WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Senate is close to wrapping up talks ahead of introducing a compromise climate change bill, said a top Democratic lawmaker who discussed ideas with industry groups on Wednesday.

“We’re planning to button up our efforts somewhere I hope next week,” Senator John Kerry told reporters after meeting with a coalition that represents automakers, forestry and paper companies, Big Oil, steel, mining, electricity and others.

Kerry is working with Republican Senator Lindsey Graham and independent Senator Joseph Lieberman on a bill to require U.S. industry to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases associated with global warming.

Indicating there was still work to be done, Kerry said, “We’re trying to build support as we develop (bill) language.”

Bruce Josten, an executive vice president at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, left Wednesday’s meeting with the three senators and told reporters: “They’re being very constructive; they’re trying to figure out how to make this work for the American economy.”

The measure will not take the exact approach of legislation approved by the House of Representatives in June, and by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in November. This would set an economy-wide “cap and trade” direction to reducing carbon pollution.

Kerry said that while “a lot of language is there” to craft legislation, “we don’t have a full outline” yet of a bill.

PRICE COLLAR AND FUEL FEES

The climate bill has been stalled in the Senate and supporters have missed several informal deadlines for producing and passing a bill.

Under cap and trade, companies would face limits on the amount of carbon pollution Washington would let them emit. Those limits would become stricter over the next 40 years, when supporters want an 80 percent reduction from 2005 levels. Also, required pollution permits could be sold on a regulated market.

The three senators also talked about pollution reductions of 17 percent by 2020 below 2005 levels, a goal President Barack Obama has embraced.

The Chamber of Commerce, which says it represents more than 3 million U.S. businesses of all sizes, is staunchly opposed to U.S. Environmental Protection Agency regulation of carbon dioxide.

The three senators said on Wednesday the bill would pre-empt the EPA from regulating the gases, said a source with knowledge of the meeting.

The EPA is ready to issue final regulations as early as March 31 for automobile carbon emissions. That would clear the way for expanding regulations to smokestack emissions, although the agency prefers Congress tackles that problem.

Instead of an economy-wide cap and trade, the three senators are aiming to impose the market system initially on power companies, which contribute about 40 percent of carbon emissions.

The senators are “talking about allowances for that sector that are built around pollution-reduction targets and prohibiting price spikes,” Josten said.

Power plants would face emissions limits starting in 2012 while big manufacturers and energy-intensive industry would not face limits until 2016, the source said.

The senators presented an eight-page outline to the industry groups but took it back at the end of the meeting, he added.

The bill would also include a hard price collar that would keep carbon prices between $10 and $30 a ton. Any polluter emitting below 25,000 tons a year would not be regulated, the source said.

As for a possible oil industry tax, the senators discussed a fee on fuels linked to the market price of carbon. The fee would be visible to consumers at petroleum pumps and on airline tickets, the source said.

A tax at the oil refinery level that would not be as visible to consumers has also been discussed by the senators.

Once a bill is put together, the Congressional Budget Office will analyze the potential costs to the federal government and the economy. EPA also is expected to conduct a six- to eight-week analysis of the bill before it could be debated on the Senate floor, possibly in June.

Article by Richard Cowan and Timothy Gardner, editing by Mohammad Zargham; appearing courtesy Reuters

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Do they really work to improve the quality of our air and water? Are they worth their cost in terms of regulatory burden and costs of compliance? In short, yes! To some extent, our regulatory programs are a trial and error affair. We can’t always know the ultimate effectiveness of a new program nor its ultimate costs. We can’t always predict the economic benefits of new regulations either since they invariably lead to innovation and generate new inventions and jobs.

The US has been monitoring the quality of our air and water for decades, so we can track the effectiveness of our programs. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is making the most recent data available. Air pollution impacts public health, the environment, and the Earth’s climate, and understanding these impacts are important priorities for the agency.

EPA regulatory actions and voluntary efforts have led to cleaner cars, industries and consumer products, that in turn have contributed to improvements in the nation’s air. They have also led to developments of new pollution control systems for power plants and other major sources such as Selective Catalytic Reduction, a technology that removes Nitrogen Oxides from emissions by converting it to Nitrogen and water.

Since 1990, nationwide air quality has improved significantly for the six common air pollutants: ground-level ozone, particle pollution, lead, nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide. Emissions of toxic air pollutants, such as benzene, have declined about 40 percent nationwide between 1990 and 2005.

These reductions are helping to improve public health by decreasing the number of emergency room visits, respiratory illnesses, and premature deaths. Positive impacts can also be seen in the environment, with regional haze decreasing.

Despite this progress, about 127 million Americans live in counties violating at least one of the national air quality standards. The agency has taken recent actions to tighten air quality standards to help ensure improvements in air quality for everyone.

EPA’s most recent evaluation of air pollution, Our Nation’s Air, Status and Trends Through 2008, presents trends in air quality measurements, analyzes national emissions from key industrial sectors and takes a look at the relationship between air quality and climate change.

Article by Roger Greenway appearing courtesy ENN

photo: Jami Dwyer

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CleanTechies had four questions about his new book.

CleanTechies:  You promise a balanced look in your title, and you give the global warming nay-sayers a chapter.  Why do you feel it’s important to take this approach?

William F. Stewart:  I know it is a cliché, but skepticism really is the lifeblood of science. Historically, it is through the intense questioning of conventional wisdom that advancement has been possible. Although there are certainly a lot of cynics and charlatans masquerading as skeptics, good faith skepticism itself must be embraced if we are to achieve new discoveries.The reality is, climate science is still in its adolescence–just decades old. If you mentioned “global dimming” a decade ago, you would have elicited blank stares. But now, aerosol related dimming is a widely accepted climatic forcing mechanism.

Similarly, solar variance and the urban heat island affect, as contributors to global warming, are no longer the fringe theories that they once were. Finally, while climate models and computer programs are doing some incredible things, we have not yet figured out a way to account for all intricate and integrated climactic forces and feedbacks.

None of this is meant to suggest that we do not know enough to be very, very concerned about anthropogenic climate change, but I think it does more harm than good to belittle skepticism out of hand or to sugarcoat the uncertainties.

CleanTechies: What are the three keys to unlocking the mysteries of climate change?

Stewart:  First, bias and propaganda can be found on all sides of the global warming debate. It is generally recognized that proposed climate change solutions would result in large-scale economic changes, but these solutions also contain divisive ideological components involving the role of government and internationalization. The book provides several examples of how these “hot button issues” lead to subtle and not-so-subtle bias.

Second, much about our climate remains a mystery. Although the basic mechanisms of global warming are well understood, many of the critical details, for example the impact of climate feedbacks, remain shrouded in mystery.

Third, global warming is not just a scientific challenge, but rather presents highly contentious political, economic, and social problems. Because nations of the world will be affected differently, bear different historic responsibility, and assign different priority to climate change, any international agreement will require an “apples to oranges” compromise that will present formidable political barriers.

CleanTechies: Give us a glimpse of your visions for the sustainable future.

Stewart: While it’s obviously a plus to upbeat, I am going to be realistic here. Sustainability can only follow an international commitment, and an international commitment will only follow a more broad-based acknowledgement of the peril. Let’s face it, volcanoes, the ice-albedo effect, carbon sinks, el Niño, the Kyoto Protocol, population growth, melting permafrost, peak oil, and the Hockey Stick Graph are a lot to swallow–not to mention integrate.

The IPCC, NOAA, and the National Academy of Sciences have sounded the clarion call, but real solutions will require a grassroots call for action.

The truth is, the question of whether substantial action will occur before some semi-apocalyptic combination of resource depletion and warming remains squarely in doubt. The good news is that, while no single renewable energy will likely serve as a silver bullet, promising new technologies continue to emerge.

CleanTechies: What are the short-term solutions to climate change?

Stewart: There is a section near the end of the book titled “Picking the Low Hanging Fruit.” Chief among the immediate, no-brainer, opportunities are energy efficiency, combining climate change and energy security strategies, encouraging a robust debate on nuclear energy, implementation of smart grid technology, and development of infra-structure and incentives for wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and other renewables.

By comparison, hydrogen, carbon sequestration, biofuels, tidal, and wave energy offer long term potential, but are not short-term solutions.

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The government awarded leases to companies to construct six wave energy projects and four tidal project off the Scottish coast in what experts say would be the first developments of their kind on a large commercial scale.

Construction would cost £4 billion ($6.1 billion) and require another £1 billion ($1.53 billion) in government funding to upgrade the national electric grid. But First Minister Alex Salmond said tapping into the resources of Pentland Firth, a strait north of Scotland that is known for its strong tides, can make the country the “powerhouse of Europe.”
If successful, experts predict, the projects could power 750,000 of Scotland’s 2.3 million homes and generate four times as much electricity as a former Scottish nuclear power station in Caithness.

“Leading international energy companies and innovators continue to be drawn to Scottish waters, which boast as much as a quarter of Europe’s tidal and offshore wind resource and a tenth of the continent’s potential wave capacity,” Salmond said.

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

photo: silverxraven

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Finding the information you were looking for was not always easy, and not always free. Now things are getting a little easier, and more information is obtainable for free.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that it is providing Web access, free of charge, to the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Chemical Substance Inventory. This inventory contains a consolidated list of thousands of industrial chemicals maintained by the agency.

The EPA is also making this information available on Data.gov, a Web site launched to provide public access to important government information.

“Increasing the public’s access to information on chemicals is one of Administrator Jackson’s top priorities,” said Steve Owens, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances. “The American people want easily accessible information on chemicals, and today’s action is part of a series of ongoing steps that EPA is taking to empower the public with this important information.”

Until now, the consolidated public portion of the TSCA Inventory has only been available by purchase from the National Technical Reports Library or other databases. By adding the consolidated TSCA Inventory to the Agency’s website and to Data.gov, EPA is making this information readily available to the public at no cost.

Currently, there are more than 84,000 chemicals manufactured, used, or imported in the United States listed on the TSCA Inventory. However, EPA is unable to publicly identify nearly 17,000 of these chemicals because the chemicals have been claimed as confidential business information under TSCA by the manufacturers.

Under Administrator Lisa Jackson, the EPA has already begun a series of  steps to provide greater transparency on chemical risk information, including an announcement in January that signaled the agency’s intent to reduce a certain type of confidentiality claim, or Confidential Business Information claim, on the identity of chemicals.

In the coming months, the EPA will take further steps to increase transparency and make more information available to the public, including adding TSCA facility information, and the list of chemicals manufactured to the Facility Registry System. The FRS is an integrated database that provides the public with easier access to EPA’s environmental information and better tools for cross-media environmental analysis.

The addition of TSCA facility and chemical databases to FRS will provide the public with information on the facilities in their communities using industrial chemicals.

Article appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

photo: cyborgsuzy

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Qualifying costs include, but are not limited to, certain manufacturing related costs, software that enables computers or other devices to engage in smart grid functions, and metering devices, sensors, and control devices that are capable of engaging in smart grid functions.

Recently, questions have been raised as to whether the DOE grant under this program is subject to federal income tax.

The IRS, in Revenue Procedure 2010-20, concluded that the DOE grant is not subject to federal income tax.

In Rev. Proc. 2010-20, the IRS noted that the DOE grant is considered a contribution to capital that is not subject to tax under section 118 of the Internal Revenue Code. Section 118 of the Internal Revenue Code provides that, in the case of a corporation, gross income does not include a contribution of capital to the corporation.

In particular, the Treasury regulations related to Section 118 highlight that contributions to capital include contributions made by a person other than a shareholder, for example, a governmental body for the purpose of enabling the corporation to expand its operating facility.

The corporation receiving the DOE grant must however reduce the basis of the property to which the DOE grant relates to. For example, if a corporation purchases a smart grid related device for $1,000 and receives a DOE grant under the Smart Grid Investment Matching Grant Program in the amount of $200, the basis of the device shall be reduced by the DOE grant amount.

The resulting basis of $800 is the basis of the property for purposes of depreciation.

Rev. Proc. 2010-20 becomes effective March 10, 2010 and does not apply to non-corporate taxpayers or to DOE grants related to smart grid research, development, and demonstration.

photo: Ian Muttoo

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The model has since gained in popularity and has been used to forecast oil production worldwide. However, recent studies show that the model does not take into account more complex oil production cycles of some countries. Those cycles can be heavily influenced by technology changes, politics, social upheavals, and other factors.

In 2008 there were dramatic and unprecedented fluctuations in oil prices. The price per barrel rose to $140 which was an all time high; then the price plunged to less than $50 per barrel by the end of the year losing more than 64 percent of the maximum price in less than a three months period.

The supply of crude oil in the international market oscillated accordingly. This behavior affected oil production in all exporting countries.

Yet despite the fluctuations demand for crude oil in some developing countries, such as China and India, has increased in the past few years because of the rapid growth in the transportation sector and consumer demand. The rapid growth in fuel demand has forced policy makers worldwide to include uninterrupted crude oil supply as a vital priority in their economic and strategic planning. Yet world oil supplies have to come to an end.

Forecasting the future is always difficult. With oil some new supply source may be discovered in some unsuspected geographical location as one example. Demand may also increase and wars may consume yet more.  Alternate energy sources may also be used or discovered.

Accurate prediction of oil production is affected by fluctuating ecological, economical, social, and political factors, which impose many restrictions on its exploration, transportation, and supply and demand.

The Kuwait study was done to develop a model to predict world crude oil supply with better accuracy than the existing models.

The original Hubbert peak theory posits that for any given geographical area, from an individual oil producing region to the planet as a whole, the rate of petroleum production tends to follow a bell shaped curve.

Choosing a particular curve determines a point of maximum production based on discovery rates, production rates and cumulative production. Early in the curve (pre-peak), the production rate increases because of the discovery rate and the addition of infrastructure. Late in the curve (post-peak), production declines because of resource depletion. Hubbert’s Peak was achieved in the continental US in the early 1970s. Oil production peaked at 10.2 million barrels a day. Since then, it has been in a gradual decline.

The new Kuwait approach originates from  the Hubbert model, it overcomes the limitations and restrictions associated with the original Hubbert model. As opposed to Hubbert single cycle model, this model has more than one cycle depending on the historical oil production trend and known oil reserves.

The world production is estimated to peak in 2014 at a rate of 79 million barrels per day. OPEC has a remaining reserve of 909 barrels, which is about 78 percent of the world reserves. OPEC production is expected to peak in 2026 at a rate of 53 million barrels per day. On the basis of 2005 world crude oil production and current recovery techniques, the world oil reserves are being depleted at an annual rate of 2.1 percent.

Other models predict peak oil production to occur anywhere from today to 2030. The exact date, of course, will not be known until it happens. Dramatic fluctuation in oil prices will continue and a new lifestyle for all of us will have to happen sooner or later.

Article by Andy Soos appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

photo: chrisjfry

For that reason, Howard Friel’s painstaking book The Lomborg Deception: Setting the Record Straight About Global Warming represents time well and usefully spent.

Friel identifies two strains in Lomborg’s work: his “theorem” that though global warming is happening and is human-induced it is far from a catastrophe; his “corollary” that there is therefore little need to incur the costs of reducing greenhousegas emissions to the extent urged by concerned experts.

Friel concentrates on Lomborg’s two books The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World (2001) and Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming (2007). The first book covered a range of environmental concerns presented as an exaggerated “litany” of bad news generated by environmentalists. The second focused exclusively on climate change.

Friel spends most of his space on a detailed examination of Cool It. Lomborg has no hesitation in claiming that scientists exaggerate the effects of global warming, and has a large number of end notes supposedly backing his claims with reference to the sources of his evidence. By examining those supporting notes and citations in considerable detail Friel exposes the flimsiness of Lomborg’s claims. They are grounded, to say the least, in bad data. Indeed if Friel’s tracking of the referencing is accurate they are hardly grounded at all.

Take Lomborg’s claim that there will be only 12 inches of sea level rise this century. Of this he attributes 9 inches to thermal expansion.  He references the 9 inches to Figure 10.6.1 in Working Group 1 of the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report (AR4).  No such figure can be found, says Friel. But assume Lomborg meant Section 10.6.1.  It contains three projections (using three SRES scenarios) of thermal expansion. They range between 4 and 15 inches. Lomborg apparently chooses a rough median and presents it as an unwarrantably precise estimate.

The remaining 3 inches of Lomborg’s 12 inch rise come from melting glaciers and ice caps. Here he references Figure 10.6.3 in WG1 of AR4. Again there is no such figure, and he probably meant Section 10.6.3 titled Glaciers and Ice Caps; nowhere in it or its subsections can Friel find any substantiation of the 3 inches claim. Lomborg then referenced a claim that Greenland is expected to contribute 1.4 inches by itself to, we assume, Section 10.6.4. With its subsections it spans five pages, which do not report any 1.4 inch expectation from Greenland.

Lomborg’s further claim that Antarctica will be accumulating ice as a result of increased precipitation and consequently contribute a 2-inch reduction in sea level rise is also referenced to Section 10.6.4 which offers no such report.

Writes Friel, “Lomborg referenced only these IPCC figures to itemize his assertion of a one-foot sea-level rise, even though none of these sources can be found in the IPCC assessment report.”

Friel finds similar loose sourcing to most of Lomborg’s claims. Polar bears are not threatened. Climate change will reduce human mortality due to an offsetting reduction in cold-related deaths. Extreme weather events will be much fewer than predicted by environmentalists. The World Health Organization exaggerates excess fatalities due to global warming. Food concerns related to global warming are vastly overplayed: “We will be able to feed the world ever better.”  And $4 billion dollars annually will be enough to bring water and sanitation to those in the world who lack these essential services.

Friel offers frequent useful statements of the scientific consensus on many of these issues against which Lomborg sets himself as an authority empowered in some extraordinary way to see the exaggeration of which he asserts a large scientific community is guilty.

The role of the IPCC, as set out in 1988 by the U.N. Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation, emphasises scientific objectivity, policy neutrality, balanced geographic representation, and consensus. By the time its reports are issued, Friel comments, one might conclude that its product would embody a scientifically sound consensus middle ground among its 2,500 contributors and reviewers.

He marvels that Cool It, which reflects none of these characteristics and which throughout asserts unsubstantiated claims that are completely at odds with the IPCC consensus can yet be described as representing “the practical middle” (Wall Street Journal) or “the pragmatic center” (New York Times). Lomborg has successfully competed with the IPCC in the United States.

Friel provides a telling analogy:

The favourable coverage of Lomborg and his books are to global warming what the triple-A ratings for mortgage-backed securities were to the U.S. financial system — misguided seals of approval with catastrophic consequences.

More catastrophic, Friel  notes, in the case of climate change than in the case of financial systems which can presumably be repaired. His verdict on the part played by publishers and journalists:

Lomborg’s success largely reflects an ability of elite publishing houses and news organizations to contruct an alternative but counterfeit network of knowledge about an issue of the highest public importance.

In the light of his thorough scrutiny of Lomborg’s claimed sources Friel considers it legitimate to maintain that Lomborg’s books are an assault on science, as Scientific American did when it convened a forum of distinguished scientists to write a rebuttal to The Skeptical Environmentalist in 2001. Friel reports this and other authoritative responses to Lomborg’s earlier book in some detail.

He also asks whether the success of Lomborg’s books in a cultural sense is a manifestation of a broader “assault on reason,” described by Al Gore in his book of that title as a systematic breakdown of rational consideration of the major challenges facing the US and the world.

There’s probably little reason to expect that a book like Friel’s will put a dent in the popularity Lomborg commands. Denial is rampant at present. And the book is not a light read. However, it has elicited a lengthy response from Lomborg himself, to which Friel has replied on his publisher’s Web site.

He comments there that his previous experience in the hermeneutics of deception mostly dealt with books and texts that sought to justify war:

Lomborg’s books are no worse then those, but they are no better. Perhaps twenty or fifty years from now, if and when the fuller impacts of man-made global warming are more apparent, people might argue that they were worse. This is because at least wars usually end whereas global warming past a certain point probably won’t.

Which is all the more reason to persist with trying to focus public attention on the real science and expose the falsity of confident deniers and delayers. And good reason to welcome what Howard Friel’s book has contributed to that exposure.

Article by Bryan Walker appearing courtesy Celsias.

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Global statistics show that the solar thermal industry is taking large steps in fulfilling heating and cooling demand in the world. Most of the countries around the world have adopted incentive programs for both solar water heating and space heating. Whereas in some countries, solar thermal systems have been widely utilized for so many years even without incentives.

The most important decision criteria for a household to install a solar thermal system is basically the payback times of their investment. The main driving factors of the investment payback time are the total cost of the systems and the cost of alternatives heating systems.

I tried to create a simple table* in order to exhibit the differences in incentives, costs and payback times in the three cities where I have resided. According to the table, state incentives seem to be necessary for enabling market growth in the United States, where primary energy costs are lower, or in Austria where the irradiation factor is comparatively low.

Austria has been a pioneer in European solar thermal industry since the 1970s due to gas scarcity; solar thermal companies were developing their technologies while the state was creating public awareness and incentive programs for domestic solar heating systems.

Solar water heating systems have been widespread in Turkey because most of the southern cities did not have access to gas pipelines until recently. Turkey has a big climatic advantage for solar systems; however, the jump into domestic space heating has not been realized yet.

Israel and Cyprus are two countries with no solar incentives at all, but all new buildings must be able to supply a portion of their heating demand via solar thermal systems. Spain adopted a building law in 2006, very similar to that of Israel, and became the second largest for solar thermal in Europe while increasing its installed capacity dramatically.

In order to have a wider view on the issue, I drew a chart that exhibits the global installed solar thermal capacity. I have used the data from European Solar Thermal Industry Federation and Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21).

I was not surprised that China, Turkey, Japan and Israel are leading the industry since those are the countries who have been historically strong players in the solar thermal business. All these countries have substantial irradiation; however, Europeans succeeded in a rapid growth during the last five years. Despite their cloudy and cold climate, Germany is the market locomotive in Europe. The fluctuating price of foreign natural gas is one of the main reasons of European success.

According to the Potential of Solar Thermal in Europe study  published by ESTIF, Europe can deploy solar thermal systems covering 47 percent of its total heating and cooling demand by 2050, in the case where substantial financial and political support mechanisms together with energy efficiency measures and research activities are activated.

That requires an annual growth of 26 percent in the industry every year until 2020, which seems to be achievable given that the European solar thermal market grew by over 60 percent in just 2008. In the modest scenario, which foresees moderate advancement in policy and support mechanisms, Europe would cover 11 percent of its total heating and cooling demand by solar thermal systems by 2050.

China, on the other side of the world, is taking serious steps in order to reduce its carbon emissions. According to Renewables Global Status Report, China installed three quarters of the global added capacity in 2008 and remained the world leader in the solar thermal industry, with more than 65 percent of existing world capacity. Due to the low production costs and traditional use of cheap and compact systems, solar water heating systems have existed for a number of decades in China.

(I was unable to gather any data from the Chinese market due to a language barrier. I would be happy to receive more information and comments through this website or emails.)

*Basic assumptions on drawing of the table:

1) Market tendencies in three different cities were used as the basis for the size selection of collectors and storage tanks.
2) Natural gas was assumed to be the primary heating source and the prices were gathered from utility companies of Vienna, Istanbul and Northern California.
3) The costs of solar systems are gathered through a short telephone survey with contractors in the countries. Moreover, the examples given in the website of Austrian Solar Thermal Association and Solar Map of San Francisco were used as a resource.
4) All values are converted from national currency to USD with the following rates in March 2010: USD/EUR= 0,731 ; USD/TL= 1,5345
5) CO2 emissions for natural gas were assumed to be 6,1 kg/therm.

photo: julian

data sources: ESTIF and REN21; chart and table by author

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The Strata Tower, a 408-unit apartment building scheduled to open in July, will be topped with three 19-kilowatt turbines — each with five 29.5-foot blades designed to suck wind from various angles and accelerate it through tubes, generating as much as 50 megawatt-hours of electricity annually.

It will also generate about £16,000 to £17,000 annually through the nation’s new feed-in tariff, the developers say.

The £13-million tower, which developers hope will be a model in sustainable construction, will also utilize natural ventilation rather than air conditioning.

By 2019, government law will require carbon neutral design for all new buildings.

Green building advocates described the Strata design as pioneering, but questioned whether wind turbines would become common in skyscraper projects.

“I doubt wind power will become a common feature in high-rise inner-city projects,” said Paul King, chief executive of the U.K. Green Building Council. “But without this type of bold innovation, how would we ever know?”

Article appearing courtesy Yale Environment 360.

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