The obvious response to sea level rise and storm surges is to try and keep the water out by building things like walls. But there are other options. At the southern tip of Staten Island, New York, for example, a new near-shore breakwater system was just completed this past October.
Designed by landscape architect Kate Orff of SCAPE, the project cost $111 million, runs about 2,400 linear feet, and is designed to "break" future storm surge waves as they approach the coast. This won't completely eliminate the risks, but it will help to reduce them.
At the same time, by slowing currents next to the shoreline, these barriers are expected to reduce shoreline erosion (and eventually reverse it) and improve the overall habitat for plants and animals along it. The breakwaters themselves are also intended to attract organisms, hence the term "living."
It's a novel approach when it comes to flood infrastructure in the US. But it's certainly not a new idea:
Breakwaters is an ancient idea for how to protect shorelines – and the people who live close to them – by building underwater seawalls to defend a harbor or a beach from the force of waves. Kate has designed an extraordinary, modern-day interpretation, the Living Breakwaters, which will not only protect humans and revitalize the coastline of New York City, but also restore lost marine biodiversity. This is a visionary project that tackles the full task of adaptation, and which has the capacity to inspire and to positively impact vulnerable shorelines worldwide.
It'll now be interesting to see how this performs during storms. But in the meantime, you can find more information about the project on SCAPE's website.
Photo from SCAPE and Ty Cole
By some measurements, cement production alone is responsible for about 8% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions every year. And so there is an imperative to find suitable low-carbon alternatives. Here is what is currently happening in the US (via Grist):
On Tuesday, Terra CO2 Technology was picked to receive a $52.6 million federal grant to build a new manufacturing plant just west of Salt Lake City. The company has devised a method that turns common minerals into additives that can help replace Portland cement — a key component in concrete, and one of the most carbon-intensive materials in the world.
In addition to this new facility, the company is set to start construction on its first plant in the Dallas-Fort Worth area:
The project is expected to break ground in January 2025 and begin shipping out materials by late summer 2026, Yearsley said. The facility will be capable of producing up to 240,000 metric tons of SCM [supplementary cementitious materials] per year when completed, or enough to serve roughly half of the local metropolitan market.
And all of this is part of a broader initiative by the US Department of Energy:
The Utah facility is one of 14 projects provisionally selected this week to receive $428 million in total awards from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains. The initiative, which is funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aims to accelerate clean energy manufacturing in U.S. communities with decommissioned coal facilities. Officials said the projects are expected to create over 1,900 high-quality jobs across a dozen states.
For the rest of the article, click here.
Germany has, over the last 2 years, really gotten into balcony solar panels:
The ease of installation and a potent mix of government policies to encourage adoption has made the wee arrays hugely popular. More than 550,000 of them dot cities and towns nationwide, half of which were installed in 2023. During the first half of this year, Germany added 200 megawatts of balcony solar. Regulations limit each system to just 800 watts, enough to power a small fridge or charge a laptop, but the cumulative effect is nudging the country toward its clean energy goals while giving apartment dwellers, who make up more than half of the population, an easy way to save money and address the climate crisis.
Of course, there's only so much that panels like these can produce. By some estimates, a "large well-positioned balcony" might only produce 15% of a home's electricity needs. But hey, that's still something, and it seems like something that Toronto should be looking at.
We also have balconies.