Green Roof Resource

Weak commitments to CO2 reductions by Germany were reported today by BBC News. The deadline for reporting commitments to reductions as part of the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme is Friday, but many countries will not make the deadline. It is expected that Germany will reduce CO2 emissions by only 0.6% between 2004 and 2012. Under Kyoto, Germany has pledged to reduce emissions by 21% below 1990 levels. As of last year, the EU-15 have only reduced CO2 emissions by 0.9% below 1990 levels. The current rate of reduction is far short of what is needed to meet the commitment.

Growing concern over excessive CO2 emisisons has lead to a US Supreme court case. On Monday, the court agreed to hear arguments on whether the EPA is required to regulate CO2 as part of the Clean Air Act. According to the article in the NYT, more than ten states, three cities, and several environmental groups sued in 1999. In 2003, the EPA refused to regulate as neither the CAA nor the amendments in 1970 or 1990 call out CO2 as a pollutant.

If we can’t agree on whether to reduce CO2 or if we reduce by how much, we may be looking for innovative ways to cool the planet. So far, the ideas ranging from giant sunshades that orbit the earth to large, white islands in the oceans to increase reflectivity have been met with skepticism.

McGraw-Hill is launching a new magazine to focus on green buildings, GreenSource. The green building market (including residential green building) is expected to grow to a 60 billion dollar industry by 2010. McGraw-Hill Construction is hoping to become the premier information source for the industry. Related magazines under McGraw-Hill include Architectural Record and Engineering News-Record. GreenSource will be the publication for the USGBC and developed with the assistance of BuildingGreen, publishers of Environmental Building News.

Earlier this month I was in Vienna, Austria to present at a conference on city surfaces. “Towards the City Surface of Tomorrow” focused on emissions from city surfaces and included some discussion on methods to reduce emission flows from surfaces. I attended as green roofs are a city surface technology that can reduce emissions to air and water.

While there were not many talks addressing solutions to diffuse emissions, I did learn more about roof surfaces and how roofs contribute to diffuse pollution. In Europe there are a greater percentage of metal roofs than there are in the United States. As a result, European cities are concerned with metals in stormwater runoff due to rooftop corrosion. While flashings are made of metal, the majority of roofs in the US are bitumen based. Therefore, stormwater runoff in the US can accumulate concentrations of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) from roof or road runoff.  Many cities are challenged with managing stormwater, but specific environmental problems such as pollutant loads may be regional.