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climate change as opportunity・developing economic value through investments in resilience

From a Dutch mind-set, climate change is neither a hypothetical , nor a drag on the economy, nor an ideology. For the people of the Netherlands climate change is an opportunity – to let water in, where possible, to live with water rather than struggle to defeat it – with added economic value developed through investing in resilience.

People in the Netherlands believe that the places with the most people and the most to lose economically should get the most protection.

To the Dutch, what’s truly incomprehensible is New York after Hurricane Sandy, where too little has been done to prepare for the next disaster.

The idea that a global economic hub like Lower Manhattan flooded during Hurricane Sandy, costing the public billions of dollars, yet still has so few protections, dumbfounds climate experts in the Netherlands.

See:

“The Dutch Have Solutions to Rising Seas. The World is Watching” | Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times, 15 June 2017

#climatechange #realestate #resilience #Rotterdam #investments #economicvalue

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Apple issues second green bond, a $1 billion bond to finance renewable energy & closed-loop supply chain

Yesterday Apple issued its second “green bond”, a $1 billion bond dedicated to financing renewable energy, energy efficiency at Apple facilities and throughout its supply change, to close its supply chain loop, and procure safer materials for its products. 

The bond offering includes a specific focus on helping Apple meet a goal of

  • developing a closed-loop supply chain and
  • using only renewable resources or recycled material in the manufacture of its products.

The bond is to mature in 2027 and will yield 95 to 100 basis points more than Treasuries. Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. arranged the sale.

Investors are seeking lower-carbon investments. Demand for green bonds is growing significantly.

According to the Climate Bonds Initiative, in 2016 $81 billion of green bonds were issued. This is double the number of green bonds that were issued in 2015.

See:

“Apple Issues a Second Green Bond to Finance Clean Energy” | Alex Webb, Bloomberg, 13 June 2017

“Apple issues $1 billion green bond after Trump’s Paris climate exit” | by Valerie Volcovici, Reuters, 13 June 2017

Climate Bonds Initiative | “Climate Bonds Initiative is an international, investor-focused not-for-profit. We’re the only organisation working solely on mobilising the $100 trillion bond market for climate change solutions.”

#Apple #finance #greenbond #GoldmanSachs #BankofAmerica #JPMorganChase #renewableenergy #cleanenergy #investments #bondmarket #climatechange #climatechangesolutions

 

 

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clean air & energy | no longer infinite commodities?

“My generation, as a baby-boomer, looks at clean air and energy as infinite commodities. The generation coming up looks at it totally differently.”

Tony Milikin, Chief Sustainability Officer, Anheuser-Busch InBev

Some American firms are taking climate change so seriously that they are surprising even former critics.

Such commitment includes energy-efficiency measures and new wind and solar projects that companies are helping to build around the world.

Rather than buy the bulk of their power from utilities, which can rarely guarantee 100% clean energy to their customers, companies are using power-purchase agreements (PPAs). Through PPAs companies sign long-term contracts to buy clean electricity at agreed prices from firms that develop solar and wind farms.

See:

“Big business sees the promise of clean energy” | The Economist, 10 June 2017

#PPA #powerpurchaseagreement #energy #cleanenergy #windenergy #solarenergy #cleanelectricity #AnheuserBusch

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Market Solutions for Environmental Challenges

Goldman Sachs today signed a long-term Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, LLC.

The agreement will enable the investment and development of a new 68 megawatt wind project in Pennsylvania. The wind project is expected to facilitate up to 150 construction jobs and, once operational, result in the reduction of more than 200,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year.

Goldman Sachs reiterates its commitment to market solutions for environmental challenges.

 “We are committed to being a leader in the development of renewable energy. By enabling this new wind project to come online, the agreement will help grow the renewable grid and contribute to the momentum behind a lower carbon economy.”

Lloyd C. Blankfein, chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs

The PPA with NextEra Energy Resources is a collaborative effort between Goldman Sachs’ commodities trading group (J. Aron) and its Corporate Services and Real Estate department.

Goldman Sachs has achieved its carbon neutrality commitment. The company is working towards achieving its goal of 100 percent power for its global electricity needs by the year 2020.

Goldman Sachs is a member of the RE100 initiative, “the world’s most influential companies, committed to 100% renewable power.”

See:

“Goldman Sachs Signs Long-Term Power Purchase Agreement to Spur Renewable Energy Growth and Jobs” | Press Release, 12 June 2017

“Our Operational Impact” | Goldman Sachs Environmental Stewardship

RE100

#realestate #resilience #cleanpower #renewableenergy #windenergy #PPA #GoldmanSachs #tech #greenhousegasemissions #climatechange #market #marketsolutions

 

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Downtown San Diego | early morning vistas

Early morning vistas.

San Diego is, indeed, beautiful and has what is widely acknowledged as one of the best, if not the best, micro-climate in the United States. Very Mediterranean.

Why “tech”, that I appear to mention so often and that is taking root in the downtown San Diego economic eco-system?

“Tech,” in my mind, is no more than information gathering, processing, analyzing, reporting, and using, with certain questions asked (by people), the questions usually having to do with certain industries (art, finance, transport, design, building and construction, chemistry, physics, aerospace engineering, entertainment, etc.).

Sort of like groups of individual Marines gathering, processing and using information, on steroids.

Why pay attention to tech in downtown San Diego? Some of these companies have just appeared downtown, willy nilly, not according to the city plan. People in the tech industry generally speaking make more money than those working in the hospitality industry (housekeeping, serving tables, etc.). It is money generated here rather than earned elsewhere and brought here by visitors, tourists, and buyers of second or third homes.

 

#SanDiego #downtownSanDiego #realestate #resilience #art #tech #technology #finance #urbanliving #urbanluxury

 

 

 

 

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a ‘mainstream’ approach to ESG | finding the “metrics that matter”

Goldman Sachs highlights “the metrics that matter, a ‘mainstream’ approach to ESG.”

Seeking to identify companies with long-term growth potential, Derek Bingham of Goldman Sachs Research’s GS SUSTAIN team and his colleagues study which sustainability measures most closely align with returns over time.

Investors can improve their risk analysis and returns, he says, by identifying sustainability metrics that offer hard data (e.g., resource efficiency for a metals company, employee turnover for an investment bank) that correlate with a company’s long-term stock performance.

There is an opportunity for portfolio managers to identify which ESG metrics matter most and invest accordingly.

Bingham recommends a “holistic view” and discourages the “silo” effect.

Listen to the Goldman Sachs podcast Episode 63: The Metrics that Matter – A ‘Mainstream’ Approach to ESG”

#GoldmanSachs #ESG #riskanalysis #investmentreturns #resilience #data #metrics #finance #longtermgrowth

“Episode 63: The Metrics that Matter – A ‘Mainstream’ Approach to ESG” | Derek Bingham, GS SUSTAIN, Goldman Sachs Research, & Jake Siewert, Global Head of Corporate Communications, Podcast: ‘Exchanges at Goldman Sachs,’ recorded 2 May 2017

 

 

 

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Benchmarks | the movingly beautiful tracings of El Anatsui’s work

Now on exhibit at London’s October Gallery, Benchmarks are a testament to the richness and elegance of El Anatsui’s creative genius.

A graduate of Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Kumasi, Ghana, El Anatsui not only believes that, as an artist, he must work ‘with whatever his environment throws up,’ he is passionately curious about the physical history of the materials themselves, the stories they contain and the journeys that bring them into his hands.

The journey countless numbers of bottle tops, several bags of which were eventually discarded by a local liquor shop and happened upon by El Anatsui, have taken along the ways of West African trade inspired his iconic and elegant bottle-top installations and hangings.

Made from thousands of aluminium bottle-tops wired together with copper, the humble materials from which the cloth-like metallic masterpieces are made are embedded with multiple cultural, historical, and socio-political histories. El Anatsui draws out and reframes the stories and journeys behind these histories with the incredible skill, mastery, and grace of a master storyteller and creative genius.

Turning his attention to the tables and smaller flats of wood on which these  countless numbers of bottle tops were pounded, crushed, folded, and pierced as they journeyed and were transformed into works of art, El Anatsui has created the prints which he has, in one of his many moments of genius, entitled “Benchmarks”.

The tables and flats, that after so much pounding manifest a landscape of textured relief, were brought to the studio of Factum Arte, a team of artists, technicians and conservators based in Madrid, London, and Milan. Well known for its synergy of past, present and future techniques, Factum Arte is dedicated to digital mediation – both in the production of works for contemporary artists and in the production of facsimiles as part of a coherent approach to preservation and dissemination, and, much like El Anatsui artistically investigating the journeys and histories of local materials, pushes the boundaries between technology and craft.

At Factum Arte, the tables and flats were

3-D scanned at a very high resolution, routed onto aluminium plates and then printed through an etching press. Black ink was used to access the textural information held both in the intaglio and on the surface; others were worked upon in colour, while others still with chine collé laminates. The artist played with endless combinations and permutations of the resulting prints to create the syntheses

that he calls “Benchmarks” and are now on exhibit at October Gallery.

For one particularly direct work, coloured ink was laboriously dabbed onto dampened Japanese paper overlaying a large and highly textured tabletop, producing a detailed relief print that bears witness to many years of accumulated mark-making.

Genius at work at the interface and interactions of culture, histories, materials, science, technology, trade, media, work, art, and craft. So moving and so amazingly beautiful.

See:

“El Anatsui’s Landmark ‘Benchmark’ Prints at October Gallery” | Nicholas Forrest, BlouinArtinfo, 27 April 2017

Benchmarks: New Prints by El Anatsui | Exhibition at October Gallery, London, 6 May – 13 April 2017

Factum Arte

#ElAnatsui #OctoberGallery #art #materialsscience #technology #FactumArte #prints #bottletops #Japanesepaper #3Dscans

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MIT Media Lab’s paradigm shifting Digital Construction Platform

MIT Media Lab Mediated Matter group researchers realize a paradigm shift in architectural design, construction, and thinking with the Digital Construction Platform (DCP): custom, individualized buildings computationally grown and additively manufactured using on-site environmental data.

The Digital Construction Platform is a single, multi-dimensional system into which data gathering, analysis, design, architecture, and construction have been integrated.

The Digital Construction Platform (system) is operated electrically (photovoltaic charging is discussed), is free moving, and can be used to design and digitally construct, from locally available materials, multi-functional structures of any size in a single build.

Internal structure can be modified in new ways. Different materials can be incorporated and material density varied as design and construction proceeds to provide optimal combinations of strength, insulation, or other properties.

Benefits of structures built with this system include speed to market, less cost, and customization to the requirements of the site and the objectives of the maker.

Designed to be self-sufficient, the platform can be adapted to existing building sites, equipment, and building codes without requiring whole new evaluations.

Data about the site is collected using built-in sensors for temperature, light, and other parameters. This data is used in the design process and to make adjustments to the structure as it is built.

The use of on-site environmental data has many benefits. Data from sources such as derived ground-penetrating radar analysis of the site enables the placement of supporting pillars, for instance, in optimal locations.

On-site environmental data can also be used in the design of walls.

  • The walls may have varying thicknesses depending on their orientation. Thicker, more insulated walls can be built on the north side of buildings in cold climates
  • The walls may be configured to respond to local wind conditions. A relatively simple, yet entirely sophisticated, feature  such as a curve in the walls may help the structure withstand wind
  • The walls may be designed and built to respond to load-bearing requirements. Like columns, walls may taper from bottom to top as load-bearing requirements decrease.

The Digital Construction Platform features a scoop and a tracked vehicle that carries a large, industrial, precision-controlled robotic arm with a smaller, precision-motion robotic arm at its end.

Sourcing and use of local materials is discussed. The platform’s scoop could acquire local materials for the construction. The scoop would be used concurrently to prepare the building surface.

The precision-controlled arm can be used to direct both a conventional and non-conventional construction nozzle. The nozzles can be used to pour concrete and spray insulation material, can be adapted to vary the density of the material being poured, and can mix different materials as construction proceeds.

The precision-controlled robotic arm would also be used to direct additional digital fabrication and effectors, such as a milling head.

The platform embodies a shift not only in design and construction paradigms but a paradigm shift also in our thinking about buildings – from a “machine to live in, made of standardized parts” to “the building as an organism, computationally grown, additively manufactured, possibly biologically augmented.”

“‘The construction industry is still mostly doing things the way it has for hundreds of years. The buildings are rectilinear, mostly built from single materials, put together with saws and nails,’ and mostly built from standardized plans.”

Steven Keating PhD ’16, mechanical engineering graduate and former research affiliate in the Mediated Matter group at the MIT Media Lab. He led the development of the system as his doctoral thesis work.

From an architectural perspective the project “challenges traditional building typologies such as walls, floors, or windows, and proposes that a single system could be fabricated using the DCP that can vary its properties continuously to create wall-like elements that continuously fuse into windows.”

Neri Oxman, MIT Media Lab Mediated Matter group director and associate professor of media arts and sciences.

The robotic system is described in the journal Science Robotics (26 April 2017) in a paper entitled “Toward site-specific and self-sufficient robotic fabrication on architectural scales” by Steven Keating PhD ’16, a mechanical engineering graduate and former research affiliate in the Mediated Matter group at the MIT Media Lab; Julian Leland and Levi Cai, both research assistants in the Mediated Matter group; and Neri Oxman, group director and associate professor of media arts and sciences.

See:

“System Can 3D Print an Entire Building” | Science Daily, 26 April 2017

“MIT Develops a System Than Can 3D Print the Basic Structure of an Entire Building” | SciTechDaily.com, 27 April 2017, Source: David L. Chandler, MIT News

Publication: Steven J. Keating, et al., “Toward site-specific and self-sufficient robotic fabrication on architectural scales,” Science Robotics 26 Apr 2017:Vol. 2, Issue 5, eaam8986; DOI: 10.1126/scirobotics.aam8986

#architecture #design #construction #tech #realestate #resilience #smartluxury #art #MIT #MITMediaLab #3Dprinting

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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smart luxury | private museums & the sharing of art & knowledge

“We wish to share and interact with more people and encourage our friends to share their collections too. Only thus we can grow and learn from each other.”

Wanwan Lei and Li Han of Beijing share their motivation for opening their collection to the public through the establishment of a private art museum.

Larry’s List predicts that private museums,  70% of which have been founded since the year 2000 and whose resources and funding do not rely on public support, will increasingly cooperate with each other in the future.

Networks have been founded to increase partnerships between private museums in support of the loaning of works of art, the presentation of traveling exhibitions, and the sharing of knowledge.

See:

“Private Art Museum Report” | Larry’s List, December 2015

“Larry’s List is launching the Private Art Pass 2017 – The Ultimate Privilege Card for the Art World” | Larry’s List

#art #collections #collectors #privatemuseums #realestate #resilience #finance #smartluxury #luxury #urbanluxury

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urban luxury | crisis & opportunity

Urbanist Richard Florida posits a “new urban crisis.” He defines the new urban crisis as the “back-to-the-city movement of the affluent and the educated.”

The New Urban Crisis is a “fundamental feature of larger, denser, richer, more high-tech, more creative-class cities and metro areas.”

A central contradiction stands at the heart of today’s urbanized form of knowledge capitalism writ large. The very same clustering of talent, business, and economic capability in large, dense, knowledge-based places also carves deep divisions into our cities and society.

In next posts, we’ll work to de-code Professor Florida’s thinking, the term “urban crisis,” and the state and economies of our cities.

“Crisis” may point towards opportunity. Opportunity both on the individual level for reflection, growth, learning, and change and for collaborative work amongst individuals, companies, and institutions towards creative solutions.

See:

“Mapping the New Urban Crisis” | Richard Florida, CityLab, 13 April 2017

#urbanluxury #smartluxury #luxury #resilience #realestate #education #urbancrisis #urbanism