Tag: NYC

Subways to (Kinda) Power Themselves

Most hybrid cars capture energy excerpted while braking and use it to help refill the battery. A company that makes flywheels will be working with New York City to apply the same kinetic energy capture concept to subway cars, meaning that the subways will become an even more efficient way to travel. Every time a subway car enters a station and applies the brakes its capturing kinetic energy to get it started again.

The difference is that the power generated would reach into the megawatts. A 10-car subway train in New York’s system might require a jolt of three to four megawatts of power for 30 seconds to get up to cruising speed, according to Louis Romo, vice president of sales at Vycon. That’s enough to power 1,300 average U.S. homes.

And when one train leaves the station, another one comes in right on its heels. While delivering walloping surges in power like that to downtown stations is feasible, remote stations can experience drops in power. Train departures have to literally be staggered to accommodate the availability of power.

“Almost every rail company in the U.S. has a station where voltage sag is a problem,” said Romo.

Vycon claims it can help smooth out this problem by effectively getting the trains to act like Priuses. When drivers hit the brakes on their hybrids, the kinetic energy of the moving car gets transformed into electric power that then gets stored in the battery.

Read more at Green Tech Media.

Frank Gehry’s Cool New New York Project

That crazy architect Frank Gehry has an environmental and socially conscious development going up in New York City. I love it when high-profile people work on projects that are down to earth.

Unsurprisingly, New York by Gehry is not seeking LEED certification, but a spokeswoman informed Inhabitat that the building does have a variety of green features, including low-e windows, Energy Star appliances and greywater filtration. Plus, the building has lots of green/outdoor space.

Probably the biggest surprise to come out of the luxury building is that all 903 apartments will be rent stabilized. Developer Forest City Ratner received Liberty Bonds and city tax breaks for the building, so in return they must keep the apartments rent stabilized for 20 years. Plus, a senior vice president at Ratner told DNAinfo that they are offering one month free rent. But that doesn’t mean they’re cheap — rents still start at market rate, which is $3,580 for a one bedroom.

Read the rest at Inhabitat

Microfinance in New York City

Microfinance has been working very well in the developing world as a way to support people in creating better opportunities for themselves and their communities by providing a small amount of money for projects. People who would otherwise be rejected for a loan can qualify for a microloan and then use that money to start a business.

Now programs in New York City are helping people in poverty start small business to better themselves.

Fortunately, she found Project Enterprise. The $1,500 loan she received allowed her to get a license and purchase the equipment to start grooming pets in her apartment. With this increased offering of services, the income of Bridgette’s business more than doubled. She has already taken out a second loan to buy equipment to let her handle more pets, and is now planning for her third loan, to take the next step and expand into an actual storefront

Read more at the blog of the Grameen Foundation.

Oysters to the Rescue

Some people eat them while others use them to make the world a better place. I like using them to clean up pollutants and the like, be warned though oysters are not as plentiful as they were.

Hopefully after this talk you’ll be pro-oyster and spreading the word on how great they are at cleaning the environment! Let’s save the oysters to save our planet.

Architect Kate Orff sees the oyster as an agent of urban change. Bundled into beds and sunk into city rivers, oysters slurp up pollution and make legendarily dirty waters clean — thus driving even more innovation in “oyster-tecture.” Orff shares her vision for an urban landscape that links nature and humanity for mutual benefit.

Hydroponics in Schools

In urban centres where the land has been used for buildings and other infrastructure there is little room for production farms, so how do we teach children about farming? Well, we can use hydroponics to grow plants and help people understand why plants and food are so great.

A school in New York City has installed a hydroponic greenhouse that makes use of rainwater to grow plants for their school.

There’s no soil in a hydroponic greenhouse, which captures and recirculates rainwater to the roots of plants. In capable hands — though maybe not in 5-year-old hands — the 1,400-square-foot structure can produce up to 8,000 pounds of vegetables every year. It is an experiment in environmental education its founders hope will be replicated in schools citywide.

Two mothers at the school, Sidsel Robards and Manuela Zamora, founded the greenhouse, inspired in 2008 by a trip to the Science Barge, a floating urban farm docked in Yonkers. They got New York Sun Works, the nonprofit green-design group that built the barge, interested enough to execute the greenhouse, a bright, open and wheelchair-accessible space, covered by glass and entered from the school’s third floor, that is essentially the Barge on a roof.

It includes a rainwater catchment system, a weather station, a sustainable air conditioner made of cardboard, a worm-composting center and solar panels. In the center of the room is a system resembling a plant-filled hot tub: an aquaponics system home to a community of tilapia, whose waste is converted into nitrate. The system loses water only when it evaporates to help cool plants, consuming only a tiny fraction of the water that a field of conventional dirt does.

“You basically can have this closed system, this symbiotic thing going on, where plants are eating food, creating waste, you’re converting it and then the plants are taking it up,” said Zak Adams, director of ecological design at BrightFarm Systems, which designed the greenhouse and the barge.

Read the full article at The New York Times.