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BUILDING FOR A COLD CLIMATE ideally means protecting the North side of the house - this earth sheltered home does a good job of that. In the winter, North facing windows are a prime source of heat loss. That's why there are only a few small one's here. They do contribute to cross ventilation in the warmer months.
I spent three days in Las Vegas recently.
Watching a big wind turbine flying apart is spectacular. Even seeing still photos of the aftermath of a catastrophic failure, such as the one shown here, is pretty fascinating, in a train-wreck sort of way.
I moved to Brattleboro, Vermont 28 years ago to work for an organization that was all about promoting solar energy--an industry that blossomed out of the energy crisis in the 1970s. When the problem is dependence on an energy source that's non-renewable, that comes from far away and sucks money out of our local economy, that pollutes our air when we burn it, and that contributes to global warming, it makes a lot of sense to look for an alternative that's renewable, available locally, and environmentally safe. Solar energy is just such a solution.
We faced some pretty tough choices this past summer. Heating oil prices were around $4.50 per gallon, and scary news reports were projecting $5.00 per gallon by January. Some rushed to lock in prices by pre-buying their winter oil. It was a gamble. Were prices going to go even higher (as the heating season approaches, heating oil prices have traditionally risen), or would the bubble burst and prices fall?
A story's been posted on BuildingGreen.com that ASHRAE has unexpectedly pulled the plug on the Standard 189 development committee. This standard is supposed to be "a new minimum, code-enforceable standard for green buildings." The USGBC and IES have been working with ASHRAE on the project since 2006, and were apparently ambushed by ASHRAE's decision to shake up the process.
Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here — it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time.
Read the current bulletin
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.
