Green upgrades for Empire State Building

A $20 million project to upgrade the Empire State Building was announced today. An article in Forbes reports that the upgrades will result in $4.4 million of annual savings due to increased efficiencies.

The upgrades will also reduce carbon emissions by 105,000 tons over the next 15 years (roughly equivalent to taking 17,500 cars off the road). New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg hopes that this will help move the city towards their goal to reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2030.

The cost of the project is being supported by the Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton said that the project would serve as an example to the world that established buildings can be made greener to great affect.

Specific plans include replacing each of the building's 6,500 windows with insulated glass that will prevent heat transfer in both hot and cold weather. There are also plans to install more insulation around radiators and upgrade water cooling systems, ventilation, heating and lights.

Recycle your cell phone

The upcoming week is National Cell Phone Recycling Week, according to the EPA. Their goal is to raise awareness about cell phone recycling and prevent about 90 million unwanted cell phones from entering landfills every year, according to this article.

They are cooperating with cellular manufacturers and retailers to get information out to the public. Most of these companies have programs to recycle your old phone and information is readily available from those companies.

Cell phones contain a number of materials--copper, precious metals and plastics--that have a high carbon footprint to produce. Using materials from recycled cellphones has the potential to reduce the energy used in production by enough to power 18,500 homes for a year.

Environmentally safer concrete

According to an article in the New York Times, a new bridge on I-35 outside of Minneapolis is built using a concrete blend that is friendly to the environment.

The bridge was built to replace a bridge that collapsed in 2007. The engineers were focused on finding a more durable concrete to prevent a future collapse. Their solution was to use multiple blends of concrete that were specialized for each component of the bridge.

Most of the concrete blends used in the project were made without Portland cement, the traditional bonding material with a high carbon footprint. Instead, Kevin MacDonald of Cemstone Products Company developed a way to use industrial waste products--fly ash and blast furnace slag--as the bond material.

Using these recycled materials reduces the carbon footprint of the bridge because their carbon output was already accounted for when they were originally produced. Portland cement also releases about one ton of CO2 for each ton of concrete.

MacDonald is just one of many researchers working on reducing the carbon footprint of concrete.

Harvesting manure for biofuel

According to an article in Environmental News Network, the world's largest biomass power plant is located in the Netherlands. It runs on chicken manure and provides power for 90,000 homes.

The power plant has a 36.5 MW capacity and generates approximately 270 million kWh of electricity annually. It uses the carbon dioxide and methane gasses produced by the manure to produce power.


Not only does this method of power production spare the carbon cost of traditional power sources (coal, oil, etc), but it prevents the methane and CO2 in the manure from escaping into the atmosphere.

The power plant will use about 440,000 tons of chicken manure per year, which is about one third of the total yearly amount produced in the Netherlands.

Renewable energy on the rise

According to Finnish scientist Professor Peter Lund, 40% of the world's energy will come from renewable sources by 2050. He made this projection at the Copenhagen Climate Congress.

He estimates that 25% of our power will be from wind and the other 15% from solar, based on current market projections. According to Lund, renewable energy technology will have to gain dominance in the energy markets by 2030 to meet this goal.

Senate to look at global warming

Harry Reid announced last night that the Senate will be looking at energy and climate change this year. He expects that they will begin talks on the energy bill in the next several weeks and hopes that they will take on climate change this summer.

The energy bill is headed by Jeff Bingaman (D. New Mexico), the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. If passed, utilities will be required to source 4% of their energy from renewable sources by 2011. That number will increase to 20% over the next decade.

There are not currently many details about how the Senate plans to take on climate change, but we hope they will take a comprehensive look at the situation and discuss ways to reduce not only carbon emissions, but methane and other chemical emissions as well. Specifically, we would like to see attention paid to user emissions (automobiles, aerosols, etc.), power plant emissions, methane emissions from dairy and meat production, and the energy cost of new building.