Urban Ecoist

“Smart Grid” is quickly becoming a buzzword among politicians, environmentalists, and utility companies. But what exactly is a Smart Grid and how it is going to save the planet?

The “smart grid” is not a single thing, but rather a whole host of technologies that can be used to create or upgrade an electric grid using digital devices to keep track of usage and monitor peak usage as well as controlling the usage within a home or building to ensure that high-energy devices are switching on during off-peak times when possible. A smart grid may include monitors within buildings that allow users to better manage their energy usage. Smart grids will also become necessary to allow individual sources of energy, like home solar panels or geothermal systems, to upload to and feed the grid. And electric cars that you plug in at home? Yeah, those will need smart grid technology to work.

It’s not like a Smart Grid will solve all of our problems, but it may help us use energy more efficiently, and that is something that is becoming extremely important as the world’s thirst for cheap power grows. Even a small percentage of efficiency in a major city’s electrical grid means big savings in terms of carbon emissions. The US’s electricity grid was first developed and built in the early part of the 20th century, so yeah, that’s not outdated or anything.

Leave it to the Dutch to take the lead in converting the first major city to full smart grid technology. The city of Amsterdam may provide us with a useful case study on how a large city can install and benefit from a smart grid. Amsterdam is currently restructuring its energy infrastructure to be “smart” and hopes to have it all done in the next few years.

All told, the municipality, energy outfits, and private companies are expected to invest more than $1 billion over the next three years. That figure includes a $383 million investment by local electricity network operator Alliander in so-called “smart grid” technology that uses network sensors and improved domestic energy monitoring to trim electricity use. Also part of the plan: up to $255 million to be spent by local housing cooperatives on boosting household energy efficiency, and $383 million from companies including Phillips (PHG) and Dutch utility Nuon to be invested in other energy-efficient technology.

“In the next year and a half, we expect to be the leading smart city in Europe,” says Ger Baron, senior project manager at the Amsterdam Innovation Motor, a public-private joint venture that is overseeing the project. “We’re in the right place at the right time.”

The focus on cutting cities’ emissions could have a major impact on the battle against global warming. As of 2006, more people now live in urban areas than in the countryside, and the sprawl surrounding megacities such as Mumbai and Saõ Paolo is only likely to increase. Consultancy Accenture (ACN) reckons cities produce almost two-thirds of total global carbon dioxide emissions through a combination of car fumes, household energy use, and industrial manufacturing. In the coming years, policy shifts from the U.S. and elsewhere will put even more pressure on controlling carbon output.

“Until now, there’s been an underemphasis on what cities can do to cut emissions,” says Mark Spelman, Accenture’s global head of strategy. –Business Week

Global technology companies like IBM and Cisco are also getting in on Amsterdam’s plans to change the way the city uses energy. And Dutch banks are going to provide small loans to homeowners to purchase and install green improvements around the house, with the intention that the costs saved from energy efficiency will pay for the cost of the loans.

The Business Week article also mentions that Xcel Energy is working in the city of Boulder, Colorado to connect 60,000 homes to a smart grid.

Considering that in most cases, smart grids are being pushed by energy companies and that is a positive move. Whether it is just to make more money or not, moving forward in innovation is what this world needs, rather than trying to squeeze more money from the planet’s dwindling resources.

Smart Grid, electricity, energy, Amsterdam, technology, efficiency, homes, usage, solar panel, geothermal, electric car, IBM, Cisco, Xcel Energy, Boulder, Colorado

Ok, so normally, I am not one to count on celebrities to either a) do something or anything important enough for me to care about or b) tell me how to think about things that I may already care about. However, as this is a site with a focus on all things sustainable, I have made an exception in Mr. Brad Pitt’s and Make It Right NOLA’s case.

So, in my first installment of “green” celebrity news…I bring you…Brad Pitt.

Enough about making grandchildren envious already, and nice shiny suit there, Brad. Oh, and you forgot that top button, too. Ok, I got that out of me…

Visiting D.C. within just a few weeks of his frequent co-star, George Clooney’s visit, Pitt’s star power was kept as secret as humanly possible in the cesspool of Washingtonian politics. But according to the AP story about the visiting “dignitary”, “The Power of Pitt drained entire congressional offices of their female employees and quite a few male aides as well, all of whom could be picked out by the way they suddenly appeared in the Senate’s doorways and halls, nonchalantly cupping cell phones and cameras at their sides and hanging around waiting news crews.”

Pitt was in Washington (Angie is also shooting a movie there, so he was in town already) to talk with the people in power about affordable, sustainable housing. If you didn’t know, Pitt is the starpower behind an effort in New Orleans called Make It Right NOLA (click on that link to read more about Make It Right). MIRNOLA is working to design and build green housing in the Lower Ninth Ward, an area devastated by Hurricane Katrina and an area home to a predominantly low-income minority population.

While on the Hill, Brad Pitt met with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid about “nationalizing” Make It Right’s ideas and designs for more American cities that have been afflicted by disasters, both natural and man-made (hello, Detroit, Michigan).

Brad Pitt, NOLA, New Orleans, Make It Right, Capitol Hill, Washington DC, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Lower Ninth Ward, affordable housing, sustainable housing, George Clooney, green building, green design, low income

A very wet example of a rain garden...

I was just reading the City of Chicago’s Green Alleyways Handbook, and I came across the idea of building a rain garden to help with storm water runoff. Then I started thinking about it, and with Spring’s showers on the way, now would be a good time for us all to consider building a rain garden in our urban spaces.

Now, obviously, some urbanites will not have the option to construct a rain garden, large or small, as they may not have any yard space at their disposal. It’s not like you can build a container rain garden (or can you?) — but you can find a way to capture your own fair share of rainwater to save from the sewer (but make sure it’s not in a copper bowl like in that one episode of Different Strokes when Dana Plato’s hair turned green), for example, in a rain barrel. But that’s another topic, another day.

...And a very dry one.

Rain gardens are not rocket science, but you do have to do some planning and a little science will come into the project before it’s done. It is best for your back if you already have noticed a spot in your yard where there is a depression where rain water already collects during storms. If you have multiple low-spots, choose areas next to paved areas like patios or roadways or by downspouts. Although remember that you will not want the water too close to your house (within 10 feet) or large trees, either. Sure, a rain garden may be dry 85% of the time, but there is still that other 15% of the time.

A great place to start your planning is a site called Raingardens.org. appropriately enough. It’s a really comprehensive site, which I won’t do justice to by gleaning pertinent info and passing it off as my own, so check it out by clicking here. The organization is based in Western Michigan, but anyone living anywhere can learn from the site’s extensive information.

Whether you have a little space or a lot of space, you give a little something back to the groundwater that supports your life by letting a bit of your garden space work to recharge that groundwater. Rain is filtered naturally through your rain garden, where it finds its way down, down into the deep soil and into the groundwater supply. If it were not for your rain garden, that same storm water may instead find its way into a swollen roadway which picks up all the leaking fluids from cars young and old and then into the sewer system, where it will meet more microbial friends, before being treated at a facility and then returned to your groundwater supply.

Maybe I’m being overly dramatic, but with the inevitable Water Wars coming…start planning now.

rain garden, garden, gardening, rain water, storm water, rain, water management, sewer, treatment, groundwater, water supply

Like many cities around the world, lax land use laws have lead to what we all know and love as urban sprawl. Back in the days of cheap fossil fuels and a “what, me worry” attitude concerning our natural environment, cities grew out willy-nilly from a central area in which older buildings were abandoned for newer ones in outlying areas and suburbs. This kind of growth leads to residents living farther away from other areas that house commercial buildings where many of those residents work or shop. This in turn leads to more and more cars on the roads, more traffic, more pollution, and I think you get it so far.

Welcome to the Carbon Era. Now, cities are trying to reverse urban sprawl and Sydney, Australia is one of those cities. The Australia Prime Minister and his Labour party are trying to gain support for their plans to rethink Sydney in ways to increase density within areas closer to the city centre. The plan is to put in two new subway lines and develop high-density housing close to the stations. Think high-rise near-suburbs.

The PM feels that Sydney can be made to be of a similar density of people and jobs as some of the world’s largest cities that rely on efficient mass transit to shuttle their citizens around, like say, London or Tokyo. He’s so sure of it that he’s willing to spend $13 billion on the plans.

Of course, there are a number of reasons to re-envision the modern city, and ‘re-densifying” (my own word there, enjoy!) is a crucial component to making a city work. It seems counter-intuitive — to make more people live in a specific area rather than spread them and their waste out, but the more efficiently cities use space for residences and businesses, the more space that will be available for trees and nature — and less need for hour-long commutes.

mass transit, subway, Sydney, Australia, urban sprawl, urban, city planning, urban planning, urban design, space, residences, commercial buildings, city, cities, trains, London, Tokyo