Gothamist: NYC's Buildings Too Gassy For Earth's Good

jmc

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 15:38:48 -0500

nyer, a village is not going to be more efficient than a large concentrated city, no matter how you make it. there's a certain thing called "economies of scale." also, decentralized utilities are a ideological bullcrap. the great part about a grid is that it can distribute power to the people who need it when they need it. adding some microturbines to large ny buildings for combined heat and power (CHP) and district heating might be a good idea, but your idea of a dream city is just that... a dream.

daniel

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 22:50:43 -0500

NYC could get greener by following Tokyo's leading and mandating gardens on every rooftop, this would lower the temperature of the city, and help with air quality...

nyer

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:50:55 -0500

hey, i'm not against city living but don't compare the dream city with the worst example of 'everything else'. compare apples to apples. sprawling suburbs are the worst case scenario for non-city living. they were planned and developed in times when consumption was king with no thought of efficiency. go to rural new england and find a different perspective. the only glass houses are greenhouses. grow your own food. telecommute. compost your crap instead of dumping it into the rivers. compost your food and pay to dispose of trash by the bag instead of shipping it down the coast out-of-sight out-of-mind. live in a passive solar home with the option to install renewable energy systems. be responsible for replacing your own windows and insulating your home. i've lived many places and never seen a culture so readily throw away barrels of take-out trash every day. multiple plastic boxes inside a paper bag, inside a plastic bag with disposable silverware. the carbon required to produce and transport all of that is NOT figured into these estimates. nowhere else have i seen people use space heaters in the middle of summer because the ac is too low (ok, that's probably included, but really disgusting). only in ny. our city relies heavily on the carbon output of rural america and, like that truck idling all night, it is NOT figured in (idling for over 5 mins is against city laws). we produce highly concentrated waste that is uncontrollable whenever we get a little too much rain. it's not so different from a hog confinement operation vs free range. how many car commutes is going to make up for building the 2nd ave subway line? the point is the eco-economics are much more complicated and it's wrong to claim city life is inherently more 'green' than everything else. villages with local, decentralized utilities designed in reaction to their micro-climates are deliberately sustainable. on par with the dream city.

Jay

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 16:02:45 -0500

Living in cities IS inherently greener. "those diesel trucks idling all night in chelsea" are accounted for in the calculation of NY's greenhouse gas emissions. Why is it hard to believe that NY is more efficient than America's sprawling suburbs? As bad as the midcentury skyscrapers are, most suburbs in the US contain the same exact type of structures even further apart from eachother. If they replaced the oil and coal plants that serve the city with new nuclear power plants, the CO2 emissions from NYers could be decreased even more. Even though Chicago is less efficient than NY, it probably produces less greenhouse emissions as it's ~75% nuclear powered, as opposed to ~40% for NY.

nyer

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:43:59 -0500

attached housing is more efficient, but not when it's an uninsulated, prewar apartment building with no control over heat or possibility to invest in improvements. passive solar? no way. i think there's no way this estimate could be accurate. as #12 mentioned, most of our output is outsourced which reduces our estimate and increases that of the producers. all the transport involved in bring our products to us and exporting our trash can't be ignored. those diesel trucks idling all night in chelsea belong to us. parsing out the eco-economics gets messy, but the notion that city living is inherently greener is a myth that nyc media loves to embrace regardless of the shaky estimation process. glass-clad skyscrapers with non-operable windows are inefficient to an extreme.

schmod

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:47:23 -0500

What's causing NYC emissions to INCREASE over the past couple of years? If anything, I see the city getting greener and cleaner (which is also fairly impressive considering our antiquated infrastructrue) Also pause to consider the number of people who don't live in the city, but still work here, most of whom commute into the city by public transportation. Now we just need to make more of our buildings "green", which, given Con Ed's capacity issues, actually has a decent chance of happening. It's not NYC I'm worried about. It's the rest of the country.

WT Economist

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 13:15:36 -0500

It isn't a surprise that life in dense New York City is less environmentally damaging that life in the burbs. New Yorkers use space more intensively than those elsewhere, and attached houses and apartments have less exterior surface area relative to interior floor area than ranch houses, and use less energy to heat and cool. Mass transit and walking conserve energy compared with driving. Still, I think the 1/3 estimate may be exaggerated. A great deal of energy is used in industry and agriculture (and the production of energy itself), and since our stuff is produced elsewhere, we outsource those CO2 emissions. While New Yorkers also consume less stuff -- nowhere to put it -- the energy used to produce goods might be better accounted for at the point of consumption rather than production. Were that the case, the re-use of goods -- handing down children's clothes, repairing and reusuing furniture, and the fact that we buy, use, and sell fewer cars -- would emerge as a greenhouse gas strategy.

Tim

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:21:15 -0500

New York has 2.7% of the nation's population, so 1% of the emissions is pretty damn good.

y

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:08:30 -0500

Hopefully the mayor will support increased use of Pedicabs, bike lanes, and improved public transportation to get a lot of gas-guzzling cars off the road!

adam

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 12:03:06 -0500

"Water vapor contributes to nearly all the effects of Global Warming." Source?

BRYAN

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:35:32 -0500

fyi---sustainable NYC

mike

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:33:55 -0500

Patrick, I see you've been drinking the right-wing cool-aid about water vapor.

Patrick

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:19:02 -0500

Ugh. It was only a matter of time before our Mayoral Nanny picked up on this, the ultimate of Nanny State issues. First, there's no mention of the econmic output of NYC compared to the entire nation of Ireland. I suspect we're far more effecient, in monetary terms. Second, carbon output is practically meaningless as a Greenhouse gas. Water vapor contributes to nearly all the effects of Global Warming. So if our Nanny-In-Chief Mike wants to have an impact he'll show he's serious by closing our public pools. Let's see how well that goes over?

Constant Dater

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:13:49 -0500

I read that a small thing with big consequences is that most roofs in the city have a black (tar/tarpaper?) coating, rather than a lighter colored material. This, along with all the concrete, helps heat up the city, leading to more energy being spent to cool things down, and so on.

Howard

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 11:10:46 -0500

Global warming is a myth.

Landor

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:56:18 -0500

Does anybody know: can thermostatic controls be added to existing steam radiators?

cj

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:54:13 -0500

This is at least the third time you've used this photo. I love it -- no complaints here! Well, except for the environmental wreckage in NYC that inspires you to keep using it.

Mid-C Frank

Wed, 11 Apr 2007 10:28:23 -0500

Since my landlord gave us over 100 degrees of heat all last night, and we all had our windoes open fully, I'm not surprised by this news!