One of the more insidious aspects of the recent “green” p.r. rush is the frequent description of “green” attributes as luxury goods and the related sense that somehow, environmental health and leadership are amenities available only to those who can pay for them. That being green requires having green.

While it’s true that green buildings sometimes cost more up front, the premium paid for related benefits is generally recouped through reduced energy bills and increased productivity in 2-4 years, after which the savings represent a significant net gain to owners and residents.

For this reason, there is strong and growing interest by both public and private sectors in the benefits of “green” affordable housing: units that are built in order to minimize monthly energy costs and maximize indoor air quality. Those who stand to benefit the most from reduced monthly energy bills are, of course those with the lowest monthly incomes. Energy efficiency measures thereby makes green housing more affordable, especially as energy costs rise.

  a green and affordable home model from the New Orleans Holy Cross project

The additional up-front cost to build green represents the greatest barrier to low cost green housing, since the profit margin to build affordable housing is generally very narrow, and often depends on low interest loans and government support. Local governments and housing agencies are increasingly looking for ways to bridge the gap for housing developers, and to offer them permit relief, training, marketing and other benefits to incentivize green affordable housing.

According to californiagreensolutions.com, “a study published in the Appraisal Journal documented that the market value of a home increases $20 for every $1 decrease in the annual energy costs.”

A related goal for affordable housing is its location, or “transit-efficiency” - the degree to which low cost housing is convenient to public transportation and services - thereby providing benefit to both the resident (in terms of avoided transportation expenditure) and to the environment (in emissions avoided). The Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago was the first to suggest and develop a “transit-efficient mortgage” to acknowledge the income impacts of easy transit access - an option institutionalized by Fannie Mae as the Location Efficient Mortgage. While these products never gained widespread traction or acceptance by lenders, there is a new wave of financial instruments under development today, and local governments are increasingly requiring or incentivizing energy efficiency in publicly subsidized affordable housing and other building programs.

Brad Pitt has famously supported the development of new, green and affordable housing in the reconstruction of New Orleans, post Katrina, in partnership with the national nonprofit group Global Green, among others. Other areas with burgeoning green affordable housing programs include the cities of Seattle and Chicago.

So what’s happening locally? More and more, it seems. The recently completed Denver Housing Plan calls out the Green Communities standard from the national nonprofit Enterprise Communities as a new minimum for any city-supported housing development.

New Transit-Oriented Developments (TODs) being built on current and future Denver region FasTracks light rail lines (including the Gates project, and 10th & Osage developments, among others) represent a great opportunity to include housing that is transit-efficient, green and affordable in the mix.

I was involved in commissioning early green building standards for the Stapleton Airport redevelopment back in 1997 (pre-LEED) at a time when builders complained that the market wouldn’t support such amenities. While those standards were never applied, the Master Developer, Forest City Stapleton, was one of the first real estate developers in the country to require that all housing meet certain green building standards. What began as a reluctant practice soon revealed a competitive advantage, resulting in builders attempting to “outgreen” each other for their environmentally conscious buyers. Today Stapleton requires that all housing be built to the Energy Star standard, thereby ensuring that a homebuyer on Stapleton will pay significantly lower energy bills per square foot than their counterpart in other parts of the city. It is worth noting, however, that affordable housing is not a large part of the Stapleton market.

A smaller but also exciting precedent was set recently with the opening of RiverClay Condominiums in the Jefferson Park neighborhood of Denver, which are both green and affordable. Zocalo Development ensured that the project was certified by both the US Green Building Council’s LEED residential standard, and Energy Star. Seedco Financial Services in Denver helped to finance the project and hopes to identify and support more such projects in the future.

I believe that, in the not-too-distant future, all publicly supported housing (and most commercial housing as well) in all income brackets will include a high level of energy efficiency in design and construction. It just costs too much not to.

Where has spring gone? It’s the last day of school already and more than a month has passed since my last post. The good news is that we’re busy here at Headwaters HQ. The bad news is that I haven’t had time until now to process and reflect on the major events of the last 8 weeks or so. A few notable happenings:

1. The City of San Francisco is once again on the bleeding edge of new environmental policy, and has instituted the first direct emissions-based “carbon tax” in the country. The City of Boulder passed its own carbon tax in 2006 on residential and commercial electrical use, the proceeds from which (about $800,000 per year) pay for programs to offset citywide emissions. The San Francisco law is the first to create a tax focused primarily on commercial/ industrial greenhouse gas emissions. From Environmental Leader:

“The San Francisco Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s board of directors voted overwhelmingly (15-1) to charge area companies 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide they emit, a first for the U.S.,The Associated Press reports.

The new rules, which impose fees on businesses for emitting greenhouse gasses, are expected to generate $1.1 million in the first year to help pay for programs to measure the region’s emissions and develop ways to reduce them. They are set to take effect July 1.

Of the more than 2,500 businesses that will be required to pay the proposed fees, the biggest payers will be seven power plants and oil refineries that would have to pay more than $50,000 a year. The majority of businesses would pay less than $1, the district estimates.”

There’s additional interesting commentary on Steve Newcomb’s blog here.

2. The New York-based national environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has an innovative new resource available to businesses online, the Greening Advisor. It provides a useful basic overview of activities businesses can take to green their activities. It does not convey any particular marketing benefit or certification, but is a useful summary of the “universe” of greening actions applicable to many businesses.

3. GoogleEarth (a great free software application to try if you haven’t already) has, with help from the British government, added a climate layer that allows users to view global warming impacts over time. As reported in Google Earth Blog:

“Opening (the google climate file) will first show you an image overlay of the Earth which indicates temperature change over time from 1999 and forecasted through 2099. Use the time slider to watch the changes over time. Also in the file are placemarks with accounts from people around the world speaking about how climate change has effected them, as well as information from the Met Office about possible effects as temperatures continue to rise.”

4. Here in Denver things are gearing up for the Democratic National Convention, which was last hosted here in 1908! There is a great deal of excitement and anticipation, and wondering what the infusion of 35,000 delegates, reporters and hangers-on will mean for us as we go through our daily lives. The DNC greening effort is heating up (so to speak) and a small army of volunteers are organizing dozens of innovations in everything from bicycles available to all who want them (1,000 at last count) to carbon emissions calculations and offsets for the event, to training of hotels and restaurants in green business principles, and the use of green materials in building and operating the convention, to a full day of forums on Energy & Climate featuring major national policy and industry players. Now, if only we had a candidate….

Stay tuned for more news in the weeks to come.

I was honored in April to receive a Wirth Award from the Wirth Chair for Sustainable Development at the University of Colorado at Denver’s School of Public Affairs.

Founded 11 years ago by former Senator and current United Nations Foundation President Tim Wirth, the Wirth Award honors programs and people who have made a significant contribution to the state of the environment in Colorado and beyond. This year’s program focused on Pioneers in the New Energy Economy, and included awards to Auden Schendler, Environment Director for the Aspen Skiing Company, Dr. Anu Ramaswami, Director of the IGERT sustainable urban infrastructure program at UCD, John Powers, founder of the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado and Kim Jordan, CEO and Owner of Ft. Collins-based New Belgium Brewing Company. Former Senators Tim Wirth and Gary Hart (the current Wirth Chair Fellow) spoke at the luncheon awards ceremony attended by over 400 people, and Mayor John Hickenlooper presented the awards with UCD School of Public Affairs Dean Kathleen Beatty . Awardees Schendler, Powers, Conover and Ramaswami are pictured above.

The Wirth Chair has notably been involved over the past 18 months in the development of a Presidential Climate Action Plan (PCAP), which has produced strategic recommendations for the first 90 days of the new presidential administration, with the help of a nationally reknowned advisory board, including Interface Carpet Chairman Ray Anderson, Natural Capitalism Co-Author L. Hunter Lovins, Yale School of the Environment Dean and former UNEP and WRI Director Gus Speth and Author/ Oberlin College Environmental Studies Director Dr. David Orr. I participated in the drafting of the PCAP at one of several meetings held at the Wingspread Center in Racine, Wisconsin in 2007

One of the challenges faced by businesses and governments as we move toward a post-carbon society is that the rules and standards seem to keep changing. As with the organics industry in the early 1980s, it is difficult to identify what “sustainable business” really means, how it is best measured, and how to compare the actions of one company with those of another with any kind of similar yardstick.

There are a handful of widely recognized products (ISO 14001, GRI, Six Sigma) that track, analyze and allow apples-to-apples reporting on company operations practices, but for most consumer products no single standard has yet prevailed. This leaves room in the current “green rush” for misleading marketing, and for brand competition as companies position themselves to fill the void.  Read more…

A pilot program launched in Denver last week aims to show drivers how their habits effect greenhouse gas emissions by tracking how much time they spend idling and how much extra fuel they use due to sudden changes in speed. Real time wireless monitoring will send data from city vehicles to an online database that can be analyzed to determine low- and high-emitting driving habits.

While it sounds a bit Orwellian, it will be interesting to see whether and how the City can convert this information about driving behavior into actual behavior change and emissions reductions.

According to the press release and Denver Business Journal:

“Driving Change,” a $400,000 program launched last week, will install equipment developed by Denver-based Cartasite Inc. in individual cars to track idling and fuel consumption caused by speed changes via wireless connectivity to a database developed by the Enviance corporation. Rapid acceleration and hard braking can lower gas mileage by as much as 20 percent, and idling is believed to consume one cup of fuel every five minutes.

 Read more…

As much as I appreciate the concept of Earth Day, I hate the fact that, for one short day a year (or at least the week surrounding it), dozens of groups compete for media and audience attention for events and opportunities related to environmental health and sustainability. While there were many sleepy years between Earth Day’s kickoff in 1970 and its recent revival, when one day may have sufficed to do it all, the explosion of interest in green issues and activities means that no matter how fast you move, you’ll miss something good. And the universal goal of strong media coverage will never be achieved if all events are grouped in a single day or week. On the other hand, the more varied and numerous the activities, the greater chance that many people will be engaged, and that’s probably a good thing.  Read more…

If a picture is worth more than a thousand words, then these videos focusing on global warming and energy conservation should hit their mark in this era of YouTube, viral marketing, and multimedia messaging. But are they effective at changing individual behavior? You be the judge:  Read more…

Just Out: beginning this spring, a limited number of hybrid vehicles in Colorado will receive the same privileges in HOV lanes as carpoolers. Hybrid drivers must apply to CDOT for special decals that will give them access to HOV lanes on I-25, Highway 36 and Santa Fe drive in Denver. The goal is ostensibly multifold:

• Incentivize the use of highly efficient vehicles by making it easier for them to bypass traffic jams.
• Reward purchase of hybrid vehicles, which still cost a premium up front, by providing preferential road conditions for them.
• Limit the number of eligible vehicles to avoid the congestion that has resulted in such programs in Washington DC, California and elsewhere.  Read more…

BetterBagsColorado is lobbying the Denver City Council to impose a 10-cent surcharge on take-home bag from grocery stores with annual revenues of $2 million or more. The proposed tax is intended to protect the environment by reducing demand for plastic and paper bags, thereby reducing related pollution and landfill impacts. Their hope is that this type of charge will discourage casual consumption and disposal of bags, and encourage the reuse of existing bags or cloth bags.  Read more…

My grandfather Julian Conover was a mining lobbyist in the glory days of the mining industry. Old photographs show him on a cruise ship in the 1940s standing with FDR’s Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes (the father of the Clinton appointee of the same name), no doubt convincing him of the merits of the 1872 mining law that has caused environmentalists so many problems.He was also a member of something called The Old Timers Club, formed in 1938, the written purpose of which was to “perpetuate friendships formed within the coal industry and to promote worthy activities directed toward the betterment of coal mining.”

Grandpa was a geologist in an era when mining was big business in the US, and protecting the interests of coal (and other mineral) mines was his job. That meant keeping regulation to a minimum. Colorado was built, in part, on that extractive industry. Today, Colorado is leading the way in the mitigation of the carbon emissions produced by burning coal and other fossil fuels. Mitigating carbon emissions, whether voluntarily or by regulatory requirement (as in California) , has become a major concern for companies around the world, and a major business enterprise at home.

Coal is still relatively plentiful, as you know if you’ve ever had to wait for a coal train to pass a road crossing in Colorado. And yet, as a major source of carbon dioxide emissions, conventional coal is facing increasing regulatory and financial pressure. Utilities, the primary users of coal for electricity, are canceling or delaying plans for new coal-powered plants, instead seeking greater efficiencies in existing plants, and encouraging conservation among their customers to lower demand. The Wall Street Journal recently reported on the fact that banks are now putting a price on carbon emissions when assessing financing for coal plants and other high emission investments - a new risk factor for lending, and one that business can’t afford to ignore.

What’s it all mean to you and me and the carbon produced between us?  Read more…