Some Regional 'Green' Forces: newspaper, nonprofit, and gov't

When I set myself the task of finding out what was happening with renewable energy and things Green in general in the Hudson Valley, I was frankly not prepared to find as much as I did. I'm going to be writing more about some of these efforts that are underway, but there's far more than I'll be able to find time to discuss in me own little blog.

So I thought I'd just start listing and linking to some of them, to share some of the relevant, mostly very hopeful stories found in only the last few months or ongoing. All deserve more in-depth treatment, since this is some exciting stuff when you care about the world being built with the long term in mind, but better to do a little now than wait for the big day.

To lend some sense of rhyme or reason to the selection, I decided to pick out entities from different fields and slants on the subject. So for now, here is a newspaper's coverage, a non-profit campaigner/facilitator, and a government program.

Green Living index, on Recordonline.com

We'll start with the heroically embattled Fifth Estate, in the form of the Green Living index on recordonline.com. That's the "Web press," we might say, of the Times Herald-Record, which seems shy to admit it's published in Middletown, where it traces its lineage of daily editions back to the middle of the 19th century.
By whichever nameplate, they do a good job of covering all the major green-tinged news in the Valley and State.

"Local coverage of the green revolution" - Times Herald-Record

Sustainable Hudson Valley

Next, a non-profit that's been promoting sustainability in this area since the mid-90's, Sustainable Hudson Valley is currently working with many partners in the region as "a resource broker, a consensus builder, and a source of both technical and moral support, assisting each community with achieving its unique goals" towards "an environmentally advanced and restorative 'green' economy".

This year, besides advising local governments on getting positioned for clean-energy stimulus funds — and managing to stir up a bit of a ruckus — Sustainable Hudson Valley is focused on the Kingston Green Trail. It's a partnership of agencies to try to stimulate interest in " a transformed urban environment, where people can move by cycle and on foot... gardens, parks and tree cover are abundant... renewable energy and recycled materials create economic advantage... and these activities form the base of a vibrant knowledge economy."

Plus, I liked this part: "Our work is to stimulate a home-grown green economy that gains security from a base of businesses with loyalty to this place."

New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA)

New York State has been fairly progressive with forward-looking energy programs. NYSERDA supports "energy-efficiency programs, research and development initiatives, low-income energy programs, and environmental disclosure activities," such as their Residential Green Building Program (RGBP), currently in development, "to provide incentives to owners of new and substantially renovated residential buildings," and many more.

www.nyserda.org

Related, here:
How Green Is The (Hudson) Valley

Photo from Flickr by Philip McCluskey
(that's from the old firetower on top of
Overlook Mountain, with the Hudson
River that slight band in the distance.)