PCRD

Green Economy - See for Yourself!

This morning on the way to work and listening to PBS, I learned of a new website that allows visitors to input their assumptions about the likelihood of various future energy policies being implemented and then calculates the resulting effect on the Gross Domestic Product and economic growth in the US.  This neat little trick is the product of a "meta-analysis" synthesizing the 27 leading economic models by Robert Repetto of Yale University who writes that the synthesis "... reveals what the crucial assumptions are and how changing those assumptions affects the predicted economic costs of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by specific percentages below the business-as-usual path by 2030. Surprisingly, only a handful of key assumptions account for most of the differences among model predictions of the economic costs of reducing emissions."

Check the results of your own assumptions at http://www.climate.yale.edu/seeforyourself/ - and See For Yourself!

Carbon-Neutral Cities

In response to climate change and being environmentally responsible, a few new city projects are aiming for absolute self sufficiency from the fossil fuel energy, relying completely on renewable sources of energy, such as solar power and wind power. These are known as carbon neutral cities. The first project is Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City. Designed by renowned British architect-planner Sir Norman Foster, this will be the first zero-carbon footprint project of its kind. Just to tell the scale of this master plan, Masdar is being designed to house about 50,000 people on 1,500 acres. This will be car free city with transit and personal transportation pods for movement within the city. Read more here. 

The second eco-city being designed is Dongtan in China. Located on an island close to Shanghai, this is a larger project on about 20,000 acres and expected to house a projected population of half-a-million. You can have a virtual tour of Dongtan and find more literature here. 

Posted by Indraneel Kumar

Green Jobs for America (and Indiana)

Posted by Terri Lester

As the debate on global warming continues, twelve states are actively educating companies and the public on the need for investments in good "green" jobs. What they have found is that there are job opportunities for the green economy. They also provide provide a state-by-state picture of occupations that gain from "green investments". Here are some of the observations they make about Indiana:

Solving global warming will require all kinds of workers with a wide range of skills. Tens of thousands
of Hoosiers have good-paying job skills that are representative of a broad range of skills needed to build clean energy solutions:

• Carpenters will be needed to make buildings more energy efficient. There are nearly 24,000 carpenters in Indiana, paid an average of nearly $18 per hour.
• Electricians are essential to expanding mass transit solutions. There are 15,000 electricians in Indiana, paid an average of nearly $24 per hour.
• Operations Managers are needed to manufacture of energy-efficient automobiles. There are nearly 25,000 operations managers in Indiana, paid an average of nearly $42 per hour.
• Machinists craft essential components for wind power. There are nearly 15,000 machinists in Indiana, paid an average of over $17 per hour.
• Welders are vital to solar power manufacturing. There are over 12,000 welders in Indiana, paid an average of over $15 per hour.
• Industrial Truck Drivers transport supplies and fuels for the cellulosic biofuels sector. There are nearly 22,000 industrial truck drivers in Indiana, paid an average of over $14 per hour.

Further information on the “Green Jobs for America” campaign can be found at here.

RUrbanism: Sustainable Integration of Rural and Urban Communities

Posted by Indraneel Kumar

Climate change, green house gas emissions, and energy and food securities are highly debated and recognized issues globally. What will cities of the year 2100 will look like? How shall we plan and design for sustainable communities 100 years from now? The International Gas Union held a worldwide competition in 2003 and one of the three award winning projects was Goa 2100 planning based on RUrbanism or rural-urban sustainability framework .

The Goa 2100 was recognized for using sustainability concepts such as ecological footprint, material life-cycle analysis, optimal densities and built-form analysis, and time-budget analysis into planning and designing a city. The planners found that based on availability of renewable, recycling capacity and other resources within the region, Goa should have densities between 150 and 300 persons per hectare and buildings should be six-stories high. By the way, our neighbor, Vancouver, British Columbia won the 1st Place in this competition. The cities (PLUS) award winning entry involved 500 experts and 30 cities across Canada in a 2-year long planning and design effort. Read more here. Planning for sustainability requires innovative approaches and these projects reflect those ideas.