Q: What’s wee, made of straw bale, and awesome?
A: The ModCell Straw-Bale Pre-Fab home! File this under “better late than never”… I just learned about this house and knew I had to talk about it here because it embodies many of the things that I love in one tidy, very livable package. Observe: It’s a house, which is great, since I love house [...]
America’s Greenest Building Code
Last week, the California Building Standards Commission unanimously adopted the first-in-the-nation mandatory Green Building Standards Code, also known as “CALGREEN”. The new standards take effect starting January 1, 2011 and will require all new buildings in the state to be more energy efficient and environmentally responsible. The new CALGREEN code will require: a 20 percent [...]
Green Day Forum
Today I’m at the Earth Advantage Institute’s Green Day Forum in Portland. I’m surrounded by impassioned and brilliant green building professionals from all aspects of the industry. For instance, I’ve already met builders and realtors who came to educate themselves and I got some literature from one of the only certified energy efficient mortgage lenders [...]
Green Building Policy in a Changing Economic Environment
The title of this post is taken from a report recently released by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), which I found through my daily Department of Energy update. The report can be found on this AIA’s Local Leaders in Sustainability Web page, which also has some great links to case studies done over the [...]
…and I dropped the blogging ball! More about the Solar Decathlon…
Sorry for going on hiatus after my last post from DC about the Solar Decathlon. The truth of the matter is that the weather was 100% miserable the entire time I was there, and I had not the time nor the space to blog: my hands were numb and it was raining, thus making it [...]
Live from the National Mall…Team Germany FTW!
In a stunning surprise come-from-behind win, Team Germany took the top award at the Department of Energy’s Solar Decathalon this morning after winning the Net Metering category, upsetting the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign who was in first place before the final winner was announced, and who ended up in second place. This is Team [...]
Going to the Solar Decathalon!
Happy Blog Action Day! The theme of Blog Action Day this year is “climate change”, which is pretty easy for me to tackle since I think about climate change a lot. As I write this I’m on my way to PDX to travel to Washington, DC to visit the Solar Decathalon. For those of you [...]
CFLs
It’s been a while since my last post, during which time I’ve been mulling over the movie The Age of Stupid, which I saw at its worldwide premiere, and watching what the world leaders at the G20 Summit had to say about climate change. But that’s not what this post is about, so more on [...]
The AIA Awards and Carbon Neutrality
The American Institute of Architects, or the AIA, is the national association for professional architects in the United States. Each year, local chapters of the AIA give out awards to projects or firms in their jurisdiction for exemplary design. Well, MOST of the chapters give out awards for exemplary design. Yet another reason why I [...]
Weatherization: not just a long, fancy word
I love it when the topic of weatherization comes up in political debates or speeches. To me, it means that the people in charge are actually paying attention and realize that buildings need to be more energy efficient. But, what exactly IS weatherization? First the definition: Dictionary.com says that weatherization is the process of making [...]
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