Community groups can promote solar for income - starting sustainability conversations

Over the last year, Beyond Oil NYC has explored ways that community-based nonprofit organizations (CBOs) could earn income from promoting sustainability initiatives.

We published a report in fall 2012, and in the last few posts offer our updated results: there's probably no opportunity for CBOs to earn easy income either through compost or urban agriculture, although we found some promising innovations. The good news: CBOs can earn money from promoting solar energy systems right now. It's easy and we'll show you how, on request. Community solar promotions can start many other conversations on local sustainability and resilience.

Government leadership on sustainability is centrally important, of course, but enlisting the active support of community organizations is potentially powerful.

Because CBOs can reach out to neighbors and networks of close relationships, they can be very effective marketing partners in sustainability projects. The articles in this series drew on interviews with many sustainability program providers and advocates in NYC, and on our direct experience promoting a range of services in western Queens at Long Island City Partnership.

Lessons from the City's white roof painting program

Through promoting the NYC program to paint roofs white we learned that voluntary programs just don't work if they're not perceived to offer more value than the standard choices. Highly reflective white roofs are much cooler in summer than NYC's standard black tar roofs. While it's great for the City as a whole, savings to individual building owners from lower electric bills were too small to induce them to pay for the cost of paint, even if the City took care of labor costs. The City sensibly made roof cooling compulsory. Officials upgraded the building code to require that new and repaired roofs meet minimum reflectivity standards - which will gradually and unobtrusively cool more of NYC roofs.
 
Case study: community group promotes energy upgrades, participation goes way up

People are more likely to sign up for a program after being contacted by a community group they know than by the program’s outreach staff, who they don’t know. We proved this in Long Island City. Con Ed's Green Team energy efficiency retrofit program is a great deal for businesses but it's still a tough sell.

When LIC Partnership promoted the program to our constituents, the businesses we referred participated in the program at a much higher rate than area businesses contacted only by program contractors. Check out the details of our successful energy efficiency retrofit promotions.


We were motivated by our environmental agenda. Other groups could get similar results – but would be more effectively motivated by money.  

With the right cash incentive for results, nonprofits around the City would get on the phone and call their contacts, and energy retrofits would skyrocket. Maybe someday Con Ed will decide to offer such incentives to supplement its omnipresent ads...

Until then, are there sustainability projects viable today through which civic groups could use their connections to earn income?

 
Business projects in urban agriculture?

Despite the buzz, there's actually very little urban agriculture in NYC considering the vast amount of rooftop and backyard space available. It's very hard to run such projects as businesses: start-up costs can be high, and profit margins are usually low. Entrepreneurs with enough money to build high-end rooftop greenhouses capable of year-round production can do well producing high value greens and tomatoes. But where cash is limited, options are fewer. However, we found some opportunities for groups more concerned with hunger, nutrition and environmental literacy than cash profits.

Groups could aggregate vegetable production from multiple parcels in a neighborhood, either selling produce or giving it to food pantries. The Food Bank for Westchester set up farms on the sites of five nearby nonprofits and donates the yield to food pantries. That model could be applied to NYC, if community groups were to use vacant public lots.


The City is already working to identify vacant public lots and get residents to turn them into community gardens. Even more potential garden space would be available if one were to add temporarily vacant private lots. They're usually not considered for gardening, as no one would want to go to the effort of building permanent raised garden beds on them.

But add low-cost, portable planters, and temporary gardening use of lots becomes more feasible. Just move the planters to new sites each year. Or use temporary, biodegradable planters - straw bales. Combining these innovative practices could make it easier for community groups to promote gardening. The City's biggest yields from low-cost urban agriculture are likely to come through environmental and health education as well as community building.

What about composting?


NYC generates massive amounts of food waste. Instead of paying to haul it away, some have suggested it could be collected by community groups, composted at neighborhood facilities, and sold at a profit. Such projects would face profound operational, legal and financial obstacles. It's possible that bags of nonprofit-branded compost could be sold as a fundraising product, like Girl Scout cookies, but unlikely. Only massive municipal action can make a dent in our food waste problem, and fortunately that's what we're getting. New City plans to scale up food waste collection and composting deserve our support.

Finally, here's some money: solar PV system installations

LIC Partnership created referral agreements with solar installers. The group's outreach to its clients resulted in two solar system installations so far, earning referral fees for the group. With this model, virtually any NYC civic group can leverage its local contacts and earn income, cut costs for its constituents, and helping make NYC more sustainable and resilient at the same time. It's a win-win-win solution. We're giving out the referral agreement and promotional materials on request. You can do this in your community.  Call us.
 
We're not suggesting that community groups will only support sustainability projects when they get paid. But why not take advantage of that opportunity, and use it as a conversation opener to other projects?

After Hurricane Sandy, NYC government and policy circles have focused on making the City more resilient. Will the new emphasis on resilience, and the City's Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency, complement better known sustainability initiatives? Or will it compete for limited funds and attention, lowering the priority of climate change response?  Identifying projects that promote both sustainability and resilience, while engaging neighbors at the grassroots level, would be of great value.  We'll offer some answers in the next newsletter.

Until then, follow our Facebook page or our blog.

Engaging NYC Community Groups to Promote Sustainability Initiatives

Over the last year, this blog has explored ways that community-based nonprofit organizations (CBOs) could earn income from promoting sustainability initiatives. Government leadership on sustainability is centrally important, of course, but enlisting the active support of community organizations is potentially powerful. Because CBOs can reach out to neighbors and networks of close relationships, they can be very effective marketing partners in sustainability projects. The articles in this series draw on interviews with many sustainability program providers and advocates in NYC, and on our direct experience promoting a range of services in western Queens at Long Island City Partnership.


In fall 2012 we published a report looking into potential projects in composting, urban agriculture, energy efficiency retrofits and solar power for CBOs with more local contacts than cash.  

The ideal sustainability program to engage community groups would provide:

(1) enough incentive for community groups to make the effort of promoting them
(2) enough benefit for constituents to sign up
(3) value in the form of income, savings, goods, services, or social capital
(4) low entry and set-up costs
(5) applicability to NYC


"The report is quite impressive, synthesizing a lot of information."

- Kubi Ackerman, Project Director, Urban Design Lab at The Earth Institute, Columbia University; Lead author, "The Potential for Urban Agriculture in New York City."

Our updated results

There's probably no opportunity for CBOs to earn easy income through compost, and probably not through urban agriculture either. The good news: CBOs can earn money from promoting solar energy systems right now. It's easy and we'll show you how, on request.

Lessons from the City's white roof painting program

Here's an example of a sustainability initiative that's great for the City as a whole, but insufficiently appealing to would-be participants. Highly reflective white roofs are much cooler in summer than NYC's standard black tar roofs. Through promoting the NYC program to paint roofs white we learned that savings to individual building owners from lower electric bills were too small to induce owners to pay for the cost of paint, even if the City took care of labor costs. The City sensibly upgraded the building code to require that new and repaired roofs meet minimum reflectivity standards - which will gradually and unobtrusively cool more of NYC roofs. Without enough incentive, voluntary programs don't work.

Upcoming posts in this series

- Case study: community group promotes energy efficiency upgrades, participation goes way up. 

- Easy income from urban agriculture? Not so much.

- Can community groups sell compost instead of Girl Scout cookies? 

- Finally, we'll show you the money: referral fees for promoting solar PV system installations.  We'll reveal our model so you can try it in your own neighborhood.

Can compost replace Girl Scout Cookies?

Can NYC community organizations earn income from neighborhood scale food waste collection and composting?  To put it another way, could bags of compost with the name of your block association or church ever be used for fundraising like Girl Scout cookies?  


“We currently spend more than $1 billion a year to manage solid waste including $300 million to export 3.3 million tons of City-collected waste. These costs are projected to rise exponentially. We must take aggressive steps to make our waste management system more environmentally and economically sustainable.” PlaNYC, p. 137.


According to the NYC Dept. of Sanitation (DSNY), food scraps constitute about 17.7%, approximately 650,000 tons annually, of the total NYC DSNY-managed waste stream. 4% of the City’s waste stream is leaf and yard waste. (PlaNYC, p. 138) 

Before we delve into opportunities for businesses and nonprofit groups to earn income while dealing with this problem, we'll review the City’s current efforts, and then the Bloomberg Administration’s newly announced plans to expand recycling.


Food waste collection today


Some community groups have been collecting food waste from residents at their facilities for years. Red Hook Community Farm, NY Restoration Project, Earth Matters, and the Gowanus Conservancy all collect food waste and compost it for use in their own gardens. It’s fairly easy for programs that compost up to 1,000 cubic yards per year to meet NYS licensing requirements. (Volume above that requires a NYS DEC Part 360 permit.)


DSNY is collecting and composting food scraps dropped off by NYC residents at neighborhood locations through the newly launched NYC Compost Project Local Organics Recovery Program (ORP) and the GrowNYC Food Waste Drop-Off Program. There are fifteen food scrap drop off sites.  DSNY also collects food scraps from about fifteen Green Market sites.

DSNY and Department of Education are already piloting a food waste collection program in about 40 Manhattan and Brooklyn public schools and 20 nonprofit institutions. (More at DSNY Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling.) Those programs only account for a microscopic percentage of the food waste that’s dumped in NYC trash every day.

What about selling compost?

Lower East Side Ecology Center has been collecting food waste at the Union Square Market, composting it near the East River, and selling it back to consumers since 1994. BuildItGreen! Compost in western Queens has been making its own compost since 2010, but as required by its funding gives it away instead of selling it. Its director Justin Green is looking at creating a huge worm composting facility to create a high quality, higher priced compost. “We haven’t come up with a money making formula yet. The market for compost and how you reach it is still unknown.”

GrowNYC enters the compost retail market

A big breakthrough in compost sales is coming this year. GrowNYC / Greenmarket plans to start selling bags of Greenmarket branded organic compost, with an estimated retail price between $10 – 12 for a 12 lb. bag, according to David Hurd, Director of GrowNYC’s Office of Recycling Outreach and Education.

Hurd agreed that it’s possible for community groups to buy Greenmarket brand compost at wholesale and resell them at their local Greenmarket, but that doesn’t mean it would work. Although some NYC gardeners will pay extra for Greenmarket compost, and would be more willing to buy if some of the sale price was going to their neighborhood group compost is probably never going to compete with Girl Scout cookies as a fundraising product for nonprofit groups. Besides, it’s hard to compete with the low end of the market. Generic compost from Lowes sells for about $2 for a 40 pound bag.

Will New Yorkers pay to have their food waste picked up and composted?


Ordering take-out food for home delivery is a standard business, but will it work the other way?
Greg Todd has proposed collecting food waste from residents or businesses for neighborhood composting using industrial tricycles, charging a fee for waste pickup and perhaps selling the finished compost. This method has been pioneered in Northampton, Massachusetts. It’s a fascinating idea, but there are legal and operational barriers to this in NYC.

To actively pick up food waste, a license from the NYC Business Integrity Commission is needed. NYC BIC aims to eliminate organized crime from the business sectors it regulates, such as waste carting. Carting licenses cost $5,000 for a two year term, with extra fees per vehicle. BIC license fees and procedures pose a barrier for community groups which might want to collect food. Entrepreneurs would have to convince City officials and lawyers to create an exemption for community based food waste pickup, or find ways to partner with commercial holders of BIC licenses.

Another challenge would be finding multiple sites on which community composting facilities could be sited that are large enough to process large amounts of food waste. And finding the money with which to purchase and operate the composting facility, when there’s no guaranteed market for its product, and the City’s newly announced plans for massive expansion of food waste collection.

Perhaps there are ways to capture very specific parts of the waste stream for value added products. Two UC Berkeley seniors discovered they could use coffee grounds to grow oyster mushrooms. Their Oakland-based company now employs 21. They’re selling mushroom growing kits at Whole Foods, as well as very pricey bags of compost. If you can think of any, please post them. 


The City changes the game - announcing new recycling and composting plans, and a styrofoam ban


In his February 2013 State of the City Address, Mayor Bloomberg laid out a host of new initiatives:

“We’ll also take major new steps toward another important sustainability goal that we’ve set: Doubling the city’s recycling rate to 30 percent by 2017… It starts with making recycling easier for everyone by putting 1,000 new recycling containers in streets on all five boroughs this year… We’ll also tackle New York City’s final recycling frontier: food waste… So with Speaker Quinn and the City Council, we will work to adopt a law banning Styrofoam food packaging from our stores and restaurants. And don’t worry: the doggie bag will survive just fine.”

• Put 1,000 new recycling containers on streets in all five boroughs this year.

• Work with Speaker Quinn and the City Council to adopt a law banning polystyrene foam food packaging from stores and restaurants.

• Finalize a major new facility in South Brooklyn that will accept all kinds of plastics, have a state-of-the-art education center to teach children about recycling and one of the largest solar installations in the city.

• Begin recycling food waste, nearly 200,000 tons of which fill landfills every year at a cost of nearly $80 per ton. That waste can be used as fertilizer or converted to energy at a much lower price.

• Launch a pilot program to collect curbside organic waste from single family homes in Staten Island for composting.

Ron Gonen, Deputy Commissioner for Recycling and Sustainability at NYC Department of Sanitation, told us that the most important question is how to increase the organic waste processing capacity in the NYC area. What’s needed is not just industrial size but municipal size facilities. “We need companies with much bigger capacity, like Recology.” The City of San Francisco partners with Recology and now diverts 80 percent of all waste generated in the City away from landfill disposal through source reduction, reuse, and recycling and composting programs. San Francisco’s recycling and composting rate is the highest of any city in North America. Other leading municipal recyclers are Portland, Seattle and Toronto.


The biggest challenge, says Gonen, is making sure that NYC has the budget and the long term vision to build the composting and recycling infrastructure we need. The City is expected to issue requests for proposals (RFPs) from private firms to build massive composting facilities in the metro NYC area.

Businesses can join this effort, Gonen suggests, by looking into the design of products and packaging, and stimulating consumer demand for products made from and packaged with only recycled materials.


Back to our original question: can community groups make some money from composting while complementing City efforts?  Even if someone could hurdle the legal and logistical obstacles to neighborhood food waste collection, they would be in competition for what NYC plans to offer for free as a municipal service.  As far as we can tell, this is one of those sustainability dilemnas that cannot be addressed by entrepreneurial projects.  It requires massive government action, and fortunately, it's on the way. 

As with urban agriculture, there may not be much money to be made, but a great need to make New Yorkers more environmentally literate that doesn't translate easily into income.  We should still encourage people to garden in their own yards, using the compost they produce from their own food and landscaping waste.   The new DSNY composting services will need lots of neighborhood champions.  We'll need to build broad public support for a range of government sustainability measures in economically volatile times, and composting isn't a bad place to start. 

How to Double Participation in Con Ed's Energy Efficiency Program

Although NYC has some of the highest electric rates in the country, and businesses routinely cite high energy costs as a major headache, very few small businesses take advantage of government energy efficiency programs, because they are often confusing and difficult to navigate.

One of Con Edison’s Green Team programs (Small Business Direct Installation), rolled out in 2009, is more accessible. After receiving a free energy efficiency survey of their facility, business owners get a brief report of suggested upgrades for lighting, heating, ventilation and cooling systems. The report shows how long it will take for savings from the upgrades to pay for the discounted installation costs, almost all of which pay for themselves within a year. Con Edison offers a 70% discount on the installation costs of upgrades. Costs are instantly covered by grants, so clients do not need to fill out applications or wait for rebates.

Despite widespread advertising and contractors promoting the surveys door-to-door throughout the City, many businesses assume it’s too good to be true. Contractors report that only 15% of businesses that consent to a free survey proceed to purchasing the recommended energy efficient equipment upgrades.

In 2010-2011, LIC Partnership, a local economic development nonprofit serving Long Island City in Queens, mailed, phone and emailed many of its business constituents about the Green Team program. LIC Partnership staff directly referred many individual businesses to the staff of Willdan, the Con Ed contractor assigned to the area.

Results from Con Ed's contractor with no community connections in LIC
 
Willdan staff surveyed a total of 868 business customers in Long Island City between January 1, 2010 and May 31, 2012, and 238 of those businesses (27%) proceeded to purchase some of the upgrades recommended in their survey reports.

Of the 654 of 868 surveyed businesses not contacted by LIC Partnership staff, 151 (23%) went on to purchase upgrades.

Results when community group in LIC referred its constituents to a Con Ed contractor

When LIC Partnership staff personally contacted and referred 214 businesses for surveys, 87 (41%) purchased upgrades. When LIC Partnership staff collaborated with Greg Meyer, a single Willdan employee, 23 of 51 businesses referred (45%) purchased upgrades.

(Link to full data set.) 

"The main obstacle I encounter in this program is an endemic lack of trust. When cold-calling, I have found that customers generally sign up for energy efficient retrofits 15% of the time, and the few that do generally take 6-8 months to get the project going. In LICP’s warm market, I’ve found the majority of customers they directly refer me to elect for an energy efficiency retrofit, and they generally do so 1-2 months after initial contact. The end result allowed me to successfully navigate a high-efficiency network based off of mutual trust and respect with a high close rate instead of the more commonly used system of pavement-pounding, wishing and hoping." - Greg Meyer, former Con Ed/Willdan contractor in LIC

These results clearly demonstrate that when a community organization reaches out its constituents on behalf of a program, participation will be much higher than if representatives of the program - who have no direct link to that community - do the outreach themselves.  But what's their incentive to perform the extra work?

Promote your program for free?
Yeah, right.  Show us the money. 

Even though Con Edison encourages community groups to promote the Green Team program, they are not specifically required to.  Whatever incentive Con Ed community support grants may offer is not tied to results.  LICP's efforts, based on the environmental advocacy interests of its staff, are completely atypical.

As NYC Councilmember Dan Halloran said, "You can't do anything without the .... money. Money is what greases the wheels, good bad or indifferent."

To engage NYC's many community groups with limited resources, we looked for sustainability projects that might offer even a modest source of income.

We didn't find any easy answers in urban agriculture and composting.  The most promising project we found was promoting solar energy system installations for referral fees.  Two of LICP's referrals installed systems, earning significant fees for the group.  We are making our model available to the public, and encourage you to try it in your neighborhood.

But what about energy efficiency upgrades themselves? Promoting them would be a great project for community groups, but except for a few groups that are specifically funded to work on those programs, there aren't financial incentives directly tied to results.
  
Imagine what would happen if Con Ed were to offer nonprofits referral fees of 3% of the total cost of any commercial or residential facility upgrade project their referrals completed.  It's likely that the annual number of Green Team projects completed would rise, and energy consumption would decrease.  Perhaps the most important outcome would be the recruitment of neighborhood leaders across the City as grassroots spokespersons for energy conservation. 

Sticking up for styrofoam: chemical industry lobbyists oppose NYC styrofoam ban

This afternoon at Long Island City Partnership - my day job - the front desk of our office building called to say that some people from NYC Council were here to see us. This was surprising, as we know our local Council staff well and they would certainly call or email us in advance if they needed anything, let alone if they planned to visit. But we told security to send them up.


The two men introduced themselves as representatives of the American Chemistry Council. Wait, the front desk told us you were with NYC Council, I said. They apologized for any miscommunication, saying they told security they were here to discuss an issue before NYC Council. Uh huh. 

“We’re meeting with business groups like yours to briefly explain how the City’s proposed ban on styrofoam will drive up costs and is bad for business. We’d just like a few minutes of your time.” We said that we were busy, but took the flyer and said we’d call them if we had any questions.

In Mayor Bloomberg’s recent State of the City address, he outlined many, many new initiatives.  They included plans to start curbside pickup of yard and food waste in Staten Island, expand school food waste collection and composting, expand the types of plastic the City recycles, and to ban styrofoam in food packaging. A few weeks later, the American Chemistry Council has boots on the ground in NYC, sticking up for styrofoam.

 

In its flyer – check it out here - ACC claims that (1) paper products are twice as expensive as styrofoam products, (2) that styrofoam products function better than paper products, (3) that NYC Department of Sanitation can’t recycle most paper products because they have a wax or plastic coating, and (4) worst of all, it’s a missed opportunity to start a styrofoam recycling program.


Before researching any of these claims, our first question should be whether we can believe anything the American Chemistry Council says.


A quick visit to the ACC website shows that one of its top initiatives is promoting fracking for natural gas. North American natural gas supplies were in decline until a few years ago, when hydrofracking shale became the popular drilling technique. It’s the controversial procedure whereby water and a proprietary mix of corrosive chemicals are pumped into shale deposits deep underground at very high pressure, releasing natural gas.

According to ACC:

…Energy mavens from around the world met in Houston last week for IHS CERAWeek, where the economic benefits of natural gas from shale to America’s manufacturing sector proved a popular topic yet again. America’s chemical manufacturers are especially rebounding from the economic decline, courtesy of abundant and affordable sources of natural gas from shale that the industry uses as a fuel and a raw material, said several energy analysts. Daniel Yergin, chairman of CERAWeek, described to NBC News the “unfolding oil and gas revolution in the U.S. and the economic impact it has had on jobs, manufacturing and competitiveness.” …

Concerned citizens around the country are up in arms about it. One problem with this procedure is that drilling chemicals and natural gas leak into nearby water supplies, permanently contaminating them. Sometimes there's enough stray natural gas in tap water for it to be set on fire.

Another is that the amount of unconventional natural gas that can be fracked – leaving aside the health and environmental impacts – has been vastly exaggerated by industry. If we don’t have “100 years of natural gas” – then building out our infrastructure as if we did could turn out to be a very bad investment.  That's exactly what Post Carbon Institute says in its new report, "Drill Baby Drill: Can Unconventional Fuels Usher In a New Era of Energy Abundance?"

...Governments and financial analysts who think unconventional fossil fuels such as bitumen, shale gas and shale oil can usher in an era of prosperity and energy plenty are dangerously deluded, concludes a groundbreaking report by one of Canada's top energy analysts. In a meticulous 181 page study for the Post Carbon Institute, geologist David Hughes concludes that the U.S. "is highly unlikely to achieve energy independence unless energy consumption declines substantially."

Exuberant projections by the media and energy pundits that claim that hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling "can provide endless growth heralding a new era of 'energy independence,' in which the U.S. will become a substantial net exporter of energy, are entirely unwarranted based on the fundamentals," adds Hughes in a companion article for the science journal Nature. Moreover it is unlikely that difficult and challenging hydrocarbons such as shale oil can even replace the rate of depletion for conventional light oil and natural gas.

The American Chemistry Council are primary boosters of the shale gas fracking scam.  When they sneak around NYC saying negative things about new recycling initiatives, I suggest you don't believe them. Please contact your real NYC Councilmember and ask them to support the proposed styrofoam ban.

Beyond green building: Alex Wilson on resilient design

Alex Wilson

After Hurricane Sandy, preparing New York for future disruptions became a common topic in some government and civic circles. Municipal Art Society convened an excellent conference in January. (Some of the videos are available online.) Conversations mostly gravitated to future hurricanes and floods, although climate change will bring a range of potential disruptions and extreme weather events. So far, calls to sharply lower our carbon emissions to reduce the scale of future climate disruption don't seem to be getting much traction.  However, for NYC civic leaders to take a serious look at post-Sandy preparedness is a giant step forward.

The Bloomberg Administration recently launched the NYC Special Initiative for Rebuilding and Resiliency, which encompasses several interagency task forces. One is the City’s new Building Resiliency Task Force, which will look at both the direct effects of extreme weather on buildings, such as flooding or wind damage, and indirect effects caused by infrastructure outages like loss of electricity and water.

One member of that task force is Alex Wilson, a leading green building publisher for thirty years, as the founder and executive editor of BuildingGreen.  In addition to authoring several books and hundreds of articles, he served as executive director off the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association.  Alex is one of those taking green building to a deeper level by incorporating resilience to accelerating social and ecological changes. At a recent Green Drinks NYC event, he spoke about his newly created Resilient Design Institute (RDI) and what we can do in NYC.

Alex got involved in building resilience after Hurricane Katrina, working in Gulf Coast communities not just to restore them to their previous condition, but to prepare them for future events. Alex noticed that older homes, with their vernacular architecture, were better adapted to deal with problem conditions. The broad wrap-around porches and open room design of older homes built before air conditioning became universal in the 1940s were well-suited for coping with heat, and supplying natural ventilation. If electricity is cut off, the old-fashioned houses are much more livable.

Alex began combining the best of traditional design methods and contemporary science and materials to build structures that are livable even without fuel or electricity.  For five years, he called it passive survivability and as he put it, failed miserably. Then he shifted to a more upbeat term: resilient design.


The historical data is showing huge increases in intense storm events, especially in the Northeast and Midwest. With our insufficient progress in reducing carbon emissions, climate related disasters will keep increasing. The green building community will increasingly have to meet the need for resilient design, learn how to build net zero energy homes, and to apply those design principles to entire communities.  Environmentally aware folks will get this instantly, but an appealing message for non-environmentalists can simply be that these homes will keep their family safe. “Even Rush Limbaugh could like that.”

Flooding

New England towns like Brattleboro were flooded when normally placid streams running through them were inundated by torrential rainstorms. To minimize future flooding, communities directing streams through single three-foot culverts could replace them with three four-foot culverts.  Whether in small communities or in NYC, builders will have to use materials that don’t become useless or toxic after they get wet. It’s common to fixate on flooding, but that’s just one point of vulnerability.

Wind events

Even light frame residences can be engineered to resist uplift forces of strong wind events. In Dade County, Florida, county codes require extra tie-downs connecting structural elements. In Oklahoma, it’s common to build small hurricane safe rooms of reinforced concrete, partly underground.


High temperatures

The less heat is absorbed into the house, the less energy will be required to meet cooling needs. Wrap-around porches on south and west sides of a house shade the first story with broad roof overhangs, preventing heat absorption. Roofs with highly reflective coatings absorb less heat, as do windows with low emissive glazing. While venetian blinds on the inside of a window are helpful, it’s better to prevent sunlight even passing through the glass. Two approaches are exterior shades covering the windows, or manually adjustable sun shutters. For NYC buildings, external screens can be mounted over west side windows and angled to minimize how much summer sunlight enters the window.



Water shortage and drought


Climate change effects in the northeast are expected to include more rain, along with generally more erratic weather. The south, west and Midwest are already getting more frequent and severe droughts. (Check the US Drought Monitor for regional drought forecasts.) Buildings in those areas can minimize their water requirements by installing not just low-flush toilets, but composting toilets and waterless urinals. Grassy lawns do well in the water-rich northeast. For drier areas, xeriscaping - landscaping with desert plants and less-thirsty native plant species – and even gravel lawns are probably a better fit. Rooftop rain harvesting or water catchment is a good idea anywhere, even in NYC, but easier to promote where there is greater public concern about drought. Where rural houses get water via an electric pump, adding a manual pump ensures consistent water supply even if the power goes out.

Blackouts

How can buildings be designed to stay warm or cool for a long time even if electricity is cut off? Droughts can indirectly cause power outages, as about 90% of our power plants require cooling water to function. Installing very high levels of insulation, above what’s currently encouraged, is the answer. While triple-glazed windows are considered to be a premium in the US, they’ve been standard in Swedish building codes since the 1970s. Most US homes with solar photovoltaic panels are not automatically protection for electric outages, as they’re designed to operate in connection with the power grid. PV systems have to be customized to operate as an island from the grid before they can provide power security in the event of a grid outage.


Food security


New Yorkers don’t usually think about where our food comes from. We will when droughts affect Midwest grain production, or yield of fruits and vegetables from California’s Central Valley. That’s a good reason to promote growing more of our food within New York State, and even within NYC, as we’ve been exploring lately on this blog. Alex points out that buildings and power plants can capture waste heat and run it through greenhouses and aquaponic systems, which combine production of plants and fish.

Existing buildings

Experts can design new buildings to very high standards of efficiency and resilience, which are far beyond the vast majority of the current stock of standard NYC buildings. Resilient building retrofits are very hard and very expensive.

For houses and multi-family buildings, about four inches of additional insulation must be applied, either to outside, using mineral wool, or the inside, using foam. How the building handles moisture is critical. If water gets in from the outside, or moisture condenses from the inside, it can cause mold, or damage building structures. Roof overhangs are essential to keep rainwater away from exterior walls. Moving equipment from basements to second floors or the roof is obviously a challenge, as is applying these approaches to big commercial buildings.


The commercial building industry could start coping with resilience challenges – if the insurance industry compels it. Alex noted that some European designers have "re-skinned" commercial buildings with an entire new facade to gain the high-performance that was missing in the original building. “That's expensive, but one strategy to make an obsolete building far more sustainable and resilient at significantly less cost than tearing it down and starting over."




DM: What are the key messages you hope to share with the Building Resiliency Task Force, and what particular actions do you want the Task Force to take?

AW: One of my messages is that resilience is about a lot more than flooding. We need to be creating residential buildings (multi-family apartments, row houses, single-family homes) that embody passive survivability--buildings that will maintain livable conditions even with extended loss of power or interruptions in heating fuel. This means changing the way they are built so that they have far better energy performance. We can build new homes or apartments that will never drop below 50°F even with no power or oil or gas heat. We can retrofit older homes and apartments to do that, but it's a lot harder and more expensive. The easy part is new construction; the far greater challenge is the existing building stock.


DM: It seems that some people in the Bloomberg Administration get the need for resilience as well as energy efficiency and conservation. Where else do you see that awareness in NYC? In what NYC business or civic communities do you think it is especially important to raise awareness of the need for resilience? How can individuals help?

I think the NYC chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, Urban Green, has done a great job at raising awareness about resilience and sustainability. AIA New York and especially the Committee on the Environment (COTE) is also engaged in this. The number of well-known companies that are engaged in the Buildings Resiliency Task Force is very heartening: Durst, Albanese, and Tishman to mention a few. I don't know what role other organizations and companies will play in advancing resilience.

DM: I’m sure that many Building Green publications have covered resilience applications specific to NYC. Can you share the links of any such articles for New Yorkers who want to take next steps in resilience?

AW: This editorial from December 2005 introduced the concept of passive survivability and is available without logging into BuildingGreen.com, as much of our content is only accessible to subscribers.

http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2005/12/1/Passive-Survivability/

This article, from 2006, provided a more in-depth review of "passive survivability" as a design criterion for buildings, and it is also free:

http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2006/5/3/Passive-Survivability-A-New-Design-Criterion-for-Buildings/

On the RDI website I posted a ten-part series on the fundamentals of resilient design, though that would be a lot of links. Otherwise, you'd have to scroll through a dozen blogs in finding that series:

http://www.resilientdesign.org/category/news-blogs/alex-wilson/

This "Taking Issue" editorial in Fine Homebuilding does a pretty good job at laying out the case for resilience for homes:

http://www.finehomebuilding.com/item/23112/a-case-for-resilient-design



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Tip of the hat to Margaret Lydecker, founder of Green Drinks NYC, and event organizer Paul McGinniss of The New York Green Advocate and featured contributor to EcoWatch.

Opportunities for urban food production on roofs and lots

What are the opportunities for community based nonprofits or entrepreneurs with limited resources to make money from urban agriculture?

Despite all the buzz, there's actually very little urban agriculture in NYC considering the vast amount of rooftop and backyard space available.  Everyone looking at urban agriculture agrees the City would benefit from having much more of it.  The prospect of income would help, but it's especially difficult to run urban agriculture projects as businesses.  Their start-up costs can be high, and the profit margins are usually low.  Projects with enough money to build high-end rooftop greenhouses that enable year-round production of high end greens and tomatoes can do very well, but limited cash means fewer options.   However, we found some opportunities for groups more concerned with hunger, nutrition and environmental literacy than cash profits. 

Community gardening has a well-established presence in NYC.  During the 1970s buildings burned across the City, and residents of troubled neighborhoods reclaimed vacant lots. Community gardens from this era were intended to provide public neighborhood green spaces. Some are beautifully landscaped, and some offer small gardening plots for individual neighbors. 

While there are superficial similarities, urban farming is quite distinct from community gardening. Urban farming is oriented around the pragmatic goal of producing food. Increasing its practice in NYC has recently become a topic of governmental, academic, and popular interest.

No one expects urban agriculture to provide more than a fraction of the City’s food needs. “The Potential for Urban Agriculture in NYC,” a report from the Columbia University Urban Design Lab, clarifies that urban farming can play an important role in community development, significantly contribute to food security in some neighborhoods, enable entrepreneurs to establish viable businesses, and catalyze larger food system transformation (pp. 2-5)

But where can it take place? The profit to be made from real estate development on vacant land in NYC is much greater than that from farming, which limits farming to unconventional spaces from which there isn’t a much more profitable competing use. The Urban Design Lab states there are over 52,000 acres of backyard space in NYC (p. 38) and about 3,000 acres of flat roof space on large NYC buildings suitable for rooftop farming (p. 40). There are “clusters of potentially suitable roofs in the Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and the Maspeth and Long Island City neighborhoods of Queens, which is one of the most promising areas in the nation for rooftop agriculture” (p. 44).

Although urban farming clearly has great potential, and some of its initial projects are widely publicized, the amount of urban farming actually taking place in NYC is extremely small. Well-capitalized businesses like Bright Farms and Gotham Greens can pay for expensive rooftop greenhouse systems that enable year-round production and steady income – but there are still just a few of them, despite the abundance of potential investors and rooftops.

How might already existing resources, innovations, and stakeholders be linked to scale up urban farming in NYC? Community based nonprofits have an underused capacity to market sustainability programs to their constituents, as demonstrated in a recent Beyond Oil NYC report. Urban farming projects could benefit from that marketing capacity, if crafted to be sufficiently appealing to groups with a strong incentive to catalyze or support them.

Some likely candidates are groups concerned about hunger, food security, and environmental justice. While conventional entrepreneurs require minimum expected profits to start a business venture, nonprofits may be willing to proceed based on anticipated yields in the form of other constituent benefits. Start up costs will be much lower for ground level projects than rooftop projects, making them the place to start. If production increases, the project could generate income, from selling produce through a CSA or a nearby greenmarket.

Rooftop Farms

Despite the buzz, there are only a handful of rooftop farms in NYC. There are serious challenges to setting them up: finding a building with roof large enough to make the effort worthwhile (over 30,000 s.f.), and strong enough to carry the extra load (over 50 pounds per square foot). Unique business partners are required: an owner willing to upgrade their building in a very unfamiliar way, and entrepreneurs with enough experience in both business and farming to satisfy the building owner and funders. Farmers and building owners must negotiate a long term access agreement, install a waterproof green roof membrane, and truckloads of lightweight soil. The farmers must generate enough produce sales to cover their costs and loan payments, and pay themselves.

Urban farming on ground level

While there are still challenges with ground level gardening, smaller projects can be started with lower initial costs, enabling community based nonprofits to get involved, and leverage their capacity for grassroots marketing.

As the NY Times writes, the Bloomberg Administration has directed city agencies to identify vacant lots suitable for gardening. OasisNYC provides extensive land use maps and data. 596 Acres maps vacant public lots at which community gardens can be organized. Green Thumb, the community gardening program at the NYC Parks Department, is ready to help volunteers set up and run new community food gardens. One bottleneck is the limited number of those volunteers.

John Ameroso, former urban extension agent and for Cornell University, says the community gardens that flourish today are those focused on growing food, with "a dedicated farmers’ market or a C.S.A.   These amenities make stakeholders out of neighbors who may not like dirt under their nails and rural farmers who drive in every weekend." Those where people just come in to take care of their personal garden boxes, he says, aren't faring so well.

Nonprofits can catalyze the process

Land that can be gardened and neighbors willing to do it still have to be brought together in a complex process. Who’s willing to make the effort to bring neighbors together, train and supply them? Who will carry out this work, and with what resources? This might be a match for community groups with hunger, nutrition and food security on their agenda.

In the last post, we saw how Food Bank of Westchester set up farm projects on the grounds of five nearby nonprofit facilities. Their yield came in several forms: thousands of pounds of vegetables distributed to food pantries; the vocational training for the clients of FBW’s partners; green marketing benefits for all concerned; and the grant income FBW received for vocational and educational services. (Indirectly, they avoided the cash cost of vegetables they would have had to buy from distributors.)

Urban nonprofit groups can copy this model. Vacant public lots available for gardening can be found through Green Thumb, Oasis and 596 Acres. Another resource is vacant private lots. As we’ll see next, even those lots awaiting other commercial use can be temporarily farmed through mobile planters.

The list of community partners willing to help link nonprofits with potential public and private sites might include elected officials, the community board, local economic development nonprofits or business improvement districts. Business organizations may be well suited to contacting private property owners.

Like FBW, city groups can assign one of their staff to spend part of their time organizing a gardening project. Using their relationships and knowledge of the community, the organizer can recruit community volunteers, and liaison with providers of technical assistance and gardening skills training, like Green Thumb. The lots may require fences, and supplies for raised gardening beds (clean soil, compost, lumber) or mobile planting containers. With some initial successes, nonprofits can apply for grants to cover staff salary and program costs.

Innovative gardening techniques: if access to the lot is temporary, there's no soil, or the soil is contaminated

Gardening projects can be temporary as well. It's common practice in NYC to build raised beds, and fill them with clean soil and compost. Setting up semi-permanent structures may not be desirable or possible on lots where access is only temporary.  The way around that is to use mobile planters, which can be moved from one lot as the period of use ends, to a new location. 

Inspired by urban gardeners in Nairobi, Kenya who fill sacks with soil, cut holes in the sides, and plant vegetables in the holes, Feedback Farms in Brooklyn is experimenting with mobile planters that can turn vacant lots into temporary farms.

Stacked on wooden pallets for drainage, their lightweight, low cost sub-irrigated planters (SIPs) can be moved mid-season if needed. SIPs are planting containers in which the water is introduced from the bottom, allowing the water to soak upwards to the plant through capillary action. SIPs have been used in the US for over 100 years. Many do-it-yourself SIPs can be made from plastic buckets and boxes, and their manufacture for sale to urban gardeners has potential to become become a cottage industry.  In a more direct copy of the Kenyan sack growing system, Feedback Farms is testing the use of small sacks, as well as super sacks, a generic industrial bulk bag.

Or, as a NY Times feature explains in depth, gardeners can plant directly in inexpensive, highly biodegradable straw bales.

One NYC group pioneering best practices in food production on small urban plots is Active Citizen Project (ACP).  They have set up many community-operated farms and food distribution systems in Brooklyn using the SPIN method. The SPIN farming method emphasizes intercropping and scheduled crop rotations for high vegetable yields in small spaces. ACP plans to sell produce to commercial customers and to community members at 50-70% of market price.  ACP's leadership is extremely knowledgable and very pragmatic.  One of the difficulties in running an urban farming business is that they're not producing income during the winter, which makes it tough to support full time staff.  They and many others in the farming space are looking into value added products that can extend the shelf life of their produce and increase their markup.

This winter I attended the Northeast Organic Farming Association of NY (NOFA) and NESAWG conferences. Some of my takeaways were the needs to upgrade food distribution capacity that can link upstate and regional producers with NYC consumers.  Farmers need a large enough percentage of the retail sale price to meet their costs and stay in business.  It's not easy. 

While anyone concerned with urban agriculture wants to see more of it, it's not currently a money-making proposition.  City officials and advocates are going to have to be quite creative with incentives, regulations and programs even to remove the barriers to urban farming as a income-free pastime.  A repeating theme: even if you can't assign a dollar value to it, raising the environmental literacy of New Yorkers is probably the most important reason to promote urban agriculture.