to blast it with streams of superheated gas (known as plasma) at temperatures of 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. At this temperature, organic matter vaporizes into a form of gas that can be used to power turbines, generating waste steam that could be then be used to create more energy. Inorganic matter such as aluminum cans could be used as recycled material for construction and infrastructure, including filler for roadbeds.

Not only does St. Lucie County hope to provide power for 50,000 homes in the process, but, by keeping trash out of landfills, it would significantly curb methane emissions that would result from decomposition. In addition, the plasma process itself (also known as plasma arc gasification) apparently generates far fewer emissions than standard incineration, and the county administration expects that the resulting energy will be no more expensive than natural gas.

Though plasma plants have been around since the 1980s, St. Lucie’s will be the first intended specifically for waste disposal. Expected to go on-line in 2011, city planners anticipate that it will process 1,500 tons of garbage daily and will supply the local energy grid with 60 MW of electricity (though some sources claim that public outcry (see below) and other logistical difficulties have caused GeoPlasma – the plant’s owner and developer – to propose a scaled-back verison that will process only 200 tons per day).

The plan is not without controversy, however. Skeptics claim that the technology is unproven and may release unsafe amounts of dioxin and other cancer-causing particulates into the community. Others claim that the proposed benefits may be overblown; a study of a similar plasma arc waste disposal facility in Honolulu concluded that the technology actually increased waste disposal costs while providing little if any environmental benefit. Until such concerns are abated, our trash isn’t likely to go anywhere but into the ground.

Sources: “Plasma Turns Garbage Into Gas”, Scientific American; “Doctors Say: Be Careful, St. Lucie County; make Geoplasma prove its claims about proposed arc incinerator”, www.tcpalm.com; “City to Brief Council on Plasma Arc Recommendations For Landfill Reduction”, City of Honolulu Department of Environmental Services (press release); “Can We Turn Garbage Into Energy? The Pros and Cons of Plasma Incineration”, www.slate.com; “Plasma arc waste disposal”, “Plasma (physics)”, www.wikipedia.com; “How Plasma Converters Work”, www.howstuffworks.com; “The Prophet of Garbage”; Popular Science; “Generating Power From Waste”, www.recyclingexpert.co.uk; www.geoplasma.com (Geoplasma homepage).

Welcome back teachers and students!

Now with the new school year underway, our education team is putting together our calendar for education programs with our many school partners all over the city.

We are now accepting applications for programs for Fall 2008 and Spring 2009! Please email application forms to education[at]solar1.org or call 212-253-1813 to schedule a class today! This season we are expanding our K-12 enrichment programs to include:

• Renewable Energy
• Sustainable Design
• Estuary Ecology and Water Testing
• Environmental Art

Upcoming Events and News

Outdoor Education Fair
Tuesday | September 23rd | 4:30pm
New York City Outdoors! An Environmental Education Exposition on Tuesday, September 23^th, 2008 at Pier 66 Maritime in the Hudson River Park at West 26^th Street in Manhattan. The Expo showcases the environmental education resources for New York City teachers and educators. Soil and Water

Solar Sprint
Thursday | Sept. 25 – 4-7pm
The Junior Solar Sprint will be hosted at MS 74 in Queens, NY.

Harlem River Festival
Saturday | Sept. 27th
Join us for Harlem River Festial, celebrating National Estuaries Day and takes place at our Swindler Cove Park in Washington Heights/Inwood. Organized by New York Restoration Project.

Butterfly Tagging Day
Saturday | Sept. 27th | 1-3pm
Join us for a fun-filled day of monarch butterfly tagging and learning about the animals and plants of Stuyvesant Cove Park!

Hudson River Snapshot Day
October 7th | 9am – 1pm
Solar One will be a host site for NYC’s annual Hudson River Snapshot Day. Contact Chris Kennedy (kennedy [at] solar1 [dot] org) to sign up your school to be apart of this event. Learn more about the program here.

The Solar-Powered Film Series returns to Solar One for the 4th year with two programs of environmental features and shorts, plus games, contests, a scavenger hunt and director Q&As and discussions with experts on various environmental topics. Presented by Solar One and Green Edge Collaborative; for full schedule and more information, click here. Limited chairs will be available, first come first serve; please feel free to bring your own. Please note that documentaries may contain language unsuitable for children.

Thursday August 21 at 8PM
Environmental Art:


Running Fence, 1978, 58 mins.
An engrossing document of Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s efforts to build a 24 1/2-mile-long, 18-foot-high fence of white fabric across the hills of northern California.


Christo’s Valley Curtain, 1973, 28 mins.
The first collaboration between the Maysles Brothers and Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and recipient of an Academy Award Nomination.

Friday August 22 at 8pm
Water Shorts:

Gimme Green, 2007, 27 mins.
Gimme Green peers behind the curtain of the $40-billion industry that fuels our nation’s largest irrigated crop—the lawn.


Invisible Creek, 2004, 8 mins.
Travel down the most polluted waterway in America, Newtown Creek, located on the border between Brooklyn and Queens in New York City.


City of Water, 2007, 30 mins.
City of Water explores the aspirations of public officials, environmentalists, academics, community activists, recreational boaters and everyday New Yorkers for a diverse, vibrant waterfront at a time when the shoreline is changing faster than at any other time in New York’s history.
Plus a discussion of CSOs (Combined Sewer Overflows) with Cortney Worrall of the Coastal Marine Resource Center

Saturday August 23 at 8pm
Green Building:


The Greening of Southie, 2008, 81mins.
Building Boston’s first LEED Gold-certified building turns out to be harder than anyone thought. The Greening of Southie shows what happens when you try to build the city of tomorrow… today.
Plus Q&A with director Ian Cheney

See you at the movies!

Participants in the “Urban Epiphyte” project went through their normal routines wearing live plants culled by CK from Prospect Park in tool belts and fanny packs, documenting reactions and interactions with other New Yorkers. In one instance, a crowd gathered to help as one plant fell to the subway platform. Chris himself noted that the people he encountered treated his plants with the care normally reserved for pets and that many kept discussing the incident afterward. Ultimately, those fortuitous witnesses were inclined to consider aspects of their environments that they normally take for granted in a new light. Isn’t that the whole point to quality art?

According to a notice received by Solar One from the new climate action group 350, Spiderman – yes the web-slinging hero of comic book and cinematic fame – will apparently be climbing the Westin Hotel at 270 W 43rd St in Manhattan at 11AM, in an effort to “fight climate change.”

Solar One has no further details to report beyond this, but would bet that it will definitely be something to see. 350 is a new international, grassroots climate action group formed by the geniuses who brought you Step It Up, the largest single national climate demonstration in history.

Speakers

Debika Shome, Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University
Sabine Marx, Center for Research on Environmental Decisions, Columbia University
Stephen Hammer, Urban Energy Program, Center for Energy, Marine Transportation and Public Policy (CEMTPP), Columbia University
William Solecki, The CUNY Insitute for Sustainable Cities

Are New Yorkers worried about flooding? heatwaves? sea level rise? What ARE the potential impacts of global warming on New York City? Are we willing to change our lifestyles to reduce our impact on the environment? Do we support the Mayor’s sustainability plan — PlaNYC 2030?

For this lecture, researchers Shome, Marx, Hammer and Solecki will review the results from the first-ever study of New Yorkers’ opinions about global warming.  They will also discuss whether people’s perceptions match scientific projections for the future.

French President Nicholas Sarkozy called for a significant increase in green investment at an international conference on global warming last week in Paris. As much as 90% of the financing that will be necessary to help mitigate climate change must come from the private sector, France’s leader told reporters.

His comments were intended to address the creation of a long-term strategy to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. Sarkozy also called for the establishment of a globally regulated carbon credit market and cited America’s policy of stimulating environmental change through private financing, though he is critical of the American administration’s insistence on voluntary emissions cuts. In the past Sarkozy has openly advocated stricter tariffs and trade penalties on nations that do not actively attempt to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, even going so far as to threaten American imports with stiffer taxation if the U.S. continues to vacillate on the establishment of a mandatory emissions cap.

Ever the diplomat, Sarkozy made no mention of President Bush’s apparently straight-faced attempt at credible environmental policy. Bush’s announcement earlier in the week that the U.S. would reduce its emissions by 2025 was met with harsh criticism at the conference by Germany and other nations; the EU released a subtler but no less emphatic statement that Bush’s plan did “not match the level of ambition needed on the part of developed countries, considering their responsibilities in the challenge we face”.

Despite his seemingly contradictory about-face on climate change, Bush offered no specific suggestions as to how this emissions reduction would be achieved. Skeptical environmentalists claim that the announcement is merely an attempt to establish a less rigorous policy before his successor has a chance to tackle the issue. With the American president’s likely motives revealed, the rest of us can stop looking for further signs of the apocalypse. The world just isn’t ready for a green George W…

The brainchild of Acciona SA, a Spanish conglomerate that specializes in civil engineering, construction and infrastructures, Nevada Solar One uses parabolic mirrors to focus sunlight on a tube of fluid above them. Other CSP plants, including an 11MW facility that opened in Spain last year, utilize different designs. The plant in Spain uses a dense array of smaller mirrors to focus light on a water tower at its center. Other variations use long, flat mirrors or devices that look like satellite dishes. Some even continue to provide power after the sun sets by storing energy in molten salt. CSP is also more cost-effective than traditional solar installation, in that it doesn’t rely on pricey and energy-intensive silicon panels.

CSP’s future clearly seems sunny. According to the SEIA, another 11,000MW worth of CSP plants are supposedly in the pipeline thanks to generous federal tax breaks that offset up to 45% of initial costs. If all goes according to plan, viable solar power may be right around the corner.

By now you’ve probably heard most of the doomsday scenarios regarding global warming. Temperatures and sea levels are rising, glaciers and ice caps are melting, and shifting weather patterns are wreaking havoc with ways of life that have otherwise changed little for centuries. Climate change has been connected with everything from water-rights squabbles to failing crops to an increasing prevalence of malaria and dengue fever. Some scientists have speculated that these scenarios may be avoided by sequestering greenhouse gases in large bodies of water, but this short-sighted approach begs the question: what exactly are these emissions doing to our oceans?

“Ocean acidification” was a hot topic at the recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). According to researchers, our oceans have lower pH levels now than at any point in the last 40 million years, and at the present rate these levels will drop by another .3 units by the end of the century. This is due to the chemical reactions that result when carbon dioxide is dissolved in water, forming carbonic acid. Over the long term, this process could affect the food chain in significant ways. First, many organisms will not grow as large or will produce fewer offspring, as increased levels of CO2 render respiration and other physiological processes less efficient. Also, the absorption of greenhouse gases is likely to create dead-zones at some depths where the CO2-oxygen ratios are too low to support life. This is apparently already happening and is somewhat similar to the poisonous volcanic crater lakes that exist in central Africa, where high levels of CO2 and other gases are kept at the lake bottom due to water pressure — until something stirs up the water, leading to the release of noxious plumes that can have lethal, large-scale consequences, such as the 1700 people killed in Cameroon in 1986.

It is unlikely that the presence of such dead-zones in the oceans will present any significant danger to human populations, except in that such zones will lower the productivity of the ecosystem, affecting subsistence fishermen and others who rely on the sea for their sustenance and livelihood. But there is one more way in which ocean acidification could have serious consequences. Shellfish, coral and echinoderms may not be able to form their exoskeletons, as the calcium carbonate on which they depend dissolves during carbonic acid formation. One researcher referred to the massive volcanic explosions at the end of the Permian period 250 million years ago which caused oceanic pH levels to change suddenly, leading to the extinction of 90% of oceanic species, particularly those that make shells from calcium carbonate. Another researcher, looking into the combined effects of acidification and temperature increase, conducted experiments on purple sea urchins that replicated the ecological conditions that will exist in 2100 if emissions levels continue unabated. Her results indicated that the urchins had to work up to three times harder to create their shells, and that these shells were often deformed.

All this goes to show that you can’t simply shrug off greenhouse gases by pumping them underwater.