According to a recent audience survey, conducted on behalf of NPR's corporate sponsorship team, we learned that nearly 40% of NPR station listeners say they're at least somewhat likely to buy a new vehicle within the next 12 months.  And when making the decision, four out of five listeners would consider a hybrid (with three in five willing to consider an ethanol or flex-fuel vehicle).

What remains to be answered is how many of these listeners who responded to the survey live in Park Slope, where they buy soil for their roof gardens? And do things like drink imported Coca-Cola and eat room-temperature cheese while pining for ways to lessen their carbon footprint? Buying a hybrid, of course, is only the first step. 

Chicago's World's Fair in 1893 gave the world a glimpse of what the American urban lifestyle would become: Shining cities with Olmstedian parks and fountains, active waterfronts, high-rise office and apartment towers powered by this new concept of distributed electricity connecting all of us via copper wire. This new invention allowed us to quickly move vertically on elevators and run appliances that would cook our food, cool and heat our homes and wash our clothes. This amazing vision would greatly influence architecture, the arts and American industrial optimism. It changed the skyline of every American city. It unleashed the creative energy of generations to come.

At this singular event, Walt Disney's father witnessed the world's first Ferris Wheel and become involved in amusement parks; a guy named Hershey introduced chocolate-covered caramels; and Nikola Tesla's alternating-current electrical system beat out Thomas Edison's direct-current system as the most efficient and economical way to distribute electricity to the masses. Our country showed the world for the first time what we were to become, and it was all based on the revolutionary new concept of "lighting" up our urban areas with electricity. The world and its cities would never be the same.

The challenges and opportunities of today revolve around a similar question: How do we use our precious energy more efficiently? How do we make our buildings more sustainable, and how do we empower the consumers of these resources with the tools they need to make intelligent energy decisions? We need to find ways to use less and make more of these finite resources. We need to remember and apply the First Law of Thermodynamics, that energy cannot be created nor destroyed but only transformed. We need to understand that the economic engine that will lead us out of the Great Recession is applying American technology and ingenuity to make our cities and country more energy independent and our buildings more sustainable.

The same innovation that was on display in Chicago more than 100 years ago needs to be tapped today to find new ways to decrease the number of BTUs we consume, decrease our carbon footprint and decrease the amount of money we send to foreign sources for carbon-based fuel. Buildings owners-rightly or wrongly-are and will continue to be held responsible for monitoring, measuring and managing the electrical load of our customers. What we need to do is to give our customers the tools to "see" their own consumption patterns and thereby allow them to influence their behavior. Creating intelligence within the electrical grid is the new Holy Grail.

We believe the next big thing is how we, the real estate industry, begin the process of integrating our IT networks with the electrical grid-in other words, to push and pull data to and from electrical appliances such as meters, pumps, fans, lighting, sensors, stoves and washing and vending machines to servers and routers that can extrapolate this data into useful graphical interfaces. We need to enable our BlackBerries and iPhones to control our electrical consumption and make smart decisions about buying electrons. A common set of infrastructure standards needs to be established to allow a building-wide network that is both wired and wireless, one that can measure and manage anything that is plugged into it. We need to introduce Robert Metcalfe, the creator of Ethernet, to the spirit of Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison and create interoperability between these two inventions. Put another way, we need to allow photons of light from our information-technology (IT) networks to influence electrons of electricity in our electrical-transmission (ET) network.

This merger of IT and ET will be an economic juggernaut that will allow cities like New York to expand their economic base and serve as a model for the rest of the world. This concept can and will have the same impact on the imagination of today's young innovators as the 1893 Chicago World's Fair did by allowing software and middleware developers to create applications that can be plugged into and adapted to this infrastructure. Con Edison's Smart Grid Demonstration Project is crucial to this endeavor, as is Mayor Bloomberg's efforts to create an Urban Technology Innovation Center. The time is now to merge Metcalfe's and Tesla's visions in order to change our world forever.

John J. Gilbert III is COO of Rudin Management, and part of REBNY's energy task force.

The city just finished one of its most wintry Februaries, highlighting once again the inescapable conundrum for landlords: how to keep the power and heat on sufficiently at the best possible cost. It is a seemingly ceaseless challenge-New York already pays the second-highest electricity prices in the nation, behind only Hawaii-one met by energy firms and their clients every day with varying degrees of success.

And, with the Bloomberg administration intent on lowering the city's carbon footprint, it's a challenge now compounded by the voguish need for energy efficiency. Let's be green, people! Or greener.

Buildings account for a disproportionately high percentage of the city's emissions because of the widespread use of public transportation. Much of the day-to-day costs of operating a building come from energy, and it's in an owner's best interest to keep them down. But how?

New York's energy system changed significantly in 1996, when the New York State Public Service Commission, a bipartisan state agency, deregulated the state's electricity and gas industries. Consumers were no longer forced to choose energy from local utility companies, and could choose to receive energy from energy service companies, or ESCOs. The goal was to lower costs and encourage innovation and new technology, according to the agency's Web site, and massive companies like Con Edison, Central Hudson and Niagara Mohawk would offer alternative sources of power to consumers in subsequent years.

That was also the year that the federal government further developed the Energy Star label, which would become a benchmark of energy efficiency and a precursor to the widespread Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification developed by the U.S. Green Building Council in 1998. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority began funding electricity research and development in the same year, as the state moved toward a deregulated market.

FRUSTRATINGLY SO SIMPLE to begin with, isn't it? Energy costs are divided among supply and delivery in New York City, as elsewhere. Supply is based on the actual generation of power, whether it is by steam, natural gas or more-for now-exotic forms, like wind or solar. It is tied to the global marketplace. Delivery, on the other hand, comes from the cost of transporting the power through pipes and power lines to the user. Deregulation gave consumers the freedom to choose the source, or supply, component of energy costs, while still locking them into their immediate infrastructure, or delivery costs.

Significant savings can come from managing some of the less glamorous parts of a building, such as the boiler. Decidedly mundane but financially astute technology like EnTech Digital Controls' flagship control system, the Virtual Remote-500, and U.S. Energy Group's USE Manager measure the efficiency of a building's boiler system, aiming for uniform interior temperatures.

U.S. Energy Group's USE Manager is aimed at Class B and C commercial buildings as well as apartment buildings. Traditional boiler controls only look at outside temperatures when determining heating; the USE Manager looks at outdoor and indoor measurements, resulting in about a 30 percent reduction in oil, gas and city steam consumption, according to Tom Scali, vice president of sales at U.S. Energy Group. The system, which is Internet-based, also emails users regarding inefficiencies and cuts down on water loss in the heating process, he said. The cost of the system is around $20,000.

U.S. Energy Group has installed the system in about 3,000 buildings, a number that Mr. Scali isn't satisfied with. "The retrofitting of commercial buildings in older spaces has been neglected," he said. "These old buildings ... are the worst consumers of oil."

For Class A buildings, energy systems can be controlled by state-of-the-art energy management systems-but the prices are higher.

The 140,000-square-foot tower at 545 Madison Avenue, in the Plaza district, was gut-renovated in 2006 by LCOR, a real estate investment company, and certified LEED Gold. This process included installing a central building management system, which cost about $1 million, allowing tenants to manage heating and cooling systems in each individual office. This allows for more control, compared to a building-wide or floor-wide system. The exterior of the building is insulated with a glass skin, reducing heat fluctuations in the winter and summer.

The entire renovation cost $90 million, but building to LEED standards added only a 5 percent premium, said David Sigman, senior vice president of LCOR. The energy savings of the building are theoretically 15 percent, as determined by a computer model of 545 Madison, which is what the LEED certification is based on. The U.S. Green Building Council, developer of LEED, was criticized for initially limiting energy efficiency measurements to computer models, but have required the submission of power bills in the latest version of LEED.

LCOR developed 2.5 million square feet for the federal government's General Services Administration in Alexandria, Va., the largest-leased Energy Star building, but following landlords' adoption of the LEED system, those Energy Star regulations have become less prominent. "LEED has basically supplanted them, because LEED is so specific, and so marketable," said Mr. Sigman.

The tower at 545 Madison also receives 15 percent of its power from ConEdison Solutions, a branch of the power company that specializes in energy savings, which can come from relatively basic practices. "Certain things are called the low end-the payback time on them is relatively quick," said Anthony Spera, director of sales for energy services for ConEdison Solutions. These include installing proper light fixtures and switching off appliances, such as computer monitors, when they aren't in use. "Depending on how ambitious you want to get, you can go through the entire spectrum," he said, including solar and wind power.

BUT SOLAR PANELS DON'T make for ideal Manhattan residents. They clutter what are already tightly spaced city roofs and require regular sunlight, which makes them less effective in the depths of winter. Furthermore, even with some government subsidies, they are extremely expensive and do not recoup their own costs for years. Another way of investing in renewable energy is paying a premium for it, as Chelsea Piers and New York University have done with wind energy. This is another example of choosing energy supply-in this case, energy derived from wind energy-while maintaining the same local delivery systems.

"They made a conscious decision to pay a little more to support new renewables coming online in the country," said Michael Forese, a commodity account executive at ConEdison Solutions, referring to Chelsea Piers, the deal with which he was involved in.

Determining the actual energy savings in a building can be a complicated process. Actual power bills are better compared by kilowatt hour rather than dollar amount, since prices change. This usage should also be compared from one month to the same month in the year before, said Mr. Spera of ConEdison Solutions, because seasonal changes make adjacent months different. Measurement and verification devices that run for a full calendar year can also aid in determining actual savings.

But an efficient system is only as good as its daily operations, and there's much evidence that they aren't performing at peak standard. If, for example, one gazes across midtown on a Saturday night, there's usually an abundance of lights in empty office buildings, probably because someone forgot to turn them off-or just didn't care to. For shame, New Yorkers!

"It only works as well as you use it," Mr. Spera said.

A multifaceted approach is an effective way of lowering energy costs, but those in the industry say that a change in attitude is also an essential part of initiating real energy savings. This includes not merely accepting the marketed merits of "green" buildings, but also strenuously measuring hard data. And ultimately, it means bringing a conscientious attitude toward building operations, as well as embracing new technology.

"Most buildings," Mr. Spera said, "buildings in general, should be looking at both sides of the equation. They should be looking at the supply of the energy, such as purchasing plans, and they should be looking at the usage side."

rli@observer.com

The question is how much inequality should there be?  The answer is not so much inequality that people on the bottom of the ladder cannot live a decent life. Not so much inequality that there is hunger, hopelessness, untreated disease, violence and inadequate access to education. We’ve learned that a large middle class makes societies wealthier and can contribute to political stability. But without public policy to encourage a middle class, the logic of the unregulated market leads to greater and greater inequality.  A second part of a solid economy is one that creates and maintains production and wealth over the long term. A concern for the long term is central to the definition of sustainability.

If a nation achieves wealth by oppressing its people or damaging ecological resources, it eventually pays a price for its misdeeds.  In the United States we paid the price of oppression under slavery with a brutal civil war and its racist aftermath. We have also spent hundreds of billions of dollars to manage and clean the poisons we released into the environment and still release in the name of industrial production. China has only started to learn the environmental and financial cost of rapid development. In the end they will pay, and here in the United States we will continue to pay as well. Short-term gains are often bought at the price of long-term pain. This is a concept that is gaining currency. Landing on a carrier in a pilot’s outfit does not mean you accomplished your mission. Sometimes a fund that pays off the same high return year after year is too good to be true and turns out to be an unsustainable Ponzi scheme.  On the other hand, an experienced pilot who knows his stuff and is humble and dedicated just might manage to land a jet plane on a river. Most people can distinguish solid from shaky. Sustainable means solid, dependable stuff that is designed to last for the duration.

What do we need to develop a sustainable planet? There are a number of prerequisites:
•    Reduce the destructiveness of competition between people and nations.
•    End the growth of the human population, end poverty and eliminate extreme levels of income inequality.
•    Develop renewable, non-fossil fuel based energy.
•    Learn how to reduce the damage we do to our environment.

Peace.  With the presence of weapons of mass destruction, we need to develop a system of international law that reduces the probability that these weapons will be used.  Our current system of international law, balance of power and diplomacy has failed from time to time, but has at least prevented unimaginable disaster from taking place. We need to improve these international institutions.

Population and Poverty. The human population continues to grow. Last month, the world’s population grew by about six million. This growth was uneven across the globe. In developed countries such as Japan, that do not encourage immigration, population is declining. Last year Japan’s population went down by 50,000. In the developed world, population growth would end if not for immigration. In developing nations the population is still growing. The reason for these different growth patterns is simple. In the developing world, a parent cannot be sure that their child will grow to be an adult, and in the absence of social security, children are the best form of old-age insurance. Moreover, in an agrarian world, children are needed to grow and harvest food.  In the developed world, children are typically economic liabilities. They cost a great deal to raise and educate. We love and value our families, but do not raise children for the economic benefits they bring.

People who study economic development and population talk about something they call a demographic transition.  This is what happens when a developing country makes the transition to full economic development. Children are no longer perceived to be economic assets, but economic liabilities; and the population stops growing. The best way to end population growth is to end poverty.

Ending poverty also leads to sustainability in two other ways. First, poverty breeds political conflict. People without an ownership stake in society have less to lose and may be drawn to conflict.  Parents who can provide for their children and realistically hope for a better life for them will favor peace over war.  Second, some of the best brains that will one day invent a new technology or the cure for cancer may very well be trapped in a life of poverty and will never get the education they need to help us think our way to a sustainable future.

Energy. To reduce damage to the biosphere, reduce global warming and reduce the cost of energy, we need to transition our economy to renewable, non-fossil fuels.  While there are plenty of fossil fuels left on the planet, extracting those fuels will only get more difficult and expensive in the future. Burning fossil fuels will continue to damage our ecology and atmosphere. Renewable energy is the key to the green economy. Without it such an economy will never be achieved. The Obama administration’s energy initiative is a critical first step in developing this new energy economy.

Ecological Footprint. The year 2007 was a turning point in world history – for the first time a majority of the world’s population lived in cities. One of the great paradoxes of modern life is that given the size of the world’s population, it is better for the planet’s ecosystems if people live together in cities than if they are dispersed throughout the countryside. By living in cities we make it easier to preserve natural environments outside of cities. New York City is much more energy efficient than most other places in the United States. As we learn to more effectively manage our energy, water and waste through increasingly sophisticated technology, we can reduce our impact on the planet and gradually transition to sustainability.

Can we do it? Can we get from here to there? Let’s put it this way, if we don’t learn to grow our economy while protecting our environment, we may survive, but to paraphrase Nikita Khrushchev, “the living will envy the dead.” While the human species has some irrational tendencies, we don’t tend to be suicidal. The opposite of sustainable development is short-term wealth that can’t be maintained. Sounds a little like Wall Street at the start of the 21st century. I like to think we are a teachable species. Let’s hope we are.

From my perspective it was a wonderful speech. I felt the entire country exhale and breathe a sigh of relief. Here was a voice that over these past two years many of us had come to count on; possessed by a man with near perfect political pitch.  The main message was responsibility and stewardship. He called on all of us to leave behind the childish pettiness of partisan politics and remember that we are a unique community, formed from every part of the planet. As technology shrinks the size of our world and creates a global, interconnected economy and society, he noted that America's diversity got us there first and we have a responsibility to lead.

Of course as in any piece of great pubic oratory there was something for everyone. For me, he said:

• "...each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet.
• "Our capacity remains undiminished. But our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
• "We will restore science to its rightful place, and wield technology's wonders to raise health care's quality and lower its cost. We will harness the sun and the winds and the soil to fuel our cars and run our factories. And we will transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age. All this we can do. All this we will do."
• "What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them- that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works"

And finally:

• "We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."

I was not the only one thrilled by President Obama's message,  I heard Conservative pundit, Pat Buchanan, laud our new President in his call for a return to: "...those values upon which our success depends - honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths."

Our new President makes you want to help him and wish him well. I have never seen anything like the flood of support and good will that he has enjoyed these last few days. It was amazing to see and could not be better timed.

Of course inauguration day is more than words, it is also symbols. The most important of these symbols is the peaceful transfer of power represented by past Presidents and Vice Presidents joining together and the great tradition of the outgoing President seated on the podium with the new President. The size of the crowd on the Capital mall and at viewing parties from coast to coast was a thrilling final act of this great pageant of democracy. On the Columbia campus, our President, Lee Bollinger hosted thousands of students, faculty and neighbors in an outdoor viewing of the ceremonies.

To inaugurate is to begin. It is more than a little scary to think of the challenges we face. The sustainability of this fragile blue island in the vacuum of space, the violence of the Mideast, the dire poverty in Africa and the economic crisis here at home. The inauguration of this President was an event of enormous affirmation and, one of unity and inclusion. President Obama referred to his own story and as he often does, used it to demonstrate how much is possible here in America.   In concluding he observed that assuming the Presidency was "a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant".  This is the promise and potential of America. While watching the ceremony and listening to Aretha sing at the start and Dr. King's colleague Rev. Joseph E. Lowery's benediction at the ceremony's end, I felt like I was dreaming- or watching an improbably sentimental and sappy movie.

But it all was real. Each of us now, in our own way must now participate in the great national renewal that President Obama spoke of on the Capital steps. January 20^th was a very moving day that we will need to remember and draw on during the difficult days that are surely ahead.

But that’s not the way things are. According to city records, Dean Vanech, whose New Jersey-based Delta Power Company was acquired by Bear Stearns subsidiary Arroyo Energy early last year, bought a five-bedroom apartment at 33 East 70th on the day before the election. He and his wife, Denise, paid $14.8 million.

Records suggest they still own a high-floor apartment on Fifth Avenue, bought three years ago for $5.07 million.

According to a listing with Halstead’s Monica Podell, the perfectly proportioned apartment opens on a marble foyer, which leads to a separate marble gallery. Then there’s a 28-foot-long living room with a wood-burning fireplace; a library; a master bedroom suite with his-and-hers walk-in closets and bathrooms; four more bedrooms; a 23-foot-long dining room; and a butler’s pantry that leads to the eat-in chef’s kitchen, which leads to the laundry and then maid’s room.

Ms. Podell and Mr. Vanech did not return calls to their offices.

The co-op was bundled with its next-door neighbor, the only other apartment on the floor, which made for a $30 million listing, but the executive and his wife evidently didn’t need what would have been a 7,600-square-foot, 23-room, eight-bedroom, seven-bathroom spread.

What kind of power is Mr. Vanech working with now that his company was sold to Bear? “Given the cost of long-dated, gas-fired generation, we will be focusing our efforts on other technology and fuels, such as coal, biomass and hydro,” he told an industry publication after founding his new Olympus Power. “It’s too late to commit to wind.”

mabelson@observer.com