Creating a superinsulated building envelope is one of the key requirements with passive survivability. I saw this superinsulated home feature when I was in Sweden last year.Photo: Alex Wilson. Click for bigger.

(More below.)

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If your existing single-glazed windows are in reasonable condition and replacing the sash isn't an option, installing storm windows often makes sense.

Sort of. The executive summary of the September 2008 Electric Power Monthly, released a few days ago by the Energy Information Administration — a statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Energy — states that "Wind-powered generation [in June 2008] was 81.6 percent higher than it was in June 2007." Holy cow! However, it goes on, "Even with this significant increase, the contribution of wind-powered generation to the national total was only 1.2 percent in June 2008."

The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) promotes neighborhood-based development as an alternative to sprawl. As part of their Highways to Boulevards initiative they recently listed ten Freeways Without Futures — elevated urban freeways that they say wreak all manner of economic and social havoc on cities and are ripe for being torn down.

Back on May 6, Jennifer Atlee posted here on this blog:"If I could adopt a conference, it would be the USGBC Cascadia chapter's Living Future 'Unconference'. As someone who generally prefers to stay behind the scenes talking shop, it was a delight to find myself surrounded primarily by the obsessed of the green building world..."

The current issue of The New Yorker has a sprawling piece about the illegal logging market, titled "The Stolen Forests", which cuts a global swath and at times reads like a spy novel.

Windows have a huge impact on the energy use of our homes. Fortunately, there have been dramatic advances in window technology over the past thirty years. This column will take a look at factors that affect the energy performance of windows.

Mold in a vented attic.

What's moisture have to with energy? Quite a bit, actually. When we tighten up or insulate a house, there's the potential of causing moisture problems that could harm your health by allowing mold to grow or affect the life of materials your house is built from. And any time you work on a house, especially when you do things that affect the exterior envelope (walls, roof, foundation), you're provided with an opportunity to fix problems that may already exist.

I spent a few days last week at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, attending the 2008 Wood Structures Symposium. Like many smaller conferences, it was pretty invigorating, with conversations from sessions spilling into the hallway coffee breaks. The theme this year was prefabricated architecture, a particular interest of mine, and there were lots of new ideas floating around.

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Plant engineer Henrik Mattsson showing off the chip sorting facility at the Brattleboro CHP plant.

Last week, I addressed some of the benefits of capturing waste heat from power plants and distributing it to buildings--a technology referred to as combined heat and power or CHP. This week we'll look at how this idea could be implemented in Brattleboro--using sustainably produced wood chips as the fuel source.

Better version: ww.miniature-earth.com

Louis Palmer and the Solartaxi

Does prefabrication make green houses more affordable? I asked this question almost a year ago when I was working on a feature article on the topic. Back then the answer was "not quite yet."