Archive for June, 2022

Should Shopping Malls Return to their Green Roots?

Via GreenRoofs.com, an article on the potential to utilize malls for a more ecological purpose: Alexandra Lange of The New York Times writes: It is easy to think of indoor and even outdoor malls as anti-landscape: big asphalt parking lots, blank walls, artificial lighting, manufactured scents, digital sounds. But the origin of mall architecture was […]

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Installing Rooftop Solar Can Be a Breeze. Just Look at Australia.

Via The New York Times, commentary on Australia’s leadership in the rooftop solar sector:  I recently moved back here to my home country partly because I believe Australians can show the world how much money households can save through simple climate solutions like rooftop solar How is it that Australia, a country that historically has […]

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1M Trees’ Worth of Smog-fighting Capacity Installed on Roofs Using Special Shingles

Via 3M, news  of how one million trees’ worth of smog-fighting capacity has been installed on roofs using Malarkey Roofing Products shingles with 3M Smog-reducing Granules: Since the launch of the world’s first smog-reducing shingle, Malarkey Roofing Products has provided the industry with enough roofing materials to protect more than 400,000 roofs. Because each roof […]

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EU Set to Make Solar Panels Mandatory on All New Buildings

Via Earth.org, a report on the EU’s decision  – in order to make solar the largest electricity source in the EU – to propose plans for mandatory solar panels on all new buildings by 2029: The EU aims to bring online over 320 GW (320,000 MW) of Solar Energy by 2025 & 600 GW (600,000 […]

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Hawaii Looks To The Sun With Rooftop Panels On Single-Family Homes

Courtesy of The New York Times, an article on Hawaii’s efforts to  to replace coal and oil with solar energy, aiming to rely extensively on rooftop panels on single-family homes: Toddi Nakagawa, who lives in a suburb of Honolulu, has spent years battling her family’s high electricity bills, which once topped $500 a month, by gradually […]

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About This Blog And Its Author
As potential uses for building and parking lot roofspace continue to grow, unique opportunities to understand and profit from this trend will emerge. Roof Options is committed to tracking the evolving uses of roof estate – spanning solar power, rainwater harvesting, wind power, gardens & farms, “cooling” sites, advertising, apiculture, and telecom transmission platforms – to help unlock the nascent, complex, and expanding roofspace asset class.

Educated at Yale University (Bachelor of Arts - History) and Harvard (Master in Public Policy - International Development), Monty Simus has held a lifelong interest in environmental and conservation issues, primarily as they relate to freshwater scarcity, renewable energy, and national park policy. Working from a water-scarce base in Las Vegas with his wife and son, he is the founder of Water Politics, an organization dedicated to the identification and analysis of geopolitical water issues arising from the world’s growing and vast water deficits, and is also a co-founder of SmartMarkets, an eco-preneurial venture that applies web 2.0 technology and online social networking innovations to motivate energy & water conservation. He previously worked for an independent power producer in Central Asia; co-authored an article appearing in the Summer 2010 issue of the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, titled: “The Water Ethic: The Inexorable Birth Of A Certain Alienable Right”; and authored an article appearing in the inaugural issue of Johns Hopkins University's Global Water Magazine in July 2010 titled: “H2Own: The Water Ethic and an Equitable Market for the Exchange of Individual Water Efficiency Credits.”