HOME STAR: This is kind of a big deal
There are several energy and climate bills floating around in the Congress right now, including the Kerry/Boxer (or Kerry/Graham/Lieberman) Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act (which has been in the works since – but not because – I thanked them here) ; the Bingaman/Murkowski American Clean Energy Leadership Act, or ACELA; the Cantwell/Collins CLEAR [...]
Want to get a home energy rating?
…Well if so, let me know, because I’m at a conference with several hundred home energy raters this week!
First of all, you may want to know what a “home energy rating” consists of. The funny thing is, there’s actually LOTS of home energy ratings. There’s the HERS, which is given by ResNet, which is the [...]
Unplug, or the Polar Bear Gets it
AKA, the Greenlite at Dartmouth University energy saving program. First, go to Greenlite’s home page here.
What do you see? Do you see a happy polar bear, playing with a butterfly?
Perhaps he’s taking a nap next to his “friends”, the baby seal and the baby polar bear…
Or, maybe you see a polar bear that’s running… you [...]
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 design;
It’s made [...]
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 mandatory [...]
Climate Killers
Happy New Year, and Happy New Decade everyone! Here’s to hoping we can make big strides this year in our efforts to save energy, reduce waste, and generally try to keep the Earth as hospitable to human life as possible.
Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, there are some pretty vocal people who are still working hard [...]
Copenhagen Commences
Ah, Copenhagen. You’ve been getting all sorts of action this year, haven’t you? First you crush our hopes of having the Olympics in Chicago and now you gather our world leaders together via their 1,200 limos and 140 private planes … to a conference on the deleterious effects of pollution on our global climate. But [...]
Colorado: “Neon” Green
While Portland is working towards being the greenest city in the country, and California is known for incorporating energy efficiency into its building codes, the real net-zero capital of the United States might soon be Colorado. The Centennial State is no stranger to energy efficiency and renewable energy: the University of Colorado won the Solar [...]
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 [...]
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