The latest issue of The Architect’s Newspaper has an article on one of Sherwood’s projects, New York’s Olmstead Center. Click here to read the full article.

Sherwood Engineers in Architects Newspaper article on Olmstead Center

Local water supply in rural India from the New York Times

• Dr. Nocera at MIT is reserching the ability to capture energy through photosynthesis, so that we can harness solar energy at night
• A cap and trade system for carbon emissions is looking like it is gaining consensus as the best option for  accounting for externalities of pollution, but how much will it cost our society?
• More on green schools, this time talking about “the halo” system that enables natural light to shine into the classroom even on cloudy days at Da Vinci Arts Middle School in Portland, Oregon
• Design your own graywater capture system!
• Google tackles office greening in London. Best way to increase recycling? Take away trash cans at individual desks.
• How can a hotel go green but still cater to visitor needs? Take a hole out of the soap bar…
• A new analysis report was released recently, showing that India could face a severe water supply problem if they do not change their usage patterns soon

Check out these awesome street ‘redesigns’ from the GOOD Livable Street Contest. There’s lots of ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures of how people would redesign their streets to make them more walkable, breathable, and permeable. While some of them would likely face technical challenges, they represent a good slice of the ideas out there for making better streets.

The contest is closed now, but due to the overwhelming volume of responses, they’ve given the judge an extra week to pick a winner. Check back May 18th for an announcement……

Treehugger brings word of the new Z-Competition: Re-skin old buildings to make them zerofootprint. Or at least, come up with scalable designs for retrofitting older, energy-inefficient buildings to reduce their consumption and improve functionality.

The competition will be judged on the aesthetics, energy efficiency, smart technology, return on investment and potential as a solution for a large number of buildings.

Like the X-Prize, this isn’t just a design competition. Five finalists will be chosen, their designs implemented and monitored over three years. The Z-Prize ca$h will be given to the building that has most reduced the energy per square foot.

Retrofitting existing buildings is one of our most pressing global challenges. It’s the most bang for the buck, the most quickly implemented, and with billions and billions of square feet of building stock out there, could represent a serious dent in carbon emissions.

The competition welcomes teams from all over the world.The deadline for the submission of designs is September 1, 2009.

A high tech parking meter for the new parking scheme in downtown San Fransicso

• Drip irrigation may not save water overall, because almost all of the water that is withdrawn from a water source is taken up by the plants, leaving nothing for to replenish the aquifer. So less water may be withdrawn from a source, but since none of it is being returned, its a net loss for the aquifer, especially since subsidies promote the use of drip irrigation, leading to more planting.
• PacifiCorp is planning to endorse a plan to remove four aging hydroelectric dams from the Klamath River in Oregon.
• The Clean Water Act may be used to sue the EPA for not making stricter standards in light of climate change data.
• Pretty much every tree, or living object for that matter, that is over 54 years old will have a spike in carbon-14 levels due to the atomic bomb testing that was occurring.
• California is taking global warming and a rising sea level into account in all their long-term planning, especially when deciding to invest in infrastructure projects that may be under water in 20 years.
• Sustainably designed affordable housing is not expected to suffer significantly from the economic downturn, since there is always a market for affordable housing in NYC. The Tapestry, in Harlem, is one example, that just secured funding recently.
• The Take Back The Filter campaign against Brita has succeeded and Brita will now recycle their filters, via mail or at select Whole Foods locations starting early next year.
• San Francisco is going to go ahead with parking reforms that allow for the Municipal Transportation Agency to fluctuate rates between 25 cents and $6/hr in order to reach a target vacancy rate of curbside parking between 10% and 35%, reducing the need for circling to look for a parking space and increase incentive to not use your car.
• A federal appeals court has banned Royal Dutch Shell from drilling oil wells off the coast of Alaska.
• Can’t say it too many times, electric cars are only as good as their batteries.  And if we start building up electric cars, then we may trade our dependence on foreign oil with dependence on foreign car parts.
• The New York Times runs through a bunch of water saving design features that seem like they are all the rage these days.
• If the federal government agrees to bail out the big three automakers, they should put at least three preconditions the loan - stop resisting environmental regulations, allow for more competition, and make a greater commitment to hybrid cars.

One of the 2,000 islands in The Maldives, from Nomadic Matt's Travel Site

• Chain stores are starting to invest in green buildings across the country. It may lead to an increase in consumers at the location due to the the green message, but ultimately, the green features lower energy costs which is valuable to the bottom line.
• The nation of the Maldives has announced they will start an investment fund to use to buy land on higher ground, probably somewhere in India or Sri Lanka, to move its population in the event of sea level rising. The island chain sits ~ 3 ft above the current sea level.
• The new Ikea in Brooklyn is currently applying for a LEED Silver rating. Green features include solar panels on half of the roof, which if they perform well, may be rolled out across Ikea stores worldwide.
• US Sugar’s sale of land (181,000 acres) in the Everglades to the state of Florida has been trimmed down to a lower price, as well as a real estate only deal, so that the sugar operations will continue for the mean time.
• A paper shredder finds a new industry in shredding electronic waste, and makes profits from it as well.

A vegetable oil powered car won the race from the Bay Area to Las Vegas. (New York Times)

• A race from San Francisco to Las Vegas has a twist - all cars start with just one gallon of a fuel of their choice and they must scavange for the rest of their fuel on their home made vehicles.  A vegetable oil fueled car won the race, where the only other finisher (only 5 vehicles started) was a wood burning car.
• The New York City Parks Department, which managed Shea Stadium, is removing bathroom and lighting fixtures for use at other Parks Department facilities, among other items, prior to demolition of the stadium. (via greenbuildingsNYC)
• Toyota won a fuel efficiency challenge last week in a race in the UK, with its Yaris 1.4D-4D (diesel) car achieving 70.49 MPG for the 400 mile race. The best gasoline car mileage was the Toyota Aygo with 68.6 MPG. Too bad neither of the vehicles are available here in the US.
• Global warming is creating a negative feedback loop by reducing the amount of water in peat bogs, leading them to dry out and decompose, which thereby releases more carbon to the air.
• Check out the solar potential for your home easily with this map (if you’re in North America that is…)
• After the energy crisis in the 1970s, a lot of money was invested finding new fossil fuel resources, but just a few million were granted to a research group in Berkeley to reduce energy demands. They realized widows were a big energy sink and basically created the market for low-emissivity windows, paving the way for the glass towers of today.
• The UK announced an employment program that will train workers to insulate attics, in a new program called the Conservation Corps.
• Michael Pollan writes an open letter to the next President about how to reform food laws so that Americans gain a healthier diet, reduced dependence on foreign oil, and greater national security.
• The Vietnamese catfish has been having a huge impact on the American catfish industry.  But are they on the same playing field from an environmental and food safety standpoint?
• A vast natural gas reserve is located below New York, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but accessing it may cause contamination of the water supply.
• Traffic could be impacting our health in one way not many of us would suspect. A study done in San Francisco showed that 1 in 6 residents of San Francisco may be suffering from higher stress rates from the increased noise levels due to traffic, and that puts them at risk for heart disease, high blood pressure and other stress-related illnesses.
• Gainsville, Florida, may adopt feed-in tariffs, which would guarantee to buy all power produced by solar PV systems at a set price for the next 20 years, creating a more stable market for solar power.  This program is an alternative to a net metering program, which is more expensive to administer.

California Academy of Sciences Green Roof via NPR

• Solar panels are turning into a burglary target.
• The Long Island Power Authority and Con Ed are looking into the economic feasibility of installing a wind farm 10 miles off the south shore of Queens.  A large wind farm has been approved by regulators 15-20 miles off the shore of New Jersey.  Now it needs to get approval from state and federal officials.
• A US-Canadian group involving many western US states has released their plans to curb emissions, and will likely involve a cap and trade system and the distribution of 90% of the allowances to industry, with only 10% being auctioned at the start of the program.  The Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative kicked off last week selling all of their 12.5 million allowances at an average price of $3.07/lb of C02 allowance, about 1/10 of the price allowances are trading for in Europe.
• Congress is in a deadlock on incentives for renewable energy. Current incentives for investing in renewable energy are set to expire at the end of this year unless Congress can come to a decision.
• The bailout plan has some green provisions written in though: tax credits for bike commuting and tax credits for plug-in hybrid cars.
• A new program may be able to work while your cell phone is turned on to calculate your carbon footprint by estimating your mode of transport via gps.
• Ben & Jerry’s is testing Greenpeace’s Greenfreeze technology, a refrigerant technology that doesn’t use hydroflurocarbons as a refrigerant, as part of a pilot testing program to get the technology allowed in the US.
• XEROX has been developing a new water treatment technology called “Spiral Water Filtration Technology” at its Palo Alto Research Center that treats water to close to drinkable levels on a very small footprint and much less capital and O&M costs.
• LA is starting a pilot program to collect food scraps separately from trash, with the goal of diverting 600 tons of wasted food from the landfill every day.
• A South African architecture firm has won the Curry Stone Design Prize for their design of a very cheap house using a timber frame and sandbags. This house is more energy efficient and safe than most of the houses used in the shantytowns around Cape Town, and is price competitive as well.
• The Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City has debuted new subway grate covers that also provide seating and a bike rack. These new grates are to address flooding in the subway that helped lead to the shutdowns in the subway service during some large storm events last year.
• Rather than looking to tear down and rebuild the slum of Dharavi outside of Mumbai, maybe it should be examined as the model of other slums. (via Archinect)
• Honda re-releases the hybrid Insight, which it expects to be competitive with the Toyota Prius, having similar gas mileage and a lower price.
• A new technology may be able to paint steel with a layer of electrodes and photovoltaic paint, essentially having the ability to turn buildings like those Frank Gehry creates into large power plants.
• An Italian company, Enel, is close to completion (it will all be online by the end of the year) on a 250 MW wind farm in Kansas, the largest of its kind in that state.
• The California Academy of Sciences, heralded as the greenest museum, opened last weekend in San Francisco. Among other green design features, there is a 100% native planted green roof, solar panels, insulation made from recycled denim, and daylighting. It hopes to achieve a LEED Platinum rating.

Fishing in the Pontine Marshes via The New York Times

• An American professor proposes to highly engineer a solution to the severe degredation of the Pontine Marshes in Italy, rather than try and restore it to its original conditions.
• Global warming may not cause the permafrost to thaw, despite earlier worries, says a study from the latest issue of Science.
• Portland, OR is the United State’s greenest city, according to a SustainLane ranking, with San Francisco at the number 2 spot and NYC at number 5.
• The problem with solar power is that where there is you can only use it when its sunny. Or can you? The DOE is investing $67 million in research projects to try and advance solar power storage. They are also investing money in cleantech water projects such as those that look at wave, tidal and current-driven hydro power.
• As fuel costs rise, more and more projects are in development to harness ocean and tidal power, with hopes of moving from testing phase to full blown energy projects.
• The Clinton Global Initiative had a large meeting last week, including speeches from Al Gore and the president of Coca Cola, pledging to attempt to achieve water neutral activities.
• Chrysler announces three electric car prototypes, including one that will be tested with fleets next year and hit the production lines in 2010.
• TreeHugger profiles 11 buildings featuring living walls.
• NY City Council seems like its on its way to making the city a bike friendlier place by supporting a bill that would require commercial landlords to allow tenants to bring bikes inside. Rather than come up with a bike parking requirement, this forces the landlord to decide how they are best going to handle the bikes.

The Wall Street Journal’s blog “Independent Street” has asked its readers about Sherwood’s ‘green surcharge’.

We’ve begun adding a .05% surcharge to our contracts to offset the emissions we produce in a client’s name (i.e. $5 for every $10,000 billed).

We all know that computers use electricity, plans are printed on paper, and air travel causes emissions. These are simply the costs of doing business - costs counted in greenhouse gases and resource depletion.

What’s the best way to handle these costs? Would you pay a ‘green’ surcharge?

WSJ’s readers had some interesting comments:

One reader compared it to being charged “every time the toilet gets flushed,” another suggested we just add it to the cost of doing business without creating a separate surcharge.

Do you think it’s more transparent to let clients know we’re incorporating the cost of offsetting our emissions? Or should we simply add it in with the cost of the lights, plumbing, rent and other overhead (including toilets!) on our P&L sheets?

There are lots more interesting comments from readers:

“Only in SF. What arrogance, imposing a extra tax on customers.”

“CO2 is a CRUCIAL plant NUTRIENT!!!….So, why on earth should we REDUCE our emission of this highly beneficial CO2???”

“If businesses truly want to be green, they will put money where their collective mouths are. Do the right thing.”

“Carbon offsets are a sick sick joke.”

“I would be happy to pay such a fee if I can be assured the money is doing what they say it is doing.”

Read the article here, and let us know your thoughts!

• Amtrak is getting record ridership as fuel costs on planes and for cars continue to rise, but it will be hard to keep up with increased demand since the infrastructure to build new cars isn’t able to ramp up quickly since its been deteriorating.
• LEED homes are now the latest trend and bragging right from the rich and famous out in California. But their green homes probably aren’t as small as most peoples.
• Cheap air lines have lead to dramatically increased air travel within Europe, mostly to coastal towns with a resort industry springing up near the airports. But this is causing global warming issues that will take a long time to undo.
• Families are actually using the Xebra electric car for neighborhood errands, spending $10/month to charge the car. But it will be hard to avoid attracting notice in one of them.
• Jim Rogers, the CEO of Duke Energy, sees himself as an environmentalist. If he can only get the other environmentalists to see his side.
• Obama supports ethanol as a way to help national security by decreasing revenues to oil rich but hostile nations.
• EPA may reduce the required ethanol yields to ease corn and other crop prices, as a significant amount of farm land has been harmed, destroying this years crops, along the Mississippi.
• The state of Florida is going to buy US Sugar, with the intention of using their land to help restore the Everglades, creating the largest ecological restoration project in the country.
• A never ending stream of plastic trash is inundating areas like northern Alaska or some islands in Hawaii. And cleanup isn’t going to solve the problems - the only way to fix the situation is to stop allowing trash into the oceans in the first place.
• Another power strip has been developed that hooks up to your computer monitor via USB so that you can manage the power controls of each of your outlets on the strip. See how much power you’re saving as well.
• The New York Times writes an overview of the science behind stream restoration and what has and hasn’t worked.
• More coverage of the downswing of suburbia as a 1-hr commute each way and the cost of heating a large home start to add up.
• The Supreme Court ruled to cut punitive damages against Exxon for the Valdez oil spill to $500 million from $5 billion, since the compensatory damages totaled ~$500 million and punitive damages are generally on the same order.
• Zipcar has a promotion in Chicago called Low Car Diet where if you agree to forgo using a car for one month this summer, they will give you a free 1-yr membership, a transit pass and driving credit. Maybe this plan will spread to other cities?
• California plans to ramp up programs to cut greenhouse gas emissions, with the goal of reaching 1990 levels in 12 years. Stipulations include utilities required to generate 1/3 of electricity from renewable resources and building high speed rail lines.
• Hawaii has passed a law requiring all new homes to have solar water heaters, with a few exceptions based on site feasibility.
• New York City passed a law that goes into effect on January 1st, 2009 to provide a property tax credit of up to $100,000 for homeowners who install green roofs on at least 50% of their available rooftop.
• The Bureau of Land Management has put a freeze on building new solar energy plants on their land, which is some of the most suitable land for such projects with huge tracts of land in the desert in the southwest.
• Bird, a mini-chain of boutiques in Brooklyn, is in the process of building a new shop. The owner has been documenting the process, which this week includes the breakdown on demolition quantities as they try for LEED certification.
• Home Depot will start recycling CFL light bulbs at all stores. Its been in place at their Canadian stores since November of last year.

A photo of the sorted demolition piles at Bird.