It's Not Easy Building Green

Say regulators, utilities are putting the breaks on clean energy
By J. Kelman,  Newser User
Posted Apr 6, 2007 12:43 PM CDT
It's Not Easy Building Green
Country's First "Green" Residential Tower Built In New York   (Getty Images)

Despite the hype, the cool technologies and the new cachet, building green on a big scale is a very frustrating business, developers in New York tell the Observer. Exciting projects are hobbled by slow-moving regulators and greedy utility companies, they say. Their $100K natural gas "microturbines" are idle because regulators say they violate building codes.

Clean-energy "cogeneration" plants are docked for months by ConEd hurdles. The city and the utilities claim technical difficulties, like antiquated building codes and power grids. But developer Douglas Durst isn't buying: “They get paid by people using their transmission lines—so when you build on-site generation, they're losing income."




(More climate change stories.)

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