Green Collar Blues
Sometimes, we all feel alone. When you believe in something, such as we all do, it may seem that the vast majority of people have their heads in the sand, and that we are all a bunch of fatalists.
People with different ideas are often the object of scorn and resentment. Frankly, it comes with the territory, and I believe that we who want a better, greener, more liveable Windsor must do two things right now.
First, we must join together and encourage each other. Second, we must know that we are not alone in our mentality and in our frustration with the city we call home. We are frustrated by this city because we care.
It gives me hope and inspires me a great deal to know that there are others out there, somewhere in the dark who think the same way we all do. Our motives are positive; our goals are for the betterment of the city, and for the greater good of the youth who will inherit our homes and lead our citizens long after we have all expired from this earth.
I want the city to not only be a better place right now, I want it to be sustainable, adaptable and bulletproof against the pitfalls that will certainly befall the communities that turn away from the hard reality that is soon to come.
Energy costs alone justify building “green” buildings as the norm. The Bank of America building in New York City is an excellent example of this, among a few others in Manhattan. This skyscraper filters polluted air into its internal filters which cool the building with purified air. That purified air is cooled by re-used rainwater in the summer months. The angles of the building act as a sort of sail that directs air flow down into the building, cutting the energy costs of this steel and glass giant by half a million dollars a year.
The Hearst Tower is another example of re-use and green architecture. Instead of demolishing the stately limestone building in favour of a totally new building, they simply kept the entire facade of the building and built an energy efficient skyscraper out of the top of the old building. The skyscraper used 75 percent recycled steel in its construction, has heat conductive limestone floors in its atrium, and it recycles rainwater as well for its heating and cooling systems.
For the uninformed, green technology has been a fad, a “European” thing for about a decade now. It seems wasting energy, wasting food, wasting time, wasting for the sake of wasting is truly a North American narcotic. We have been blessed with many unlimited things in our lives. We were once frugal and environmentally conscious, but the ideology of “scrimp and save”, “waste not want not” was thrown away after we won the Second World War.
It seems wasting for the sake of wasting were the “spoils” that our ancestors reaped after cutting out the heart of evil tyranny, and I am grateful they did, because they preserved our freedom. For some reason, however, we thought it was our God given right to live really really large, and perhaps rightly so. In Windsor, we supplied a vast number of vehicles to this dream, and we knew how important we were. What would North America, the Free World do without us? Now we are finding that out.
Why this time is so frightening for so many of us is that we are losing our identity as a city. For one hundred years when people thought of us, they thought of cars, and somewhere, back in the minds of so many people was the dreadful thought of “what if…” We passed these paranoid thoughts off as silly nonsense, but now the impossible is happening, and we are all frightened to death.
Now when people think of us, they think of unemployment, welfare cases and crime. Obviously we need to change that sentiment. This is why creating green collar jobs is so important. I cannot stress this enough: we need green industry like a drowning man needs a life preserver.
It may begin small, with a bicycle parts manufacturer, or a company that builds solar panels, but once the customers of these companies see our work ethic and our ingenuity they will tell their friends, and they will tell their friends, and so on, and so on.
It also might begin with a bang with a company like Bombardier. We obviously have the infrastructure in place and the willing workforce ready to work. Unfortunately it is going to take much more than call centres and half full casinos to get us on our feet again.
The world at large has two choices: either to keep wasting all of its fossil fuels and building unsustainable buildings and cities, or plan for the future and build without fossil fuels in mind right now while we still have the luxury of time. Build your networks with high speed mag lev and electric rail in mind, because most of the world outside of North America is doing so as we speak. Build smaller, denser networks without thinking of automobile commute times. Who cares about auto commute times, when in less than a century, most people will not be driving cars at all?
Windsor can change or die, adapt or be left out of the loop.
Windsor could supply millions of products that will be needed in ever increasing numbers in the coming centuries. High paying green collar jobs are the future of this city and we need this future to happen yesterday.
The new “New Deal” http://www.urbandesign.org/newdeal2009.html
Hearst Tower http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearst_Tower_(New_York_City)
Bank of America Tower http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Bryant_Park
Tags: economic development, Green Building, revitalization, transportation costs, Urban Design, walkable
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It seems as though there’s an opportunity to double dip at the gov’t trough. If I had the time, I’d inquire if you can get gov’t funding and subsidies for not only retraining unemployed workers but also gov’t funding for environmental causes.
The only problem is that the green collar jobs don’t exist in Windsor. Essentially we’d be training our workforce to leave.
As far as I’ve looked there’s 5 areas of employment.
Electrician to solar electrician
landscaper to green roof and sustainable landscaper
Wind power maintenance
bicycle manufacture and repair
Geothermal
It’s not easy to be environmentally friendly in Windsor
Windsor’s real estate values are so low that its difficult to justify new building. Many of these items have a reasonable payback on new buildings but retrofits are more costly and are hard to justify. The only way they can be built is by the public sector and we missed the opportunity on the bus station, 400 bldg and College/university bldgs.
I looked into solar and wind but wind doesn’t work downtown unless the turbine is 30 feet higher than the neighboring bldgs they recommend against it. Solar has a 5 yr payback but its scary to put all that money onto a downtown roof that can be accessed by strangers (there’s been several cases of homeless camps on the rooftops of vacant bldgs)
The only environmentally upgrade I think the city should push are the waterless urinals. They seem to work pretty good
Other than that, businesses need help to make these upgrades in order to create a demand for these new decent paying jobs.
It would help if the city had someone to coordinate sustainability efforts so they could contact businesses and show them the calculations on the savings. I think businesses would be willing to make these upgrades but unless the numbers are right in front of them, their preoccupied with simply surviving.
It’s certainly going to be a hard road ahead. Sometimes I feel like we have a giant jigsaw puzzle in front of us that has been dumped on the floor, and we have to put it back together in the dark. It’s going to get put back together, it will just take dedication, patience, and the ability to percieve things that others cant.
Thankfully there are a few people here who can see in the dark : )
We can build these or license to build (vertical axis wind turbines) and in a picture on the website below, they can go anywhere including our riverfront.
Popular Science’s Best of 2008 http://www.mariahpower.com/
I’ve looked out my condo for almost twenty years downtown and all I see are flat black roofs, except for the white film roof of the Capitol. How much would it take to make all the roofs downtown green and change the climate, yet we get nothing but silence and stupid puzzling looks from our city.
With the amount of sun light this city and county gets per year, we should be leading in solar power adaptation for public, private and commercial buildings. Take Windsor off the grid by putting us into the grid as a major supplier of electricity to the province.
Geothermal all existing buildings downtown and make sure new buildings comply. Why isn’t city hall on geothermal and having a green roof and rain water harvesting, lawyers fees could have paid for that!
Sorry! Eddie is away or attending to/on family business, his newest excuse for missing so many meetings these days.
The City of Windsor does have an Environmental Coordinator, Karina Richters
The city also had a plan to work on green roofs with landscaping students but what happened to that?
In Windsor, a good first step on the road to green collar jobs starts now, likely with the federal budget. I’m hopeful that home energy saving programs will be part of the budget. Our city leaders should be leading the lobbying for such programs.
You see unlike other cities in Canada, there is no housing bubble in Windsor. So, no flippers or homebuilders stuccoing and adding other forms of lipstick to a real estate pig and then dumping it to some greater fool. So, we can actually improve our housing stock with renovations for energy efficiency that will actually save us money going forward. It could be a great construction boom in this city as ex-pat construction workers return after losing their jobs elsewhere (look at the latest jobs report with Alberta hardest hit and construction layoffs a large part of that).
Here are some examples of renovations for energy savings - http://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/en/co/renoho/reensa/index.cfm
WHY INVEST IN ENERGY EFFICIENCY?
http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=1672
Good one Edwin! I like this part from the link you posted, after my response to Dee Dee!
2.2 The Value of Municipal Leadership (Do we have leadership in Windsor?)
Municipal governments are well positioned to become major players in the “second wave” of energy efficiency. Municipalities can set a leadership example by retrofitting municipal buildings such as office buildings, police and fire stations, warehouses, schools, hospitals, public housing, and recreation complexes. It is particularly important that municipal governments improve energy efficiency in their own buildings. By doing so, a municipality can optimize the use of scarce financial resources. Energy retrofits can potentially save a city millions of dollars, allowing it to reduce budget deficits or increase service delivery.
Municipal involvement in the field of energy efficiency can also set a positive example to the rest of the community, and help develop expertise that will facilitate the design of energy efficiency initiatives aimed at the entire community, including the private sector.
One way that municipalities can promote needed change in other sectors of the building stock is to support energy efficiency measures through regulation and legislation. Municipal governments can use by-laws, codes, and ordinances to prescribe appropriate energy standards for new and retrofit construction. These standards, for example, could include requirements that buildings be oriented to take maximum advantage of the sun for space heating, or that trees be planted to provide cooling shade. Even municipal governments with limited jurisdiction can establish informal energy codes. In the early 1980s, for example, during the “first wave” of energy efficiency programs, the municipalities of Berkeley and San Francisco, California enacted retrofit codes for existing buildings. Other cities have used an array of tax instruments, subsidies, fees, and rebates to encourage energy efficiency, fuel switching and the use of renewable energy sources.
Municipalities can develop partnerships with utilities, financial institutions, private energy service companies, and other local governments to promote energy efficiency. Many municipalities in Canada, some European countries, and the rural U.S. own and operate their own energy utilities and have considerable power to introduce energy efficiency programs into their community. Where local utilities are owned and operated by private investors, or by a central power agency, municipal governments can work with these utilities to increase investments in energy conservation, develop cogeneration systems to provide heat and power, and develop district heating and cooling systems. Municipalities can also join together in collaborative ventures to promote energy efficiency. For example, in concert with existing municipal associations, they can aggregate strategic purchases of advanced energy saving technologies to promote demand for these products and work together to develop and disseminate practical tools and analytical frameworks to help other cities develop retrofit strategies.
The approaches described in this handbook can be applied to a wide variety of municipalities. It is difficult to generalize and indicate which is the “best” type of program because conditions vary greatly from location to location. In reviewing this information, municipal energy managers should evaluate which of the approaches described on the following pages are most suited to their particular jurisdiction, and consider how one or more of the experiences of other municipalities might be adopted in order to come up with a financing mechanism best suited to their own unique situation.
The city talks the environmental talk but we need more than talk, read the mayor’s comments below from:
Analyst raps DRIC
By Gord Henderson,
Windsor Star January 10, 2009
http://www.windsorstar.com/Health/Analyst+raps+DRIC/1162356/story.html
Francis said it sickens him to see politicians and special interests clamouring for a quick Parkway start even if the scientific evidence indicates it will do nothing to alleviate poor air quality in adjacent neighbourhoods. Worse, according to DRIC’s own human health risk assessment, the parkway would, in some instances, actually worsen cardiovascular and pulmonary health by boosting levels of microscopic particles that migrate from lungs to bloodstream, raising plaque levels in arteries and damaging organs.
“They say give up and get on with it,” fumed Francis. “Get on with what? Get on with higher cancer rates? Get on with higher numbers of heart attacks? Get on with higher mortality?” Francis said “intense” doesn’t begin to describe the pressure he and councillors are getting from contractors and others to accept a Parkway plan so feeble its authors dared only compare it with doing nothing.
“It comes down to quality of life. Kids are going to school in this city with air monitors in their backpacks. Do we not want to change that?”
So Dee Dee what has Karina Richters coordinate lately? The only initiative and total waste of money I’ve seen is the green planting on Dougal.
Coordinators don’t initiate nor lead, the city has to take the lead in making it happen. Oh, Greenlink doesn’t count. The city must state, that Windsor will become the greenest city in Canada. Just look what the city administration has done in Chicago, we’re years behind Chicago, our mayor’s favourite city by the way!
But then I’m NOT impressed with any city in Ontario or with the province of Ontario when it comes to generating alternative energy, green initiatives, it seems that we are locked in the mid twentieth century and can’t get out.
I don’t think you can retrofit the vast majority existing bldgs with green roofs. The bldg would have to be structurally sound and cost would be prohibitive. You’re talking $20 per square foot.
I’m thinking the solar panels might be a better strategy on existing bldgs.
Geothermal would have to be vertical drilled and costs huge. I got a quote for residential of $25-30k and that was for a house. WHo knows what it would cost downtown where you dont even know whats underneath
WE should be looking at that sustainable city website I mentioned on a previous post
Okay Mark, I agree somewhat that the cost strengthening roofs might be a bit much for a building owner. Then we can ask them to switch to white roofs:
I just did a Google search on white roofs and the real advantage of having them: the whole search is here:
http://tiny.cc/8FlH3
Mark, if someone can pay $700,000 for a 1,900 sqft stucco-clad semi in cowtown why can’t we spend $100,000 to retrofit our wonderful old homes for energy efficiency here.
Sorry, Cowtown
http://www.greaterfool.ca/2009/01/09/sorry-cowtown/
What is more cost prohibitive stucco or energy efficiency?
Thats cowtown.
Here you’re paying $150k for a 3600ft2 commercialon pelissier. Thats $40 per square foot. Whose going t pay 50% of the bldg cost for green roof
We’ve got windsorites paying 3-400k for homes that are like 6-700k to build.
Its going to be a while before our existing home and commercial stock get catches up with new build prices
In the meantime, wouldn’t it be great if our environmental cooridnator (or better yet, someone from the province) had a call line to give out information on cost benefits of wind turbines, geothermal, solar panels
I spent a lot of time researching prices and cost benefits on these items which I think the information should be far more readily available.
When researching geothermal, everone was throwing numbers around verbally in the 5-10k range and when I had them put it on paper it jumped to 30K
I had to go to london to find out about solar and wind turbines. unfortunately my house is east west facing so mounting a solar panel to try to get it south facing would be a pain.
It would be nice if new subdivisions took these types of issues into consideration.
Best bang for the buck is still extra insulation
I agree that there is lower hanging fruit than green roofs, but, my point is that if any city can afford to do these retrofits it’s Windsor. We can do this, that, and the other and still, in most cases, total investment would be below shoddy minimum code replacement costs.
Longer term all real estate returns to replacement cost plus some location value. The replacement cost plus location value of some semi in a new subdivision in the middle of the prairies is not $700,000 and the replacement cost plus location value of a century home in wonderful Walkerville is not $150,000.
Blue is the new Green
From the New York Times:
http://arieff.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/blue-is-the-new-green/
I was driving through the newly created intersection of Walker and Grand Marais and noticed new streetlights had been installed. Now I don’t know enough about the units that were installed, but they don’t *appear* to be making use of green technology such as solar. Wouldn’t this have been a perfect opportunity to take (and also importantly, ’show’) *some* green initiative, even on a small scale like a few street lights?
Small example, and I’m sure there are many more.
The was so many balls dropped on that project, Hez, it makes you wonder whether anyone will ever again believe any “progressive” talk that manages to come out of City Hall.
Yay! I hope any plan includes a means of funding the renos.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090115.wcredit15/BNStory/politics/home