GreenSpaces

Archive for January, 2009

Financial Express – Barack Obama’s Green Master Plan

Tuesday, January 27th, 2009

Barack Obama’s Green Master Plan

by Rajiv Tikoo, Financial Express, January 26, 2009

WHEN Barack Obama talked about harnessing renewables in his presidential address, he was summing up the agenda of his new green deal for an energy secure United States unveiled during his election campaign.

The New Energy for America plan provides for an investment of $150 billion over ten years to fuel private endeavours in clean energy, generate five million green jobs, do away with imports from the Middle East and Venezuela, generate 10% electricity from renewables by 2012, deploy 1 million US-made plug-in hybrids by 2015, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions 80% by 2050 and make the US a leader on climate change…

Read the full article here

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Clean air can help add 5 months to your life, study says

Saturday, January 24th, 2009

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Want to Live Longer? Cut the Pollution
By Tiffany Sharples, TIME, Jan. 22, 2009

Nobody pretends that polluted air isn’t terrible for your health. Clean up the skies over any dirty city, and the people who live there will all but certainly become healthier. That, at least, has been popular wisdom, but until now, no one had ever put it to a statistical test. Now someone has, and the results are striking: according to a study just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, when local governments decide to scrub out the smog, local residents actually live an average of five months longer.

“It’s very reassuring,” says Dr. Douglas Dockery, one of the study’s three authors and an environmental epidemiologist at Harvard’s School of Public Health. “We can see some benefits from the regulations of air pollution that have been put in place in the past 20 to 30 years.”

In order to reach so precise a finding, the study’s authors had to do some exhaustive number-crunching, surveying pollution rates and longevity in 51 cities across the U.S. over a 21-year period from 1979 to 2000. Overall, they found that lifespan in all of the areas increased by an average of nearly three years — from 74 to 77 — as a result of a host of factors, most notably reduced smoking and improved income. But 15% of the change was attributable to cleaner air.

Read rest of the article here | Read the New England Journal of Medicine Report

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Express Hospitality: GreenSpaces looks for hotel companies to manage facility

Thursday, January 8th, 2009

GreenSpaces looks for hotel companies to manage acco facility, spa

by Sanjeev Bhar, Express Hospitality (Fortnightly Insight for the Hospitality Trade), January 2009

GreenSpaces, the erstwhile Haryana Technology Park, spread across 1,60,000 square metres, is actively looking fto enter into partnership with hotel companies to manage the accommodation facility and spa that has been planned in the GOI-approved SEZ expected to be operational by May 2011.

The SEZ will be the first one to be USGCB LEED-certified Platinum-rated project (apart from having TERI’s Green ‘Griha’ building rating). This will be the first time when an existing building will be given this rating, Meattle said. GreenSpaces will be a health-oriented SEZ and will be managed by various companies with expertise in various domains. “We are in talks with certain hotel management companies to manage the residential accommodations having 100 rooms for business travelers. I don’t refer to it as a hotel since the accommodation will be availed by people who are working within the SEZ. Also, we would like to have an operating company to manage the health club and spa,” he said.

Read the full article here

President-elect Barack Obama speaks about retrofitting buildings to make them energy efficient

Wednesday, January 7th, 2009

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From TIME Magazine’s interview with Person of the Year President-elect Barack Obama:

More than ever, I think, a wholesale investment in transforming our economy — from retrofitting buildings so that they’re energy-efficient to changing our transportation patterns and thinking about how to rebuild our electricity grid — those are all things that we’re going to need now more than ever.

And then the final thing, just to round out my Happy List, is climate change. All the indicators are that this is happening faster than even the most pessimistic scientists were anticipating a couple of years ago. It is going to require an enormous effort on the part of the global community to deal with it. And it is not going to come without cost. Trying to bring about that transformation — which I think offers huge opportunities for economic growth and job creation over the long term, but will entail some costs in the short term — you know, that’s the hardest thing to do in politics, right? To make big investments in things that have long-term payoffs.

Read the entire TIME interview here.

Photo credit: BohPhoto