Tag Archives: energy use

Being Green… Update

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Hi Folks!  Friday has come around once again., so that makes it ‘Green Day’ here on our blog.  I took in two webinars this week, both kindly provided by the Building Technologies Program at the US Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy division.

The first was the second part of a series on the ongoing efforts in Greensburg, KS.  In the spring of 2007 the town of Greensburg was nearly obliterated by a class 5 tornado, and when they decided to rebuild the town, the decision was made to rebuild it as a model of green building and green technologies.  Many different people, departments, governments and private industries have been and continue to be involved in this process.  I think it’s inspirational, and a good model to use for future rebuilding efforts when and if they should arrive.  The presentation slides from the second webinar as well as the slides from the first in the series and a video recording of the first presentation are available at the DOE, EERE website.  The next webinar in this series is expected in January, but I don’t have a firm date for that yet.

The second webinar I had a chance to see was titled ‘Activities and Programs Relating to Energy Efficiency Retrofits in Residential Buildings’.  While it may be true that the average homeowner is more aware of ‘green’ products today (i.e. solar panels, solar hot water, wind turbines, ground source heat pumps, etc.) it has been said over and over again that for most buildings in existence today the first steps should be to make those buildings more efficient.  This can be achieved in many ways – better windows, increased insulation, better weathersealing, etc.  This webinar addressed these issues and also the challenges faced by homeowners who have expressed an interest in pursuing these options, in three areas.  From the slides of this presentation:

  1. Access to Information: Consumers do not have access to straightforward and reliable information.
  2. Access to Financing: Homeowners face high upfront costs and are often unable to recoup the value of their investment.
  3. Access to Skilled Workforce: There is an insufficient amount of skilled workers to expand energy retrofit programs on a national level.

The slides from this webinar are also available at the EERE website; more information will be provided when it is available.

From the e-mails I received this week:

  1. The December 2009  issue of Environmental Building News is available here.
  2. The folks at ASHRAE (American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers) have made available a series of six ‘Advanced Energy Design Guides’.  There’s one for Small Healthcare Facilities, one for Highway Lodging, one for Small Warehouses and Self-Storage Buildings, one for Small Office Buildings, one for Small Retail Buildings and one for K-12 School Buildings.  The guides are in .pdf format and can be downloaded for free, but registration is required.  The guides can be found here.
  3. The latest e-newsletter from Green Building Advisor is available here.
  4. The latest Targeted e-News from Environmental Design + Construction (re: Energy Star) is available here.
  5. And finally (for now), the latest Eco-mmunity Greenzine bulletin from Sundance Channel is available here.
  6. The latest Healthy Building Network News is available here.

That’s about it for now, but before I sign out I want to add one more link to promote some folks I know at the Okanagan Science and Technology Council (OSTEC), specifically the ‘Clean Tech‘ group.

Have a great week, and if you have any links to share, leave a comment here!

Mike.

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Count Your Sheep

It’s not easy being green… is it?

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Hi Folks:

Kermit the Frog sang:

“It’s not that easy bein’ green;

Having to spend each day the color of the leaves.
When I think it could be nicer being red, or
yellow or gold-
or something much more colorful like that.

It’s not easy bein’ green.
It seems you blend in with so many other
ordinary things.
And people tend to pass you over ’cause you’re
not standing out like flashy sparkles in the water-
or stars in the sky.

But green’s the color of Spring.
And green can be cool and friendly-like.
And green can be big like an ocean, or important
like a mountain, or tall like a tree.

When green is all there is to be
It could make you wonder why, but why wonder why?
Wonder, I am green and it’ll do fine,
it’s beautiful!
And I think it’s what I want to be.”

So in that sense, I’m with Kermit.  For me, being ‘green’ is something that’s interested me for nearly forty years now.  I’m not talking about skin colour, but my relationship with the Earth.  After all, we only have one planet, and while the earth may be some 40,000 km in circumference, I think astronaut Russel Schweikart summed it up best:

“And so a little later on, your friend, again those same neighbors, another astronaut, the person next to you goes out to the Moon. And now he looks back and he sees the Earth not as something big, where he can see the beautiful details, but he sees the Earth as a small thing out there. And now that contrast between that bright blue and white Christmas tree ornament and that black sky, that infinite universe, really comes through. The size of it, the significance of it – it becomes both things, it becomes so small and so fragile, and such a precious little spot in that universe, that you can block it out with your thumb, and you realize that on that small spot, that little blue and white thing is everything that means anything to you. All of history and music and poetry and art and war and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it is on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb.

And you realize that that perspective . . . that you’ve changed, that there’s something new there. That relationship is no longer what it was.”

So, after that (very) long introduction…

Being ‘green’ is a popular buzzword today, and perhaps no more so than in the construction of our cities and our buildings.  I don’t know if people realize it or not, but in the US for example, construction, maintainenance and demolition of buildings accounts for about 40% of the country’s total energy consumption, and is responsible for an enormous amount of greenhouse gases.  I don’t think things are much different in Canada.  I used to work in Maple, ON, near the top end of Toronto, starting in the late 1980s.   That was during the big housing boom, and every day I drove past new subdivisions being put up – thousands of new units over a few years.  For the most part, they were just slapped together – built to code, but no better.  Now, I’m not much into doom and gloom, especially when there are so many wonderful alternatives, and in the past few years this whole idea has really skyrocketed.  Terms like green building, LEED, R2000, etc. aren’t exactly house-hold words, but they’re coming more and more into the mainstream.  They’re being accompanied by terms like ‘greenwashing‘ – where a company tries to sell itself as being more ‘green’ than it is, but I’ll let someone else talk about that.

I remember watching a webinar presentation a few months back, and while I regret I can`t think of the name of the presenter right now, I do remember one of his key points.  People today are talking more about the `triple bottom line`- environmental sustainability, corporate sustainability (including fair and equitable treatment of employees), and monetary profit – and he described these three ideas as being like a three-legged stool.  He went on to say that the important thing to remember is not that if you remove one of the legs the stool will fall over.  What is important to remember is that it doesn`t matter which one of the legs you remove, the stool still falls over.

One of the amazing things about the internet is that there are thousands of pages of information available to both the homeowner and the professional, and much of it for free.  Now, my background is primarily in fish and wildlife biology and computers, and although I have done my share of carpentry, plumbing, wiring, painting, drywall, etc. over the years, I’m no expert on these things and don’t pretend to be.; I’m still very much a student. I am however very interested, and as such I receive a lot of information from various government and business organizations.  So I thought I’d take one day a week to share what’s been coming to me, with you.  I promise not to have a long preamble at the beginning of every ‘green’ post!

1) Greensburg, KS.  For those who are unaware, and those who’ve forgotten, in the spring of 2007 the town of Greensburg, Kansas was nearly obliterated from the map by a huge class 5 tornado.  Over 90% of the buildings were completely flattened and everyone was evacuated.  People weren’t allowed back into the town for several days afterward.  After the storms had settled, a town meeting was called to see what the residents wanted to do.  An idea was put forth, and it received great support from both the state and federal governments, to rebuild a ‘green’ town.  Construction is still ongoing, but several new buildings have been or are expected to be certified LEED Platinum, the old courthouse (one of two heritage buildings left standing) was completely renovated to LEED Gold, and even for those residents who couldn’t/can’t afford certification, green ideas and building techniques are still being implemented.  All of the electrical power for the town is coming from wind energy.  Anyway, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Program is hosting part 2 of a series on Greensburg, online on December 15, 2009, 12:00–1:30 PM EST.  The webinar is free, but registration is necessary.  For downloadable information on part 1 of the series and other webinars, vist the DOE’s website.

2) I receive several e-newsletters on environmental topics and on green building (most are interrelated) each week, and many of them are also available to view on the various company’s websites.  I’ll post the links here each week (in the order I receive them).

Environmental Design + Construction
Sundance Channel, Eco-mmunity
GreenBuildingAdvisor.com
Healthy Building Network
World Resources Institute: Digest
Sustainable Facility e-News
The Sustainable Sites Initiative

Okay, that`s it for now!  Have a site to share?  Leave a comment here!

Mike.