How a Children’s Playground Is Helping With Flood Mitigation in a Small, Historic New Jersey City
September 28th, 2024
Courtesy of Inside Climate News, a look at how flood-prone Hoboken, New Jersey, has opened a play area for its youngest residents that also doubles as storage for stormwater runoff. For a city that’s almost small enough to fit inside Manhattan’s Central Park just a few miles away, Hoboken, New Jersey, has seen a lot […]
Read more »Baltimore Is Investing in Wetlands Restoration, a Climate Line of Defense
September 28th, 2024
Via Inside Climate News, a report on wetlands restoration and shoreline rehabilitation efforts in South Baltimore which promise to make communities resilient against climate change and severe weather while spawning new green spaces. Scientists say it’s a new science that needs careful and closer scrutiny. Brad Rogers and Brett Berkley stepped carefully on the gravel […]
Read more »How Germany Outfitted Half A Million Balconies With Solar Panels
September 27th, 2024
Via Grist, an article on balkonkraftwerk, the simple technology putting solar power in the hands of German renters: Matthias Weyland loves having people ask about his balcony. A pair of solar panels hang from the railing, casting a sheen of dark blue against the red brick of his apartment building. They’re connected to a microinverter […]
Read more »See-Through Solar Cells That Soak Up The Sun
September 25th, 2024
Via Anthropocene Magazine, a look at see-through solar cells that could he new design offers a glimpse of a future in which building facades or even windows could harness sunlight for electricity: Researchers have made near-transparent solar cells that are efficient enough to charge a phone battery. The advance, published in the journal Proceedings of the […]
Read more »Europe’s Heat Pumps Put America’s to Shame
September 25th, 2024
Via The Atlantic, a look at Europe’s heat pump adoption and trajectory: In the United States, home heat pumps have been gaining traction (and government subsidies) as highly energy-efficient replacements for gas-fired boilers and furnaces. They vary in size, but most of the units being hyped by environmentalists and installed nationwide measure just a few […]
Read more »A Chicken In Every Pot, A Battery In Every Garage?
September 24th, 2024
Via Steel for Fuel, commentary on the growth in residential battery storage: Today’s chart comes from Sunrun’s August investor presentation: In the span of a single year year, the share of Sunrun’s rooftop solar customers who opted to “attach” a battery system tripled. Notes: Sunrun points out that there is extremely high geographic variation behind these numbers. […]
Read more »'Black Swans' are highly improbable events that come as a surprise, have major disruptive effects, and that are often rationalized after the fact as if they had been predictable to begin with. In our rapidly warming world, such events are occurring ever more frequently and include wildfires, floods, extreme heat, and drought.
'Green Shoots' is a term used to describe signs of economic recovery or positive data during a downturn. It references a period of growth and recovery, when plants start to show signs of health and life, and, therefore, has been employed as a metaphor for a recovering economy.
It is my hope that Black Swans / Green Shoots will help readers understand both climate-activated risk and opportunity so that you may invest in, advise, or lead organizations in the context of increasing pressures of global urbanization, resource scarcity, and perils relating to climate change. I believe that the tools of business and finance can help individuals, businesses, and global society make informed choices about who and what to protect, and I hope that this blog provides some insight into the policy and private sector tools used to assess investments in resilient reinforcement, response, or recovery.