{"id":13547,"date":"2013-06-12T00:08:45","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T00:08:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leedpoints.com\/?guid=3ea8215db8bfecebaa3451aec2593949"},"modified":"2013-06-12T00:08:45","modified_gmt":"2013-06-12T00:08:45","slug":"new-york-to-spend-billions-on-climate-resiliency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/new-york-to-spend-billions-on-climate-resiliency\/","title":{"rendered":"New York to spend billions on climate resiliency"},"content":{"rendered":null,"protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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Nearly eight months after Hurricane Sandy slammed the northeastern United States, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is proposing a far-reaching $20 billion plan to build flood barriers and “green infrastructure” to protect low-lying areas of Manhattan from future superstorms. <\/p>\n

Following Sandy, the mayor appointed a task force to assess the city’s vulnerability. In a report released this week based on its recommendations, the mayor cited scientists’ predictions that sea levels could rise as much as 31 inches by 2050, accompanied by severe storms and prolonged spells of extreme heat and cold. <\/p>\n

“Hurricane Sandy made it all too clear that, no matter how far we’ve come, we still face real, immediate threats,” Bloomberg said in a speech at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the same location where IceStone<\/a>, a Sustainable Industries-profiled company, was nearly wiped out following Sandy (in this case, workers rallied to restore the factory<\/a>). “Much of the work will extend far beyond the next 200 days — but we refuse to pass the responsibility for creating a plan onto the next administration. This is urgent work, and it must begin now.”<\/p>\n

Bloomberg’s recommendations are highlighted by “green infrastructure” projects, including supporting renewable and distributed energy generation systems, planting more trees and vegetation on streets and rooftops, upgrading building codes, enhancing natural wetlands, and refurbishing drainage systems to manage runoff. The mayor also  appointed a “director of resilience” named Daniel Zarilli.<\/p>\n

The plan is heavy on construction of stormwalls and barriers, but Bloomberg suggested these could come in the form of elevated parks and boardwalks.<\/p>\n

The mayor’s report was endorsed by a cadre of <\/a>business and environmental organizations<\/a>, including the Columbia University Center on Global Energy Policy, Real Estate Board of New York, Environmental Defense Fund, Building Resiliency Task Force, The Rockefeller Foundation, NRDC, New York Smart Grid Consortium, the American Institute of Architects New York chapter, and the region’s largest energy utility, Con Edision.<\/p>\n

“These new guidelines place New York City at the forefront of thinking on resiliency relevant for coastal communities around the world,” said Christopher Collins, executive director of Solar One. “This continues a series of strategic steps that the Bloomberg administration has taken, including investment in new, sustainable building models, to help create a new paradigm for construction that addresses both the fact of climate change, as well as the need for renewable and sustainable practices.”<\/p>\n

How will New York pay for it all? The city can rely on $10 billion in city capital funding and federal aid, and another $5 billion in U.S. disaster relief, the mayor said. Additional federal funding and capital raised through the sale of municipal bonds would be needed to cover the remaining $4.5 billion, he added. The plan outlines a number of ways to raise the additional billions that would be required for the plan to become a reality.<\/p>\n

[pagebreak]<\/strong>“This is New York City,” Bloomberg said. “We’ve always turned challenges into opportunities. Sandy was a temporary setback that can ultimately propel us forward, if we think big and seize the moment.”<\/p>\n

The mayor said he’s added $50 million to New York’s fiscal 2014 budget currently under consideration by the city council to pay for a study of the project with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. <\/div>\n

Sandy caused an estimated $19 billion in economic damage. A similar storm in 40 or 50 years would cost $90 billion in lost property, jobs, infrastructure and government expense, according to calculations by Swiss Re Ltd., the world’s second-largest reinsurer, in the report. The task force predicted city temperatures could reach 90 degrees Fahrenheit for 57 days a year by mid-century, up from 18 days a year now, similar to the current weather of Birmingham, Alabama. <\/p>\n

For its part, Con Edison announced<\/a> in late May it will be spending $1.2 billion to incorporate smart grid technology, flood-proof substations and install stronger equipment. <\/p>\n

Superstorm Sandy caused more than 1 million power outages, affecting approximately one-third of the utility’s customers late last year.<\/p>\n

“While we recognize that these weather events represent a ‘new normal,’ our goal through our investments is to lessen the hardships that violent weather causes for our customers,” said Con Edison chairman and CEO Kevin Burke.<\/div>\n
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What is this ‘new normal’?<\/strong><\/p>\n

With climate change underway, a subtle – but important – shift has recently emerged in the dialogue of business leaders who have turned their collective focus to cities – where populations, new markets and technological breakthroughs are exploding. Instead of merely focusing on climate change mitigation, more and more discussions are based on climate resiliency<\/a> (or, if you prefer, the more Silicon Valley-friendly name: adaptech<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The current reactionary paradigm of waiting for natural disasters to occur, then cobbling funding from governments and donors to help recovery, is quickly becoming useless as the frequency and severity of these disasters hastens. According to Ben Sandzer-Bell<\/a>, founder of an organization that <\/a>creates more resilient communities<\/a> in Latin America and Haiti, climate resiliency refers to a community’s ability to survive natural disasters that occur as a result of climate change with minimized damage. According to Sandzer-Bell, “When faced with the cost of inaction in terms of human toll and financial damage, lower-cost alternatives to become resilient to natural disasters will become more attractive to governments, NGOs, global institutions, and private sector actors, etc.”<\/p>\n

[pagebreak]<\/strong>Avoiding mass relocation in the wake of disasters and reducing impact in terms of disrupted lives and physical property damage goes a long way toward making communities climate resilient. For instance, Sandzer-Bell’s CO2 Bambu, which utilizes renewable bamboo resources to help communities prepare for weather events, is developing amphibious housing that can float<\/a> during severe floods.<\/p>\n

Although New York and other cities can never be 100-percent foolproof against all forms of natural disaster, communities can anticipate future threats and take steps to prepare. Like terrorism prevention, arms hoarding, or bunker-building, climate resiliency offers abundant new opportunity for businesses that see a potential market.<\/p>\n

“Climate mitigation led to a multi-billion dollar cleantech industry – wind energy, solar, biomass, low emission cars, low-emission consumer products, etc. This has come from gradual consumer recognition that, all things being equal, tilting toward a climate mitigation solution was overall beneficial,” says Sandzer-Bell. “The same thing will happen with adaptech.”<\/p>\n

While it’s too early to narrow down specific market segments, he adds, already we can articulate broad areas that are likely to develop over time: housing, infrastructure, access to potable water, drought-resistant seeds and other food security innovations, to name a few.<\/p>\n

Leading energy engineers at Arup<\/a> outline a treasure trove of opportunities at both the building and community scale in a new book, “Two Degrees: The Built Environment and Our Changing Climate<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

According to Alex Wilson<\/a>, respected green building expert and founder of the Resilient Design Institute, mitigation and resilience go hand in hand.<\/p>\n

“If we prepare our built environment to withstand uncertain climate futures, we will create an inherently sustainable system that requires drastically fewer resources,” said Wilson, a member of the task force that informed Bloomberg’s report. <\/p>\n

Nearly two months before Hurricane Sandy in 2012, Wilson wrote an article about New York City’s resiliency shortcomings. Wilson says in spite of decades of experience creating highly energy-efficient buildings, the biggest challenge resiliency champions faces is dramatically improving the energy performance of existing homes. <\/p>\n

“It will require innovative outboard insulation systems, high-performance window treatments, and other measures like those, and I believe that there are tremendous entrepreneurial opportunities with such products and systems,” he says. “It will also require innovative financing approaches, the introduction of insurance policies that reward resilience, stronger building codes — there is a lot that needs to be done on many different levels by many different segments of the business community.” <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10542,10543,10544,8609,10545,10546,3294],"class_list":["post-13547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-building-posts","tag-adaptech","tag-bloomberg-resiliency-plan","tag-climate-change-apaptation","tag-climate-resiliency","tag-new-york-hurricane-preparedness","tag-sustainable-building-for-storms","tag-sustainable-buildings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/leedpoints.com\/green-building-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}