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 [...]
Living in Los Angeles Without a Car
It seems like a very far away experience for me, now that I’ve been living in Portland for nearly 9 months (aka the sky has been Pantone Warm Grey since October), but before my current situation I was living in Los Angeles for grad school. And, as you might have picked up from the title [...]
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 … Continues
So much for keeping you up to date with news from the United Nations COP15, aka, the Copenhagen Climate Conference, as it happened. It turns out that not a lot has gone on that was worth reporting, aside from a brief kerfuffle on Monday when much of the developing nations’ delegation walked away from the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
keep looking »Blog Action Day 2009!
Subscription Options:
