Portland is much the same way, although to a lesser extent.  One thing that is for certain is that bikes get a lot of attention here, which is quite evident when you consider the $620 million Portland Bike plan.  Another really awesome aspect of Portland is the Providence Bridge Pedal, which celebrates both the city’s bike culture as well as it’s many iconic bridges.  One Sunday morning in August, the city shuts down all the bridges – including the highway bridges – and 20,000 people on bikes ride around on them for hours.  This year the route took us up and over the I-5 (Marquam) bridge, down onto the 405, and up onto the top deck of the Fremont Bridge, which reconnects the 405 with I-5 to the north of the city.  It was awesome!   And it looked something like this:

On the 405

Atop the I-5 Bridge

On the St. John's Bridge

Which is not to say that Portland does not also love other forms of transportation as well.  There’s the MAX, which is our extensive light rail system; the Street Car, which has hosted many groups from my hometown of Cincinnati for explorations of its success; the REAL train, aka Amtrak, which is an excellent option for going to and from Eugene all the way to Seattle; and of course, cars, which people don’t really drive that well here.  However, if people do have a car, and they are lucky enough to have a diesel car, they can go to this local garage that I just heard about called Green Drop Garage for a biodiesel conversion.  Apparently they are also in the habit of exchanging oil changes for vinyl records or craft brewed beer.  Or perhaps that was a one-time offer?  Nevertheless, it’s so Portland.

I’m still waiting for the Subaru I thought I was going to get for moving here!  Oh well, I still have Dorothy…

BTW, I think this picture represents the last time Dorothy was truly clean

All is not necessarily lost though… Abu Dhabi, as the article states, is in fact, loaded, so where there is not a way, there is a bank account to make a way.   Still, will the richest Emirate find tenants to actually move into Masdar?  I hope so, for the sake of this grand experiment, because I would like to see if it’s actually possible.  And since Abu Dhabi seems to be the only ones with enough money to make it happen, I’m rooting for them.

Well, that may soon change, at least a little bit.  Enter the HOME STAR Jobs Bill.   HOME STAR provides two paths for consumers to save energy in their homes (from their Web site):

1. The Silver Star prescriptive path provides a near-term incentive for specific energy saving investments that is simple to administer and easily introduced into the existing marketplace. Homeowners receive between $1,000 and $1,500 for each measure installed in the home, or $250 per appliance, with a benefit not exceeding $3,000 or at least 50% of total project costs (whichever is less). Covered measures include air sealing; attic, wall, and crawl space insulation; duct sealing or replacement; and replacement of existing windows and doors, furnaces, air conditioners, heat pumps, water heaters and appliances with high-efficiency models. The legislation will utilize existing standards for qualifying products at a level sufficient to significantly increase consumer demand for highly energy efficient building materials and mechanical systems.  SILVER STAR improvements may be implemented by any appropriately licensed and insured contractor, but all participating contractors will receive information about opportunities for accreditation and training programs.
2. The Gold Star performance path offers an incentive to households that choose to conduct a comprehensive energy audit and then implement a variety of measures that are designed together to provide greater total returns in energy savings. This performance path represents the future of home efficiency: state-of-the-art building science is used to identify problems, present solutions and deliver verifiable energy savings, generating confidence among homeowners and investors alike. This technology-neutral approach is based on performance, not specific products, so market forces will direct funds to solutions that achieve the best results. A certified professional with accreditation from the Building Performance Institute (BPI), the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET) or an approved equivalent conducts an energy audit before work begins, and a test-out when the performance retrofit is complete. Consumers receive $3,000 for modeled savings of 20%, plus an additional $1,500 incentive for each additional 5% of modeled energy savings, with incentives not to exceed 50% of project costs. Contractors implementing the GOLD STAR performance path must be BPI accredited.

What this means is that, essentially, if this legislation passes, millions of people will very quickly have several options available to them by which they can implement energy-saving measures in their homes by actions as simple as upgrading appliances or by doing an all-out renovation.  The bill primarily hopes to quickly create as many jobs as possible, while providing energy efficiency on a massive scale, which not only will ease the burden on our aging energy infrastructure, it will ultimately reduce carbon emissions.  (Both of which, incidentally, were the goals when I started this Web site.)  Additionally, anyone wishing to implement these measures will have financing options available to them that are guaranteed through the provisions of the bill.

Pretty neat, eh? Now we just need to hope that the legislation gets passed! If you’d like to learn more about HOME STAR, visit their Web site here.  If you’d like to join the coalition supporting it, visit the Efficiency First Web site to sign up and find out how you can contact your legislators to voice your support.  Even if you don’t own your own home or aren’t in a position to change your living situation to make it more efficient, I think we can all agree that adding a couple hundred thousand jobs during a recession to a very depressed construction market is a good idea, and making several million homes more efficient is an even better idea.   So CHECK IT OUT!!!

Image courtesy of Inhabitat

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:

1. It’s a house, which is great, since I love house design;
2. It’s made of straw bales, which are sustainable, renewable, AND energy efficient with proper installation;
3. It’s pre-fab, which is super cool because pre-fabricated designs cut down on job site waste and allow for easier manufacturing recycling;
4. It’s small, and compact, and cute, which means it’s got a lower carbon footprint (although the cuteness doesn’t contribute to that, it’s just a bonus);
5. AND it meets PassivHaus standards, which is about as close as you can get to a net-zero energy house.

I mean, this is pretty awesome, right?  And it’s a good looking little house.  The only problem I’m seeing is that ModCell is a UK company which makes it nearly impossible to build the cute goodness in your pre-selected plot, if you live in the United States, that is.  Which is not to say that you couldn’t send the cuteness over on a giant cargo ship, it’s just that the adorable-ness becomes slightly less so when you realize how much fuel you had to use getting it States-side (think of how much carbon you burn when you get a on a plane to take a short flight, then multiply that by like, oh, 10,000*).

*(I’m exaggerating, I don’t actually know what kind of carbon footprint a trip on a cargo ship would yield.  I have to believe it’s bigger than having it built down the street, though).

So, here’s to hoping that ModCell partners up with an American manufacturer to begin more “local” production of it’s pre-fab wonder so that some of us can get our hands on this wee, energy-efficient, awesomeness.

Here's another photo of it because it's cool; image courtesy of Inhabitat

I’m going to go back to sticking my fingers in my ears, closing my eyes and saying to myself, “It’s better than it was four years ago… think of all the catching up we have to do after eight years of inaction… we still have time…”

…Don’t we?

Instead of sharing “news” from the conference then, I think I’ll share some tidbits that ARE worth repeating.  And we’ll start with this behemoth:

It's a GIANT sundial! (Image courtesy of Inhabitat)

This, my friends, is apparently the largest “solar energy” building in the world, in Shangdong Province in Northwest China, which is to say that, at 75,000 square meters, it’s the largest building in the world that uses a solar array as a primary energy source.  I can’t find evidence that the solar array powers the WHOLE building all of the time, however.   Stories like this make me wonder if China has been using all of the interest that we are paying them on our loans to make solar powered buildings.  If they can churn out gigantic buildings like this, do you think they can throw a few solar panels our way?  Maybe they can throw in a couple of PV arrays with our loan bill each month?

Next up is one SUPER COOL thing that has debuted in Copenhagen during the past week, and that’s this Copenhagen Wheel created by MIT students.  It’s got a kinetic energy recovery system, sensors, a smart lock, and a Bluetooth connection to the rider’s iPhone.  Talk about reinventing the wheel!  Hardy-har-har.  (Sorry.)

the Copenhagen Wheel (image courtesy of Inhabitat)

Last but not least I’d like to point out this wonderful blog post about the art seen in Copenhagen during COP15 (by, you guessed it, the equally wonderful Inhabitat).   It’s nice to know that the leaders at the conference will have something to think about as they shuttle around the city in their 1200 limos.   Meanwhile, 36% of the actual population of the city gets around by bike, a staggering statistic that is more than 5x the percent of bicyclists in America’s bike city, Portland.

So I guess we’ll just sit back and see how this one ends, shall we?

Today the EPA took the historical and bold step of announcing that man-made greenhouse gases – mainly carbon dioxide – are harmful to human health and the environment, and should be regulated. Conventional wisdom suggests that this announcement was timed to coincide with the beginning of the Copenhagen climate conference, or as it’s formally known, the COP15.  And I’m OK with that, really, especially since it will lend momentum to climate legislation.  Also, apparently the Republican party greeted the EPA’s announcement with a statement ridiculing them for suggesting that we place regulations on the “air that we exhale”.  To which I say, perhaps if the Republicans didn’t spout off so much hot air in the first place we wouldn’t be in such trouble!  (Ba-dum-pum… seriously am I the only one that thought of this joke?!)

I’ll try to keep up with news from Copenhagen and post it here as I see it… in the meantime, stay warm, folks!

Without further ado, Former Vice President Al Gore describes how he’s going to “get crazy” to get out the message of climate change.  Right on!

From left to right, moi, Quilian from Archinect, and Jill from Inhabitat. Not shown are Barry, our instigator, Joel, our moderator who was actually in Phoenix, and Cameron, the founder of Architecture for Humanity, who was having some technical difficulties.

The panel, despite an audio delay and some serious bandwidth issues in all four corners, was more or less a success, if for no other reason than we conducted a nearly carbon-free conference session!  Think of all the carbon that was saved by all of us not flying to Phoenix.  This was a big incentive to doing this presentation, and if it was going to happen, GreenBuild was the place.

I do want to mention, however… when I get in situations like today’s panel, I have no idea what I’m saying. I was trying so hard to hear the questions, and to concentrate over the sound of the audio echoing, that my mental “filter”, which is usually fairly porous to begin with, was almost nonexistent.  Therefore I just want to say, once again, THANK YOU to everyone in the audience who sat through it!  I hope you got something out of it.  And I hope you can agree with me and my internet friends* when we say that the Web will certainly play a part in the way that designers operate going forward… even if it will take some time to work out the kinks.

*Speaking of my internet friends, Cameron was the only one that I’ve ever met in person, and it was a pleasure to see everyone else’s animated faces today!  Make sure you check them out on their respective sites:

Jill Fehrenbacher on Twitter @inhabitat and online at www.inhabitat.com…

Cameron Sinclair on Twitter @casinclair and online at architectureforhumanity.org…

Quilian Riano on Twitter @quilian and online at Archinect.com…

Thanks again, and see you all on my Google Reader 

I do want to point out this recent article in the Telegraph out of Britain.  It struck me because the executive in question has won the right to sue his employer because he believes he was unfairly dismissed for his “green views”, meaning, they might be treated as a religion.  Regardless of the legal implications of the case in the U.K., I think this is a really interesting way to approach the practice of green living.  Some of my best friends have told me that my strong convictions about treading lightly on the earth are like my “religion”, and this didn’t offend me.  This case does strike me as peculiar, however, since it poses lifestyle choices as being based on a “belief” in global warming, rather than the fact that it IS happening.  However, the population of the United States believes that global warming only merits a priority of 4.71 on a scale of 1 to 10.  So perhaps our population must rely on global warming as a “belief” to accept it more widely in the public sphere.

This, of course, requires us to accept that scientific fact is optional.  And, since I think the notion that dinosaurs roamed the Earth a mere 6,000 years ago is ludicrous to the point of hilarity, I’m going to have to stop just short of calling what I believe – that is, facts – a “faith”.