It is esti­mated that by the year 2050, eighty per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion will live in cities. In addi­tion, the Urban Land Insti­tute pre­dicts that eighty per­cent of cur­rent build­ing stock in the US will still be in use in the year 2050. A series of impres­sive efforts are under­way to mobi­lize the financ­ing and tech­nolo­gies to retro­fit large build­ings, but nearly half of the build­ing stock in Amer­ica is small-medium sized.

Liv­ing City Block is an ini­tia­tive to help cities redesign and retro­fit inef­fi­cient and/or aging build­ings at the block scale and is is com­mit­ted to work with com­mu­ni­ties to cre­ate resource hyper-efficient, eco­nom­i­cally sus­tain­able and health­ier and more liv­able neighborhoods. Aggregation of square footage at the block scale enables economies of scale for small-medium sized build­ings and lends the abil­ity to work with local gov­ern­ments to imple­ment not just trans­for­ma­tive energy solu­tions, but also to rework water, waste, health­ier streets and other block-scale issues.

Liv­ing City Block was born at the Rocky Moun­tain Insti­tute and was launched ear­lier this year by Llewellyn Wells.
The ini­tial pilot project is under­way in lower down­town Den­ver that will pro­duce a frame­work that can be exported and adapted in sis­ter cities. Already we are in con­ver­sa­tions with key poten­tial part­ners in Boston, Wash­ing­ton DC, and Santa Marta (Colombia).

David Kol­srud at AgriEnergy Ethanol Mill in Luverne, Minnesota

Ear­lier this spring I vis­ited David Kol­srud and his team at DAK Renew­able Energy in South Dakota. DAK has a port­fo­lio of ethanol, biodeisel and wind invest­ments with the com­mon theme being com­mu­nity own­er­ship. We vis­ited Agri-Energy, an ethanol mill that is owned by 230 local farm­ers and pro­duces 22 mil­lion gal­lons of ethanol as well as dis­tillers grain (fed to live­stock) and bio­mass pel­lets that are burned in place of some of the coal at a power plant in the region. For a decade and a half they have been pio­neers in com­mu­nity own­er­ship struc­tured renew­able energy devel­op­ment in the mid-west and are seek­ing to con­tinue their lead­er­ship by invest­ing in, and deploy­ing more sus­tain­able, inte­grated tech­nolo­gies and prac­tices. While I was there we vis­ited Mark Willers of Min­wind in Min­nesota and toured their fully com­mu­nity owned windfarm.

Min­wind 1.65MW turbine

Deutsche Bank has designed a Car­bon Counter wid­get to be down­loaded to your desk­top in order to allow you to have an accu­rate, real-time dis­play of the esti­mated amount of green house gases in our atmos­phere.  The num­ber is the same fig­ure which is dis­played on the 70 foot tall Car­bon Counter near Penn Sta­tion in New York City. It’s a bit like a tick­ing time bomb, but if we’re suc­cess­ful in our efforts to com­bat cli­mate change, the num­ber will sta­bi­lize and even­tu­ally start to decline…

Last week I had a fan­tas­tic sur­prise.  A friend and col­league invited me to see a film in the mid­dle of the after­noon. I was just return­ing from Berlin and was jet-lagged and fig­ured, why not?  But won­dered, why is this movie show­ing dur­ing the work day?  It turned out be a pre-screening of the upcom­ing doc­u­men­tary “Car­bon Nation” for some of the amaz­ing peo­ple inter­viewed in the film so that they could give input on how they were por­trayed, check the facts, and give gen­eral input. Accord­ing to the film’s Direc­tor, Peter Byck, “Car­bon Nation” is an opti­mistic (and witty) dis­cov­ery of what peo­ple are already doing, what we as a nation could be doing and what the world needs to do to pre­vent (or at least slow down) the impend­ing cli­mate cri­sis.  The good news is we already have the tech­nol­ogy to com­bat most of the worst case sce­nar­ios of cli­mate change, and it’s also very good busi­ness. Other good films have been about the prob­lems, “Car­bon Nation” is a film that focuses on the solutions.”

Byck gives us a humor­ous, and some­times intensely per­sonal, peek into the extra­or­di­nary lives and work of peo­ple who are pio­neer­ing vital solu­tions.  I won’t give away too much about the film but one of the main char­ac­ters is Dan Nolan who is help­ing to save fuel, money and lives in Iraq and Afghanistan by help­ing the mil­i­tary reduce and sub­sti­tute their fuel needs. Other stars include Jim Woolsey, Van Jones, Amory Lovins, and Janine Benyus.

Keep an eye out for this must-see film!

I will be par­tic­i­pat­ing in the inter­na­tional work­shop enti­tled “Aquatic Bio­mass: Sus­tain­able Bioen­ergy from Algae?” in Berlin, Ger­many Novem­ber 2nd. The work­shop will bring together key rep­re­sen­ta­tives from coun­tries active in research and devel­op­ment of algae-based bioen­ergy. They will present and dis­cuss the cur­rent sta­tus and future options for algae use, intro­duce rel­e­vant tech­nol­ogy prospects and dis­cuss envi­ron­men­tal and devel­op­ment issues. To see the full descrip­tion and agenda click here.

Dave Muyres will be speak­ing about the role of design in craft­ing a new vision for trans­porta­tion in the United States at the fol­low­ing events:

Mov­ing Minds: The Next Trans­porta­tion Infra­struc­ture
Novem­ber 9–12, 2009 at the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan in Ann Arbor
http://um-smart.org/resources/conference09/overview.html

Oppor­tu­nity Green Busi­ness Con­fer­ence at UCLA
Los Ange­les, CA   Novem­ber 7–8, 2009
http://www.opportunitygreen.com/

Pod­car City Con­fer­ence
Decem­ber 9–10 in Malmo, Swe­den
http://www.podcar.org/cop15/index.htm

I will be speak­ing at the Inter­na­tional Con­fer­ence on Biore­fin­ery in Syra­cuse NY on Octo­ber 6th, and at Hobart and William Smith Col­lege (HWS) in Geneva, NY on Octo­ber 7th. The Fin­ger Lakes Insti­tute, based at HWS and the col­lege itself have a wide array of ‘green­ing effort. For more infor­ma­tion on their envi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives, click here.