Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News

Link: http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/green-roofs-are-they-worth-the-expense/

Richard M. Daley, the mayor of Chicago, told a panel at the Harvard Club of New York on Monday that he aims to make his city the “most environmentally friendly city in the world.”

A key part of Mr. Daley’s vision involves “green roofs” — the idea of putting plants, and even a few trees, on top of buildings. Chicago already has more than 600 “green roofs,”...

As well as giving workers from surrounding skyscrapers something pleasant to gaze at, green roofs help keep the city cool, and also filter stormwater....

New York has a few green roofs, but it has not prioritized them in the way that Chicago has (or Toronto, which is thinking of making green roofs mandatory for some new buildings).

The reason is cost, said Carter Strickland, a senior policy adviser in New York City’s long-range planning and sustainability office. “We found that street trees are more cost-effective than green roofs,”...

New York City is also emphasizing “white” or “cool” roofs, with the ability to reflect rather than absorb the sun’s heat. Green roofs, Mr. Strickland said, might cost $25 to $30 a square foot; “cool” roof would cost “a fraction of that,”....

There are other impediments in New York — including a tough permitting process. Miquela Craytor, the executive director of Sustainable South Bronx, said that it took her organization two years to install a “green wall.”
...
By Kate Galbraith
FOR FULL POST GO TO:
http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/19/green-roofs-are-they-worth-the-expense/
The New York Times Green Inc. Blog http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com
May 19, 2009

Link: http://www.nylcv.org/ecopoliticsdaily/20090513_yonkers_makes_public_housing_more_energy_efficient

The Yonkers Municipal Housing Authority ... hired Honeywell to help identify and implement efficiency upgrades and other cost-saving measures. By Honeywell's estimates, the city could potentially save $2.2 million per year if it is willing to invest $18.8 million over the next 12 years in new heating, cooling and electrical systems.

[Cheryl McIntosh, an account executive for Honeywell's public housing authority unit, said the company guarantees its estimated energy savings, or the company will pay the difference. "We've not had a miss to date," said McIntosh, whose company has 38 guaranteed energy performance contracts with public housing authorities.] ... In addition, the company will help the city allocate federal stimulus money and other grants to help pay for the proposed upgrades.

Currently, the Yonkers housing authority spends over ;$5.2] million in electricity per year, and has been plagued by high maintenance costs and other inefficiencies. One major project outlined by Honeywell would be to install geothermal heat pumps to replace outdated, expensive and environmentally unfriendly oil-fueled heaters.
...
Submitted by Elizabeth Carter
New York League of Conservation Voters www.nylcv.org
May 13, 2009
also see http://www.lohud.com/article/20090513/NEWS02/905130352/-1/ARCHIVE

Common Objectives is offering the final free version of its Waste Wise Workshop for the Workplace. This workshop was designed to create recognition of unconscious wasteful habits in the office environment and to generate corrective solutions for implementation. The goal is to lower overhead costs and carbon emissions in the workplace. More can be done besides lowering building temperatures and turning off electronics at night. To achieve an enduring sustainable green program, an employer needs to institutionalize a change of behavior in its workforce. This requires investment in continuing education and professional development.

The Waste Wise Workshop will teach participants how to make the sustainable choice.

The organizers point out:
--The average office employee creates an estimated $12,000 of waste a year
Dell started saving $3 million a year by instituting a managing and measuring program.
--Home Depot estimates a yearly saving of $16 million by simply changing light bulbs to energy efficient CFL’s.
--A small hosting company, The Planet, saved $140,000 by instituting a lights out program.
--Wal-Mart installed machines called sandwich balers to recycle and sell plastic that it used to throw away. The balers have added $28 million to their bottom line.
--According to the 2008 Gallup Environmental Poll, a majority of people say they have made at least “minor [lifestyle] changes” (55%) to protect the environment over the last five years and 28% say they have made “major changes” in their lifestyle. While this data suggests people are increasingly making changes at home, this trend has not emerged in the workplace. A recent survey found that at home 94% of those people surveyed switch off lights when they are not in use and 85% switch off their home PC after use but only 66% and 53%, respectively, carry out these simple green practices in the office.

Do I use paper towels to dry my hands or do I use the blow -dryer on the wall? Workshop objectives will be accomplished by using dynamic facilitation techniques and transformational learning. One technique of transformational learning is the use of storytelling; this engages the participants and helps bridge the gap between learning and fun. The workshop culminates in the creation of office narratives specific to the organization’s needs.

[The workshop] ...will be held in mid-town Manhattan - New York, New York on July 22nd and 23rd from 3PM to 6PM each day. ...
For more information please email nan@commonobjectives.com.

Link: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119414076/abstract

Abstract: Cities across the United States that have considerable vacant land are debating whether to foster community gardens on that land, while cities with land shortages are debating when to replace gardens with other uses. Meanwhile, many cities are looking for new ways to finance green spaces. Little empirical evidence about the neighborhood impacts of community gardens is available, however, to inform the debate or to help cities design financing schemes. This article estimates the impact of community gardens on neighborhood property values, using rich data for New York City and a difference-in-difference specification of a hedonic regression model. Ioan Voicu and Vicki Been find that gardens have significant positive effects, especially in the poorest neighborhoods. Higher-quality gardens have the greatest positive impact.

by Ioan Voicu 1 and Vicki Been 2
1. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, Washington, DC 20219 or Ioan.Voicu@occ.treas.gov
2. New York University School of Law, New York, NY 10012 or vicki.been@nyu.edu.

Real Estate Economics via Wiley Interscience www3.interscience.wiley.com
Volume 36, Issue 2; Summer, 2008; Pages 241-283
Published on behalf of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association
DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6229.2008.00213.x About DOI

Link: http://slgreen.com/news/2009/04/sl-green-realty-corp-launches-broad-energy-conservation-initiative

SL Green Realty Corp. (NYSE: SLG), owner of New York City's largest commercial office property portfolio, has launched an energy savings initiative designed to significantly decrease utility demand and create additional cost savings on usage. Upon completion in late 2009, SL Green believes that the program will cut steam usage at 13 targeted properties by an average of up to 10 percent and save as much as 35 cents per square foot in utility costs overall.

The initiative was announced after the Company was presented with the Energy Star Challenge Award bronze plaque for its efforts in reducing energy consumption at 625 Madison Avenue. In 2008 alone, SL Green reduced the property's carbon footprint and energy consumption by more than 10 percent. This was achieved by installing monitoring equipment on high pressure steam traps, making stairwell lighting technology upgrades, installing of variable frequency drives, and upgrading tenant and main building cooling towers with more efficient units. Aside from technological and mechanical upgrades, building staff and property management implemented several other operational efficiencies that curbed utility use. Management is now working on a new set of initiatives designed to further increase energy efficiencies and reduce the carbon footprint by another 25 percent.

Another property in the "green spotlight" is 100 Park Avenue, a classic office tower that SL Green has completely redeveloped, and which is on track to earn a Silver LEED certification. SL Green recently completed the comprehensive redevelopment of the 1950's-era building, recreating 100 Park Avenue as the "New Modern Classic." The $72 million capital program included significant infrastructure upgrades such as a new cooling plant, increased electric capacity, and state-of-the-art security systems. The building embodies its sustainability commitment with a new design that brings a feeling of light and spaciousness to all surfaces.

100 Park Avenue is the first building of its type in New York to install green roofs -- 14 altogether -- which employ a low-maintenance/water consumption Xeroflor mat system. In addition to the green roofs, the anticipated LEED Silver certification will be based on an aggressive enhanced recycling and energy management program -- including the installation of low-flow plumbing fixtures that reduce water consumption by an estimated 50 percent, or almost 1 million gallons of water per year, and technology that allows management to maintain pre-renovation lighting levels in the lobby at a 25 percent reduction in energy consumption.

"This renovated building, which we own in partnership with Prudential Real Estate Investors, was honored with a Pinnacle Award by the Building Owners and Managers Association's (BOMA) in 2008 for Renovated Office Building, and went on to win BOMA's 2009 Middle Atlantic regional award in the same category," said Edward Piccinich, Executive Vice President and Director of Management and Construction. "But we're particularly proud of the strides we have made in making it so much ‘greener.'" He added, "There are real savings that can be unlocked through green initiatives, but it's also critical that each project is assessed based on its projected payback period, the operational efficiencies gained, and the long term value added to the property from implementation."

SL Green Realty Corp. is a self-administered and self-managed real estate investment trust, or REIT, that predominantly acquires, owns, repositions and manages Manhattan office properties. The Company is the only publicly held REIT that specializes in this niche. As of December 31, 2008, the Company owned 29 New York City office properties totaling approximately 23,211,200 square feet, making it New York's largest office landlord. In addition, at December 31, 2008, SL Green held investment interests in, among other things, eight retail properties encompassing approximately 400,212 square feet, two development properties encompassing approximately 363,000 square feet and two land interests, along with ownership interests in 34 suburban assets totaling 7,656,500 square feet in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Westchester County, Connecticut and New Jersey.

SL Green Realty Corp. www.SLGreen.com
Press release dated April 9th, 2009

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Energy Efficient Lighting Lighting contributes to more than 40% of the energy bill in most facilities. liteLogix can provide you with energy efficient lighting which can save you a bundle while helping to promote a greener planet.

Link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2008.11.012

Abstract: Bongghi Hong, Karin E. Limburg, Jon D. Erickson, John M. Gowdy, Audra A. Nowosielski, John M. Polimeni, and Karen M. Stainbrook present an interdisciplinary modeling framework to investigate how human socio-economic activities influence the spatial pattern of urbanization, and how consequent changes in land use affect water quality and stream ecosystem condition. The framework is composed of three submodels considering (1) the social and economic structures based upon a social accounting matrix, (2) land use change and urban sprawl based upon a binary logit regression, and (3) stream ecosystem condition in the catchment area based upon the NAWQA (National Water Quality Assessment) dataset. They applied their integrated model to Dutchess County, New York, USA, as a case study. Our study, in spite of its limitations and uncertainties, demonstrates the importance of a quantitative holistic approach in linking human and natural systems and estimating tradeoffs between economic benefits and environmental quality.

Keywords: Urbanization; Economy; Land use change; Ecosystem condition; Interdisciplinary; Hudson River Valley

by Bongghi Hong 1, Karin E. Limburg 2, Jon D. Erickson 3, John M. Gowdy 4, Audra A. Nowosielski 5, John M. Polimeni 6, and Karen M. Stainbrook 7
1. Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, 144 Illick Hall, 1 Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY 13210, USA
2. Department of Environmental and Forest Biology, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, 249 Illick Hall, 1 Forestry Drive, Syracuse, NY 13210, USA
3. Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Vermont, 344 Aiken Center, Burlington, VT 05405, USA
4. Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 3208 Sage Hall, Troy, NY 12180, USA
5. Formerly of Department of Economics, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180, USA
6. Department of Pharmcy. Practice, Albany College of Pharmcy., 106 New Scotland Avenue, Albany, NY 12208, USA
7. Watershed Assessment Associates, 28 Yates St., Schenectady, NY 12305, USA

Landscape and Urban Planning via Elsevier Science Direct www.ScienceDirect.com
Volume 91, Issue 2; June 15, 2009; Pages 78-87