Oak­land EcoBlock: Demon­strat­ing Capa­bil­ity and Scal­a­bil­ity in Retro­fitting a Sus­tain­able Neighborhood

Tony Nahas

Vis­it­ing Research Scholar — Energy and Resources Group

RAEL Lab Meeting

12:00 pm, 16 Sep­tem­ber 2015

310 Bar­rows Hall, Room 323

—Wednes­day—

Pur­pose: The Oak­land EcoBlock project is an urban sus­tain­abil­ity exper­i­ment that brings together over 100 res­i­dents of a local Oak­land neigh­bor­hood block and an inter-​​disciplinary team of urban design­ers, engi­neers, social sci­en­tists and pol­icy experts from UC Berke­ley, Lawrence Berke­ley Labs, NASA Ames Research Cen­ter and Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. Using a whole-​​systems approach, the project will retro­fit a typ­i­cal block from a high energy and water depen­dency to the low­est energy and water foot­print pos­si­ble – trans­form­ing an obso­lete, resource-​​wasteful model into an inte­grated design that guar­an­tees long-​​term, urban sus­tain­abil­ity. Once re-​​purposed, the EcoBlock will be: (1) a zero-​​carbon, solar-​​powered neigh­bor­hood where homes and shared elec­tri­cal vehi­cles are pow­ered by clean, renew­able energy; and (2) a low water-​​use neigh­bor­hood that con­sumes up to 70%-80% less water thanks to roof-​​top water har­vest­ing, effi­cient water fix­tures & taps, grey-​​water re-​​cycling in homes; and (3) waste-​​water treat­ment and reuse for irri­ga­tion of organic veg­etable gar­dens, trees, lawns, shrubs and re-​​charging the ground water.

Propo­si­tion: To test the hypoth­e­sis that retro­fitting on the block-​​scale is more effi­cient and cost-​​effective than the indi­vid­ual house-​​scale in achiev­ing max­i­mum renew­able energy, water con­ser­va­tion, and local waste­water treat­ment and reuse – because it com­bines the flows and effi­cien­cies across mul­ti­ple units.

Objec­tive: To build and blue­print a pilot sys­tem that demon­strates a highly-​​efficient, afford­able neigh­bor­hood block-​​scale energy, water, and waste­water treatment-​​and-​​reuse plat­form, and retrofitting-​​process, that can be repli­cated any­where in Cal­i­for­nia and the United States.    

Tony received his under­grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion at Colum­bia Uni­ver­sity and Paris-​​IV Sor­bonne in His­tory and Anthro­pol­ogy. He pur­sued grad­u­ate work in His­tory at the Sor­bonne, the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity of Cairo and Colum­bia, research­ing the eco­nomic his­tory and admin­is­tra­tion of the irri­ga­tion sys­tems in the agri­cul­tural lands between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers dur­ing the late Sas­sanid (5^th–7^th CE) and Abbasid (8^th–11^th CE) empires. Tony holds an MBA from the Uni­ver­sity of Chicago’s Booth School of Busi­ness and worked in cor­po­rate finance in the City of Lon­don for JP Mor­gan, Bar­clays and ING Bar­ings before trans­fer­ring to Bryan Gar­nier in Paris. There­after, he estab­lished his own Invest­ment Fund spe­cial­iz­ing in alter­na­tive assets. In 2013, he tran­si­tioned from Finance to Sus­tain­abil­ity with a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in the con­ver­gence of eco­nom­ics and the envi­ron­ment. Dur­ing the 2014 aca­d­e­mic year, he was a Research Affil­i­ate at the Pre­sidio Grad­u­ate School.