ROI Upgrades - Big Green Cities

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ROI Upgrades

Big Green Cities

Billions of new dollars now are available to fund loans to cities and private landlords eager to slim down the energy diet of older buildings. A coalition of 16 of the world’s biggest cities, five banks, a host of modernization interests and the William J. Clinton Foundation are financing the program to help stave off global warming. Initial targets include municipal buildings in Bangkok, Berlin, Chicago, Houston, Johannesburg, Karachi, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo and Toronto.

       Buildings are responsible for 50 percent of greenhouse gases in most cities and 70 percent in mature cities. Retrofits typically can slice 20 to 50 percent from energy bills.

       “Potentials for energy-saving retrofits are significant in industrialized countries,” says Thomas Wilbanks of Tennessee’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “But the real challenge in rapidly growing developing countries is increasing the efficiency of new building construction.”

       Meanwhile, several role model countries in Europe are cheering everyone on. Denmark, which has upped its renewable energy from 6 to 16 percent since 1990 while cutting carbon emissions by nearly 14 percent, maintains that, “If we can do it you can, too.”

       Source: ClintonFoundation.org.

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Last modified 2008-06-04 08:00 AM
 
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