Planet Green

Last night, I “discovered” Planet Green, a channel on cable that is put together by Discovery.  I’m pretty impressed.  It has been up and running since June of last year.  I watched a program on the Solar Decathalon from 2007 – universities building green homes in a competition every other year in Washington, D.C.  There were some really cool designs – I wish they would have spread this one out a bit more or would follow up examining some of the technologies/plans the schools presented.

Then I watched a program on Greensburg, KS, the town that was literally wiped off the face of the Earth in May, 2007.  I was hoping for more about the green features the town is planning (i.e. Platinum LEED for every city building), and at the end I figured out why the show seemed to be moving too slowly to do so in an hour: it’s part of a series, which isn’t a bad idea.  The bad news is, I’ll have to spend some time trying to figure out when the next episode is going to air.

This morning, as I was getting ready for work, the channel had a program on about green roofs in Chicago, IL.  They did a very good job presenting the advantages of green roofs: lower energy costs, lower building temperatures, improved water handling in an urban setting, etc.  So far, I enjoy the programming on this station.  It’s too bad it’s on the higher reaches of cable (200′s of my programming) – more people would really benefit from its lineup.

Green Roofs

The May 2008 Scientific American had a “Working Knowledge” feature (in the back) that focused on green roofs. It gave a brief overview of materials commonly used and why they’re used. They included a graph that caught my eye (nice job, that’s what they’re supposed to do). It presented the square footage of green roofs completed in U.S. cities in 2006. The numbers:

Kansas City, MO: 178,000 sq. ft.

Dulles, VA: 230,000 sq ft.

Wildwood Crest, N.J.: 240,000 sq. ft.

Washington, D.C.: 302,000 sq. ft.

Chicago, IL: 359,000 sq. ft.

That’s 1.3 million sq. ft. of roof area that will reduce heat islands and require less energy to cool the buildings in the summer. An additional tidbit: at least 20% of any new roof on medium and large buildings must be cultivated in Tokyo, Japan. That would be nice.