Anything Else Is Green Building Amateur Hour
2007-06-29 15:36:18
I'd seen this before, but being a loyal Boing Boing reader, I just had to bring it here after Mark Frauenfelder pointed it out over at BB. What is it? Well, it's vertical farming! All the rage! The next big thing!
Seriously, though, if this gets enough money to get off the ground, we're looking at a serious agricultural revolution, one that could effectively negate the food-cost inflationary effects of ethanol. The space-age concept, which could come right from a 1970s glorious future article on how space stations will thrive with farms onboard to generate oxygen and produce year-round fresh produce, offers the opportunity to unshackle agricultural production from a host of expensive and limiting factors. The potential upsides are almost too great to go into, but hey let's give it a shot.
Mark at BB suggests reducing pollution, and I figure that can also be a plus in reducing ethanol-induced price hikes, but what else is there? Less climate sensitivity, for one, so
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, Amateur
Recycled Housing, Redux
2007-06-22 19:09:08
You can still find them out there, on occasion. You remember, from back in the 80s, the people who would collect beer bottles or soda cans or something and build geodesic dome houses out of them out away from the sorts of neighborhoods that frowned on that sort of thing. The builder/owners swore that the dome provided better natural heating and cooling, reducing energy costs. They're still out there, here and there, doggedly following in the footsteps of their conceptual forebears, trying to save materials, if not effort, and playing the energy efficiency game besides.
Well, Todd Carpenter guestblogging on InmanBlog has the 21st version of that concept: welcome to the strange world of shipping container housing. The concepts are little different from those other recycled homes, and could be applied just as well. With possible exception that the bottle- or can-based homes only really form ultra-modern dome homes, the profiles of these different types of materials are pretty close
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, Housing
, Redux
U.S. REITs Expected to Continue Investing Green
2007-06-21 22:49:44
A recent issue of the Progressive Investor offered some insightful statistics about the state of the American green real estate industry. The newsletter reports that forty-one percent of the country's real estate investment trusts (REITs) are actively pursuing energy efficiency and green building upgrades, with another twenty-seven percent planning on doing so. However, the analysis found that most socially responsible property investors are unable to identify an investment option for the specific type of asset that they're looking for. According to Rona Fried, Progressive Investor CEO, [t]hat will change over the next few years. . . . Industry leaders are forming a responsible property trade association, creating criteria for certification, integrating green building into the appraisal process and into broker databases. The factors that the report pointed to for the increased REIT attention to green buildings include high energy and water costs (twenty-eight percent and
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, Expected
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Green Building Collateral
2007-06-19 16:12:10
Green building is taking off. And some times it is as simple as that. A recent conference of business leaders in suburban Detroit recently came to the startling conclusion that an upfront investment in energy efficiency and green building can reap real dollar benefits over the life of a structure. Businesses that adopt green strategies, especially back in the design and construction phases, though they may pay a little more on the front end, will quickly see the benefits of reduced operating costs. And now that the cost/benefit analyses are coming down on the side of greater energy efficiency, the destiny of green building seems forgone.
This really isn't a huge surprise to anyone who has followed green building news, but there are plenty of folks, especially in business, for whom it is news. What's probably not news to anyone is that a much larger concern than a building's inherent efficiency is the green quality of what goes into the building. From recycled toilet paper to E
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, Building
, Collateral
Sustainability and Microgeneration
2007-06-14 12:12:30
One of the keys to green building is executing a balance between carbon released and carbon consumed or sequestered in construction. There's other issues that I'm sure will get revisited later, with regards to rainwater collection, site selection, and sustainable construction materials, but carbon neutrality is one of the most attractive avenues of attack for green building advocates. And the brass ring in carbon neutrality is the zero emission building, an example of which has been unveiled in the UK and is featured in one of our premiere posts.
Without microgeneration, however, the zero emission building will have a hard time coming to fruition.
The Lighthouse as described below takes significant advantage of a broad roof to collect solar for both electrical production and water heating, and other zero emission projects are going to have to take similar paths. A vision where power generation stations shrink and spread out is attractive, but ultimately the distributed and decen
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Exploring US Oil
2007-06-12 05:19:21
I think people who find the middle ground make the practical sense but lacks one clear thing; an understanding of urgency. Here is one middle-ground type of opinion on oil from Examiner.com. I think the position being explained is practical. The use of oil and exploration for new resources of oil in the US, as pushed by US President George W. Bush is valid. Afterall the economy is oil-dependent. Read more at IfEnergy.Com.
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Bank of America Tower: Durst Implements Ice Farm in Pursuit of LEED Platinum at One Bryant Park
2007-06-11 22:40:35
Last week, the Durst Organization offered a sneak preview of the Times Square office building that it hopes will achieve New York City's first commercial LEED Platinum
rating. Eighty feet below grade, Helena Durst took reporters on a tour of the Bank of America
Tower
's ice farm, which the developer anticipates will reduce energy costs by approximately fifty percent. The system captures rainwater- across forty tanks- which it freezes overnight (during off-peak hours) and then melts during the day in order to cool the building. A typical ice storage air conditioning system will pump refrigerant into an evaporator coil, transforming it from liquid to vapor. Traditional air conditioning units will eject the heat in the vapor through an electrical condenser. However, an ice storage system will return the refrigerant through ice, recondensing the vapor into liquid, and bypassing the necessity for excessive consumption of electricity. As One Bryant
Park continues to attract press as New Yor
The Lighthouse: A Net Zero Carbon House
2007-06-11 21:45:50
In the UK, various companies are building cutting-edge green homes as part of the Offsite 2007 Exhibition. Yesterday saw the official launch of a zero emissions house called the Lighthouse
built by the Kingspan company. It will be the first home to meet the UK government environmental standard, level six of the Code of Sustainable Homes, which all new houses must meet by 2016.
The home has a simple, barn-like form with a 40 degree pitched roof that includes solar panels and rainwater harvesting. The home also boasts high levels of thermal insulation, passive cooling and ventilation, biomass boilers and downstairs bedrooms. Biomass boilers run on organic fuels such as wood pellets and count as zero-emission because the amount of carbon dioxide they give off when they are burned is offset by the amount that was absorbed when the crop was grown. The house also has a waste separation system that allows combustible waste to be burned to help provide power.
See a short video t
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, House
Green Building Awareness
2007-06-05 18:59:36
The toughest task faced by any company in a new market is building both awareness of their brand and hunger for their product, which is why a lot of companies look to enter into existing markets and try to shove aside the incumbents.? Even mighty Google, which often looks like a raucous and reckless trailblazer in the IT game entered what was a very crowded search market when it was first introduced.? And since then, they haven't created too many new niches for on-line life, despite their many services.? So it makes sense to come into a market where demand is established and known--the dotcom bust showed off the folly of offering products with unproven demand to an unreceptive public.
Green
building is a slightly different kettle of fish.? Of course, there's existing demand for building--it's one of those basic human needs, after all--but the advantages of green versus more traditional methods has yet to be a sold notion.? One of the reasons, as the San Francisco Chronicle points
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, Awareness
The Greenest of Building
2007-07-17 20:34:34
Okay, so last time I figured that there was no more greener building than the vertical gardens an MIT professor proposed to solve a number of environmental concerns in one fell swoop. And that is a pretty darn green design. Nothing like acres of crops under one roof to dramatically decrease the carbon footprint of a structure, after all. But now, entering in the residential category for greenest ever is this home reminiscent of the hobbit-holes seen in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies. (In fact, the front door even appears to be round, just like ol' Bilbo's.)
Of course, this seems to be a little more sophisticated of an endeavor than building your house under a hill, and updated for the 21st century. What's fascinating, of course, is that it appears much of the house will be grown, rather than built, dramatically reducing the construction-phase carbon footprint. The great news is that this won't be a living by candlelight and such model--the grown home will
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Cleantech and the Deep Green
2007-07-23 16:51:26
There's an acillary to green building--and most of the cleantech industry--called deep green. It's the notion that not only is the product or technique itself designed to save energy, and so on, but that the production of all the materials and such are also green. The hidden energy costs of, for example, photovoltaic solar cells is one of the things that have slowed their adoption until recent years, and its one of the things that opponents of recycling claim is the biggest problem with that practice. The energy saved, so goes the claim, will never amount to the energy put into making the product, or the difference between it and its non-clean counterpart.
As an answer to that, Don Fitz on the Shels Is For Peace Blog (warning: a sidebar picture may be NSFW) suggests a comprehensive redesign of not only the modern metropolitan region, but American and Canadian culture in the bargain. Speaking against the gadget obsessed culture of the modern cleantech movement, he sugges
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Green Guides For The Rest Of Us
2007-07-28 07:58:37
Think globally, act locally.
Sound familiar? Of course, it's one of the mantras of the green movement, and has been for quite some time. The premise, being that everyone can make a difference, if they police up their own lives, has been active for quite some time, often has a hedge against the sort of futile wails of but the problem is too big! that find their way into almost any conversation of global climate change, emission reduction, or the like.
The Citizens' Environmental Coalition is looking to help you and me and whomever else wants to download their guide do more in terms of acting locally. Called The World at Home: A Household Guide to Building Green
, their pdf guide offers a number of concrete tips on how to do better for your home, in ways large and small. For example? Try to eschew concrete as a building material. It takes a lot of energy produce and transport, and local substitutes, such as cob, can provide all the strength and durability without the foss
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Government As Cleantech Customer
2007-07-30 21:09:01
There are a number of ways government can get involved in green building and cleantech. One is to tax the hell out of the wasteful, unsustainable, and redundant, and thus incentivize going in the other direction. Another is offering all kinds of rebates, deductions, and grant programs to create positive incentives for using these kinds of materials, techniques, and technology--above and beyond their inherent savings. These two practices used together might be called a carrot and stick approach. Or vinegar and honey.
A third way is for the government to become a leading user of cleantech itself.
The city of Cambridge, Ontario, Canada has chosen this third way, building the new municipal offices with a host of clean and green innovations. In consideration for LEED accreditation, the new building makes extensive use of live vegetation to insulate the roof and, internally, filter and treat the air. Also in place is a grey water recycling system, extensive natural lightin
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, Customer
Green Building Education
2007-08-07 16:06:03
One of the biggest roadblocks in the way of green building initiatives is lack of education--ignorance, to put it more bluntly. This past weekend, I started work on finishing a bedroom and an office in the lower level of my house, and frankly, I couldn't tell you the first thing about what I need to do to make my work more green. I know generic tips, like using better insulation, and more efficient lighting, but beyond that? Clueless. Not because I want to be, but just for a lack of information and education.
That's why the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative's (ISMI) recent offering of a course with the US Green
Building
Council is such an important step forward. Granted, the course is limited in scope, but it's also critical based on who ISMI's component members are: IBM, Intel, AMD, Hewlett-Packard, and so on. Motivating these folks to tune their buildings and facilities into the green-and-clean way of doing things is critical for sustainable informati
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Nega-Watts & Embodied Energy
2007-08-14 19:12:25
Getting energy from the energy we don't use is cheaper than looking for new forms of energy or building new plants.
Wha?
It's simple. Energy
efficiency measures, according to California legislators, will save them enough energy to avoid building three huge new plants. Which will essentially mean that California's capacity for energy production will go up, allowing economic expansion, without a corresponding increase in emissions, high-impact production plants, or fossil fuel consumption. Of course, the idea really isn't new to advocates of green building, but what is new is aggressive programs like this, rewarding power companies for meeting certain benchmarks in reducing consumption.
That kind of emphasis is also going to help with aggressive, future replacement efforts that seek to supplant fossil fuel power production with renewable energy will have an easier time of meeting a mark that is relatively stationary, rather than always growing.
In New Zealand, meanwhile, the go
Read more: Watts
How Efficient IS Your House?
2007-08-21 12:47:04
That's a question that's been posed often, recently, as many concerned with home heating and energy efficiency have begun raising the flag for increased efficiency and the problems with current standards. That current homebuilding standards lag seriously behind what is needed in the home-building market is beyond question. Right now, builders are advertising Energy Star homes as some kind of novelty, or luxury when that kind of thing ought to be a minimum standard.
Steve Maxwell, writing for the Toronto Star raises the flag on home insulation, indicating that in cold Canada, the basic standard for insulation is woefully inadequate, and many Canadians are pouring heat out of their homes. In a damning bit of observation, Maxwell cites two studies, one that indicates fiberglass itself is too blame and not the insulator of the future by any stretch, stating that the colder the air gets, the worse fiberglass performs. In the other study, he points out that direct observation ind
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Steve Wozniak: Green Giant?
2007-08-27 09:50:20
Woz: legendary co-founder of Apple Computers, now Apple, Inc.
Woz: hacker, author, and charitable giver.
Woz: herald of the green building movement?
Recently, Steve
Wozniak served as a judge for the History Channel Modern Marvels Invent Now competition, highlighting exciting new developments in technology and technique. The 2007 winner was Mike Sykes, a builder from North Carolina and founder of Enertia, a company specializing in the materials and techniques that won Sykes the competition. The basic crux of the gist is the use of Southern Yellow Pine, which can maintain internal temperatures within five degrees of 71F by the freezing and melting of the wood's resin over time. In an interview with ECNMag.com, the Information Center for Design Engineers, Wozniak touts this building approach as well as another, called ram earth construction.
Ram earth construction involves extruding building material from the earth excavated at the building site in order to provide a better i
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Schwarzenegger's Opportunity
2007-09-25 16:59:42
Will he or won't he?
Governor Schwarzenegger
of California has a unique opportunity coming up. Right now, three bills sit on his desk that could blaze a brand new trail for green building standards in the United States and help cement California's place in the lead on environmental issues. Not that they haven't been there for years and years, but green building is one of those areas that not enough people are paying attention to in terms of potential climate change impact.
For example, though some have mocked the banning of incandescent lightbulbs in Australia as too draconian, a less visible regulation such as one requiring builders only install CFL lighting in new homes would itself have a tremendous impact on energy use and emissions. I count almost 40 internal light fixtures in my (rather modest) home, about half of which I've changed to CFL at this point. Starting out with CFL, which would add maybe $80 to builders' costs could save the homebuyer money and significant
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How To Grow Green Building Interest
2007-09-25 16:35:41
Until such time as state and local authorities really get a grip on the question of green building and start mandating EnergyStar or US Green
Building
Council standards in building codes, it's critical for those interested in it to grow local awareness and interest so as to increase demand. Right now, as much as it might pain some in the environmental movement, green building and emission reductions are in the hands of the open market. With the lack of stricter regulation, greener alternatives have to compete with their less-efficient counterparts for the attention--and dollars--of concerned consumers.
Without ratcheting down the cries for stricter regulations and tax breaks for the green conscious, it may be worthwhile to start investing time and energy into promoting awareness.
In green building, one of the easier ways to do that is to organize green building home tours. This requires, of course, that there be enough homes (and willing homeowners) in a given area, but with awa
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Getting Off The Grid
2007-09-17 21:51:12
Last time, I talked about an exciting development in wind power, one that could eliminate a lot of the variability from wind power itself. The theory is, as you climb up above sea level, winds are more constant--presumably since there are fewer and fewer windbreaks to disrupt and diver the wind, one fo the reasons that traditional wind turbines are placed on shorelines and windward mountain slopes. Tethered lighter-than-air turbines reduce the geographic limitations, which could be a boon to neighborhood and co-op power generation, while also providing a more steady source of energy.
But the predictability of the power is the key. While the more extreme activists might be fine with rolling blackouts or nearly-zero power consumption at all, it's not realistic as a sell to the average American. Likewise, many of the services that folks have come to depend on are not going to deal well with those kinds of extremes. But providing power to them, clean power that doesn't come f
Niftiest Clean Energy Proposal Today
2007-09-11 16:39:05
You want cool clean energy? You want something that's sexier or more exciting than slabs of silicon on your roof?
How about your very own wind-turbine blimp? Magenn is a start-up founded by an airship pioneer who developed the first Magnus effect lighter-than-air vehicles. To put it simply, the Magnus effect allows for high levels of stability in spherical airships while aloft. Recently, innovator Fred Ferguson applied his rotating airship concept to the idea of electricity generation, since it made an ideal bed for turbine generators.
Tethered to the ground and floated to heights of 1000 feet, MARS, Magenn's flagship product, would sit in near-constant atmospheric winds, defeating the variability of ground-level winds that plague the wind turbine industry. By providing a more constant source of electricity, MARS-type turbines might be able to take some of the load from the coal-fired workhorses of the current electrical grid.
However, like many other clean energy solutions
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, Energy
, Proposal
, Today
Greening Our Heritage
2007-09-06 17:35:50
One of the crisis questions that may soon begin to crop up more and more often is what to do about a nation full of aging, historical structures that are about as energy efficient as, well, as really old and drafty buildings. Especially over the last couple centuries or so, the nation's buildings have not aged well in this respect; significant upgrades would be required to many cities' historical districts just to replace single-pane glass windows with something more efficient and modern, for instance. And there's the real chance that such upgrades would wreck many of the features that make them such attractive historical landmarks.
Chuck Weikel of Annapolis, Maryland is in that sort of position, according to this article from the Baltimore Sun. His plan is to grow drought-resistant grass on the roof of his home as a way of saving energy, but living in one of the city's historic districts, his plans have to be approved by Annapolis's Historic Preservation Commission. The g
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Small Building, Big Impact
2007-10-08 14:42:10
Pop quiz: What is Atlanta's most efficient entry among US Green Building
Council LEED-certified buildings?
Did you guess a 2800 square foot pair of storefronts built in 1946? I don't think that would have been my thousandth guess, but turns out it's the answer. The unassuming building sits on Edgewood Avenue, near Martin Luther King Jr. Center, half of it home to a small vegitarian restaurant, the other half the future home of an environmentally-oriented architecture and design firm--the same firm that oversaw rennovation of the sixty year old building.
The structure, once rennovated, qualified for the USGBC's LEED Platinum rating, the first in Atlanta and only fourth in the US Southeast to garner that level of efficiency.
Aside from being Atlanta's first (hopefully of many) such structures, what's so important about it? Two big things stand out:
It's a relatively small structure. No giant walls of indoor green, no massive solar arrays, no wind-catching turbines on its s
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Government's Responsibility To Cleantech
2007-10-04 16:43:38
Here's an intriguing idea: rather than letting market forces work on the question of cleantech and alternative energy, the US federal government should throw its considerable weight behind a massive cleantech and alteng effort--to the tune of $300 billion. Aimed at bringing about rapid and sweeping change to the energy economy--as well as the building, automotive, and electronics industries--such an effort could produce dramatic changes in how we live within a decade or two and perhaps both radically reduce emissions and fossil fuel reliance.
Such is the dream of maverick environmentalists Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger.
Wired's article in the link above does an excellent job of deconstructing the personalities of Nordhaus and Shellneberger, the perceived reaction to their dream, and the book which is based on it, Break Through.
They occupy an intriguing middle ground--on the one hand, far to the left of those who suggest that any such changes can happen purely on the bas
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, Responsibility
Recycled Housing Gets Noticed
2007-10-14 16:15:13
Back in June, I talked briefly about the use of disused shipping containers as green housing solutions, comparing it to the use of aluminum cans and glass bottles to build geodesic dome houses. Looks like some others have caught wind of the idea. According to the links in the Making Light blog post, there's actually a number of ongoing projects that are turning our excess into a viable housing alternative.
As mentioned before, one of the phenomenal upsides to the whole thing is that this is recycling at its very best. For now, the US seems to be a net importer of these things as part of the trade imbalance with China--since not as many goods go out as come in, there isn't as much demand for empty containers once they've reached their initial destination.
Firsthand, I experienced recycling of these guys while deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the US Marines. Our facility had a number of these left lying around, and it was relatively simple to fit them with air conditioners and pa
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, Housing
Schwarzenegger Drops The Ball--Sort Of
2007-10-18 10:11:05
A couple weeks ago, I mentioned that the Governator had a unique opportunity to push California even further into the forefront on green building and cleantech. The bills up for consideration would have made the USGBC's LEED-Gold standard a requirement for all new government buildings and boosted the minimum energy efficiency for residential construction.
Unfortunately, he elected not to sign those bills.
He did sign a number of green bills, including a couple that take half-steps toward the goal of pervasive green building in California. Most of the rest of his green legislation slate, however, dealt with other important topics, like water conservation and monitoring of toxic chemicals. So it was far from a defeat for those who want to see California continue to advance in green-ness.
Some of the green building-related bills, now law:
AB 1109 will boost energy efficiency in indoor lighting; a more sane proposal than outright banning of incandescents, it provides a more open com
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, Drops
Retro Building
2007-10-26 10:09:10
One of the keys to green building is seeking out alternative construction materials in order to overcome the shortcomings of existing insulation and building practices. The trend, of course, is to look for the latest technological advance, to come up with the replacement for fiberglass that will revolutionize home construction.
Going backward would of course seem counterintuitive, but there are plenty of rather retro materials and techniques that could provide a lot of the savings and low carbon impact that those who care about green building are looking for today.
One of the prominent examples I've seen has been the green roof, which is a brilliant throw back to the days of sod houses on the American prairie, but look to be significant energy savers, especially for ubran, flat-roof structures. Requiring much less maintenance than traditional tar roofing, and providing massive benefits in terms of reduced cooling costs and improved drainage, urban cityscapes could soon become ra
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Sustainable and Affordable
2007-11-02 23:59:10
The biggest force opposing green building is not government intransigence or corporate apathy, but the very simple matter of up-front cost.
The traditional equation in green building has always been simple, if a bit prohibitive: construction costs may be higher, in some cases much higher, but they'll be paid for over the life of the structure in energy savings. Sometimes recouped in a relatively short period of time, sometimes very long-term. Other savings are simply seen in greater durability, meaning product such as light bulbs or windows will not have to be replaced in a term similar with their less-efficient counterparts.
But the upfront costs can still be quite considerable, and beyond the reach of many, even when amoritized over thirty years.
So the key is going to be reducing the up-front costs without sacrificing the energy savings and general sustainability of the structure.
Back in August, CNet News did a photo tour of a pre-fab green-built house under construction
Read more: Sustainable
Greening Datacenters
2007-11-11 16:47:19
The datacenter has become as much a necessity to modern corporate life as plumbing, electricity, and HVAC. Both the on-site sort that runs local and distributed networks and the colocated variety that support hundreds or even thousands of businesses, datacenters tend to be massive carbon emitters and a serious thorn in the side of any carbon neutrality effort. Yet, for the 21st century, they're absolutely crucial to business.
Back in June, I mentioned the Google/Intel effort to dramatically reduce power consumption in information technology devices, but that's only the tip of the iceberg, and in many ways reliant entirely on manufacturers to produce greener hardware. That's going to be critical, no mistake, and the swell of interest in cleantech is going to make it a no-brainer for these companies. But first they have to overcome significant engineeering challenges, and it's incumbent on datacenter operators to begin reducing impact and energy costs.
Jeremy Faludi covers a
The Reach of Cleantech and Clean Energy
2007-12-01 16:20:58
To me one of the remarkable things about the very recent and very rapid developments in the adoption of clean energy and cleantech is how widespread it has become. And not only widespread, but cutting across what one might call traditional political and ideological lines.
Inherently, cleantech has a sort of appeal that the alternative does not--no one is really that in favor of pouring toxic smoke into the atmosphere for everyone to breather, for instance. No one is in favor of smog, or a return to the bad old days of Pittsburgh's unreformed steel mills when the city hung under a cloud of smoke and nastiness. No one wants miners to die in more coal mine cave-ins, or get blacklung, or what-have-you.
So it's not surprising, and yet it is, in that the environmental debate has long been framed in polarized political terms--liberals in favor of increased restrictions and regulations, conservatives against. But that's the critical thing, on a social level, of the pending cleantech
Read more: Reach
, Clean
, Energy
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