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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 mortgage lenders [...]
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 [...]
“When Al Gore sees his shadow, it means the Earth is dying”
I had the absolute privilege of seeing Al Gore here in Portland last Thursday, at an event where he was standing up in support of our gubernatorial candidate Bill Bradbury (who himself seems like a committed supporter of environmental issues). I’m happy to say that after departing Portland, Al Gore traveled to New York, where [...]
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 [...]
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