You got to love New Yorkers. They are real, and they are often serious. And they like to walk the walk. So New Yorkers have a lot to celebrate now that their elected mayor Mayor Bill de Blasio declared that he will stop all new fossil fuel projects within and serving the city.

This is the largest municipal ban announcement of its in the world. building on the mounting global movement for a just transition off fossil fuels to a renewable-energy economy that works for all.

“This is a monumental step for New Yorkers in making our home a model for real climate leadership, and a massive victory for frontline communities and climate activists everywhere,” said Dominique Thomas, a  350.org organizer and New Yorker. 

“As we enter the climate decade, we need transformational climate action, and now the financial center of the world is moving to stop all new fossil fuel projects. This move invigorates us to protect our communities from all gas, oil, and coal projects, including the Williams fracked gas pipeline, and implement a Green New Deal that works for all New Yorkers.”

What will New York do?

They are taking concrete climate action by divesting its $215.5 billion pension funds from fossil fuels, enacting nation-leading legislation to slash pollution from big buildings, pursuing Exxon and other Big Oil corporations in court for climate costs and damages, while expanding investments in wind and solar.

Community resistance to fracked gas projects within and around the City continues to grow, including over 70 elected officials opposing the Williams fracked gas pipeline and tens of thousands of New Yorkers calling on Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to stop Williams and all fracked gas projects.

A wake up call to Wall Street, living in a parallel universe

“The Mayor of New York City announcing a ban on new fossil fuel projects will reverberate across the nation and around the world as a nail in the coffin of the fossil fuel economy,” said Tamara Toles O’Laughlin, 350.org North America Director. She is also a New Yorker:

“As our communities protect our health and safety by keeping fossil fuels in the ground, Wall Street banks and insurers enabling projects like Keystone XL, Line3, and coast to coast fracking need to wake up. The writing’s on the wall: move your money out of toxic fossil fuels and into real climate solutions.”

The Mayor is set to issue an executive order to implement this ban. This will be a critical step toward climate action, including ordinances, regulations, building code changes and legislation, to maximize the effectiveness of a ban and to ensure all staff and city agencies use all tools at their disposal, including how they engage in rate cases public service hearings.

In New York, utilities National Grid and Con-Ed have attempted to hold New Yorkers’ energy needs hostage, especially for small businesses, and Black and brown communities, says 350.org. We interviewed 350.org founder Bill McKibbens here.

350.org’s Phil Aroneanu On How To Build An Environmental Movement In The Middle East

Governor Cuomo and the New York Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) retain overall decision-making on new and existing projects. Now, New Yorkers are escalating the demand for Cuomo to stop the Williams fracked gas pipeline once and for all, and build on this announcement by declaring a ban on new fossil fuel projects across the state.

New York – we are cool. We like you. On second thought, no. We LOVE YOU. But if you look to your rooftops, they are less than impressively energy healthy. For years the city has been talking about green roofs, but only a handful like Henry Gordon Smith from Agritecture are pulling any weight.

Where are the passive solar water heaters, solar panels for collecting power? New York – it’s good to make bold statements, but what are citizens doing locally instead of just blaming Wall Street?

What’s the next steps for the eastern West?

Use available resources from selling oil and gas and invest in renewables. There is no reason why the warm climates of North Africa, the Levant, the former Middle East, the new western east can’t make this happen –– with all the sun that shines nearly year round. What happened to Desertec?

Meet DESERTEC’s Oliver Steinmetz: Opportunities for Middle East Countries

The post New Yorkers go hard against fossil fuels, divest $215.5 billion pension funds from fossil fuels appeared first on Green Prophet.

Today’s pilgrims to Medina are way cooler than their predecessors thanks to sun shelters surrounding Islam’s second-holiest mosque.

Al-Masjid al-Nabawī,  the second mosque built by the Prophet Mohammed, is one of the world’s largest. But continual expansion over the centuries hasn’t kept pace with the increasing swell of Hajj pilgrims who congregate each year in its courtyards.

With summer temperatures exceeding 120 degrees F, these marble-floored spaces can be punishing.  A dual challenge emerged: how to improve the mosque’s natural micro-climate without destroying its architectural character. The solution was to plant a forest of umbrellas.

German designers, SL-Rasch, in collaboration with Sefar Architecture (links to PDF), conceived a landscape of high-tech sunscreens that span the 150,000 square meter forecourts, a total area larger than the mosque’s footprint.  The 250 convertible umbrellas, each 20 meters tall, are sized to fill the courts’ proportions, converting the open plazas into fully covered outdoor rooms.

Like blooming flowers, umbrellas are programmed to fold and unfold in minutely delayed sequence to avoid collision between their moving parts. Their near-silent operation is automatically aligned with changes in daily temperature. They open each morning, creating a translucent ceiling, and retract each evening in less than three minutes, leaving a forest of 250 elegantly detailed posts towering over expansive public spaces.

In summer, the open umbrellas provide daytime shading and reflect away much of the sun’s radiant energy.  When closed at night, they allow residual heat absorbed by the stone floors and walls to escape back into the atmosphere. The process is reversed in winter.  When temperatures are relatively low, umbrellas are closed during the day to allow winter sun to warm the site, and opened at night to retain heat near ground level.

The structural posts are multi-functional.  They channel infrequent rain towards the center  of each column, which is connected to the building drainage system. Lamps in the column capitals provide nightime illumination.

This project has successfully reduced the courtyard’s ambient daytime temperature by 14 degrees F.  Increasing bodily comfort allows pilgrims to focus on more spiritual concerns.

Twenty years ago, SL-Rasch created another solution to the climate/crowd dilemma. 

Embracing three sides of the Prophet’s Mosque, the King Fahd Bin Abdul Aziz extension provided a new 112,000 square meter area for outdoor assembly during Hajj.  Innovative “sliding” domes were devised to protect the plaza from intense sunlight and heat, while providing natural light and ventilation, in a fully flexible way.

The mosque itself is air-conditioned. Lowering temperatures in the surrounding courtyards reduces cooling demand inside. Shading the courtyards accomplishes this, plus provides comfortable areas for the pilgrims outside.

The sliding domes, installed on raised rails, are moved over the open spaces to create shade in the hot season.  At night, they can be slid back into “parked position” over the roofs immediately adjacent to each courtyard.  As with the newer umbrellas, the process is reversed in cooler seasons.

Each dome is a sandwich made of a carbon-glass/fiber and epoxy filling with ceramic tiles integrated on top and an undersurface of intricately decorated wood laminate. Domes are edged in artificial stone to match the roof cornice of the mosque.  A computerized control system glides the hefty forms quietly into place. The dome project was awarded Best Innovation prize by the International Association for Automation and Robotics in 1993.

Green Prophet eagerly looks forward to what comes next from this ingenious facility, as it blends technology with antiquity to meet the needs of its growing congregation.

Umbrella images via Sefar Architects; Dome image by Premiere Composite Technologies, LLC

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