Climate Change

Are you a homeowner, interested in finding ways to make your home or investment property more sustainable? Then listen to Beverly Craig (1994) discuss lessons learned from six years working on improving the water and energy performance of multifamily affordable housing with Homeowner's Rehab, a nonprofit that owns over 1,000 units of affordable housing in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Thanks to a Switzer Foundation Professional Development Grant, I had the opportunity in January to attend the 13th National Conference on Science, Policy and the Environment, titled “Disasters and Environment: Science, Preparedness and Resilience.” The conference brought together experts from many disciplines and sectors to delve into the complex challenges associated with preparing for, responding to, and recovering from natural disasters.

2008 Switzer Fellow Beckie Menten is the Energy Efficiency Coordinator for the Marin Energy Authority, the first Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) system in California. Community Choice Aggregation allows cities and counties to aggregate the buying power of individual customers to secure alternative energy supply contracts.

The process of designing and building our house made me aware, maybe more than anything, of how closely tied the comfort of a structure is to the same energy design elements that make it efficient.

Thirty-five thousand Americans marched around the White House in biting winds and cold sunlight on Sunday in the largest demonstration for climate action in history.

It is estimated that shipping produces 4 to 5% of global carbon dioxide emissions. In most cases, these ships are powered by diesel fuel. On today's report we learn about an innovative California technology aimed at reducing this pollution. 2007 Switzer Fellow Francisco Donez is an environmental engineer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 9.

The University of California, Berkeley, got a $4 million grant for three years' work on electric power grid monitoring. UC Berkeley's California Institute for Energy and Environment, or CIEE, will oversee the research, working with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the UC Center for Information Research. Alexandra von Meier is co-director of electric grid research at CIEE and will lead the project. Read more

Brian Beal, a University of Maine at Machias biologist, has been studying the decline of clam populations in the state and said warm weather, coupled with an extremely successful predator, historically spells disaster for clams. Green crabs, originally from Japan, were first recorded on Long Island, N.Y., in the mid-1860s and weren’t seen in Casco Bay until the early 1900s, Beal said. The green crab populations have been kept in check by severe cold snaps, Beal said, experienced frequently throughout the last century, allowing clams and other shellfish to recover.