News: Biophilic Cities; A trash-less Sweden; Playgrounds on Parking lots

We hope you enjoy our weekly roundups! The AfS organization enjoys sharing innovation from around the world, helping to show the impressive future we are creating together. 

Enjoy the roundup (this covers 03/15-03/21)!

>Habitats for humanity: Why our cities need to be ecosystems, too. 

Enter University of Virginia urban and environmental planning professor Tim Beatley with the solution, FINALLY. Here he comes, with the delivery. Wait for it…

Biophilic cities.

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Wait, come back! It’s better than it sounds! Biophilic cities are places where animals and plants and other wild things weave through our everyday lives. The name comes from “biophilia,” E.O. Wilson’s theory that humans have an innate connection to other living things, because we evolved alongside them. It’s futurism with a paleo twist: An effort to create human habitat that can also host a menagerie of wild creatures — and not just for their sake, but for ours. Keep reading!

>Sweden, a recycling-happy land where a quarter of a million homes are powered by the incineration of waste, is facing a unique dilemma: The nation has run out of much-needed fuel. Sweden, birthplace of the Smörgåsbord, Eric Northman, and the world’s preferred solar-powered purveyor of flat-pack home furnishings, is in a bit of a pickle: the squeaky clean Scandinavian nation of more than 9.5 million has run out of garbage. The landfills have been tapped dry; the rubbish reserves depleted. And although this may seem like a positive — even enviable — predicament for a country to be facing, Sweden has been forced to import trash from neighboring countries, namely Norway. Yep, Sweden is so trash-strapped that officials are shipping it in — 80,000 tons of refuse annually, to be exact — from elsewhere. You see, Swedes are big on recycling. So big in fact that only 4 percent of all waste generated in the country is landfilled.

Good for them! However, the population's remarkably pertinacious recycling habits are also a bit of a problem given that the country relies on waste to heat and to provide electricity to hundreds of thousands of homes through a longstanding waste-to-energy incineration program. So with citizens simply not generating enough burnable waste to power the incinerators, the country has been forced to look elsewhere for fuel. Says Catarina Ostlund, a senior advisor for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency: “We have more capacity than the production of waste in Sweden and that is usable for incineration.”

Sweden, a recycling-happy land where a quarter of a million homes are powered by the incineration of waste, is facing a unique dilemma: The nation has run out of much-needed fuel. 

>Petwalk: A draft-free doggy door for energy-efficient homes.

Adios plastic flaps! High-tech and highly insulated, the Petwalk system not only prevents drafts but stops intruders, human or otherwise, from squeezing their way into your home.

It’s a given that plastic-flapped pet doors and the furnace-less wonders known as passive houses aren’t exactly simpatico. Installing a traditional pet door in a home built to the stringent passivhaus energy efficiency standard — a standard once described by Lloyd Alter at sister site TreeHugger as involving a ****load of insulation, careful detailing, and controlled amounts of high quality glazing — is, well, blowing it, as they’re essentially giant holes that promote the one thing that passive house building sets out to avoid: drafts.

So what to do if you long to live — or currently reside — in a sealed-up, super-insulated home but also own a dog or a kitty that likes stroll in and out to and from the backyard as he or she pleases?

Recently unveiled at EcoBuild 2014 in London (h/t to Gizmag), Petwalk — “the first real high quality entry for pets” — is a thermally insulated, crazy-sophisticated pet door from Austria (of course) with aburglar-resistant built-in alarm system and a windproof, passive house-conforming design that prevents energy loss, i.e. heat from escaping and cold air from getting into your high-efficiency home.

>A modular passive house concept out of France dubbed Pop-Up House has been generating a fair amount of ooh la las over the past few days — and for good reason, as it would appear to truly live up to the claim presented in its tagline, which to some, could be read as an oxymoron: “Making passive construction easy."

Easy, of course, was the operative word involved with the construction of the 1,615-square-foot Pop-Up House prototype in Aix-in-Provence, France: It was relatively cheap (more on that in a bit), required hardly any special tools (just an electric screwdriver), and went up insanely quick (just four short days). I’m also guessing that the mental anguish that comes with assembling flat-packed furniture from a certain retailer was absent given that the airtight abode in question revolves around "simplicity that would make a Swedish furniture manufacturer blush!"

>JAJA Architects thinks that parking garages should offer more than just spaces to leave vehicles. The firm just won a competition to design a massive parking garage in the new development area of Nordhavn in Copenhagen. The garage will feature a green facade made up of planter "shelves", a green roof complete with a playground, two special staircases and a railing that will serve to connect pedestrians on the street level to the roof. Continue reading!
 

News: Texas soars in solar production; Soft robots; No more bottled water in San Francisco

> It's Official! San Francisco Bans Bottled Water on City Property. In a permanent extension of a 2007 law, San Francisco has made it illegal for the City to buy or distribute plastic water bottles. Bottled water contributes to massive amounts of litter and plastic waste all over the world. San Francisco has an aggressive plan to achieve zero net waste by 2020. In late 2013, Inhabitat reported that San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors appeared ready to enact one of the strictest bans on bottled water in the nation. Days ago, the proposal became law, and plastic water bottles smaller than 21 ounces will no longer be allowed on city property starting Oct. 1, 2014.

> Solar power cheaper than natural gas, coal, and nuclear power in Texas! 

Ah, remember when solar power was expensive. You know, just a couple years ago. Things change fast, don't they?

1) the DOE projected that solar would get below 6¢/kWh by 2020, and 2) Austin Energy was initially seeking bids for solar power from a power plant or power plants totaling 50 megawatts of capacity, but after receiving over 30 proposals, including the winning proposal from SunEdison, it increased the size to 150 megawatts. Overall, this is big news for the solar industry. It's increasingly safe to say that solar power is now mainstream.

> Poop and pee are valuable stuff; that's why people used to collect it and even pay for it. That's why our current toilet system is so awful, just mixing them with lots of water and flushing them away, and why the Caltech Toilet that got all the coverage in the Gates Foundation Reinvent the Toilet program was so problematic, it was really just a fancy flush.

In fact human byproducts (don't call it waste) have real value is a world of peak fertilizer and peak phosphorus; it provides both. That's what's so interesting about the Blue Diversion toilet developed by Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology. It is a mix of high and low tech that does a whole lot more than just flush and forget.

> Soft robotic fish makes a big splash. The growing field of soft robotics holds promise for devices that can maneuver around a space without damaging the surrounding environment. "We're excited about soft robots for a variety of reasons," MIT professor of computer science and engineering Daniela Rus said in a news release this week. "As robots penetrate the physical world and start interacting with people more and more, it's much easier to make robots safe if their bodies are so wonderfully soft that there's no danger if they whack you."

> Every year, Americans send millions of tons of food to the landfill. What if you could use all of those pizza crusts and rotten vegetables to heat your home? That's already happening in one unlikely laboratory: the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn.

The plant's longtime superintendent, Jimmy Pynn, shows off the plant's crown jewels: eight huge, shiny, oval-shaped steel tanks known as digester eggs. Each one contains millions of gallons of black sludge that's roughly the consistency of pea soup. Pynn calls it "black gold."

"It has a pungent odor to it," Pynn says. "To most people it's like ugly, yucky stuff."

Where others see foul and potentially hazardous sludge, Pynn sees a source of renewable energy, thanks to trillions of helpful bacteria inside the digester eggs.

"The digesters like to be fed like us: three times a day," he says. "They like to be kept warm, 98 degrees. And whether we want to admit it or not, we all make gas. And that's what we have these guys for: to make gas." Read on.

The digester eggs at Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant in Brooklyn contain millions of gallons of black sludge.

News: Leapfrog Project for Tocloban; Planter-based public pee stations; NCY Organic Waste Collection

>It’s been seven years in the making, but the world’s first “invisible” bike helmet is now available for purchase. The brainchild of Anna Haupt and Terese Alstin, two industrial designers fromSweden, the Hövding—Swedish for “chieftain”—is essentially a collar that deploys an airbag-like hood in case of an impact. Unlike regular hard-hat helmets, which the duo deride as “bulky, like a hard mushroom on your head,” the Hövding is designed to be unobtrusive. But the device is more than an expression of vanity. “An invisible bicycle helmet is a symbol of the ‘impossible,’” Haupt and Alstin say in the video. “If people say it’s impossible, we have to prove them wrong.”

>Composting park proposal keeps NYC's organic waste close to home. As New York City attempts to up its food scrap waste diversion game and align itself with West Coast composting powerhouses like San Francisco and Portland (baby steps folks, baby steps), one architecture firm has proposed a rather intriguing idea on how to accommodate roughly 30 percent of the city’s residential waste stream that’s composed purely of organic waste.

Renderings: PRESENT Architecture via Gizmodo

Currently, a majority of the city’s waste — all 14 million tons of it produced annually — is hauled off via truck to out-of state landfills (thanks Ohio, Virginia, and Pennsylvania!) to the tune of $300 million. This is obviously an insane amount of money to dedicate to the unloading of garbage on other states. With PRESENT Architecture’s Green Loop proposal, New York City's organic waste, which, if all goes as planned will be collected via a mandatory residential curbside collection program by 2016, wouldn’t make that greenhouse gas-intensive journey to some far-flung dump. It would stay close to home.Really close to home.

>What do you think about this? San Francisco experiments with planter-based public pee stations. Designed in response to a rampant public urination problem, PPlanter is a smart and ecologically sensitive public urinal that conserves water while prettying up things with bamboo. 

Open-minded but not always easy-going, San Francisco is the kind of place where it’s easy to do certain things that may prove to be more formidable — or even impossible — tasks in other major cities. Things like recycling your yoga tank, munching on hyper-local produce at a baseball game,composting the remnants of last night’s dinner party, and, until recently, going on a casual stroll around your neighborhood without pants.

One thing, however, that San Francisco has never quite been able to nail down is an ecologically responsible, aesthetically inoffensive method in which full-bladdered residents and visitors alike can urinate while on-the-go. Important stuff! Continue Reading. 

>Leapfrog Project: Living Tents Could Bring Light and Hope to Typhoon-Ravaged Philipines Town. Rebuilding after natural disasters is a daunting task that requires the synergy of different disciplines. Post-disaster rehabilitation efforts in places like Haiti have proved that in order to avoid failure, various sectors must come together on the ground to strategize the rebuilding program. Leapfrog aims to engage different schools of thought in design, science, business, and technology to create a discourse and group activities that will generate ideas for the recovery of the destroyed city of Tacloban, located about 360 miles southeast of Manila.

These unique installations are inspired by the Marimo ball, a rare growth form of alage that takes the shape of a large green ball. The project is an extension of the Living Wall project developed by Atelier Lira Luis, and it draws upon biomimicry and living skin concepts to encourage resiliency in rebuilding.

News: A Visit to Greensburg Will Help in the Philippines

Thomas McAloon tries out the GreenTown storm shelter by New Day made from a recycled propane tank.

On February 20, 2014, Greensburg GreenTown met with Thomas McAloon and Eric Chetwynd, who are affiliated with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). They were en route overseas to help in the recovery of the city of Tacloban in the Philippines. Tacloban was hit by Typhoon Haiyan on November 7 last year; the storm destroyed 90% of the community and took more than 6,000 lives throughout the Philippines. Tom and Eric will be visiting Tacloban and other ravaged cities, and will encourage, as appropriate, a restoration strategy that incorporates energy, resource and environmental conservation. They came to Greensburg to meet with community leaders and glean information from the local Green Initiative that will be useful in their work. Read more.

News: Are the signs of Spring changing? LA's first bike-friendly district; Can aquaponics be a solution to California's drought?

>Plane, train or automobile: Which has the biggest footprint? This isn't a new question, but do you actually know whether taking the train is greener than driving? And just how bad is flying, anyway? According to the National Geographic Green Guide, you roughly double your emissions if you cancel your plane reservations and drive across the country instead. If you take the train, then you’ll cut carbon dioxide (CO2) by half compared to the plane. A key reason is that the train (or the diesel bus) may be a big carbon emitter, but it’s designed to carry a lot of passengers, so the per capita emissions are a lot lower. Read more.

>Warming World App. The heat is on for the planet as a whole, but what has been happening where you live? Click on the map to find out, or enter a location in the search box at top right. The initial map shows average temperatures over the past 20 years; use the drop-down menu to see maps for earlier periods.

>California leads the way in solar jobs, but 18 other states more than doubled their solar jobs in 2013, according to a new map. The map, published by the Solar Foundation as part of their National Solar Jobs Census, found that Southern states were some of the most active in creating solar jobs in 2012 — new solar jobs in North Carolina, Georgia, Texas and Louisiana accounted for nearly a quarter of the total new solar jobs added last year. In Georgia and North Carolina, solar installation jobs doubled, bringing their respective totals to 2,600 and 3,100.

>Is aquaponics the answer to California's drought?

Last year was the driest in California’s history, and as the state’s drought worsens, farmers are looking at new ways to grow food, including aquaponics. Aquaponics, which combines gardening with fish farming, is a method of food production that uses 90 percent less water than regular farming.

>Los Angeles is launching the city’s first Bicycle Friendly Business District (BFBD) in Northeast L.A. that will serve as a pilot program for a larger citywide initiative in 2015-16. The public-private partnership aimed at bringing more cyclists to commercial corridors will install bike infrastructure including parking (racks and corrals), repair stations, bikeways, signage and maps of the bikeway network.

>For eons in New England, a First Sign of Spring has been sap oozing from a maple tree. In northwestern Montana, officials at Glacier National Park report that a long understood First Sign of Spring is the appearance of a bear — emerging from hibernation. In other parts of the country, the telltale signs have long been natural recurrences, such as the appearance of crocuses,sandhill cranes, great blue herons and stinging nettles.

But the world is changing and maybe it's time to reconsider and draw up a new list. Where do we look in 2014 for that initial hint of spring – the season's on-button?

News: Offshore wind energy; New York Resilient Community; Make Jaywalking legal

>The Pacific Northwest state of Oregon is already home to America’s second largest land-based wind farm — the 845 megawatt (MW) Shepherds Flat Wind Farm. Now the state has taken a big step closer to hosting the west coast’s first offshore wind farm. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) just approved plans for Seattle-based Principle Power develop five floating turbines off Coos Bay. The 30 MW pilot project will be located in about 1,400 feet of water roughly 15 miles off the Oregon coast. The reason for using floating turbine technology in deep water as opposed to wind turbines anchored to the seabed in shallow water has to do with the west coast’s narrow continental shelf. Read more.

>When Hurricane Sandy roared across the eastern seaboard last October, Long Island was hit with devastating storm surges that wrecked thousands of homes. To help rebuild a stronger and more resilient LI community, NYIT's School of Architecture and Design teamed up with state officials to form a new organization called Operation Resilient Long Island (ORLI). In its latest call for action, ORLI organized the 3C Comprehensive Coastal Communities Competition to help spur new ideas about resiliency against future storms by creating new housing typologies. The competition drew in 60 design entries from 20 countries, and now NYIT is hosting an exhibit of the top 32 finalists. See all 32 entries here.

>On a sustainable street, there are no jaywalkers: At the start of the 20th century, streets belonged as much to pedestrians and children at play as to automobiles. By the end of it, stepping into the street in the wrong place was a crime. How did jaywalking become a crime? And how do we decriminalize it? 

News: Resilient Housing; What about a Sustainable Sochi?; Climate Change Coutour

>While its name might evoke scenes of Mother Nature at her most destructive, the cleverly designed Tsunami House on Camano Island, Wash. revolves around comfort, elegance and resilience. 

The home’s not-so-secret weapon?

Located 9-feet below the home’s main living space is a multipurpose “flood room” with sliding, garage door-esque glass panels that are designed to break away when impacted by a sudden storm surge.  During tsunami-like catastrophes, it’s a room that, in essence, takes one for the team. It’s also a room where everything, stylish furniture included, has been certified as waterproof.

>The White House and passed the long-awaited Farm Bill on Tuesday and announced on Wednesday that the administration aims to establish seven regional “climate hubs” to assist rural communities in the event of floods, droughts, fires, soil degradation, and pest damage.

The President hopes that creating these safeguards against climate change will garner political support for tackling larger issues, such as the EPA’s regulation of coal-fired power plants and promotion of renewables. The agency is currently writing laws that could potentially close hundreds of coal plants around the nation.

>Missing a Chance to Lead on Sustainability in Sochi: While CVS scores points at home for sacking cigarette sales, most Olympic sponsors are doing little to advance sustainability on a global stage.

>Artist Catherine Sarah Young designs imaginative solutions for a bleak future. For example, take the aqua tutu (shown above), designed to keep the wearer afloat in a flash flood. Deflated, it's a colorful skirt. Inflated, it could keep you alive, like an innertube.

The aqua tutu is included in Young's collection of Climate Change Couture, part of a larger endeavor called The Apocalypse Project. Based on climate trends, Young imagines a world where global warming has made life a lot more difficult. Each garment is pared with a written vignette that illustrates its potential use. She began the project during a 2013 Art Science Residency Programme in partnership with the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands, Tembusu College National University of Singapore and the Singapore-ETH Centre's Future Cities Laboratory.

None of the garments are intended for real production, but instead Young hopes the project will create more dialogue about climate change. For example, the Thermoreflector is designed to deflect heat away from the body in an ultra-hot urban environment of the future, with shield-like sleeves that protect the wearer's face.

>Can enormous heat deep in the earth be harnessed to provide energy for us on the surface? A promising report from a geothermal borehole project that accidentally struck magma – the same fiery, molten rock that spews from volcanoes – suggests it could.

>More than 100 semi trucks enter the back gate of the Oakland, Calif., wastewater treatment plant every day, carrying tons of unusual and often disgusting freight: tons of cheese whey, chicken blood and heads, used cooking oil. And yet wastewater director Bennett Horenstein enthusiastically welcomes it. It is, after all, free fuel.

Machines pulverize the cargo to the consistency of applesauce, then pipe it to 12 massive tanks called anaerobic digesters. Inside, bacteria devour it, along with solids from the plant's sewage, producing methane-rich biogas that is captured and burned to generate electricity – effectively making the facility a renewable power plant.

News: How many Winter Olympics do we have left?; A new floating Passivhaus design; How would you redesign an vacant lot?

> What is the biggest reason we all haven't bought e-bikes? Is it that we are so immersed in car culture that we find it hard to see how an e-bike can do everything for us that a personal automobile can? Check out 5 good reasons you might look into buying an electric bike, soon. 

> Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley are working on a new set of smart curtains that could cut your energy usage in half. Made from fabric embedded with carbon nanotubes, the curtains would respond to light, automatically closing when the sun’s rays are their strongest. The smart curtains work without batteries, electricity, or an operating system, which could save large office buildingssignificantly in energy costs.

> If you haven't already, check out the Green Building Information Gateway (GBIG). GBIG is a great way to explore green building activities and find certifications, disclosures, awards, case studies and more.

> Passivhaus, or passive house design demands a lot of insulation, so at first it seems counter-intuitive to put a passivhaus on stilts and have yet another surface exposed to the elements. In fact, passive houses are so well insulated that they often have as much as 14 inches of foam under the slab. If you don't like plastic foam insulation and want to use a greener product, it actually makes sense to put the whole thing up in the air. Juri Troy Architects designed the House under the Oaks to be "a low budget passive house concept developed for an Austrian family." Like so many Passivhaus designs, it is a simple box, since every jog or corner is a thermal complication.

> Consider checking out Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre. This book deals with learning to grow the majority of the food you need for yourself and your family on a small amount of land using the square foot gardening technique. The book takes you from the initial steps needed to prepare your land, to harvesting and maintaining soil quality year after year. 

> Like so many other American cities, Louisville, Kentucky, must deal with thousands of vacant properties. The city government alone owns more than 450. To turn these vacant lots into assets, the city government and Vision Louisville have launched Lots of Possibility, an innovative design competition to transform blighted, abandoned spaces.

The city government tells us: “Vacant properties not only threaten the health, safety and vibrancy of a neighborhood – but they also are lost opportunities to create active places that strengthen neighborhoods.”

Individuals or teams can submit ideas for either permanent or temporary uses of city-owned lots. The city will select six finalists for each category and then two winners for each, which will receive seed funding.

The city government explains how the competition works for both categories:

Permanent projects (e.g., residential, commercial, institutional/civic, or other use that requires taking ownership of the lot)
Two winners in this category will receive ownership of the vacant lot proposed + $15,000 in seed funding to make the project happen. In this category, particular emphasis will be placed on making sure that the idea is not only creative, cost effective and able to be replicated, but also has the potential to be fully funded (assuming that additional funds beyond the prize package are needed.

Temporary/interim projects (e.g., do not involve a physical structure that will be difficult to remove; one to two year lease of the vacant lot acceptable)
This category is designed for proposals that identify innovative ways to repurpose vacant lots. Uses are not expected to be permanent at the outset, but rather to preserve the land for future potential development. Two winners in this category will receive a one year land lease (renewable for an additional year) + $4,000 in project funding. Please note that winners will be expected to maintain the lot, as well as restore the site, at the end of the lease.

The city has made 250 vacant lots available. “They are of varying sizes, shapes and locations.”

> We are about to enjoy the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, but how many more Winter Olympics will we be able to have? Russia's Sochi, Canada's Vancouver, France's Chamonix, Japan's Nagano and California's Squaw Valley all have one thing in common: These former and future Winter Olympics venues are each known as prime sites for cold-weather sports, and as breathtaking havens for sporting enthusiasts. But according to a new study, these winter wonderlands are now under threat from climate change and soon may no longer be cold enough to play host to elite winter sports competitions like the Winter Games.

> Check out National "Shout Out For Solar" Day on the Greensburg GreenTown homepage!

News: Figuring out how walking and swimming can create valuable energy; Your next house may be 3-D printed; Is diesel 'hip' again?

>Walmart, Costco and Kohl's topped the 2013 Solar Capacity Rankings, which ranks companies by the total installed capacity of their systems and the number of operating installations, as well as showing the geographic diversity of their solar deployment.

Apple, IKEA, Macy’s, Johnson & Johnson, McGraw-Hill, Staples and Campbell’s round out the top 10.

Costco Solar 

>New study reveals the ideal model for tomorrow's sustainable cities: 

The global urban population is expected to rise from 3.6 billion in 2010 to 6.3 billion by 2050, and the top five locations for this urban population explosion are India, China, Nigeria, West Africa and the United States. This rate is almost the equivalent of adding a new city the size of Singapore every month.

“How cities around the world develop in coming decades will determine how efficiently we use vital resources – particularly energy, food and water – and directly impact the quality of life for billions of future urban citizens," said by Shell vice president Jeremy Bentham.

>“Imagine if children running, playing and walking could help power the lights in their school corridors or the applications in their classrooms. This is the first step towards Pavegen’s vision of a more sustainable tomorrow.”

So said Pavegen CEO and founder Laurence Kemball-Cooke in September, upon installing his innovative, energy-harnessing floor tiles at his alma mater, the Simon Langton Grammar School for Boys in Kent — where 24 tiles, covering 12 meters of a corridor, now harness and convert kinetic energy from students’ footsteps into a sustainable energy source. 

>After showing Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion Deployment Unit made from grain silo parts, a reader pointed out that in fact, you could still buy a home made like this, the Sukup Safe T Home. According to Mother Earth News, non-profits can buy them for $ 5,700 each. That is of course, just for the shell; A permanent structure an an environment cooler than Haiti's would need a floor and insulation, but it is a great start.

Seven homes at an orphanage in Haiti.

​>10 Simple Ideas That Could Make An Incredible Impact

>Scientists claim to have developed a revolutionary new giant 3D concrete printer that can build a 2,500-square-foot house in just 24 hours.

The 3D printer, developed by Professor Behrokh Khoshnevis from the University of Southern California, could be used to build a whole house, layer by layer, in a single day. The giant robot replaces construction workers with a nozzle on a gantry, which squirts out concrete and can quickly build a home based on a computer pattern, MSN News reported.

It is "basically scaling up 3D printing to the scale of building," said Khoshnevis.

'Contour Crafting' is a layered fabrication technology and has great potential for automating the construction of whole structures as well as sub-components, according to the project website.

>Artist and designer Julio Garcia recently built his own recycled shipping container home in Savannah, Georgia. The printmaker took two 40 ft containers and set them apart with a shed roof and clerestory windows that fill the modest space with loads of daylight. Wood and a lot of bright interior furnishings make the one-bedroom home a perfect retreat for an artist.

>At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this week, it's not all hybrids and battery-powered cars. Some car companies are making significant investments in a fuel that's not new at all — diesel.

The newest diesel engines are far cleaner than their predecessors, and they get many more miles per gallon. The question is, what's holding customers back from switching gas pumps?

>Power generated from solar panels or wind turbines is nothing new to the world of sustainable energy, but what about a charging system that harnesses the energy from indoor swimmers as they glide through the waters. Yinger ‘Eagle’ Jin, a sophomore at Wake Forest University, built an oscillating water column that measures the amount of electricity produced by the pool’s waves. Using the amount of air pushed out of the cylinder to drive a turbine at the top, the column that’s submerged in the large body of water ultimately converts wave energy into electricity.

News: Is the Arctic Drunk?; A car-less Hamburg; Living between buildings; Can you afford that BMW in Singapore? Take the train!

> On Sunday night, a reporter for The Weather Channel stood in a Minnesota snowstorm, talking about local efforts to move homeless children into heated shelters. “How cold is it supposed to get?” the anchor, back in the studio, asked. The reporter replied: “Colder than Mars.”

Indeed, recent temperatures across the U.S. have been Mars-like. Forecasts in the midwest call for temperatures to drop to 32 below zero in Fargo, N.D.; minus 21 in Madison, Wis.; and 15 below zero in Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Chicago. Wind chills have been predicted to fall to negative 60 degrees —  a dangerous cold that could break decades-old records.

All of which begs the question — if climate change is real, then how did it get so cold?

The question is based on common misconceptions of how cold weather moves across the planet, said Greg Laden, a bioanthroplogist who writes for National Geographic’s Scienceblog. According to Laden, the recent record-cold temperatures indicate to many that the Arctic’s cold air is expanding, engulfing other countries. If true, this would be a perfect argument for a “global cooling” theory. The Arctic’s coldness is growing. Laden asks, “How can such a thing happen with global warming?”

The answer, he writes, is that the Arctic air that usually sits on top of our planet is “taking an excursion” south for a couple of days, leaving the North Pole “relatively warm” and our temperate region not-so-temperate. “Go Home Arctic, You’re Drunk,” he titled the explanation. Read more here. 

> Singapore will stick to a licensing system that has made it one of the world’s most expensive places to buy a car, limiting vehicle ownership to encourage more people to use public transport.

Singapore needs the so-called certificate of entitlement for the “short and medium term” because of land limitations and road congestions, Lui Tuck Yew, minister of transport, said in an interview yesterday. More than 20,000 vehicles were sold in the city-state between January and November 2013, with luxury automakers Daimler AG (DAI) and Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW) emerging as the top two sellers, making up one in every three cars sold. The government is targeting 70 percent of the population, currently 5.4 million, to use public transportation by the end of the decade, compared with 63 percent now.

>With more and more people choosing to live in cities, there is less and lessaffordable housing available, meaning that some municipalities are trying out things like micro-housing or relaxed zoning laws to meet up with the demand. Of course, not all of these micro-developments have to sit on vacant land; Danish designers Mateusz Mastalski and Ole Robin Storjohann have created a series of clever urban infill concepts that could occupy the residual spaces between buildings, yet remain lit with natural daylighting and looking surprisingly spacious.

(Click on image above to see 5 different design ideas)

Titled "Live Between Buildings," the project proposes several designs sited in various cities like New York, Tokyo, Amsterdam, Helsinki and London. Coming in various configurations, the surfaces are all covered with transparent roof windows to let the maximum amount of light in. The designs are definitely not for the disabled, as access to the various levels requires some nimble navigation up ladders and stairs. But the spatial overlapping allows for a lot of different functions to be potentially packed in, while leaving some room for fun things (climbing wall, swing and hammock? Why not).

> Japan offers to lend US half the cost of 'Super Maglev' train between Washington and Baltimore. The Japanese government has promised to lend the United Stateshalf of the cost of building the first "Super-Maglev" train, reducing travel time between Baltimore and Washington DC to just 15 minutes.

Tokyo is so keen to show off its technology that it will provide loans for half the estimated $8 billion (£5bn) cost of installing the tracks, Japan'sAsahi newspaper said on Tuesday. The American federal government is keen on the project, according to Central Japan Railway Co., and state authorities are especially enthusiastic.

>About 40% of the area of Hamburg, the second largest city in Germany, is made up of green areas, cemeteries, sports facilities, gardens, parks and squares. For the first time ever, the city has decided to unite them together via pedestrian and cycle routes. It’s all part of the “Green Network Plan,” which aims to eliminate the need for vehicles in Hamburg over the next 20 years. 

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The city will also construct new green spaces that should help absorb CO2 and regulate the city’s climate (Hamburg’s average temperature has risen about 9ºC in the last 60 years). These spaces will also help to prevent flooding: in the same 60 year time period, Hamburg’s sea level has risen about 20 centimeters and is expected to rise another 30 centimeters by 2100.

With this network, Hamburg will be following a trend, perhaps best exemplified by Copenhagen, of cities constructing cycle paths in order to linking outlying areas to city centers. And, importantly, the plan will make the car – currently the only transportation option to get from one part of the city to another – essentially unnecessary.

>Green space in towns and cities could lead to significant and sustained improvements in mental health, finds a new study published in the journal of Environmental Science & Technology.

Analysing data that followed people over a five year period, the research has found that moving to a greener area not only improves people's mental health, but that the effect continues long after they have moved. The findings add to evidence that suggests increasing green spaces in cities - such as parks and gardens - could deliver substantial benefits to public health.They found that, on average, movers to greener areas experienced an immediate improvement in mental health that was sustained for at least 3 years after they moved. The study also showed that people relocating to a more built up area suffered a drop in mental health.

> 33 Resilient Cities Announced by Rockefeller Foundation. 

Today, we are excited to name the first group of cities selected through the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities Centennial Challenge – cities who have demonstrated a dedicated commitment to building their own capacities to prepare for, withstand, and bounce back rapidly from shocks and stresses.

Since we announced the challenge on our 100th birthday, May 14, 2013, the response has been enormous, with more than 1,000 registrations and nearly 400 formal applications from cities around the world. Each city was asked to present a clear and compelling description of how they are approaching and planning for resilience to decrease vulnerabilities, and after careful review of the applications, a panel of esteemed judges, including former presidents Bill Clinton and Olosegun Obasanjo, recommended the first set of 33 cities for the 100 Resilient Cities Network. Among the winners: One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world wrote of the city’s history withstanding shocks for the past eight millennia. One African city wrote of a resilience plan as harmonizing climate change adaptation, biodiversity, planning and management and water security. And a city in South America finds itself dealing with landslides and forest fires, all while sitting in the shadow of a volcano.

QUITO’S RESILIENCE CHALLENGE

News: Federal flood insurance program; Turning a mall into a walkable community; Electric cars for power storage; Solar power poised for a huge year

> Federal Flood Insurance Program Drowning In Debt. Who Will Pay?: "Millions of American property owners get flood insurance from the federal government, and a lot of them get a hefty discount. But over the past decade, the government has paid out huge amounts of money after floods, and the flood insurance program is deeply in the red."

> How A Giant Mall Parking Lot Turned Into A Park And A Walkable Community: "Instead of paving paradise for a parking lot, this Seattle shopping center is showing how America's suburbs are changing: There are now nearly 400 LEED-certified apartments going up where cars once parked."

> The Dramatic Makeover of New York's Streets Under Bloomberg: "Filmmaker Clarence Eckerson has been documenting conditions on the city's streets since the 1990s, and he has a huge archive of footage. Here, he juxtaposes images of key New York locations before, during, and after radical redesigns that took place under the jurisdiction of the Bloomberg administration’s transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan. Eckerson shows the transformation of Times Square, Herald Square, the Brooklyn waterfront, the Queensboro Bridge, and several other formerly car-choked areas that are now havens for human beings on foot and on bicycles."

Image: Evan Krape

> Electric cars may hold solution for power storage: "In a Delaware pilot project, electricity is stored in and retrieved from the batteries of idle vehicles. Car owners would be paid."

> Meanwhile, Ford creates plug-in car that runs on sunlight: "Ford is going to show a concept version of its electric plug-in hybrid C-Max crossover at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that comes with a giant solar panel on the roof. As a result, Ford says the C-Max Solar Energi Concept can get the same performance from collecting a day's worth of sunlight as from plugging in its regular C-Max Energi into a socket. The automaker estimates that the sun could power 75% of a typical drivers' trips in the concept."

> Solar Power Poised For A Huge Year In 2014: "The equivalent of a 5-megawatt solar farm every hour of every day – that’s how much new solar photovoltaic power is being installed around the world right now, according to a leading industry analyst, and it’s a surge that will help the industry to a mammoth total for 2014."

> 2013's 12 Greatest Strides Towards Reducing Food Waste: "The year of 2013 has been an exciting one for the future of food. Amidst moving to ban trans fats and demonstrating the threats of routinely using antibiotics in animal feed, the country woke up to the opportunity and moral obligation to waste less food. "

> The 2014 Clean Energy Resolution: "The most commonly made resolutions focus on health and well-being -- to stop smoking, eat better, get more exercise, spend more time with family and friends, and so forth. Sometimes they focus on more outward ambitions: to change jobs, get out of debt, or pick up a new hobby. But how many people make resolutions aimed at the kind of changes that are not just best for themselves, but best for everyone? Is there a way to do both?"

News: Key growth area of 2014; New idea for streetlights; Small businesses making HUGE impacts

> Sustainable Packing ‘Essential Part of Business’ Sustainable packaging will be a key growth area in 2014 and beyond, according to Frost & Sullivan’s predictions for the global chemical, materials and food industry.

>At night, brightly lit office buildings are depressing — you know that either people are working too hard, or the building is wasting energy. Dutch mechanical engineer Chintan Shah looked at streetlights and saw a similar problem. Why light a path if no one’s walking or biking there? (Sorry, turtles. Guess you don’t count.)

Check out their Vimeo video here: http://vimeo.com/74326736

>The Milkweed Mercantile was named one of the top "green"small businesses by Green America earlier in December.

The mercantile is located in Dancing Rabbit Eco-Village, just north of Rutledge, Mo., and promotes a sustainable lifestyle centered on community. The Mercantile consists of a cafe and eco-inn, made entirely of sustainable materials. It was selected as a finalist for the award by a panel of experts in green living, then people from around the nation voted and named it the top green small business for travel.

>The NYC Department of Environmental Protection recently announced plans to install green infrastructure in eastern Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn as a means to prevent stormwater from polluting Newtown Creek. The proposed green infrastructure would use natural systems such as soil and vegetation as an effective stormwater management solution that would protect water quality while also beautifying the neighborhood. According to DNAinfo, Bed-Stuy’s green upgrade will be funded by water and sewer bills.

News: Water-free dyeing a reality; 10 greenest college campuses; Solar, wind energy continue to make headway; Oil from algae

> How Did A Small Illinois Town End Up With 300 Plug-In Cars?: "Don't let the name fool you; Normal, Illinois, is actually unique. Dubbed EV Town, the [electric-car] initiative includes electric-car purchase incentives, and an aggressive effort by the local government and businesses to develop charging infrastructure."

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Image: Nike

> Nike Unveils Water-Free Dyeing Process: "The eco-friendly method called 'ColorDry' eliminates the use of water and harmful chemicals, reducing energy consumption."

> The Greenest Things to Do With Your Body After You Die: "Every year cemeteries across the U.S. bury over 100,000 tons of steel and 1,500,000 tons of concrete from coffins and re-enforced vaults. Green burials are all about reconnecting death and nature, reducing exorbitant costs, and sparking an environmental paradigm shift. "

> How Green is Your Campus? The 10 greenest college campuses in the U.S.

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> Downtown Denver Launches Denver 2030 District: "The Denver 2030 District is a unique public/private partnership that brings property owners and managers together with local governments, businesses, and other community stakeholders to provide a business model for urban sustainability through collaboration, leveraged financing, and shared resources. The District's goals include an aggregated reduction in energy and water use, and an increase in alternative methods of transportation among the District member buildings by the year 2030."

> Solar Energy Is Heading to Mainstream in the United States: "Shayle Kann, Vice President of Research at GTM, wanted to assess whether solar is becoming mainstream. He decided to use a checklist, since the U.S. solar market is so complex... So Kann devised a checklist to help answer the question, At what point does solar become mainstream in US? And how close are we?"

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Image: Paso Verde

> Paseo Verde in Philly First to Achieve LEED-ND Platinum: "Maximizing mixed use and transportation connections helped this Philadelphia project score the most points since LEED for Neighborhood Development’s creation."

> Haiti switches on to solar power as sustainable electricity solution: 'Solar energy is clean, green and can help to solve Haiti's power crisis. Now the world's largest solar hospital is lighting the way"

> Wind Power Rivals Coal With $1 Billion Order From Warren Buffett: "The decision by Warren Buffett’s utility company to order about $1 billion of wind turbines for projects in Iowa shows how a drop in equipment costs is making renewable energy more competitive with power from fossil fuels."

> SISCA asks students to innovate sustainable solutions: "Grad students from 17 universities around the world submit project proposals to the Sustainability Innovation Student Challenge Award (SISCA) competition, hoping to win the $10,000 grand prize or a $2,500 runner up prize."

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Image: PNNL

> Algae to crude oil: Million-year natural process takes minutes in the lab: "Engineers have created a continuous chemical process that produces useful crude oil minutes after they pour in harvested algae — a verdant green paste with the consistency of pea soup."

News: Treating ice-slicked streets with cheese; Leonardo Dicaprio's electric race car team; What it takes to be a social entrepreneur

>Great things often come in small packages, and when it comes to cleaning up the Bronx River, environmentalists are turning their attention to oysters—nature’s answer to improved water quality. A crew aboard a 100-foot barge dumped 120 tons of oyster shells into the river on Monday across from Soundview Park in hopes of spurring an oyster renaissance that will bring aquatic life back to the harbor. The shells will act as a base for 125,000 baby oysters that the group is planning to place on top of the shells in the future.
 

>Reflections on What Makes a Social Entrepreneur : Meet Curt Bowen, a social entrepreneur. Bowen observed that Guatemala has the 4th highest rate of malnutrition in the world, 79 percent of rural residents live under the poverty line, and 72 percent of the soils are severely degraded. He helped come up with a solution to this problem: pigeonpea. Pigeonpea helps rebuild soils and is a powerful tool against malnutrition.

Bowen adds, "Just like an entrepreneur may spend years in financial crisis and obscurity before they make it big, social entrepreneurs need to be focused, dedicated, and work hard for a long time with little pay off. We have to be visionary and yet extremely practical. And success doesn't come from the big crazy ideas--a lot of people my age have those. Success comes from the wisdom to pick the right goal and then the tenacity to keep at it, year after year, as you try to find that combine." 

>When you live in a state that's defined by both brutal winter weather and delicious dairy products, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise when officials start to treat ice-slicked streets with salty mozzarella juice. 

>Since declaring a break from acting to relax and "do good for the environment" back in January, Leonardo DiCaprio has more than delivered. The 39-year-old, who will next be seen in Martin Scorsese's "Wolf of Wall Street," has raised tens of millions forconservation projects through auctions and parties, invested in sustainable building projects, and now seeks to boost electric car sales. 

Photo: Venturi Automotive

The actor has partnered with electric vehicle manufacturer Venturi Automobiles to create a racing team capable of competing in the new FIA Formula E Championship, the world’s first fully-electric race series that begins in September 2014.

>Restaurants across the country soon will be able to let customers know how nutritious and sustainably sourced their food is thanks to the United States Healthful Food Council (USHFC).

Launched as a pilot in Washington, D.C., the Responsible Epicurean and Agricultural Leadership (REAL) program uses third-party audits to certify the nutrition and sustainability of foods served at restaurants, as well as from caterers and food-service operations.

The goal is to develop a nationally recognized mark of excellence for the food industry -- increasing the sustainability of foods served while addressing the causes of obesity, diabetes and other diet-related diseases. According to the USHFC, REAL signifies authentic, wholesome, nutritious and sustainable food.

>What Separates A Healthy And Unhealthy Diet? Just $1.50 Per Day?

>Obama’s Pollution-Control Agenda Goes to Court. Efforts to regulate pollutants that cause smog and soot, as well as mercury from coal plants, have moved in fits and starts for more than a decade. If both rules go forward it would cause powerproducers such as American Electric Power Co. (AEP) andSouthern Co. (SO) to shutter old plants or invest billions of dollars in pollution-control technology.

Photographer: AAron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via Getty Images.

>What are ski areas actually doing to preserve the environment and the climate? TheNational Ski Areas Association (NSAA) has several programs in place to measure, encourage and acknowledge ski areas' efforts to protect the environment and operate in an environmentally sustainable manner. Sustainable Slopes is the primary program that NSAA uses to track the ski resort industry's progress towards greater environmental sustainability. The program monitors individual ski area efforts at reducing fuel consumption, investing in higher efficiency equipment, increasing recycling efforts, promoting clean water, and many other factors.

>The world has been fixated on going green, and now the attention is shifting beyond recycling and eco-chic living to a growing concern for the planet’s water, according to Ford’s 2014 Trends Report.

Ford identifies this trend as “Sustainability Blues” and says forward-looking brands are already investing time and money into better water management practices.

News: Tech companies going green; Study reveals power of PV during peak demand; Levitating house could protect against earthquakes;

> Tech companies going green: "In a growing trend, Facebook and Microsoft have announced new purchases of wind power for data centres. They join Google in choosing wind for the power-hungry facilities, which house IT equipment for computing, networking and data storage, as well as infrastructure for electricity and cooling."

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Image: nyc.gov

> World’s Largest Landfill Will Soon Be NYC’s Biggest Solar Plant: "New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that Freshkills Park on Staten Island, once the world’s largest landfill, will soon be converted into the city’s largest solar energy facility. Once completed, the plant will produce up to 10 megawatts of power — five times more than any solar energy system in the city and enough to power approximately 2,000 homes."

> 10 landscape design projects that turn damaged and neglected spaces into healthy, beautiful environments.

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Image: Ron Pollard

> Architectural Record on "Performance Anxiety": "Creating buildings that deliver on progressively more ambitious environmental goals will require energy simulations that reliably predict post-occupancy consumption."

> Rooftop Solar Can Meet 58% Of Peak Power Demand: "A new study by the Pecan Street Research Institute found that residential solar panel systems can cut electricity demand during peak summer hours by 58 percent.

By monitoring 50 single-family homes in Austin, Texas with west- and/or south-facing solar panels from June through August this year, the study found that west-facing solar panels produced 49 percent more electricity during summer peak demand hours than south-facing panels, a finding that should make utilities think twice about excluding west-facing solar panel systems from solar rebate programs. According to the study, west-facing rooftop systems cut peak demand 65 percent, while south-facing systems reduced peak demand 54 percent."

> Startup helps restaurants and groceries turn food waste into fertilizer: "Food waste is a huge issue these days, not just in the home, but also in the food service and grocery industries, with an estimated 40% or more of the food in the U.S. ending up as waste each year – totaling millions of tons of organic matter. And with food production consuming as much as 80% of our freshwater, 50% of our land, and 10% of our energy, that food waste ends up also being water and energy waste as well.

However, one startup, founded by two former Microsoft employees, has a solution to dealing with the vast amounts of unusable food generated in food prep and sales, not necessarily by reducing the amount of waste, but by turning those wasted food scraps into a valuable resource."

Image: Air Danshin, Translated by Spoon & Tamago

> Japanese levitating house system could protect homes from earthquakes: "As fantastical as a home levitation system may seem, Air Danshin claims that the technology is not only effective, but also 1/3 cheaper than many other earthquake-proofing systems out there – and it requires little maintenance. According to Spoon & Tamago, the technology calls for a fairly simple, if powerful, set of mechanisms to be installed around a property. When an earthquake hits, a sensor responds within one second by activating a compressor, which forces an incredible amount of air under the home, pushing the structure up and apart from its foundation. The air pressure can keep the home levitating up to 3cm from the shaking foundation below. An indoor valve controls the flow of air under the house, keeping the structure steady as it 'floats.'"

> A 140 acre forest is about to pop up in Detroit: "The lower east side of Detroit is about to get a make-over. Hantz Woodlands (formerly known as Hantz Farms), has reached a deal with the State of Michigan to purchase 1,500 parcels of non-continuous land for the price of half a million dollars and plant urban forestry in place of blighted and derelict properties that scatter the landscape."

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Image: RAND

> What will our future be like if we don’t change how we get around?: "How will Americans get around in the year 2030? A recent report from the RAND Corporation lays out two 'plausible futures' developed though a 'scenario analysis' and vetted by outside experts. While RAND takes a decidedly agnostic stance toward the implications of each scenario, the choice that emerges is still pretty stark."