EcoGeek has a post on New York's new bike share program - New York City Bike Share Program Will Have 10,000 Bikes, 600 Stations.

Last year, we heard that New York City was considering a huge bike sharing program and now it's becoming a reality. New details have been released about the program and it's just as big as had been hoped. There will be about 600 stations with 10,000 bikes and the program could be up and running by next summer.

The stations will be widespread, covering the Upper East and West sides all the way down to the tip of Manhattan and then across the East River into Brooklyn as far as Greenpoint and Crown Heights.

The city has chosen Alta Bike Share to install and operate the system. Alta operates bike share programs in Washington, D.C., Boston and Portland, but the New York system will dwarf those systems by a few thousand bikes, making it the largest in the country. Above is a video featuring the Capital Bikeshare program in D.C.

The program will allow for 24-hour, multi-day or annual subscriptions as well as shorter rentals charged by the half-hour. Monthly subscriptions will be cheaper than a monthly MetroCard.

Solve Climate reports that New York has launched a web site providing “3-D maps which enable any building owner to go online and find out how much sunlight hits their roofs" - New York City Is Latest to Launch Solar Mapping Tool for Building Owners.

Since March 2008, when San Francisco first put its map a click away from interested citizens, solar photovoltaic (PV) installations in the city have tripled, from 700 to 2,100 this year. "[It] is the main solar outreach tool used in San Francisco," said Danielle Murray, the city's renewable energy program manager.

That may be so, but many observers say the City by the Bay's rooftop solar boom has been largely driven by California's tiered rate system, in which electricity bills rise as people use more power. And, according to Murray, the solar map has averaged a less-than-arresting 70 hits a day since debuting — though she insists this figure belies the project's impact.

Seventeen other U.S. cities and the German city of Osnabrük have published solar maps on the Web since San Francisco's site went live, enabling home and building owners to assess the potential of their roofs to generate clean electricity.

The map combines aerial images with calculators and other features to provide owners with facts and figures needed when considering whether to purchase a PV system, such as the pitch of the roof and the amount of shade cast by neighboring buildings.

Inhabitat has a post on a rooftop farm in New York - Brooklyn Grange: World’s Largest Rooftop Farm Kicks Off Second Growing Season.

The second growing season is in full swing for the rooftop urban farmers at Brooklyn Grange. Located atop a six-story 1919 warehouse, the 40,000 square foot organic rooftop farm built by Bromley Caldari Architects is believe to be the largest of its kind in the world! The almost 1-acre farm is an oasis surrounded by little greenery and lots of concrete in Queens at 37-18 Northern Boulevard. After a successful first growing and selling season that began last spring, the farmers at Brooklyn Grange are continuing their production of organic produce that includes 40 varietals of juicy tomatoes, peppers, fennel, salad greens, kale, swiss chard, beans of all sorts and a variety of delicious root vegetables like beets, carrots, and radishes, as well as plenty of herbs. ...

Brooklyn Grange‘s organic produce is grown in 7.5” deep beds with Rooflite soil. Produced by Pennsylvania soil company Skyland, Rooflite is a lightweight soil composed of organic matter compost and small porous stones which break down to add trace minerals that are needed for the produce to grow into a healthy and mature state. The use of organic soil means that everything produced by Brooklyn Grange is sustainable and good for you. The farm had a nine-month growing season last year, and during the winter, they used cover-crops such as rye, buckwheat, vetch, and clove, resulting in a year-round production of organic goodness right in the heart of NYC.

Grist has a post on a plan by New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg to cover landfills with solar panels (part of the trend to using brownfield sites in urban areas for solar power generation) - Bloomberg wants to cover New York City’s landfills with solar panels.

New York City's mayor Michael Bloomberg puts birds on things, if by "birds" you mean solar panels and "things" you mean the city’s myriad defunct landfills. The so-called greening of brownfields is a nationwide trend, since landfills and other plots of ruined land close to or even within cities are often not suitable for other applications.

You can't build houses on a capped landfill, and short of turning them into parks -- an expensive and, to some people, kinda gross proposition -- they have few applications. Solar panel installations, however, tend to be light-weight and require nothing more than open space. The closer renewable power plants are to the users of their electricity, the more efficient they are, because losses from transmission of their electricity are minimized. So urban brownfields that would otherwise go unused are uniquely suited to hosting large arrays of solar panels.

It's all part of the city's PlaNYC, an ambitious agenda to reduce the city's greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2012. The plan's 100-plus programs also include an energy efficiency corporation for helping building owners finance energy conservation measures, and a phase-out of the dirtiest heating oils.

The SMH has an article on the increasing popularity of cycling in New York City - Wheels are in motion.

The decision to bring my bike with me when I relocated to New York City a year ago was more out of sentimentality than a belief that I'd be pedalling much. In fact, on previous visits I thought it was madness to cycle these streets, congested with cabs and cars, trucks and buses and pedestrians. A year on, I never imagined I'd have the chutzpah to cycle so much. But it's not me that's changed - New York is becoming a city that loves to cycle.

In the past six years, the number of cyclists in New York City has doubled. In the past four years, the number of people commuting to work by bike has increased by 45 per cent. And much is being done to accommodate them.

While walking down First Avenue near 64th Street - where bikes were once chained to parking metres, street signs and trees - I notice a proliferation of bike racks (four in one block). They're popping up all over the city; by late next year, 5000 racks will be installed in a program called CityRacks, which aims to encourage cycling for "commuting, short trips and errands".

In the past three years the Department of Transportation has built 320 kilometres of bike lanes across the city's five boroughs, taking the total to 1000 kilometres of bike paths, lanes and routes.

On 8th and 9th avenues and Broadway, the department has added North America's first protected on-street bike lanes, designed so the bike lanes are physically separated from motorised traffic. In fact, in recognition of the progress made to improve conditions for cyclists, the League of American Bicyclists designates New York as a "bike-friendly community" with the potential to become a great cycling city.

The New York City bike network is now a labyrinth of off-street bike lanes (dedicated paths), on-street bicycle lanes (painted green) and on-street bicycle routes (cycle with the traffic). They offer a rewarding and practical way to see New York, aided by the city's flat terrain and the grid system of streets that makes for easy navigating.

The NY Daily News reports that after years of delays, Verdant Power may finally start commercial operations next year - Choppy waters for turbines.

A PIONEER'S path is rarely easy. Just ask Trey Taylor of Verdant Power about his quest to turn the East River's turbulent tides into oil-free electricity.

Verdant's push to produce clean power by using large underwater turbines to harness the river's currents has been slowed by bureaucratic red tape and two major equipment breakdowns.

But those failures taught Verdant valuable lessons that have the company tantalizingly close to turning on the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. "Everything is learning as we go," said Taylor, who co-founded Verdant in 2000 and now serves as its president.

After years of testing, Verdant expects to establish a money-making tidal-power operation along the Queens shoreline by next year. That operation, which requires a federal license, would place 30 turbines in the East River's east channel between Queens and Roosevelt Island.

It would have the capacity to produce 1 megawatt of power - a portion of which may be sold to the MTA to power the subway system, Taylor said. For comparison, in peak summer months, the city uses about 11,500 megawatts at any given time, said Prof. Stephen Hammer, head of Columbia University's Urban Energy Project.

Starting in 2006, Verdant anchored six turbines in the east channel. Measuring 16 feet in diameter, the turbines operated for 9,000 hours, generating 80 megawatt hours of juice for a supermarket and parking garage on Roosevelt Island.

But in that time, two different turbine designs malfunctioned under the current's heavy pressure - providing initial setbacks but also important lessons.

Inhabitat has a post on a proposal to turn Governor's Island in New York into an eco-park - Governors Island Envisioned as Incredible Eco-Park.

New York’s Governor’s Island is set to receive an incredible set of renovations that will transform the 172-acre plot of decaying Coast Guard structures into a stunning eco-park. Designed by West 8, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Rogers Marvel Architects, the project is a hybrid of landscape and architecture based around a sinuous set of new paths, watercourses, restaurants, aquaria and even complimentary wooden bicycles. Slated for completion in 2012, the ambitious, new and improved Governors Island will incorporate a host of environmentally friendly features.

Wired has a post on a plan to introduce energy efficient LED streetlighting to New York city - Big City, Brighter Lights: Gotham's New LED Streetlamp Plan.

After half a century of walking their dogs under the same old streetlamps, New Yorkers are ready for a new age of enlightenment. Gotham's own Office for Visual Interaction won an international competition to design a replacement. Its inspiration: LED headlights. "We took the same idea and made it vertical," OVI's Enrique Peiniger says. The new lamppost's 4-to 6-foot head boasts up to 100 LEDs with multiple lenses that can be configured to dial in specific lighting "footprints" of uniform brightness. For New York, the coverage patterns will be tailored for three distinct situations—park, street corner, and mid-block.

How many workers will it take to change the bulbs? A lot fewer. LEDs last twice as long as the current high—pressure sodium bulbs. Oh, and they burn 30 percent less energy. Plus, the fixture's modular design makes it easy to swap out chips as LED technology improves. OVI is putting the finishing touches on its prototypes, and if tests go well next year, the lamps will soon start lighting up the city that never sleeps.

Busines Week reports that Verdant Power's tidal energy project in New York's East River is about to restart again, and may be the first in a wave of green energy projects in NYC - Why New York City's third try with tidal power is good news for the U.S.. More at The New York Times - A Futuristic Energy Plan, 100 Years in the Making.

Good news. Verdant Power is set to restart its groundbreaking renewable energy project in New York’s East River. The news suggests that this and other cities are emerging as centers of green energy innovation.

In 2006, I wrote about Verdant Power’s efforts to build what look like underwater wind mills in New York’s East River. The idea is simple: as water flows, it spins the turbines, making electricity.

But it’s been hard going for the startup. The site has had to undergo years’ worth of costly, meticulous environmental evaluation. So far, no deal breakers — the fish have steered clear. The real problem has been too much of a good thing. The river currents are more powerful — and energy rich — than Verdant’s design engineers anticipated.

Here’s why. The East River is really a tidal channel. Unlike a river that flows at a slowish, steady pace in one direction, the current in the East River ebbs and flows, reversing direction twice a day, and peaking at speeds much higher than most rivers. The current has torn apart two pilot installations. The first set of blades failed; then, with stronger blades in place, the pivoting machinery gave out.

Starting tomorrow, the engineers who watch over the test site from a converted shipping container (parked outside a supermarket they hope to soon be regularly powering), will start installing their third, even-more-ruggedized batch of turbines.

I’m really rooting for them, and hope the third time is the charm. As Jim Dwyer points out in a nice update on the project’s progress at the New York Times, the city is blessed with currents and winds surrounding every boro. Centuries back these were harnessed as the source of power, using dams and windmills. (The city’s seal has a classic Dutch windmill in its center.) And as Mayor Bloomberg recently pointed out, these resources should be the first we tap as the city seeks to build new sources of electricity generation.

No, that’s doesn’t mean super-sized windmills on top of the Empire State Builging — aesthetic concerns aside, it’s too costly to retrofit such a dynamic heavy structure on most buildings. But it could be smaller, lighter windmills tucked in where conditions are good. Check Marquiss Wind, a California based maker of rootop turbines and Hanbana Lab’s workshops to build rooftop wind devices(here and here), a wonderful NYC non-profit working to boost awareness of green energy in the city by installing it, developing new approaches and educating the community.

And Bloomberg’s vision will surely mean innovative hydropower technologies, like Verdant’s, in our waterways. It means solar panels on every building’s roof. And it means turbines on Staten Island’s Fresh Kills Landfill and in the windswept Atlantic waters south off Brooklyn and Queens. In Amsterdam, windmills are a scenic feature of the view from shore. In the U.S. Cleveland and Hull, Mass. are moving ahead to proudly place windmills near shore to supply local power and brand their cities as green.

Skeptics may think it unlikely for a green revolution to happen here before say, San Francisco. But uniquely for a city of any size, New York has a rule that most of its electricity must be locally generated. This is a smart, responsible rule that will make it more likely green energy is built here. The rule keeps politicians and voters honest about taking responsibility for decisions — and environmental impacts — that in many other cities can be put far off and out of site.