New York Mayor Bloomberg harnessed the green power of Earth Day to unveil a plan that would require NYC buildings - responsible for 80% of the city’s emissions - to undergo regular energy audits and retrofits, as needed, in order to become more energy efficient.
The announcement was made just a couple weeks after Bloomberg and President Clinton announced a $20 million efficiency overhaul of the Empire State Building, and the Mayor called for extensive urban wind power deployment. Two years ago, the Mayor launched PlaNYC, an ambitious, multi-sector policy initiative aimed at bringing greater sustainability to NYC, on Earth Day.
Plan to Include Energy Code, Require Energy Audits & Efficiency Upgrades
Under the new plan, each of the 22,000 buildings in the city with more than 50,000 square feet of floor space would be required to conduct energy audits every 10 years, say city officials. The package also includes a first ever energy code for New York, that would require equipment upgrades, in all of the city’s one million structures, to comply with the latest standards for energy efficiency. The current state code does not prohibit buildings from using older, less efficient equipment in retrofits.
The laws and initiatives in the works, set to take effect by 2013, aim to in reduce the city’s total carbon-dioxide emissions by around 3 million tons a year, helping New York meet the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative target of 10% reduction in emissions from the power sector by 2018. …..click here to read more
Florida has been the linchpin to maintaining the moratorium on federal offshore drilling in the Atlantic, Pacific and certain areas of the Gulf of Mexico due to the size of its poltical clout, its coastline and the abundance of oil and gas off its shore. While Jeb Bush was governor, his brother supported his anti-drilling stance and ensured no new oil and gas activity would begin in federal waters off the coast of Florida (Federal waters on the outer continental shelf begin roughly ten miles from the coast, while the states control the sea floor until that point). In fact, the 


However, investors are looking for signs,
Secretary began 