One of the most important things to keep in context within the framework of this class is, how does this standard relate to the other systems, standards, and methodologies we’ve seen?  Observe:

• ENERGY STAR:  This government-sponsored system is used widely by building professionals and manufacturers.  But, it is somewhat unwieldy with lots of checklists and tools and has been rejected in multiple jurisdictions for being too complicated.
• State programs and codes: There are too many of these to mention, and they range from prescriptive to performance, regulations to codes.  Standards vary from place to place and can be quite helpful in certain areas – if you know how to take advantage of them.
• Architecture 2030:  This organization sets ambitious goals but provides very little framework for how to get there.
• LEED:  This large and dense standard has achieved what we might call “market transformation” due to its position as THE green building benchmark.  But, to achieve certification you must wade through mounds of paperwork and fork out lots of money.
• Passive House:  This simple and straightforward standard places a premium on high performance, but is perhaps not as comprehensive as some of the other systems.

In contrast, the Living Building Challenge asks the question, “what if every single act of design and construction made the world a better place?”.  With the LBC, the ideal outcome IS the goal, and there are no choices about whether or not you follow the “imperatives”.  If you are trying to reach Living status, you either “go big or go home”.

This brings me to our field trip last week, the last one of the quarter… we are so fortunate in Portland to live in a community that places such value on sustainable living.  We have not just one but THREE Living Buildings in the works in the city of Portland!   The Oregon Sustainability Center, when it is built, will likely be the greenest high-rise ever built and reassert Portland’s status as a global leader in the green design community.  The Key Delta Living Building in North Portland will be a phenomenal resource to its community once it is fully transformed from the gas station it used to be.  But, as great as those buildings will be, they are not built yet.

The Living Building that IS built, or I should say nearly finished, is the commons, a two-family home in SE Portland that is a labor of love for the brothers building it.  Sticking to the integrity of the Living Building Challenge has been a – dare I say – challenge for the owners, but they have come a long way and will have one of the greenest houses in the land when they are done.  We had a good time on this field trip, and even took a class picture!

Assignment #7 is to sign up on the Web site EarthAid.com, to see how you use energy in your own dwelling, and to see if knowing how much energy you use will help you save it.  We’ll all “friend” each other on EarthAid, get points, and try to earn rewards.  At the end of the quarter, we’ll see how we did.  Sign up for Earth Aid now using the link below:

(If that doesn’t work, click here)

On this, the last day of March, we are talking about energy modeling.  Students in the class are assigned a term project in which they are to select one building and conduct a complete evaluation of it, including at least three different forms of energy modeling or assessment.  They can pick any three, but a good strategy would be to pick at least one that they feel comfortable with, one that challenges them, and one that is entirely unlike the other two.  For instance, if I were doing a very small building, I feel very comfortable using HEED for smaller structures, so I might pick that first; I find eQUEST incredibly challenging, plus it is an industry standard, so I would pick that one to become more familiar with it; and finally, I might use the spreadsheet analysis method to balance things out.  If I were doing a larger building, I might try to use Google SketchUp with the Open Studio plug-in, since it uses DOE’s Energy Plus as its back end; I’d try Ecotect just to see if I could do it; and maybe I would use EnergyPro as my third, since it is more focused on systems and less on geometry.

There is no right or wrong method to achieving the results of the term project… but be strategic about which programs you pick, have a reason for picking them, and then do your best.  If you encounter problems or don’t know what certain inputs mean, start a list of questions, and bring them to class with you.  Students will have several opportunities throughout the quarter to ask questions of energy modeling “experts” and each other.

Here is a “scale” of energy modeling that we talked about today in class.  There are definitely other types of modeling tools out there, and one of the objectives of this class is to let students try several of them and become familiar with the process of determining energy consumption of buildings.

Energy analysis programs range from those that are based in text inputs to those that function with visual inputs. There is no right or wrong way, but they each have their quirks!

Any questions?  Let me know!

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.

1. Treehugger. If you only want to follow one blog that dishes all the news you could ever hope for that deals with green design, energy, business or living, it should be Treehugger.  Then, 3 days later when you realize that you can’t keep up with their RSS feed because they publish something like 100 posts a day, feel free to come back to my blog and I’ll give you the highlights once a week or so 
2. WhiteHouse.gov/Blog.   Could anyone have imagined when the Internet first showed up in the 1990′s that we would have a direct line of access to our President, and to the initiatives of Executive Branch of our government, straight from the horse’s mouth?  This blog is a revelation in transparency and information dissemination, and has filters for every imaginable subject, including one for Energy & Environment.  BUT, it may not be for everyone; for instance, if you can’t think for yourself and you require a 24-hour news network to tell you what to believe, then by all means, don’t bother reading the WhiteHouse.gov blog.  Or mine, for that matter.
3. Inhabitat.com.  I regard Inhabitat as an old friend, an endeavor that I, myself, might have come up with if I had logged a few more years of experience in the green design industry a bit sooner.  Instead it was founded by my internet friend and green-living-wunderkind Jill Fehrenbacher, and it persists in being awesome due to a small army of like-minded wunderkinds that have since joined the effort.   Wundervoll!
4. GreenInc. For anyone who might be surprised that the green design and energy industries rely as much on business decisions as any other industry.
5. Wired Science. I think Wired has a blog updating schedule similar to that of Treehugger, but I manage to resist all of their feeds in favor of this one, really really great one.  Science nerds unite!
6. DotEarth/NYTimes. One of the first blogs that I ever bookmarked… and one of the closest things to a traditional newspaper column that I read.
7. Al Gore’s blog. Whether you love him, or, ahem, don’t love him, you do have to admit that Al Gore has the access to and the attention of every major world leader who has the opportunity to do something about climate change.  So, I pay attention.  And besides, his blog posts are sometimes adorable.
8. Planet Green. It’s primarily a TV channel, but it also happens to publish stuff that even its Discovery sister media outlet, Treehugger, doesn’t.  Coincidence?  Probably not, but it’s still worth a look.
9. Huffington Post Green. The Huffington Post is a new media standout, that ever-evolving fusion of social-media-network + aggregator + opinion + comedy = something fun to read.  Their Green section, although perhaps not as strong in content as some of the above outlets, nevertheless covers the goods as well as giving us fun polls and the ever-present adorable animal videos.  Worth it just for that last bit, if nothing else.

So there you have it… my Top 9 Inspiration Blogs of 2009. Check them out, and have a Happy New Year, because things are bound to get better in 2010!

Take, for example, the news that the first net-zero neighborhood in the United States is being built in Boulder. At just 12 homes, it will be a tiny neighborhood, yes, but a photovoltaic-powered assemblage of LEED Platinum homes nonetheless.

Image courtesy of Inhabitat

Also, today I learned from one of the DOE’s daily updates that the U.S.  Air Force Academy near Colorado Springs is committed to being the first institution of its kind to reach net-zero energy use, by purchasing or producing as much renewable energy as it consumes.   The Air Force is actually leading the government charge on energy innovation, and according to the DOE,

“The Air Force currently uses more green power — 426.2 million kilowatt hours (kWh) annually — than any other branch of government, over a third more than the second-place Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and twice as much as third-place DOE.”

Very impressive!  The Air Force has also collectively added several “green stripes” to its uniform (wait, do the Air Force get stripes on their uniform?  I think so?) with several EPA and DOE Green Power awards, including:

• 2003: Green Power Partner of the Year;
• 2004: Green Power Leadership Award;
• 2005: Green Power Partner of the Year;
• 2008: Green Power Leadership Award.

Building improvements at the Air Force Academy will focus on the 6.4 million sf of space already in use, with high efficiency mechanical, electrical and HVAC equipment; security and energy efficiency upgrades to window wall systems; improved building insulation; utilization of natural lighting; and energy-focused roofing replacements.   The goal in making these improvements is to have all its buildings reach or exceed the USGBC’s LEED Gold standard.

And NO, I’m not finished yet.  As IF that weren’t enough, the Air Force’s leadership on renewable energy has led Colorado’s elected officials, military and energy leaders to create the Front Range Renewable Energy Consortium (FRREC) to “collaboratively develop and utilize the state’s renewable energy and energy efficiency resources”.  This new consortium includes:

• Department of Defense and military (Air Force, Army, Colorado National Guard);
• DOE and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory;
• Governor’s Energy Office;
• USNORTHCOM/NORAD;
• Xcel Energy;
• Tri-State Generation;
• Colorado Springs utilities.

That list above doesn’t even mention the Air Force Academy’s Army neighbor, Fort Carson, which is ALSO now marching towards net-zero energy status and hopes to reach this goal by 2015.

Whew!  That’s a heck of a lot of bullet points, and a heck of a lot less energy consumption.  Massachusetts, New York, and Wisconsin, you have an answer to this?  California, Oregon and Washington?  …Your move!  Colorado might soon be renamed “The Net-Zero State”…

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 

Image courtesy of Treehugger

The Beddington Zero Energy Development – BedZED for short – is now seven years old in England and a report has been drafted that describes how much its residents have reduced their carbon footprints.  I won’t get too far into the report, as Treehugger does a great job of that already, but I think it’s interesting that this development goes so far above and beyond other housing to reduce energy but the average resident’s carbon footprint is still an average of 8.9 – 9.9 tonnes.  To be truly sustainable on a global level, that number should come down to 1!  So we really have a long way to go before we are building homes that contribute more effectively to a carbon-free lifestyle.

Also, if you are looking at the live version of the blog you’ll notice a very distinct new look.  I liked this WordPress theme for its simplicity but I need to get that blue splotch off the top of the page.  Baby steps!

Technology is playing a big part in the way green design is promoted nowadays, and we’d be missing out if we didn’t pay attention to this phenomenon.  Blogs connect to Twitter, which connect to mobile phones, which connect to Facebook, etc.  We can harness this technology to not only promote green design, but to educate people about it as well.  We’ll be talking about some of this when we host a panel discussion at GreenBuild in November in Phoenix, AZ, so you can look forward to further discussion of this topic here in the months leading up to the conference.

Until then, have a Twitterific day… or something.