Apr 24 2009

The Green Seen

Posted by: Leonard Anderson

Several items relating to the business and technology of clean energy caught our attention this week:

• Paris plans to install small wind power turbines on rooftops in four neighborhoods to generate electricity directly for the buildings or feed the power into the state-owned EDF utility. Officials say the turbines won't spoil the skyline but Jean-Louis Butre, head of the French Federation for Sustainable Development, says: "I think we are destroying Paris' historical heritage and I fear these are utopist solutions." He favors less visible internal turbines. The city is also considering placing turbines in the Seine river.
• San Francisco will launch an online "ecomap" to track the carbon footprints of the city's neighborhoods by Zip codes. Cisco Systems Inc. developed UrbanEcoMap.org and city officials gathered information such as  garbage collection and recycling, composting, hybrid-vehicle ownership and other environmental data for the map. The site will be available in mid-May. San Francisco is said to be the first city in the world with an ecomap, with Amsterdam and Seoul to follow. "The ecomap provides citizens with concrete, tangible access to information and resources with relevance to their daily life," says Wolfgang Wagener, director of Cisco's urban development program.
• Vatican City last year put up rooftop solar panels and now the Holy See is planning to develop a 500 million Euro, 100-megawatt solar project north of Rome. "Now is the time to strike," says Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, governor of Vatican City. "One should take advantage of the crisis to try and develop these renewable-energy resources to the maximum, which in the long run will reap incomparable rewards," the prelate adds. The Vatican also is considering a biomass project at the pope's Castel Gandolfo summer residence and there is talk of a low-carbon "popemobile."

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