Environmental Facebook

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I've written a number of posts concerning collaboration. It's probably my biggest passion within the environmental movement. In fact, yesterday, during my Environmental Case Studies class, I was asked what my passion is within environmental sustainability. While other people mentioned sustainable food or energy, I just can't pick a topic that is most important. I believe that they are all almost equally important and need to be worked on by everyone. Most importantly, people need to be working on environmental issues in a collaborative manner. 

Collaborative sites have started to pop up, but none has had the type of interactive success that the general sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have had. Of course this is due in part to the more targeted audience of sustainability, but I would still like to see a more comprehensive site. Hopefully I will eventually be able to put together some such site, or witness its creation. This is, after all, about advancing the movement as quickly as possible, not about who gets credit for it. Components of my dream site would include:

1. Quora Factor - a component where members can ask questions and receive answers from professionals and then vote up and down each answer. Quora has been incredibly successful in my eyes in promoting interactive discussion
2. Klout Factor - This encourages users who receive positive feedback from the community and ranks members based on actual knowledge. This also deters spam and uneducated posting.
3. User Profiles / Facebook Factor - This would actually be more like about.me where users can link they other accounts like Twitter, Facebook, and company pages, and write a short about me.
4. Pinterest Factor - The boards on pinterest and Quora have also taken off, exposing people to interesting and cool pictures and articles. These boards could be linked to people's profiles.
5. Categories/Tags: No more than 10 categories or tags to organize information. When people are able to independently tag their material, organization becomes difficult and people who may be working on similar projects often don't realize it. Of course each category can be further subdivided. 
6. Events / Meetup Factor: The site Meetup.com has been incredibly successful in connecting people with similar interests and uniting them at physical events. This helps increase attendance and promotes networking.

Oh I wish I knew enough code to actually create this...

What else would you

NYAGP Green Expo and Talks

This event happened on Tuesday, February 22, 2011 at 6:15 at Amber (432 6th Ave., NYC)

About NYAGP: New York Association of Green Professionals was launched in November 2010 by Pankaj Gupta and has quickly grown to 185 "Green-tech lovers." Pankaj's goal is to

“We want to help small business in growing and developing. NYAGP is committed to make their products / services more visible through this event and it`s distinct features such as 'Green Expo' and 'Presentations'.”

`NYAGP is a distinct platform which provides great networking and learning opportunity to Green Professionals through conferences and networking events. 

NYAGP also helps innovators and entrepreneurs get their idea commercialized by providing help in finding a well- balanced team, writing business plan and generating seed funding.

Here are their sites:
Meetup (main site)
Facebook
Twitter

Their next Meetup is already scheduled for March 26 - check it out here.

Last night's event was mainly networking with 3 presentations in the middle. The following is my summary of the presentations.

1. Brett Anitra Gilbert, Ph.D. (Texas A&M University, Rutgers University): Challenges for Entrepreneurs in the Commercialism of Green Technologies
Brett Anitra Gilbert has a background in hydrogen fuel cell technology. Once she began to see how useful fuel cell tech. is, she wondered why is wasn't more widespread. Her presentation was aimed at showing the challenges faced by creators of green technologies in marketing their products. These challenges were divided into market challenges and then business challenges. (Arrows represent her ideas for solutions.)

1. Lack of awareness of the environmental problem --> Educated the market place
2. Apathy (people just don't care) --> Make the products convenient
3. Cost (new products are ore expensive because they are not yet produced on a large scale), and limited value proposition --> Marketing
4. Lack of infrastructure to support new technologies / insufficient supply chain (limited number of suppliers who control the market and can increase prices) --> Create aftermarket support
5. Competing technologies (people don't understand the uses) --> Education
6. Politics! 
• Gilbert's claim was that the government is constantly changing preferences, like flavors, each year, so each year investments from the government shift. 
• Big business prevents new technologies from coming up --> Entrepreneurs need to plug into their trade association to have support and lobbyists on their side. 

Questions for consideration:

1. How efficient is hydrogen? (At the moment it is still being produced by coal plants, which is horribly inefficient.)
2. How can we get past U.S. government subsidies for big business?
• At the moment big business has so much control over the government that they effectively push down new, sustainable technologies because they fear the competition. 
• Gilbert's answer was that only time will let this pass. If the people make a change in demand, then businesses will follow. However, I don't think this can come quickly enough. We need the government (not lobbyists) to step in and take control of the situation: to promote sustainable technology, and take away power from big business. 
• Her other answer was a carbon tax. [My opinion] Carbon taxes have been widely supported, but big business is not going to tax itself, and, at the moment, they likely have too much power for the government to side-step them. In Maryland a carbon tax was imposed that was above the carbon output. When carbon output fell the tax remained at previous levels and was completely ineffective. 

2. Scott Van Pelt, LEED GA, Urban Green Energy: Advances in Small Wind
Since the first wind farm was started in New Hampshire in 1980, the wind turbine industry has been growing. Wind turbines use wind to move the coils of a generator rather than the traditional method of steam. There are 3 types of wind turbine - Horizontal axis (which whistles), the Savonious type, and the Darrieus type. The latter two are both on a vertical axis. Pelt's company, Urban Green Energy installs Darrieus type turbines on a small scale.

There are 3 things to consider when setting up a wind project: swept area, siting, and battery vs. grid tie. And there have been quite a few advances to the wind industry recently - venture capital funding is increasing, the federal government has increased funding, universities are creating majors based on sustainable energy, and improved siting technology.

It is also important to consider buyer motivations for wind energy: 1. living a more sustainable lifestyle (for the true tree-huggers among us) 2. LEED/marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility for businesses who want to have a 'green image' 3. Return on investment.

So, why wind? There are a number of benefits to wind energy: 1. Wind can be harnessed almost anywhere 2. Wind turbines have a smaller footprint than solar (claim by Pelt, although I am not sure of the data for this) 3. Lower cost 4. Wind-solar hybrid systems (these are very useful because on nice days it is sunny but not windy, and during storms it is windy but not sunny etc.)

Questions for consideration:

1. What resources do we have here in NYC?
• Wind is relatively viable in NYC and there are a few companies
• Urban Green Energy is launching a pilot project in the Bronx

3. Christine Vescovo: Greensulate
Greensulate was founded by Amy Norquist and has won many awards. They focus on designing and creating green roofs and make very individualized projects. They work with the New York Restoration Project. Normal roofs have to be replaced every 10-15 years, but green roofs can last up to 100 years!

About Greensulate: "Greensulate is on the leading-edge of integrated design, engineering, installation and maintenance of Green Roof Systems for the residential, commercial, and industrial markets as well as public & private institutions. We partner with architecture firms, conventional roofing contractors, engineers, real estate owners & developers and facilities managers across the U.S. to design highly customized Green Roof Systems, manage their installation, and offer important on-going maintenance services. All Greensulate Project Managers are certified Green Roof Professionals (GRP’s) accredited by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities." 

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Overall the event went very smoothly. It was great to be able to talk to everyone, rather than the general format in which everyone sits down and listens to a few panelists and then leaves without having connected. I think this sort of even will be very important for connecting the environmental community and increasing collaboration.