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Scoop.it!
The San Diego County Board of Supervisors voted 4-1 in favor of all but one of the staff's recommendations. 
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Scoop.it!
The wood and plastics industry prefers Green Globes and is designing laws around it. Paging Jerry Yudelson.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
More of this insanity. The energy should be into improving building standard, not hunting for the one that "lets you get away with" the most amount of traditional practices.
The emphasis needs to be on improving sustainability. Not protecting old school, entrenched interests.
Scoop.it!
Employment in the U.S. solar industry jumped 20 percent in 2013 to hit 142,698, according to an annual survey released Monday. Nearly half of all U.S. solar workers counted in the most recent survey install systems, rather than make the equipment.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
For all the knocks on green jobs, they seem to be steadily increasing year over year.
Scoop.it!
By employing a multi-pronged approach to scaling, the Rocky Mountain Institute aims to advance building efficiency. (The aggressive acceleration of deep-energy retrofits - By employing a multi-pronged approach to scaling, the Rocky...
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Fantastic work by RMI to get solutions going rather than coplain about the problem itself.
Scoop.it!
Promoting research and hands-on experience, this international competition challenges students to reduce energy consumption by constructing efficient homes that rely almost solely on the sun for energy. 20 teams from more than 10 countries will be competing in this year’s event, taking place in Madrid.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Another green competition wherer, in a very real sense, we are all winners.
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Scoop.it!
There are 150,000 LEED-certified housing units across the world, according to a new report. Is your state in the top 10 or the bottom 10 for the U.S.? There are now more than 150,000 LEED-certified housing units worldwide, according to the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED in Motion: Residential report. Where does your home state stack up? Visit the link for the top 10 and bottom 10 states per certified units. Via Lauren Moss
PIRatE Lab's insight:
Another example of the growing coastal-inland divergence in almost all aspects of our society.
Scoop.it!
Passive Houses are essentially buildings which use very little energy for heating and cooling, whilst also providing a high level of comfort. The houses are so energy efficient they can save up to 90% in heating costs. One of the main focal points of Passive Houses is minimizing air leakage from the property. In fact, for a house to be certified, ‘the building must not leak more air than 0.6 times the house volume per hour’. The houses implement the latest in insulation technology, triple-glazed windows, balanced energy recovery ventilation and limiting thermal bridging, being heated mostly using ‘passive’ energy from electrical equipment, people and passive solar gains... Via Lauren Moss
PIRatE Lab's insight:
A quick primer for those who have never thought about passive management of energy via building design.
Scoop.it!
What’s the coolest place in Los Angeles? It may be right over your head. Starting in 2014, thanks to an update of the Municipal Building Code, all new or refurbished buildings will be equipped with “cool roofs.” A cool roof is built of reflective rather than absorptive material. Compared to traditional roofs, cool roofs can be as much as 50 degrees cooler on the roof surface, and can lower interior building temperatures by several degrees. Los Angeles is the first major American city to pass a cool-roof ordinance... Via Lauren Moss
PIRatE Lab's insight:
We can even go this one better with green roof designs. But light is preferable to dark when it comes to surfaces in our hot climate (this is why adobes were white washed). Our most energy-intensive season is the the hottest period at end of summer/early fall months, with most of that energy going into air conditioning to cool heated buildings.
Norm Miller's curator insight,
January 8, 2014 1:48 PM
Great to see LA becoming a leader in requiring cool roofs that cost no more.
Scoop.it!
Australia has long grappled with the challenge of creating a conservation industry to restore the landscape. The Coalition's latest incarnation is unlikely to be effective.
PIRatE Lab's insight:
We need an array of green jobs/a diverse green work force. Too often this discussion gets side tracked into "solar panel installers" or some such occupation and fails to go big/go broad.
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It’s not easy being green — if you’re a house for sale. Sure, everyone loves energy efficient upgrades — in theory. But when it comes time to fork over green paper with pictures of dead presidents,...
PIRatE Lab's insight:
This is of note. The sentiment here is quite contrary to 1) my experience and 2) much of the analyses of "green" home imporvements such as solar photovolatics, etc. Rigorous analyses (i.e. NOT realtor columnists desperate for free advertising in newspaper outlets trying to show you how snarky and hip they are) I have read shows that such improvements really to have a good ROI. Be wary of conclusions based on anecdotal evidence...especially from San Francisco.
Too many issues here to list. I'll just note for the non-SFers that this house that hasn't sold isn't necessarily in the most desireable neighborhood, the asking price is WAY, WAY over a comperable property, and (perhaps most significantly) there is never a discussion of what this "green" renovation entailed other than using salvaged materials.
On the clear upside, for all the nay-sayers about LEED and the USGBC, LEED has clearly been a major force for pushing the design and construction industry towards (more) sustainable building practices and approaches.
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