Rooftop Heat Pump Technologies Can Save US Businesses $5B Annually: DOE
April 9th, 2024
Via Smart Cities Dive, an article on a new U.S. Department of Energy program aims to bring higher-efficiency rooftop heat pump technologies to market as soon as 2027: Dive Brief: The U.S. Department of Energy’s new Commercial Building Heat Pump Accelerator program aims to help manufacturers develop heat pumps that can replace less efficient rooftop heating and […]
Read more »The $2 Billion Plan to Electrify American Homes
April 5th, 2024
Via Heatmap, an article on the $2B plan to electrify U.S. homes: Getting fossil fuels out of your home is really hard. You have to find a contractor, ideally one who supports electrification and doesn’t ask why you won’t just stick with natural gas. You have to coordinate between multiple trades — electricians, plumbers, HVAC […]
Read more »Wall-Mounted Solar: A Rising Trend or Barely Hanging On?
April 3rd, 2024
Via Solar Power World Online, an interesting look at wall-mounted solar: Urban Health Plan’s Simpson Pavilion. Photo courtesy of Quixotic Systems. Installing solar on the side of a building is rarely the first choice for solar developers, but sometimes the customer prefers a wall-mounted array. In one instance that caught our eyes, New York installer […]
Read more »Emission Impossible: One Couple’s Quest To Ditch Natural Gas
March 31st, 2024
Via Grist, a look at what happened when two journalists decided to decarbonize their home: My wife and I live in a green, two-story colonial at the end of a cul-de-sac in Burlington, Vermont. Each spring, the front of our home is lined with lilacs, crocuses, and peonies. The backyard is thick with towering black […]
Read more »He’s Got a Plan for Cities That Flood: Stop Fighting the Water
March 29th, 2024
Courtesy of the New York Times, an article on one Chinese landscape architect in China who has a surprising strategy to help manage surges of water from storms supercharged by climate change: Cities around the world face a daunting challenge in the era of climate change: Supercharged rainstorms are turning streets into rivers, flooding subway […]
Read more »A Dutch Architect’s Vision of Cities That Float on Water
March 27th, 2024
Courtesy of The New Yorker, a look at if building on the water could be safer and sturdier than building on flood-prone land? In a corner of the Rijksmuseum hangs a seventeenth-century cityscape by the Dutch Golden Age painter Gerrit Berckheyde, “View of the Golden Bend in the Herengracht,” which depicts the construction of Baroque […]
Read more »'Black Swans' are highly improbable events that come as a surprise, have major disruptive effects, and that are often rationalized after the fact as if they had been predictable to begin with. In our rapidly warming world, such events are occurring ever more frequently and include wildfires, floods, extreme heat, and drought.
'Green Shoots' is a term used to describe signs of economic recovery or positive data during a downturn. It references a period of growth and recovery, when plants start to show signs of health and life, and, therefore, has been employed as a metaphor for a recovering economy.
It is my hope that Black Swans / Green Shoots will help readers understand both climate-activated risk and opportunity so that you may invest in, advise, or lead organizations in the context of increasing pressures of global urbanization, resource scarcity, and perils relating to climate change. I believe that the tools of business and finance can help individuals, businesses, and global society make informed choices about who and what to protect, and I hope that this blog provides some insight into the policy and private sector tools used to assess investments in resilient reinforcement, response, or recovery.