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Events

Video available: "Need, Opportunities, and Programs to Improve Air Quality and Health in SWPA"

During the Dec. 2 Pittsburgh Green Workplace Challenge Awards Ceremony, Philip Johnson, Program Director for Science and Environment for The Heinz Endowments, shared dramatic, science-based evidence about the Pittsburgh region's health issues stemming from persistently poor air quality. His informative presentation challenged us to take action in making a difference in improving our region's air at home, in schools, at work, and in the community.

A video of Phil's presentation is now available from the Green Workplace Challenge. Additional videos from the Awards Ceremony to be released soon.

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Resources

In The Air - Visualizing What We Breathe

Open through February 26
Pittsburgh Filmmakers
477 Melwood Ave., Pittsburgh 15213
More information

Photographers Brian Cohen, Scott Goldsmith, Lynn Johnson and Annie O’Neill have spent the last year recording people and places that illustrate the environmental, social and economic effects of air quality in Western Pennsylvania. An accompanying book designed by Brett Yasko with essays by Reid Frazier will expand on and provide context to the visual work. In addition to the exhibition and book, the project will also have an online presence, air.thedocumentaryworks.org. This team has gathered materials that describe the variety of issues at the heart of the air quality subject; highlighting the relationship between the health of the community and the health of its environment.

The Beth Shalom Health Initiative - Speaker Series

Saturday, Feb. 6 at 12:45 pm - "Considerations in End of Life Decisions"
Saturday, Feb. 27 at 1:00 pm - "The Jewish Healthcare Foundation at 25"
Sunday, Mar. 6 at 10:00 am - "The Plan for a Healthier Allegheny"
Sunday, Apr. 10 at 10:00 am - "Alcohol and Drug Problems: Why We All Should Be Concerned and What We Can Do"

Location: Congregation Beth Shalom, 5915 Beacon Street, Pittsburgh 15217
Free and Open to the Public
More details, including speaker bios

Featured Speakers:
"Considerations in End of Life Decisions" - Nathan Bahary, MD, PhD
"The Jewish Healthcare Foundation at 25" - Karen Wolk Feinstein, PhD
"The Plan for a Healthier Allegheny" - Karen HAcker, MD, MPH
"Alcohol and Drug Problems: Why We All Should Be Concerned and What We Can Do" - Dennis C. Daley, PhD

Inspirational Stories about Creating a Sustainable, Vibrant, Healthy, and Just Region

Thursday, February 11
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm (Doors open at 4:30 for networking and refreshments)
The Elsie H. Hillman Auditorium at Hill House’s Kaufmann Center, 1825 Centre Avenue, Pittsburgh 15219
Cost: $10 regular price; $5 limited income
More information and registration

Sustainable Pittsburgh, Green Building Alliance and p4 Pittsburgh present “Inspirational Stories about Creating a Sustainable, Vibrant, Healthy, and Just Region,” featuring 10 community leaders, teachers, visionaries, filmmakers, social innovators, and others. Each will share their own story about how they’ve worked to improve the places we all live, work, learn, and play. Child care is also available during the lecture!

Speakers include:
Leah Lizarondo – The Brazen Kitchen and Co-Founder, 412 Food Rescue
Cynthia “Muffy” Mendoza – Founder of Pittsburgh Brown Mamas; GTECH Ambassador
Terri Baltimore – Director of Neighborhood Engagement, Hill House Association
Vivian Loftness, FAIA, LEED AP – Carnegie Mellon University, School of Architecture Professor
Tess Wilson – Pittsburgh Schweitzer Fellow
Mark Dixon – Filmmaker, videographer, photographer, and media consultant at Blue Lens
Rob Pfaffman, AIA, AICP – PFAFFMANN + ASSOCIATES
Brian Wolovich – Millvale Community Library
Stephen Cooper – Winchester Thurston North Hills Campus, Outdoor Education Coordinator, School Nurse, & PE Department
Christian Hughes – Kingsley Association, Drafting Dreams

Managing Uncertainty: The New Economics of the Power Industry

Wednesday, February 17
7:00 pm
Yost Auditorium, Burnett Center - Washington & Jefferson College, 60 S. Lincoln St., Washington, PA 15301
More information and Registration
PA, WV, and OH CLE credit is available for attorneys; W&J will provide certificates of completion of Professional Development Hours for applicable registrants.

Featured Speakers:
Dianne Anderson
Former Executive Director , Great Lakes Institute for Energy Innovation, Case Western Reserve University

Gregory F. Reed, Ph.D.
Director of Center for Energy and of the Electric Power Initiative; Professor at Swanson School of Engineering, U. of Pittsburgh

Energy experts will examine the issues that must be resolved to arrive at a new business model for the generation and delivery of electricity. The ultimate question is who is going to pay for the modern grid that we need? How do we set up the right incentives for those investments? Do we need to create new regulatory frameworks?

Green Power Boot Camps Coming to PA

Friday, March 4
12:30 pm - 4:30 pm, lunch provided
Carnegie Mellon University
More information and Registration

This workshop, held in association with the Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium (PERC), will help participants develop an integrated renewable energy strategy, including both on-site and off-site approaches. Learn how to pull back the curtain on project economics, engage internal decision-makers, and navigate the marketplace of renewable energy options, with a deep dive on contracting power purchase agreements from high-impact, large-scale, off-site renewable energy projects. The workshop is part of the Green Gigawatt Partnership, which is designed to catalyze at least one gigawatt of new renewable energy in higher education by 2020.

The workshop will include:
- Overview of trends in renewable energy
- Primer on power purchase agreements
- Case studies from higher education
- Ways to manage GHG accounting associated with PPAs
- Opportunity to join AASHE’s Green Gigawatt Partnership, which provides no-cost assistance that will get you all the way to an executed PPA

All organizations are invited to attend.

Livability Solutions Green Infrastructure Workshop

Monday, March 7
10:00 am - 2:00 pm
The Pittsburgh Project, 2801 N. Charles Street, Pittsburgh 15214
Free; lunch provided
More information and registration

Please join GTECH and One Northside for a technical workshop on Green Infrastructure Tools presented by the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT). Topics will include quantifying co-benefits of green infrastructure with the Green Infrastructure Valuation Guide and how to cost-effectively scale up green infrastructure with the Green Portfolio Standard.

Audience: Non-profits, public agencies, municipalities, community groups, and anyone else that is interested in green stormwater infrastructure.

Energy Week!

March 14-18, 2016
Carnegie Mellon University
Agenda
More information and registration

Carnegie Mellon’s Scott Institute for Energy Innovation invites you to attend its first Energy Week! This five-day celebration is designed to inform government, nongovernmental organizations, business and industry leaders; faculty and students; and the general public about energy research, policy, innovation, education, and activities both at Carnegie Mellon and elsewhere in the region. Each day of Energy Week has a theme: energy research, policy, innovation, education (including an Energy Tech Expo), and Field Trips.

EE Capacity in Pennsylvania

Wednesday, March 16
8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Registration is included on the 2016 Conference Registration Form under Wednesday workshops. There is a $15 fee to cover the cost of lunch.
This event is part of the PA Association of Environmental Educators 2016 Conference.
More information and registration
Full PAEE Conference Schedule

The focus of EE Capacity is to promote diversity in educators (both formal and non-formal) and audiences to broaden environmental education opportunities in Pennsylvania. This approach to diversity is to embrace and include independent and distinct backgrounds and experiences of individuals and communities to work together to cultivate connections to the environment leading to personal and environmental prosperity.

At this meeting, organizers will review our strategic plan and accomplishments in 2015, and give an overview of the five EE Capacity projects for 2016. If you’re interested in learning how you or your organization can work to promote diversity, PAEE wants you to join the conversation as part of PAEE's Community of Learners.

Building Wellness: Creating Healthier Homes, Hospitals, and Offices with Microbiology

Tuesday, April 5
4:30 pm Lecture; 5:30 pm Cocktail Reception
William Pitt Union Ballroom, 3959 Fifth Avenue, Oakland
Register online by March 25 at engineering.pitt.edu/heinzlecture
Questions? Email mcsi@pitt.edu

The Heinz Distinguished Lecture Series, Featuring: Jessica Green

Jessica Green is an Alec and Kay Keith Professor fob Biology at the University of Oregon and professor at the Santa Fe Institute. She is also the co-founder and CTO of Phylagen.

Resources

Energy Innovation

Energy Innovation (EI) is a biweekly newsletter of the Energy for the Power of 32 initiative. It features news and events that are accelerating sustainable development for the power of 32. View the latest edition of EI using the link below.

Subscribe to Energy Innovation.

How Major Investors Are Anticipating the Risks of Climate Change

The action to minimise the possibility of stranded assets has taken the form of divestment and engagement: . . . Nonetheless, outright divestment is only one way to deflate the growing carbon bubble; it's a single jigsaw piece in a larger puzzle. Another equally important approach is to entice companies to move into the direction of a low-carbon economy by impacting the way they do business. The UK-based Hermes Investment Management, one of the leading engagement firms, uses smart data from South Pole Group to bring up climate strategy topics with their investees. Toronto-based research firm Corporate Knights goes one step further: together with strategic partners, the company recently launched the 'Decarbonizer' platform, enabling anyone to easily determine the impact a divestment from fossil fuels three years ago would have had on fund or index performance. Using this metric, the platform found that the Gates Foundation would have been USD 1.9bn better off if it had divested from fossil fuels.

More

Virginia launches program to remove politics from transportation investment decisions

This week Virginia DOT released a list of recommended projects across the state, the result of a new process to objectively screen and score transportation projects based on their anticipated benefits.

It may not sound like big news that a state has carefully measured the results it expects from billions of dollars in capital investments. Unfortunately, nearly all states rely instead on byzantine funding formulas and decades-old project lists, rather than measurable return-on-investment, to award funds for highway and transit projects. That means that this common sense change is a big one for the transportation system.

Bloomberg appoints top executives to climate risk task force

Urgent reform of climate risk reporting took a significant step forward yesterday with the appointment of leading executives from firms including Unilever, AXA, BlackRock and JP Morgan as members of the new Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, established by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) last month. . . With the likes of Exxon Mobil coming under increasing pressure to improve transparency in the wake of Paris, the work of the task force will be a key focus for many in the financial sector over the coming months. It remains to be seen what recommendations it will issue, but many will be hoping it delivers the clarity and consistency currently lacking in the sector.

Status and Trends in the U.S. Voluntary Green Power Market

The voluntary or “green power” market is that in which consumers and institutions voluntarily purchase renewable energy to match all or part of their electricity needs. Voluntary action provides a revenue stream for renewable energy projects and raises consumer awareness of the benefits of renewable energy. There are numerous ways consumers and institutions can purchase renewable energy.

Historically, the voluntary market has consisted of three market sectors: (1) utility green pricing programs (typically in states with regulated electricity markets), (2) competitive suppliers (in states with restructured electricity markets), and (3) unbundled renewable electricity certificate (REC) markets, where RECs are purchased by consumers separately from electricity (“unbundled”).

Some new purchasing options such as community solar and power purchase agreements (PPAs) are providing a hedge against future electricity price increases or other benefits. However these new purchasing options do not always provide the environmental benefit to the customer (i.e., the REC is transferred to another party), which can cause confusion about what constitutes a “green power” option.

This report covers the following purchasing options: utility green pricing, competitive suppliers, voluntary unbundled RECs, community choice aggregation (CCA), community solar, PPAs, and large commercial green power rates (or “green tariffs”). The voluntary market overall continued to exhibit growth in 2014, though growth varied by purchasing option.

China Raises $3B in First Domestic Green Bond Sale

Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Co. raised 20 billion yuan ($3 billion) in China's first domestic green bond offer tied to support for clean energy and environmental protection. . . The value of outstanding green bonds may almost double this year to as much as $158 billion as the niche product used to fund projects tackling climate change starts to become mainstream.

State board OKs new oil and gas regulations

The updates to the rules are wide-ranging, with a particular focus on adding protections for public resources that might be disrupted by drilling, ensuring that new wells don’t intersect with abandoned ones, setting stricter standards for waste handling and cleanup, and requiring that damaged drinking water supplies are restored to a safe quality or better.

Houston Mayor Calls for “Paradigm Shift” Away From Highway Widening

The Katy Freeway, or Interstate 10 west of Houston, is the widest freeway in the world, with up to 26 lanes including frontage road lanes. The 2008 widening had a significant impact on the adjacent businesses and communities. Yet, despite all these lanes, in 2015 the section of this freeway near Beltway 8 was identified as the 8th most congested roadway in the state. This was only 7 years after being reconstructed! This example, and many others in Houston and around the state, have clearly demonstrated that the traditional strategy of adding capacity, especially single occupant vehicle capacity on the periphery of our urban areas, exacerbates urban congestion problems. These types of projects are not creating the kind of vibrant, economically strong cities that we all desire.

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Sustainable Pittsburgh affects decision-making in the Pittsburgh Region to integrate economic prosperity, social equity and environmental quality bringing sustainable solutions to communities and businesses.

Sustainable Pittsburgh benefits from support ($1,000 and up) in 2016 from:


Alcoa Foundation
ALCOSAN
Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
The Heinz Endowments
Elsie H. Hillman Foundation
Henry L. Hillman Foundation
Richard King Mellon Foundation
Pashek Associates, LTD
UPMC


Special thanks to the SP Members

Sustainable Pittsburgh
307 Fourth Avenue, Suite 1500
Pittsburgh, PA 15222
(412) 258-6642
fax (412) 258-6645
E-mail SP