All Posts Tagged With: "Alternative Energy"

The Dynamic Tower- a 1380-foot, rotating residential high-rise, will break ground in Dubai within a few months, according to Italian architect David Fisher, who discussed details about the project at a press conference today at the Plaza Hotel in Midtown. According to Dr. Fisher, a second Dynamic Tower will soon follow in Moscow with a third to come here in New York City. Although he did not provide specific details, Fisher noted that he is already talking to developers about bringing the concept to Gotham.

There’s a bit of a LEED-driven controversy that’s currently playing out at the Norwalk Community College in Connecticut. Students are alleging that the design by Upper West Side-based Mitchell-Giurgola Architects for a new $40 million, 3-story laboratory building “isn’t green enough.” Last year, architecture professor John Sneider’s Environmental Systems class critiqued the 55,000-square-foot project, with students suggesting a building smaller in scale and the installation of a geothermal system. They contacted university officials last year and say they’ve been given the runaround; the school has spent $3 million on the design to date and finalized drawings for bidding back in January. Still, students circulated a petition and met yesterday with the design team, who explained the project’s sustainable features notwithstanding its lack of LEED registration with USGBC.

gbNYC selects green news items of note that were reported across the New York City area during the week of May 11, 2008, including the likely end of plans for JPMorgan Chase’s new LEED Platinum headquarters at Ground Zero, a profile of Bronx-based recycled materials supplier ReBuilders Source, and new LEED projects for Donald Trump in Philadelphia and the New Canaan Country School in Connecticut.

The MTA announced yesterday that five million green MetroCards will be issued starting on Earth Day, April 22. The limited edition cards will have a list of environmental facts on the back and will be dolled out via MTA vending machines. Ironically, the MetroCards themselves won’t be recyclable, though the MTA did admit at a news conference Monday morning at Grand Central Station that it may be time to move to a more earth-friendly material for the cards. The green MetroCards are meant to draw attention to the MTA’s new sustainability initiatives, which are the result of recommendations from a panel on renewable energy.

Two years ago, Astor Wines and Spirits relocated to the Theodore De Vinne Press Building at 399 Lafayette Street, on the northeast corner of Fourth Street in the Village. At the time, Andrew Fisher, whose family has owned the building since 1983, installed two microturbines in the basement. Until last December, though, when Mayor Bloomberg signed legislation authorizing the installation and use of microturbines, the Fishers had yet to turn the system on. Mr. Fisher told the New York Times earlier this week that the two microturbines, now operating pursuant to the rule, provide enough energy to heat, cool, and provide electricity for his store and its upstairs cooking school and gallery.

In this week’s issue of Crain’s, a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers identifies six-year-old Everpower Renewables Corp., a Manhattan-based developer of utility-grade wind power projects, as the recipient of $55 million from Good Energies, Inc. during the fourth quarter of 2007. In fact, Everpower raised the most money of any company in New York last year. While the overall amount of venture capital flowing into New York decreased from 2006 ($2 billion to $1.7 billion), David Silverman, managing director of PwC’s New York venture capital group, told Crain’s that the New York market “continues to look healthy.”