Sandy Adomatis, appraiser and Vice Chair of the National Education Committee, Appraisal Institute (From Adomatis Appraisal Service).

Green-building advocates feel like a green renaissance within home construction and renovation—an Emerald City – is on the horizon.   But appraisers have been the big buzz kill at the party.  As an industry, they’ve refused to assign higher valuation to energy-efficient features that save homeowners money on utility bills or create healthful environments.

What’s been missing, appraisers say, are data points to support higher valuations of those features, and lending underwriters able to reconcile higher appraisal values with federal lending guidelines.

GETTING ON THE GREEN-BUILDING BANDWAGON

The Appraisal Institute is hot on the trail, and last fall, it launched its “Residential Green and Energy Efficient Addendum,” a form for appraisers to identify any green and energy-efficient features of a house.  Sandy Adomatis, an appraiser and Vice Chair of the National Education Committee for the institute, says that adoption among AI members has been slow.  Of 80,000 licensed appraisers in the United States, only 23,000 are Appraisal Institute members, and of those, only 2.9 percent (667) have sought green certification.  Yet the appraisers who are trained to get green features, love the addendum.

Adomatis identifies two critical pieces that need to fall into place for green appraisal data to matter – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac haven’t gotten on board by distinguishing green properties as specialized, and homeowners must assert their rights when they want green features considered.

Elizabeth Million, appraiser and banker at Elevations Credit Union, Boulder, Colo. (From eGreenContractors.WordPress.com)

“What hasn’t changed is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac coming into 2012 and recognizing that these energy-efficiency features have value,” says Boulder banker and appraiser Elizabeth Million.  “There’s no specific area for underwriters to go to a site and find out what ‘PV’ is – what’s solar.  So the underwriter can choose not to accept the appraised value.  That, in my opinion, is why we need these data points.”

HOMEOWNERS’ BILL OF RIGHTS

Laura Stukel, a National Association of REALTORS “Green” REALTOR in Chicago with LW Reedy Real Estate, says that when homeowners are working with their lenders, that’s the time to request a green appraiser.  “If you had a horse property, you’d want an appraiser who knew how to value a horse property.  You need someone who can value green properties,” she says.

Adomatis says that the AI has green appraisal classes, tests and subsequent certifications – two for residential appraisers and four for commercial appraisers.  Homeowners can request a “green-certified” appraiser from their lender.  Sometimes, that request isn’t honored, though, because lenders don’t have the knowledge to fulfill it, or the people, she says.

“Unfortunately they’re using either their own ordering department within the bank or they use an appraisal management company.  Neither category is looking at green construction as anything other than conventional.”

Laura Stukel, NAR Green REALTOR with L.W. Reedy Real Estate, Chicago. (From Efficiency Vermont)

Adomatis notes that green appraisals are considered “complex” and that “general” or “trainee” appraisers shouldn’t be doing them.  And yet banks and appraisal companies sometimes dispatch those less-skilled anyway.  Owners can also provide completed MLS GFAs to appraisers for verification.

LINE IN THE SAND

Adomatis says it’s completely legit for property owners to ask, “Are you a trainee, or are you certified?  Have you had any classes in green construction?”  And when the appraisal’s done, check it then – don’t wait until closing.

“The homeowner should ask for a copy of the appraisal as soon as they can get it,” says Adomatis.  “Did they describe the property appropriately?  If it’s green, do they describe the green features?  If they didn’t describe it right, they probably didn’t appraise it correctly.  Then go back to the lender.”

REALTORS and appraisers are working shoulder to shoulder to get green features valued, but there’s not a big push from lenders, says Adomatis.  “I’d like to see the lenders do what we’ve encouraged the builders to do – network with all of us, networking and brainstorming together.  The AI always invites lenders,” she says.

Ultimately, Stukel says the responsibility for getting green features valued falls squarely on the home or building owner.  “You still have to manage the process,” she says.  Working with green REALTORS and appraisers can flatten the learning curve.

-Melissa Baldridge, eGreenContractors

For more information …

• Green REALTORS come in two varieties and can help owners through buying, selling and appraising properties with energy-efficiency features – EcoBroker and National Association of REALTORS “Green.”
• Note upcoming class – The Appraisal Institute’s Case Studies in Appraising Green Commercial Buildings,” June 26-7, 2012, Chicago,
• Appraisal Institute solar appraisal class coming in January 2013.
• Homeowners can present MLS “green-field addenda” to appraisers for inspection and review.  For help in the Denver/Boulder metro area with a GFA (Metrolist or IRES), contact us today.  We have certified energy auditors who can fill the form out accurately.  Info@eGreenContractors.com, 1.877.376.8953.

Big Blue, painted lovelier shades of brown, in the Corey-Merrill neighborhood of Denver

When Sarah Coleman and Carl Sack first saw “Big Blue,” they knew they were home.  The massive house, so named because all the rooms were painted shades of the color, was built in the 1920s on two and a half lots in the Corey-Merrill neighborhood of inner-city Denver.

But their Realtor, PJ Magin, remembers the 4,200-square-foot place was a gut job – the roof was shot, the hardwood floors wrecked, a detached garage needed scraping, and an old “octopus” boiler appeared to have been recently coal-fired by the foreclosed-upon owners because the house had no power.

Realtor PJ Magin and homeowner Sarah Coleman remember the trauma and drama of buying the bank-owned property.

The bank initially listed the place at $789,000, and the couple put in an offer of $245,000 in winter 2011.  Their first lender backed out one day before closing, and the bank gave the couple a small window to resuscitate the deal when Magin recommended working with mortgage lender Brett Popish.  Because Coleman and Sack had done the heavy lifting for the previous lender, including getting bids, Popish was able to fund and close in two weeks.

The 203K loan product Popish used funded $163,000 of conventional improvements like a new roof, historically right-on windows to replace the 60 single-pane original ones, and rewiring the house.  More importantly, the loan also funded “green” upgrades like a high-efficiency furnace and sealed ductwork, tankless, “on-demand” hot water heating and ENERGY STAR appliances.  And Popish, who’s a 203K veteran at Universal Lending Corporation, says homeowners are more and more choosing the loan for green upgrades to existing homes in both purchases and refis.

GRANITE COUNTERTOPS =  SOLAR PANELS

Mike Wilcox with Academy Mortgage

The beauty of the 203K is that it’s agnostic about what’s green and what’s conventional.  Viewed through the 203K lens, granite countertops are weighted the same as high-efficiency furnaces as new carpet as low-VOC paint as structural repairs as solar panels (owned, not leased).  The mortgage underwriter can fund up to 110 percent on the “as-completed value” of the purchase price ($245,000 in the case of Coleman and Sacks) plus the improvements ($163,000) up to the conforming loan limit ($408,000 in the City and County of Denver in June 2011).

The 203K is essentially a construction loan and a purchase loan rolled into one, and the FHA, its guarantor, estimates they’re two percent of the entire FHA portfolio.  The loan comes in two flavors – a streamlined loan up to $35,000 in non-structural repairs, and a full up to a county’s conforming loan limit.  Coleman and Sack opted for the latter, given the massive overhaul that the house required.

The loan also solves a couple of problems that existing “energy-efficiency mortgages” (EEMs) have.  EEMs require a HERS rating, a “miles-per-gallon” metric assigned to a home, and those start at $500 and go up depending on square footage.  The math behind a HERS rating generates the net present value of future energy savings based on a prescribed scope of work.  Vary outside of that complex calculus, and you’re on your own.

Secondly, the 203K is a less-complicated product to use as long as everyone’s on board from the gitgo, says Mike Wilcox, Renovation Sales Manager at Academy Mortagage, which specializes in the loan.  He only recommends using 203K-approved contractors, and he has a “come-to-Jesus” meeting before closing to insure buy-in.

REMOVING THE GUESSWORK

Brett Popish with Universal Lending Corporation

“This is not a program to guess at,” he says, noting that its legendary complications usually come when contractors aren’t schooled in the draw process.  “The most important thing for everybody to know is who to call – from the contractor to the lender to the FHA consultant.”

The loan product gets a bad rap among real estate professionals because it has the reputation of financing houses that are in shambles.  Not so, says Popish.

“With a 203K, you can do something as small as an appliance package, just putting new appliances in a home,” he says.  (Energy-efficient, please!)  “Or buying a home, scraping it and building a new home on the foundation.”  The numbers simply have to pencil out – green or not.

“I don’t know why every loan isn’t a 203K,” Wilcox says.  Even simple jobs like repainting and recarpeting can be rolled into the price, adds Popish.  The work simply has to be bid beforehand and weighed in the appraisal value.

Popish says 203Ks are also popular with experienced lenders because the properties go into default significantly less than homes financed with other loans.  “Anyone fixing up their home to make it a dream home, they’re far less likely to default,” he says.  (Which begs the question – Are “green” borrowers better credit risks?  Let’s start watching for data to support that.)

GREEN FOR NORMAL PEOPLE

Coleman says she and Sack don’t consider themselves hardcore enviros.  She’s an accountant, and he’s a financial analyst so both live decidedly in the realm of the left-brained.  “The greenest thing I did was buy this house and not scrape it,” she says.

Still, they chose high-efficiency systems, reused building materials when possible and have put a herculean amount of sweat equity into Big Blue, including a lot of repainting.  “We aren’t consciously buying something green, but we make important decisions whenever we can.”  The 203K helped them get there.

- Melissa Baldridge

A high-end general contractor, he built two LEED-certified homes in the Washington Park neighborhood of Denver in 2009.  At an educational session he hosted there, the U.S. Green Building Council approached him to serve on a committee.  “If you’re doing big-picture things, I’m all over it,” he told them.

At a subsequent meeting with the Governor’s Energy Office (GEO), Smith realized he was one of the few businesspeople in a room full of well-intended greenies.

“There wasn’t one REALTOR.  I was the only builder.  There weren’t any bankers or appraisers.  They were talking about moving the market at a macro scale,” he said.  “The market they were talking about was not there in any way, shape or form.”

Sean Smith, a bridge figure between building industries and the world of "green"

The problem Smith and his colleagues wanted to solve was validating the theory that green homes sell faster and for more money than conventional homes.  It’s a real “chicken-or-egg” conundrum as appraisers, mortgage lenders and underwriters, REALTORS, builders and homeowners look to each other for numbers to prove the claim.  If a market-based case can be made, it would grease the skids for moving the green-building industry into the mainstream.

An important yet imperfect study emerged in 2009[1] from the Pacific Northwest, specifically Portland and Seattle.  The MLS (Multiple Listing Service) had collected sale data from certified green homes that proved the theory there.  What implementers at the GEO realized is that grant money could be directed to Colorado’s 18 MLS’s to add “green  field addenda” (GFAs) to start data collection here.

IRES, the MLS for Boulder and northern Colorado, was one of the first aboard.  Lauren Hansen, IRES’ CEO, said she rolled her eyes when the GEO first knocked on her door about placing GFAs on IRES, but she quickly saw the value of the undertaking.  Boulder’s building codes now require all new construction and remodels to be 30 percent more energy-efficient than conventional codes.  And that’s just the starting point.

“It’s not just about listing and selling homes, but instead how can we gather the right kind of applicable data, meaningful data, so appraisers can start putting these houses side by side [next to code-built twins].”

Lauren Hansen, CEO at IRES, which serves northeastern Colorado

The GEO approached Hansen in April 2010, and IRES moved with lightning speed, launching its GFA in August.  She says she had IT support that a lot of smaller MLSs don’t have in-house.  (The GEO MLS grants intended to offset that expense, even if the work has to be sent out-of-house.)

Another reason Hansen moved so fast is because the GEO offered her a data template to facilitate apples-to-apples comparisons.  “This is not the area for you to be creative,” the GEO told her.  “If you want to change up data collection, go for it.  But be sure to have at least the same info that we do.”

The 800-pound gorilla, Metrolist serving metro Denver and almost half the REALTORS in the state, has been slower on the uptake, and its founding president resigned in October after 27 years there.  Melissa Olson, Senior Manager for Marketing & Sales, says it hasn’t been a priority for Metrolist because REALTORS haven’t asked for it.

“In our market, there just hasn’t been a real call in the brokerage community for the green fields,” she says.  She advises brokers who are interested to tack green data on as “additional information.”  Olson does say, however, that a bona fide GFA will be available on the MLS toward the end of this year.

Smith notes another issue with widespread acceptance – no secondary market for energy-efficient mortgages.  “Fannie and Freddie and HUD can come up with energy-efficiency mortgages all day long, all they want.  Underwriters and lenders will add their own layer of criteria,” he says.  “If we get the mortgage industry to really buy into an energy-efficient home with a HERS score of X (a “miles per gallon” comparison) with data from an MLS, appraisers can understand it, and they can get comps from an MLS because it’s all in there.”

He says one sticking point is that appraisers have lacked mechanisms to value green improvements.  But this year, the Appraisal Institute passed its own GFA with, Hansen notes, fields similar to IRES’s and other MLS’s.  Hansen says it’s a game changer because where appraisers go, lenders and underwriters can follow.

One more obstacle to a green MLS – and perhaps the biggest – is actually getting REALTORS to use it, and that’s a problem of education.  Even Hansen in green-tinged Boulder says she doesn’t have the acceptance of the GFAs that she’d like to see.

She says acronyms like VOC paints, SIPs and ICFs (both insulative building foam) can be intimidating.  “It’s like looking for a job.  If I don’t know what the acronyms are, I probably shouldn’t apply.”  Hansen keeps up the drumbeat in all her real estate CLU classes, not just green classes.  And Olson says she’s had the same experience in Denver.

As the various components surrounding green-building valuation gel, Hansen says it’s only a matter of time before REALTORS start using them.   “Once the brokers understand this could make my seller’s property more valuable and more attractive, it’ll be easy for them to jump on board.”

For more information, the U.S. GBC Colorado published a video on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e49dsQiopb4.

-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot

“Give a man a fish, you feed him for a day.  Teach him to fish, you feed him for a lifetime.”

-Chinese proverb

Newmont Mining officials signing social responsibility agreements with the Ahafo Host communities in Ghana. (Courtesy of Newmont Mining)

Let’s say you own a waterfront business that invests the time and resources to teach that man or woman to fish.  You routinely offer “Fishing 101” classes.  Your customer base could expand exponentially, and those newly schooled anglers could become your best customers.

Your investment – in this case, education – is the heart of what’s called “creating shared value” (CSV).  And strategists/visionaries Michael Porter and Mark Kramer say it’s the next evolution of business.  CSV harnesses what business does so well – create profit – as well as advance the social and economic conditions in the communities in which it operates.  Everyone wins.

A number of well-known global brands are embracing CSV’s “profits-plus,” and several Colorado companies are breathing new life into their businesses based on the CSV model.

To comprehend CSV, it may be easier to understand what it’s not – the sacred cow, “corporate social responsibility” (CSR).  Kramer and Porter say that corporations developed CSR programs as philanthropic ways to salvage their reputations as bad stewards of the environment, jobs exporters and sweatshop operators.  CSR programs, while often laudable, are peripheral expenses (cost centers), fringe programs that add nothing to the bottom line.

COFFEE TALK

"Creating Shared Value" co-author Michael Porter (From En.Wikipedia.org)

One example is fair trade pricing, where well-intentioned companies purchase commodities like coffee and cacao at prices above what the subsistence farmers who grow them would otherwise be able to get.  Fair trade is essentially a price support and redistribution rather an expansion of value for those suppliers.

Porter and Kramer point out Nestlé’s Nespresso division with its single-serve espresso machines as fair trade’s next iteration.  Nestlé opened the division in 2000, redesigned its coffee procurement processes and has reaped 30 percent annual growth since.  Nespresso helped its farmers with new growing techniques, bank loans, better fertilizers and pesticides, all resulting in increased yields.  While fair trade can raise farmer incomes as much as 20 percent, Kramer and Porter estimate CSV in coffee growing can raise them as much as 300 percent.

Energy efficiency is a natural fit for CSV because it creates value along the supply chain by cutting energy and waste costs, and General Electric turned energy efficiency into a $21 billion a year business with its Ecomagination division.   Whether creating über-efficient jet engines, long-lived batteries and electric car charging stations, the division’s focus on energy efficiency creates value for the company and its customers by reducing energy use and creating less waste.

And the other half of the "Creating Shared Value" team - Mark Kramer (From SDGrantMakers.org)

Closer to home, two Colorado-based companies, both approximately 100-years-old, are reinventing themselves from a CSR mentality to a CSV model – Western Union and Newmont Mining Corporation.

WESTERN UNION

Western Union is a $5.2 billion a year backbone for global money transfers with 470,000 agent locations, marketing in over 100 different languages and operations in 200 countries and territories.  “We can see where people send money,” says Talya Bosch, Director of Corporate Responsibility.  “People literally line up at Western Union offices around the world if it’s payday in, say, Germany.  If the money doesn’t get there safely and reliably, they literally won’t eat.”

Similar to microloan programs on the Asian subcontinent that foster local small business, Western Union’s core business meets peoples’ basic needs all over the planet.  “What we do puts food on the table, helps educate children and has a tremendous impact,” says Bosch.

Western Union CEO Hikmet Ersek addressing the United Nations (Courtesy of Western Union). Ersek is reinventing the company using the CSV model.

The company started the Western Union Foundation in 2001, which operates under its Corporate Responsibility arm, and last year the foundation donated over $20 million, with 46 percent of Western Union employees contributing to that.  “We’ve engaged our employees and agents, creating a culture of giving.  That’s good, but there’s more that we can do,” Bosch says, noting that CEO Hikmet Ersek pegs CSV as the company’s new magnetic north.

Bosch describes the foundation giving as “layered,” addressing issues of economic opportunity like financial literacy and job creation.  And Western Union goes where few companies have gone – to underserved, poorer parts of the planet, which is precisely what Porter and Kramer say is CSV’s sweet spot.  (Remember the newly schooled anglers.)  Bosch also says the company intends to develop programs to help the underserved stateside – small business.  (We’ll be in touch, Talya.)

As the foundation evolves, Bosch says Western Union’s grants benefit the people the company serves.  “We’re not just giving grants but education,” Bosch says.  And that education investment can generate new business.

NEWMONT MINING CORPORATION

Based in Englewood, Colo., Newmont Mining Corporation has 31,000 employees worldwide, and is primarily involved in gold mining.  Its division in Ghana, Newmont Ghana Gold Limited, is determined to avoid mining gold without properly re-seeding and re-investing in communities there.

“We clearly see we have to be a partner in the host community and in the environment in which we’re working,” says Randy Barnes, the Regional Vice President of Environment and Social Responsibility for NGGL.  “We’re trying to really flesh out what that means to them (Ghanaians).”

Newmont Ghana, too, has started with a foundation model that engages Ghanaians directly affected by mining to create local investment and ownership with an endowment that will live beyond the mine’s operations.

Ahafo Program apprentices in training, 2010. (From Newmont Mining Corporation)

To that end, Newmont established the Newmont Ahafo Development Foundation, run by a board with community and corporate representatives.  Newmont Ghana tied community investment directly to mine proceeds — $1 for every ounce of gold sold and 1 percent of NGGL profits made.  When the company does well, that’s directly channeled to improving health, education and infrastructure projects like new police facilities, upgrading water and sanitation and improving local schools and hospitals.

One key point for Ghanaians in the mine region was that one-third of jobs created go to local folk, even ahead of Ghanaian nationals.  This was a stretch because 85 percent of area residents are subsistence farmers, never trained for the technical and higher-skilled jobs required in Newmont’s operations.

So Newmont started its Apprenticeship Program in 2005 and has enrolled 145 students to date, including four women.   The apprenticeships teach mechanical, process operation and electrical skills, and a number of grads are now working for Newmont.  “One of the advantages of training locals is that you’re creating value for them to stay in the community,” says Barnes.

The mantra for CSR is “Do well by doing good.”  For CSV, it could be “Do well by engaging others in ways that create value for them.”  Companies that fail to do so will suffer withering market share as CSV companies create new markets by investing in the people they serve.

-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot

The GreenSpot blog is nationally syndicated on www.ColoradoEnergyNews.com and www.EarthTechling.com.

Brian Fuentes in one of the first straw-bale houses he built in Boulder - a mid-century ranch reno with a straw-bale gear/media room. Photo by Chris Romano.

Straw-bale houses have come a long way since Midwestern homesteaders used to stack sod on the Great Plains and call it home.  More recently, 20^th century straw-bale builders were either crunchy, granola types hand-crafting their own über-green homes, or affluent greenies seeking to create off-grid trophy houses, budgets be damned.  In all cases, though, straw-bale has been the preserve of the one-off – designed and built one at a time.  Until now.

One Boulder architect is adapting a European production model that has allowed him to increase his straw-bale business exponentially and factory-produce homes less expensively than other high-efficiency, architect-designed housing.  Brian Fuentes stacks framing and bales on conventional slab foundations, runs wiring and plumbing throughout and covers the bales with imported hydraulic French plaster that hardens like concrete.  The result – a pre-fab panelized system – is artisanal, high-end yet it still has the warmth of the human hand.

The key to Fuentes’ economies of scale is in the framing process, and where that happens – in a production facility versus on site.

A straw-bale section - assembled in Fuentes' shop and dropped into place by crane at the building site. Photo by Chris Romano.

Fuentes, a 34-year-old architect in Boulder, models the houses in his studio, builds the load-bearing framing there, stuffs the framing cavities with straw bales and applies two coats of plaster.  He transports the dried panels to the job site, and PRESTO! — Installers erect the completed walls sealed full of straw.  Fuentes compares them to LEGOS, and he says he aims to “take the drama out of straw-bale building” with his process.

Straw-bale houses conjure images of  the “three little pigs” – straw houses collapsing under the big, bad wolf’s heavy breathing.  Yet the fable belies reality.

The houses are twice as insulated as code-built homes (R-40 wall systems versus R-21), and they withstand fire better than stick-frame construction.  In fact, a Fuentes home withstood one of Boulder’s notorious canyon fires this summer.   Fuentes attributes the house’s surviving because of its metal roof and lime plastering.

The holy grail for high-efficiency building is carbon neutrality, and that’s where straw-bale outpaces almost everything.  Most of the building materials he sources are local –  straw from Alamosa, Colo., clay from Golden and lumber reclaimed from Boulder.  And “net-zero” housing (where energy use in equals energy generated and saved) is easily within reach with straw-bale building.

One of Fuentes' first projects - a straw-bale addition to a mid-century ranch house in the Newlands neighborhood. Photo by Chris Romano.

Fuentes is a visionary who speaks rapid-fire about his vision for the building industry, peppered with high-efficiency building stats.  He grows misty when he talks about the “orders of magnitude” that straw-bale homes can save in energy – 10 times less needed for heating and cooling compared to conventional homes, and 75 percent less total energy, with lighting and appliances.

Boulder is the perfect place for Fuentes, who studied architecture at the University of Oregon, another hotbed for green building.  Building straw-bale there was fun, he says.  “You had big, thick walls inside, and it feels cozy.  It works well in earthquake zones because they’re kind of spongey.  The bales bounce around.”

Boulder building codes require all newly built homes to be 25 percent more energy-efficient than conventional homes so straw-bale is one option for homeowners.  Before he began pre-fabbing straw panels, he said he worked on four homes a year.  Because of his factory system, he’s already been involved with 13 projects this year, including his own home, which he’s building from the ground up.

Another Fuentes project - built from the ground up at 815 North St., Boulder. Photo by Chris Romano.

While Fuentes may be simplifying what’s essentially an artisanal process, he’s hardly in danger of upending the home-building industry.  Though young in his career, Fuentes has been involved with only 25 of the homes.  Last year, national single-family housing  starts numbered 470,900, and that’s 80 percent off the building peak of 1.7 million in 2005, says the National Association of Home Builders.  Even in Boulder, Fuentes plays for a small team, and he estimates he’s one of only five straw-bale builders there, one of 25 in Colorado and only one in maybe 100 nationally.

His homes can’t compete with conventional stick-built homes, selling for $80 to $90 per square foot.  Fuentes’ costs are double, and his straw-bale homes ring in at around $200 per square foot.  But it’s still well below what he says other architects of super-efficient construction charge ($300 per square foot) because of expensive materials like foam-insulated panels.

Even with stratospheric energy efficiency, Fuentes says straw-bale isn’t for everyone, describing many of his clients as willing (and able) to make a “legacy investment” in their home.  Straw-bale wall panels can be as thick as 18 inches, and Fuentes says that the self-absorbed who’ve bought into “bigger is better” don’t choose straw bale.

Though he’s tried to make the process drama-free, it’s not always that way, recalling one client whose wife, they discovered, was allergic to straw.  Once the walls were sealed, though, he said the problem was solved.

While Fuentes’ production process may not be a home-building game changer, the energy savings that straw bale affords cannot be ignored.  “This makes zero-energy affordable,” he says.  “And today’s renewable technology at today’s prices possible.”

-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot

(From GizMag.com)

Erik Foster had practiced law in his downtown Denver office building for five years before he realized what an energy-efficient gem the place was.

He was chatting up a security guard one day and saw a plaque at the security desk – “ENERGY STAR 2009.”  When Foster asked about it, the guard said that the building had also won a “Building of the Year” award from the Building Owners and Managers Association, in addition to its LEED certification.  He said the operations staff was so proud of the plaques that they squirreled them away in a back office.  Foster, a real estate attorney who works with green builders and building owners, suggested a more public display – “Well, maybe the tenants would like to know that, too.”

Foster’s building in downtown Denver, had an ENERGY STAR rating of 97, meaning only three percent of buildings nationwide operated more efficiently.  A LEED Accredited Professional with Moye White, Foster is definitely a member of the green choir.  Yet he said that his firm’s lease included no provisions for how the building should operate in order to retain that elite status after the doors opened – a looming problem for green-building certifiers as more and more buildings seek labels.

(From Glogster.com)

Energy-efficient building codes and certifications are transforming the built landscape, and the U.S. Green Building Council has certified over 40,000 LEED buildings.  Cities like Dallas, Portland and Chicago are requiring LEED certification for new municipal buildings.  And companies like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Starbucks and Office Depot are routinely building LEED from the ground up.  As owners and landlords pay the upfront money to stamp their buildings as energy-efficient, they must work in tandem with tenants if they want to recertify when the building moves into adolescence and adulthood.  The mechanism for good green-building practice, beyond tenant good will?  “Green” leases, or leases with provisions that govern life in a green building.

Even though green is here to stay, the leases have a long way to go.  This is critical with ENERGY STAR and LEED, which require recertification based largely on the building’s energy use (read, how building systems function and the energy demands tenants make on them.)  Even Foster, practicing law for 20-plus years, says he didn’t see a green lease in Denver until two years ago, and that was largely driven by an architecture firm, which are usually chock-full of LEED APs, working with a building owner.

But even if owners pony up for the certifications in the first place, they must recertify (in perpetuity if they want the designation) under the “O+M” (operations and maintenance) criteria.  This includes no-big-deal provisions like building-wide recycling, low-flow water fixtures and energy-efficient light bulbs (natch).

Stairway with living green wall, Ann Demeulemeester shop in Seoul, South Korea (From AsianOffBeat.com)

There are more intrusive checkpoints, however, that directly affect the way people use a building, like pulling sunny-side blinds down in the afternoon, purchasing “environmentally preferable” products and services, and allowing daytime cleaning crews into work spaces.  “So often when a building is lit up at night, it’s the janitorial service that’s driving that whole use of utilities,” says Foster.

Another novel green-building trend flies in the face of a cherished lease practice – triple-net leasing.  With triple-net, building owners charge a per-square-foot price for energy use, and settle up with tenants at year-end.   In this scenario, Foster says tenants have no incentive to save energy because the owners pocket any savings from building efficiencies.  Sub-metering, though, captures individual energy use, rather than doling out a pro-rata share, and study after study shows direct feedback can help lower energy costs by 15 percent.  That helps make the recertification case.

An education process also has to happen before tenants go into green space.  Even a group as simpatico to greening as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had to school its employees when it moved into its LEED gold Region 8 offices in downtown Denver, with building systems like under-floor air ventilation, huge air returns on every floor and waterless urinals.  “Even buildings that are LEED or ENERGY STAR have been slow to come to the realization that they need to get tenants’ buy-in to make buildings work to maximum efficiency,” says Foster.

One reason green leases are behind building trends is that owners and managers play cards close to the chest.  In preparation for this article, I called seven property managers of LEED buildings.  Not one called back.  One woman I interviewed peripherally suggested that these building owners may be unwilling to publicize lease terms, private between management and clients.  Foster says, more likely, leasing agents don’t want to gum the works with what may be perceived as green-police, “rap-the-knuckles” rules for building use.

Speculating on whether there will be industry-wide acceptance for green leases anytime soon, Foster says, “I think it’s going to be years.  I think you have to get buy-in from the brokerage community, and we’re not there.”

-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot

Our blog is syndicated and also available at ColoradoEnergyNews.com.

Reddy Kilowatt goes back to the city. (From ParkinElectric.com)

Boulder lives on the bleeding edge when it comes to green.  The city’s never been one to back down from what would be wildly unpopular in most places – stringent land-use rules, high-bar green building codes, a carbon tax and now a possible split from its $10.6 billion investor-owned energy provider, Xcel Energy. 

The City of Boulder is weighing whether to renew its 20-year franchise agreement for electricity with Xcel, or to create its own municipal utility.  The rub?  The city has pegged contract renewal to reduction of carbon emissions á la Kyoto Protocol goals (greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012).  Boulder officials dismiss recent offers by Xcel (like offsetting carbon emissions with renewable energy) as window dressing to disguise the utility’s heavy carbon emissions statewide.

To hear some tell it, this latest standoff is one in a string of inadequate concessions and broken promises from Xcel.  David Driskell, the Executive Director of Community Planning and Sustainability for the City of Boulder, says the city’s beefs with Xcel started in 2005. 

The City of Boulder, Colo., with the Flatirons in the background. (From Colorado.edu)

“The city has a longstanding commitment to carbon reduction.  We started a municipalization study in 2005.  At that time, Xcel Energy said, ‘Hey, we’d like to make Boulder the first smart-grid city if you shelve your municipalization plan.’”[1]  That smart-grid program, which put Boulder once again on the forefront of energy policy and implementation, ran exponentially over budget and didn’t meet expectations, says Driskell.  “While the company says they’ve made improvements to the smart grid, that’s not really been seen by consumers.”  And he also notes Xcel hit up the Public Utility Commission to pass the cost overruns on to consumers.

“We were offered opportunities to invest in larger-scale projects with Xcel.  Most went to dead-ends,” he notes, referring to a wind farm that Xcel offered and then rescinded.

Nick Braden says that the City of Boulder should plan for a tough, costly slog.  Braden is the Vice-President of Communications for the Organization of American Public Power, and even though his membership numbers 2,000 small to mid-size public utilities, only 16 have joined his group in the last 10 years. 

Los Angeles is the largest city in the country with a municipal power provider. Pictured the headquarters of the Los Angeles Department of Power and Water. (From You-Are-Here.com)

Braden has watched a number of municipalities fight and lose to investor-owned utilities with deep pockets.  “It’s difficult because you have to have a vote of the people, do a feasibility study and issue bonds to pay for the assets,” he says, noting that private utility companies with huge marketing budgets can tip the scales in ballot initiatives.

Pending a positive vote in November, the City of Boulder will gain access to Xcel’s books and assets, which the utility values at $500 million (Boulder estimates are lower, at $220 million).  Rather than buying the utility assets outright or staying with Xcel, Driskell nods to a fifth way already in play in several states.  “CCAs” – community choice aggregates – are recent inventions that give municipalities the right to buy power from a source of choice, thus, loosing the grip of investor-owned utilities on energy users.   

In 2002, the California legislature passed a law allowing CCAs in response to a costly voter referendum the year prior when San Francisco moved to municipalize power production.  Pacific Gas & Electric spent $2.1 million to defeat the measure and won.

Fast forward to 2009, with both Marin County and San Fran again making noise about setting up shop as electricity providers, expressly to provide more green energy.  PG&E pushed a ballot initiative – Proposition 16 – requiring voters to approve any CCA by a two-thirds, super majority rather than a 50 percent-plus simple majority required for most referenda.  PG&E itself spent a jaw-dropping $46 million to pass the proposition, but voters still defeated it (52.5 percent to 47.5 percent).

“We’d be thrilled if it [CCAs] were a path we could pursue,” Driskell says.  Still, he doesn’t see CCAs on the Colorado horizon anytime soon, citing big contributions Xcel makes to many state legislators.  “Xcel has made it clear they would not support it,” he says.

But Driskell is hopeful regardless of whether Boulder voters decide to march forward with municipalization or not.  “It’s been a great community conversation we’re having,” he says.  “Boulder is an engaged, smart community.  Regardless of what the outcome of the vote is, we’ve learned a lot.  We’re going to keep striving toward those goals.”

-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot

"Marilyn" by Tom Deininger. (From InteractiveBlend.com)

Artists were some of the first environmentalists, whether they knew it or not.  Early 20^th century Cubist painters like Pablo Picasso used chair bottoms, newspapers and smoking pipes to create depth and a sense of the everyday in their artworks.  Later, Jackson Pollock dropped cigarette butts in the pools and paint blobs of his Abstract Expressionist paintings.  And mid-century artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Ed Kienholz used junk like mattresses, taxidermy animals and abandoned cars to break free from traditional art materials like paint and stone.

But toward the end of the 20^th century with the theory of climate change largely accepted, a number of artists have used garbage in their works as much more than jokey metaphor.  These artists “upcycle” trash into works of art like a neon arrow pointing at the piles of refuse threatening to overwhelm the earth’s landfills and oceans.  Working from literal garbage, enviro artists create works, some gorgeous, with darker messages about humankind’s impact on the planet.

"Trash People," Giza, H.A. Schult (2002) (From AdaptiveReuseBlog.com)

For German-American designer and conceptual artist H.A. Schult, his use of trash is anything but accidental.  In 1983, he created a paper river in downtown New York to highlight the amount of paper waste cities generate.  He later directed his focus to landfills and hired a stunt pilot to crash a Cessna into a Staten Island garbage dump.  And in 1996, Schult and 30 assistants created over 1,000 “trash people” sculptures that he placed in various installations around the planet, including Moscow’s Red Square, Piazza del Popolo in Rome, La Defénse in Paris and the pyramids at Giza in Egypt.

"Save the Beach" Hotel by H.A. Schult (From CubeMe.com)

Schult also created the “Save the Beach” hotel in central Madrid last year – part art assemblage and part working hotel festooned with garbage collected from the mountains of trash washed up on European beaches.  Says Schult, “The philosophy of this hotel is to expose the damage we are causing to the sea and the coastline.  We live in the era of trash, and we are running the risk of becoming trash ourselves.  Do we really want this world?” he asks.

For British artists Tim Noble and Sue Webster, trash is a metaphor for humanity’s dark unconscious– psychological aspects relegated to distant (mental) dumps and landfills.  Yet these expanding garbage repositories (both real and psychological) overwhelm the boundaries that hold them.

"Dirty White Trash (with Gulls)," by Tim Noble and Sue Webster (1998) (From JimOnLight.com)

The artists started using garbage as a primary art medium in the mid-1990s, and even hired celebrity architect, David Adjaye, to design their studio  – The Dirty House – as a creative warren and a trash warehouse.  In their “Shadow Works” series of assemblage sculptures, the art duo creates seemingly random piles of junk that, when illuminated from the front, cast human shadows and silhouettes – people confronting or disconnected from each other, lost in drink or peeing in private.  With artwork titles like “Real Life is Rubbish” and ”Dirty White Trash,” Webster’s and Noble’s pieces suggest a parallel side living in shadow – unaware, detached from self, others and the natural world, illustrated by the metaphor of overloaded landfills.

American garbage artist Tom Deininger says his favorite art-making tool is a glue gun, and he sticks together refuse like broken CDs, Coke crates, bottle caps and cigarette butts.  “I find almost everything visually stimulating from NASCAR smash-ups to Hubble images and shit just lying around the streets,” he says.  “When it comes down to it I am a real visual slut. I try to look at everything and not to judge beauty with a hierarchy of value or the source from which it is derived.”[1]

Deininger works in the same vein as early 20^th century Pointillist painters like George Seurat (“Afternoon at the Grande Jatte”) who almost mathematically arranged dots of paint – imperceptible  at a distance but predominant on closer inspection.  Deininger uses a cornucopia of trash – bottles, candles, masks, paper and all manner of useless plastic – creating portraits of pop  icons like Marilyn Monroe and John Lennon, Impressionist painter Monet’s bridge at Giverny and even natural forms like seashells.  The images are lost in an inescapable smorgasbord of garbage up close, but at a distance, the pieces merge, and the whole becomes beautiful.

"Shell" by Tom Deininger. Made from cigarette butts picked up in beach parking lots around Newport, R.I. (From PotionCollective.com)

For Schult, Webster, Noble and even Deininger, they intend their trash works to roust viewers out of complacency about what they see as the rivers of waste threatening the planet.  Some of these artists’ works are beautiful, but most are jarring.  Says Noble, ““I think anything that’s a bit of a rocket up the arse, anything that kicks against the routine, against the mundane things that close down your mind, is a refreshing and good thing.”  [2]

-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot (Denver)

Architectural drawings of Masdar's buildings (From GreenProphet.com)

Mention the United Arab Emirates, and the Americans who actually know of it, think of Dubai – that jumped-up, incandescent boomtown on the Arabian peninsula where Carrie Bradshaw’s “Sex & the City” girls behaved badly.  An Arabian desert wonderland that’s home to a $500 million underwater hotel, a skyscraper reaching half a mile high, and even a ski hill.

Yet its more staid, sober sibling – Abu Dhabi – sits a mere 75 miles away, polar opposite from the outsize, outlandish Dubai.  More traditional and erudite than its neighbor, Abu Dhabi is a center of higher learning and culture with branches of Paris’ Sorbonne and New York University (NYU), a Guggenheim museum designed by architect Frank Gehry, a concert hall by Iraqui “starchitect” Zaha Hadid and the seat of UAE’s government.  While Dubai is the Vegas of the Arab world, Abu Dhabi is the upper East Side.

Abu Dhabi is also home to Masdar City, one of the most ambitious sustainable developments on the planet.  Masdar is a master-planned community that sits 10 miles from the city center, and it’s the UAE government’s $18 billion hedge against dwindling petroleum reserves (and decreasing streams of tax revenue.)

Ethylene tetrafluorethylene like that used to quilt buildings and forms at Masdar City (From TomsReticentBlog.Blogspot.com)

Masdar is equal parts research center, living quarters, retail hub and free-wheeling economic enterprise zone, and GE, the cleantech and renewable energy colossus, signed on as its first corporate tenant.  The UAE has partnered with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to create the Masdar Institute of Science & Technology, a post-graduate university researching and developing cutting-edge clean-tech technologies.  In short, Masdar is the UAE’s investment in its future – its moon shot.

Masdar’s goals are ambitious – housing 50,000 people in three and a half acres (that population swelling to 90,000 during the day), using significantly less water and generating zero waste (everything recycled or burned for energy.)  City planners also designed Masdar to be “carbon-neutral” (any carbon emissions completely offset by generated renewable energies.)  It also plans to have one of the world’s first hydrogen plants.

With the first designs floated in 2006 by British celebrity architect Sir Norman Foster, the planned city is a futuristic wonderland.  In many sustainable developments, reaching zero carbon emissions often combines aggressively squeezing the architecture for maximum efficiency and offsetting the rest with solar electric, geothermal heat exchange systems and the like.  Masdar follows suit, and Foster and his team looked to historical Arab building design for inspiration – raising the building base to capture desert winds, designing narrow streets at hard angles to the sun to create shade and channel winds, and incorporating Arab latticework patterns to dapple remaining sunlight.  Such strategies cut temperatures, which can feel as hot as 150 degrees, by as much as half.

Masdar's "PRTs," Personal Rapid Transit" pod-cars (From IndustryLeadersMagazine.com)

Foster’s plans push into the future, too.  He bans combustion-fired autos from Masdar, opting instead for elevated trains and PRTs (“Personal Rapid Transit” driverless pod-cars), which run below street level.  He uses thick concrete as solid mass to hold cooler temperatures inside, visually softened by quilted, plastic cladding (ethylene tetrafluoroethylene).  And he places all municipal services outside the city walls – trash incineration, 54 acres of solar photovoltaic (PV) arrays and water treatment.

The city, originally budgeted at $24 billion, fell victim to global recession, and late last year, Arab Emirate budget crunchers value-engineered the development, trimming $6 billion from the original price tag.  The PRTs, which were initially meant to cover Masdar like ants, have been scaled back significantly.  Designers then scrapped plans to raise the city platform, meant to hide the city infrastructure like the two levels in the iconic Fritz Lang movie classic, Metropolis. They also chopped plans for solar panels on every rooftop, and the main extramural PV array will now be the sole solar supply.

Students and faculty began moving into one of the six campus buildings in fall of 2010, and Foster plans for the first integrated neighborhood to be completed in 2016.  The UAE government is actively recruiting businesses to set up shop there, and global cleantech companies, national banks and international retailers have already opted in.

Architect Sir Norman Foster also looked at historic designs like Arab latticework for inspiration (From Inhabitat.com)

As cities worldwide move to reduce dependence on oil and carbon emissions, the UAE government is in the vanguard with Masdar.  Yet critics like New York Times architecture columnist Nicolai Ourossoff point out that while Masdar’s goals are laudable, Masdar itself is a cordoned-off new development, separate from the messy density of the existing city center.  And since most of the planet’s 6.5 billion residents live in existing buildings, not new developments, he suggests that the bolder, braver experiment would have been to transform existing Arab cities rather than build net-zero from scratch.

As many Arab countries spend their oil wealth and drift into irrelevance, the UAE government has staked out its future with Masdar.  It could be that cutting-edge technologies and vanguard practices come bearing the stamp of Middle Eastern origin rather than from some isolated corporate lab in Europe or North America – “Made in Arabia.”

-Melissa Baldridge

But summer is when it makes more sense economically to air-seal and insulate your attic because cooling costs (running your electrically powered air-conditioner) hit harder than heating costs (using your gas-powered furnace to heat your home).   A better way to think of attic insulation is like a barrier between your living spaces and the super-heated outside, rather than just a fleece layer you add to your house when the weather turns chilly.

Summer sun heats up roof decks to temperatures as high as 140 degrees (F), or higher in many parts of the country.  That temperature is enough to slow-cook meat, and it can drag on for hours a day, from June until well into fall.  Those super-heated roof decks and attics are contiguous to living spaces we all pay dearly to cool to 70-something degrees.  The temperature difference between inside and the upper reaches of your home can be close to 100 degrees for months on end.

Heating and cooling specialists design home heating and cooling systems to handle worst-case scenarios.  Here in Denver, that wintertime doomsday temp is 4 degrees below zero, which we hit three to four nights a year.  In more temperate parts of the country, the bottom-line number is higher.  But those frigid days and nights are fewer and farther between so heating systems don’t run full-tilt-boogie for hours, weeks and months  like air-conditioners do.

Electricity also costs more than gas.  And refrigerated cooling systems cost more to operate per unit of power (BTU) than gas-powered heating systems.  Many utility providers even charge different rates per kilowatt hour (unit of electricity over time) at different times of day.  In many parts of the country if you use more than a certain number of kilowatt hours, your utility company socks it to you in the form of a price premium for the additional power.  These “demand charges” can add up quickly, and many homeowners get sticker shock  when they see what it costs to chill out.

(From atticinsulationhouston.com)

There are other ways you can cool the spaces in and around your house.  Passive attic ventilation is one example.  As air enters your attic through soffit vents at the roof eave, “spot” or ridge-top vents pull that hot air out.  Also “radiant barriers” (foil-faced layers) bounce the sun’s heat out of your house.  How that’s installed (where the foil face aims) will vary depending on where you are in the country.  Beware – radiant barriers are worthless when installed improperly.  Trustworthy roofing professionals can help you sift through false claims about them.

If your house heats up like an oven in the summer, NOW’S the time to add insulation.  Don’t wait for fall – insulate to beat summer heat.  Your house will feel better, and your cooling bills will be lower.

-Melissa Baldridge, GreenSpot

Lawn mowers hum, the smell of freshly cut grass drifts on warm air, neighbors wash cars, and the lines at big-box garden centers wind through the stores.

It’s summer, the season when we use more water.  And anyone who lives in drier parts of the country can attest that it’s a precious commodity.  In 1990, 30 states reported “water stress.”  In 2000, that number rose to 40, and in 2009, 45.[1]

More severely, water scarcity affects one in three people on the planet, says the World Health Organization.  And as the planet’s population balloons to 9 billion in 2050 from 6.5 billion people now, the problem will only worsen.  Even in the United States, freakish weather patterns are creating draught in formerly lush areas of the country that used to bank on water, water everywhere.

The average household can cut home water use by as much as 35 percent, or 44,000 gallons of water per year by using water-saving devices.[2] So, in good GreenSpot fashion, we offer some summer water-saving tips, including some you might not have considered.  And remember – when you save water, you pay less on your bills.

• LET THE MAN PAY THE BILL – That’s right.  A number of water providers offer rebates for water savers like low-flow toilets, high-efficiency washing machines and rain sensors.  Check before you buy to insure you follow utility company requirements.
• GREEN JEANS – Even plumbers have set up green certification for trade members.  When you let your fingers do the walking (or clicking), look for the ones who’ve been schooled in green ways to use and monitor water.  Here’s one great Web site to find them:  Green Plumbers USA.
• DRIP, DON’T SPRAY – We use 40 percent of our municipal water to keep yards and gardens rich and lush, and conventional sprinklers disperse about 50 percent of that, literally, into thin air.  Try soaker hoses and drip lines – they’re water-wise.
• SLICE AND DICE – Listen up, landlords!  When people start paying their own water bills, they’re more attentive with how they use water.  You can often sub-meter water use in commercial spaces.
• EURO TRASH – If you’ve been in Europe, you know that dual-flush toilets are commonplace on the Continent.  Depress the lever one way for liquid waste (releasing less water) and the other way for solids (requiring more water to flush).
• THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN – If you really want to go outside the box, investigate combination sink-toilets, which have been in use in Japan for years.  You wash your hands in the sink, which doubles as a tank.  So that water then fills the toilet bowl for flushing.
• WATER FEATURES – Water features like fountains or water walls get a bad rap, particularly in arid places.  At best, they work like big outdoor evaporative coolers, lowering temperatures around them.  Make sure they recycle their water, though.
• COVER IT UP – Mulching flower beds and trees with 2 – 4 inches of mulch significantly reduces evaporation after you water.
• WRAP IT UP – Insulate the hot-water pipes in your house, especially through colder service areas like crawl spaces.  You can buy pre-cut foam pipe wrap at most hardware stores.  That way, you don’t waste water waiting for the hot to flow.
• McSTEAMY – Steam traps catch heat from other mechanical processes, condense it and divert the water to be used elsewhere.  If you’re a commercial property owner, look into process heat and water technologies.

For more information about saving water and money, check out the EPA’s water Web site, WaterSense.

-Melissa Baldridge

[1] www.eartheasy.com

[2] Ibid.

Electric plug-ins are hot, like this electric/gas hybrid, Fisker Automotive's Karma, slated for rollout in 2011. (Image from LatestAutoReview.com)

The year 2010 was an annis horribilis for the planet, and environmental stories dominated headlines – the U.S. Senate failed to pass meaningful climate legislation, Hungary’s red sludge moved across Europe like “The Blob That Ate Philadelphia,” and of course, the Horizon oil platform exploded, leaving a devastating oil spill in its wake.

Yet there was some good news – quite a bit of it, in fact.  More a slow, steady drumbeat than attention grabbers.  And so we pause at year-end to reflect on progress for the planet, and we tip our hats to some of the people and organizations who made it happen.

LUV YA’ BLUE – The ubiquitous ENERGY STAR blue label is on everything from electrical appliances to houses to office equipment.  Prior to this year, the program allowed for “self-certification.”  In other words, “we pass your test because we say so.”  But a Government Accounting Office exam of some bogus products seeking E-STAR status found they passed with barely a raised eyebrow.  This year, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Energy required bona fide lab results submitted with new products for certification, no longer a rubber-stamp process.

Cape Wind, off the shores of Massachusetts (Image from Gwabble.com)

MORE TREES – Brazilian deforestation slowed to its lowest level in the past 10 years, with clear-cutting devouring only 6,450 square kilometers in 2010 (measured since July 31, 2009).  The Amazonian green belt serves as a sink for carbon dioxide emissions, with dense forests absorbing the gases.  So the rate at which trees vanish has an equivalent in carbon dioxide emissions – 10 percent in 2010, down from 18 percent 10 years ago. 

E-CAR GO! – This year was the year of the electric car, with some plug-in models hitting the market, and several slated for 2011.  The Chevy Volt, the Nissan Leaf, the plug-in Prius and the Tesla roadster (sexy!)  Next year and beyond, look for a Tesla sedan, a plug-in Toyota Rav and the Fisker Karma, a 403-horsepower electric hybrid that claims to be one of the first sustainably made cars.  Entrepreneurs, take note – what will help drive acceptance of plug-ins is power supplies and battery changing stations dotting the country.

LET IT BLOW – The Department of the Interior approved the country’s first-ever wind farm five miles off the coast of Nantucket after years of protest and roadblocks.  The turbines, 400-feet-tall, will cover an area approximately 24 miles square and provide power for Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. 

President Barack Obama and Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar. The Department of the Interior banned drilling off most of U.S. shores for five years. (Image from NyDailyNews.com)

MONSTER TRUCK MASHUP – The Environmental Protection Agency released in October its first-ever proposal to classify and regulate the fuel efficiency of three types of heavy trucks:  combination tractors (“semi trucks”) with 20 percent fuel consumption by 2018, heavy-duty pickup trucks and vans with 10 to 15 percent reductions by 2018, and 10 percent for “vocational vehicles.”  Environmental groups like the American Council for an Energy-Efficiency Economy hailed the proposal but encouraged the EPA to require even deeper reductions.

PERFECT TEN – Or not.  The Department of Energy released its Home Energy Score, a simplified energy-efficiency rating system that compares the efficiency of one house to another.  The score allows homeowners or potential buyer a window into how a house uses energy, which is a part of full disclosure, the DOE says.  While we applaud anything that scares up info about real estate energy efficiency, we urge caution with program implementation.  Too cursory an assessment of a building’s energy use and suggested changes can create deadly consequences in a house, like carbon monoxide poisoning and toxic mold growth.  Homeowners, spend the money to have certified professionals give your home a thorough home-energy exam.

FHA POWER SAVER – The Federal Housing Administration unveiled its Power Saver loan program, whereby the FHA will guarantee loans of up to $25,000 for owners seeking to improve their homes’ energy efficiency.  What the FHA will insure are improvements like insulation, duct sealing, new doors and windows, heating, cooling and hot water systems, solar panels and geothermal systems.  Power Savers will help homeowners afford efficiency upgrades and net the cost of improvements (minus reduced energy bills) into the mortgage.

CALIFORNIANS KILL PROP. 23 – Proposition 23 would’ve overturned the “Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006,” a law intended to reduce California’s climate-changing emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.  Critics of the proposition claimed that several oil companies were behind the measure, intending to stop or at least slow the state’s movement to energy efficiency and renewable energy.  Voters roundly rejected the measure with 61.6 percent voting “no” to the overturn and 38.4 percent voting “yes.”  California is a colossus with a GDP the size of Canada’s, and the state is a market maker with its relatively stringent rules about energy efficiency.  As goes California, so goes the rest of the nation.

The Tesla Roadster sports car, which the company bills as the next-generation of plug-in cars. (Image from TheTorqueReport.com)

NO DRILLING – While the BP Horizon disaster focused the nation on worst-case environmental destruction of offshore drilling, it had a silver lining.  In December, the Obama Administration banned offshore drilling in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and off the Pacific and Atlantic coasts for the next five years.  The administration’s move reverses a previous (pre-BP) statement to open those areas.  The Horizon changed everything.  In September, the administration imposed stricter safety regulations for offshore drillers.  And the December ban stopped new leases in the waters around much of the country, though still allowing drilling in both the central and western Gulf.

Even though the headlines looked grim this year, people, environmental organizations and businesses around the globe are moving the ball forward to mitigate climate change and heal the planet.  We salute you, every one.  And as we move forward into 2011, we urge you to remember – focus on positive progress, be the change you wish to see and help others do the same.

May 2011 be a GREEN year.

-Melissa Baldridge

From Rentaladvice.freedomblogging.com

Attention landlords!  You can run, but you can’t hide. 

The federal government and cities across the country are enacting programs and ordinances requiring building owners to disclose the energy efficiency of homes, including the Department of Energy’s recent release of the “Home Energy Score.”[1]  Mainstream mortgage lenders are adding energy costs to the generally accepted “PITI” equation (principal, interest, taxes and insurance) when they assess whether applicants can qualify for mortgages.  Scoring and valuation systems like these compare the energy use and costs across portfolios of buildings for heating, cooling and power.

Some of the early adopters you’d expect, like Berkeley and San Francisco, Calif., Burlington, Vt. and the European Union.  Yet other mainstream, meat-and-potatoes areas are requiring “the full monty” from owners about their buildings’ energy performance and in some instances, even requiring the improvements – places like Wisconsin, Minnesota and Memphis, Tenn.

From Multifamilyinvestor.com

“The city won’t allow a property with gushing water.  Why would they allow [one] gushing energy?” asked one Boulder, Colo., resident, Tom Volckhausen at a meeting on Boulder’s version of rental energy efficiency called Smart Regs.[2]  “Rent, I can afford.  Utilities, I cannot,” said James Darden, brandishing a $1,200 utility bill at a city council meeting this year, claiming his bills were the direct result of his landlord’s inaction.

Boulder recently passed Smart Regs, a particularly stringent energy-efficiency rating system with mandated upgrades for the city’s 19,600 rental properties.  The plan dovetails into the city’s Climate Action Plan of 2006, which pegs greenhouse gas reduction to Kyoto Protocol limits.  Smart Regs goes into effect on Jan. 3, 2011, and the city has provided a gentle up-ramp, allowing building owners until 2019 for full compliance.

Owners’ groups like the Boulder Area Rental Housing Association (BAHRA) have protested loudly about the ordinance because landlords don’t want to foot the bill.  Users will negate any beneficial effects, they say, cranking up central heating systems, opening windows and otherwise carelessly using energy.  Another rationale for inaction is that nothing can be done to older buildings with uninsulated brick walls that wouldn’t be wildly disruptive and expensive, like full remodels.  Yet some building owners showed up at Smart Regs hearings, claiming they’d implemented changes and benefited financially.[3]

From Flickr.com

Renters tend to have less income to put towards housing expenses to begin with.  Only 39 percent of low-income people were homeowners.  Even for those slightly above the poverty line, ownership rates were only 50 percent, well below the 64 percent for all households.[4]  Who can afford leaky, energy-inefficient places to live less than renters?

Green building isn’t the price of admission … yet.  It’s well on its way, though, in commercial spaces, homes, apartments and other rental units.  Landlords may be able to fly under the radar a bit longer, but their days are numbered.  Making changes will be far easier now, when building owners can plan and finance them on their own time and the government’s dime, rather than at the barrel-end of a government mandate.

-Melissa Baldridge

[2] P.J. Nutting, www.BoulderReporter.com, May 22, 2010.

[3] Francoise Poinsette, The Blue Line, Nov. 29, 2010. 

[4] “Housing of Lower Income Households,” Bureau of the Census, 1994.

From Home.earthlink.net

When you shop for a new car, what do you look at?  Sexy, curvaceous lines or a Rambo-like, boxy silhouette?  Sure – then what?  You tiptoe over to the window, hold your breath and check out the price … and miles per gallon.  Why the latter?  Because even if you can afford the sticker, you know an energy hog will cost you BIG time in the long run.

If you’re like most Americans, the most expensive thing you’ll ever buy is your home.  But when it comes to gauging a house’s “miles per gallon,” you’re in the dark. 

Two federal mandates aim to change that.  One is proposed legislation called SAVE, “The Sensible Accounting to Value Energy Act of 2010,” and the other is a toolbox of measures called “Recovery through Retrofit” straight off the desk of Vice President Joseph Biden.  Both SAVE and “Recovery” expose the hidden costs of ownership when buying a home, and provide financial incentives to make the purchase of energy-efficient homes easier.

Sen. Michael Bennet, sponsor of SAVE legislation

A typical home requires about $2,800 a year to power up – heat, cool and run appliances – while energy-efficient homes (30 percent more efficient) need $2,400 ($400 less annually, or $35 less per month).  To create an energy-efficient home requires $5,000 in improvements, or an increase of about $30 per month in mortgage expense.  So what if you could take that expected savings stream ($35 per month) and offset the increased mortgage?[1]

The SAVE bill requires that these energy savings are calculated into the value of a home.  Right now, if you spend $5,000 on a sweet granite kitchen countertop, plus a stainless appliance or two, that directly increases your home’s sticker price.  But not so much with energy-efficiency, which is often hidden behind the walls even though it saves homeowners money in the long run. 

Right now when you apply for a loan, the mortgage underwriter looks at the cost of the principal, the interest, taxes and insurance to see if you can comfortably cover the costs.  SAVE legislation, proposed by Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo), will require federal mortgage insurers (like Fannie Mae, Ginnie Mae, VA, FHA, etc.) to tally up those energy savings and add them to the operational expenses of a home.  But since the homeowner won’t be paying increased expenses of a gas guzzler, those projected savings count as income, extending the debt-to-income ratio that lenders assess.  Also potential owners get a peek into the efficiency of any home they want to buy, and lenders reward anyone investing in efficiency.

Vice President Joseph Biden

SAVE also reduces the risk of mortgage default.  Lenders calculate energy expenses for anyone in or near foreclosure (looking at whether they can cover all costs of the house).  SAVE just brings those expenses to light right up front, before someone even makes the purchase.

The Vice President’s “Recovery” program provides a window so buyers can see what they’re getting.  Certified energy auditors do a clipboard walk-through of a house and assign it a 1-to-10 “Home Energy Score,” comparing the house to its peers.  If you want to buy a home that’s a “9” on the efficiency scale, super.  It’ll cost you less to run in the long run.  But if it’s a “3,” then you can improve the house behind the walls so it uses less energy.  Click here to read more about the Home Energy Score.   (Note:  this assessment is different than the thorough set of diagnostic testing auditors do in a bona fide audit.)

“Recovery” also offers “green” financing – mortgages that calculate energy savings based on the improvements you make to your home.  One is the FHA PowerSaver loan, which federally insures energy-efficiency improvements.  Thirty states now offer revolving loan funds, which allow homeowners and buyers to borrow money for green improvements at low interest rates.  For more information about the PowerSaver program, click here.

Energy efficiency is low-hanging fruit, and Senator Bennet’s office claims to enjoy bi-partisan support for SAVE.  One supporting industry group, Leading Builders of America, boasts some of the nation’s largest homebuilders who support the legislation.  Both the SAVE and “Recovery” programs create green jobs for unemployed construction workers, and they drive a stake in the ground for homeowners who want homes that cost less to operate. 

-Melissa Baldridge

From Jayseverin.org

For every new building hitting the streets today, over 100 are 20 years old or older.  And if you’re in an older model, you’re at a disadvantage to your competitors in newer, shinier and more efficient buildings because their work spaces cost less to operate than yours. 

Energy codes that feed building codes have stepped up significantly in the last 50 years, and yet much of the nation’s buildings come from that era or earlier.  Multi-family buildings built in the 1990s are almost 9 percent more efficient than buildings of the 1980s, 17 percent more efficient than those built in the 1970s and ‘60s, and 23 percent more efficient than pre-1960 housing.[1]  And multi-family building requirements mirror what’s gone on with residential, office and retail.

So don’t let building owners or landlords saddle YOU with their inefficient buildings, leaving you on the hook for costly operating and maintenance bills.  Here are some great questions to ask before you buy or rent, and many of these apply to both commercial and residential buildings.

From Goodviewsworld.blogspot.com

HOW OLD IS THE HVAC SYSTEM, AND WHAT WAS ITS EFFICIENCY RATING?

 Most building inspectors will scare up this information in an inspection, and it’s CRUCIAL to pay attention if you pay any part of your expenses.  Efficiency ratings[2] are a best-case scenario in factory-perfect conditions – how much of the heating or cooling produced actually reaches building occupants?  And don’t forget – erstwhile efficiency ratings don’t function anywhere near that today.

On the heels of that question, WHO PAYS FOR REPAIRS?  ‘Remember Eldon the painter on the Murphy Brown Show in the 1980s?  He was Brown’s perpetual houseguest with an unending stream of work.  If you move into a building with old systems, your HVAC repair tech may become your “Eldon.”  Old HVAC systems rarely die – they live on life support forever.  Nothing may light a fire under your landlord for HVAC upgrades faster than requiring them to pick up repair bills.  And be sure to find out if the building owner is responsible for maintaining the system.  HVAC systems are like cars – take care of them, and they will operate efficiently for longer.

INSULATION LEVELS – That fab exposed brick wall in your office may be the coolest thing ever.  And the coldest.  Brick has little-to-no insulation value, and neither does glass.  Do you know what levels of insulation the exterior of your building has?  Insist on an R-value (insulation level) of at least 20, which is code in many places.  If your building doesn’t have at least that, you’re probably paying higher energy bills.

From Appliancemedicllc.com

Ceiling plenums are the spaces between false, dropped ceilings and floors or roofs above.  In much commercial construction, builders use that space as a return air space because it’s cheap to build.  But plenums are also inefficient because they are usually much colder or warmer than the temperature-controlled spaces below.  If your landlord won’t “hard-duct” plenum spaces, make sure supply pipes are well-insulated.  Otherwise, they lose temperature from the HVAC to your space, and you pay for that.

WINDOWS – Are windows single-pane?  If so, they could be leaking air like sieves.  This is especially true in retail spaces, which often have big glass plates to display wares.  Don’t let an owner say that the building is historical and windows can’t be changed.  There are plenty of window upgrades owners can make that preserve the historic character of a structure.  Also, look for “low-e” films, which can significantly reduce the amount of the sun’s heat entering a building.

LET THERE BE LIGHT – How are the lights in your space?  Efficient lighting can save as much as 40 percent on energy costs, and light retrofits are often one of the least-expensive fixes with the biggest returns.  “T-value” measure one-eighth of an inch.  So T-12 fluorescent lights are 1-1/2 inches in diameter.  T-8s are 1 inch.  Simply, T-8s and T-5s are more efficient than T-12s.  And if you really want to cut down on your lighting expenses, look at LEDs (light emitting diodes). 

BUILDING OR ENERGY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS – These can be as simple as programmable thermostats or as complex as building systems controlled from across the country via computer.  Studies show that if you work with a programmable system AND USE IT, you can save as much as 15 percent on energy costs.

If you’re already in an inefficient building, insist on changes when you renegotiate your lease as part of your tenant improvements.  You have the power – use it.  And if you have trouble sourcing any of this, contact us – we’ll help you find someone local.

 -Melissa Baldridge

[2] SEER (seasonal energy efficiency ratio) for air-conditioners and commercial HVAC systems, and AFUE efficiency for residential furnaces.

Design for waste-to-energy plant in Donetsk, Ukraine, by Urban Design (Stockholm), (Courtesy and copyright Urban Design, U.D.)

Do you remember the “garbage barge,” the friendless boat filled with New York City’s trash, wandering the East Coast of North America looking for a place to dump it in 1987?  This highly publicized event brought to the fore the problems cities have with trash disposal – that it has to go somewhere, and that landfills fill up, even here in America, the land of wide-open spaces.

Fast forward a generation, and people around the planet are employing a number of solutions to handle trash, including a 21^st century iteration of an old idea – burning it.  Millennial solid-waste incinerators look more like contemporary art centers or utopian nature centers than fiery Dickensian maws consuming garbage and belching poisonous filth from dark smokestacks.  Not only do 21^st-century incinerators look the part of futuristic, benign problem-solvers, they also provide other benefits, say proponents like Nickolas Themelis, professor emeritus of earth and environmental engineering at Columbia University and chair of the Waste-to-Energy Research and Technology Council. 

Waste-to-energy plant Spittelau in Vienna, Austria (From Thefullwiki.org.)

“Landfills fill up in 10 years.  And then you need another landfill, and another landfill,” Themelis says.  “When people talk about new technology [of waste-to-energy (W2E) plants], you can look at 500 plants in the world.  You can go to 80 in the United States.  And people [living near the plants] are happy, and they’ve accepted them.  And cities [they serve] have made money.”

Themelis points to a number of new W2E plants in Europe, including Spittelau in Vienna, Isséane Recycling Center and Waste-to-Energy plant near the Eiffel Tower in Paris and a plant in Brescia, Italy, which the Waste-to-Energy Council honored with a design prize in 2006.  One Ukrainian plant designed by the Urban Design group in Stockholm resembles a multi-faceted jewel with a translucent façade, surrounded by green fields and animal life.

This new breed of incinerator disposes of waste, already picked clean of recyclables, that would otherwise head to landfill.  The facilities also produce steam and heat – as much as 600 kilowatt hours per ton of trash a year, which at a price of 4 cents per kilowatt hour (cheap), nets a municipality $20 to $30 per ton in revenue.[1]  And the heat generated from burning also provides “district heat” (think of a university campus where a central plant provides power to a number of buildings campus-wide).  In fact, the energy W2E plants provide is classified as a renewable energy source by the federal government and 24 states.[2] 

Waste-to-energy plant in Brescia, Italy, (From a2a.eu)

Dozens of state-of-the-art scrubbers and filters reduce the levels of toxins generated by a plant to safe levels, says Themelis, including such baddies as mercury, heavy metals, sulfuric dioxide and dioxins.  The plants reduce the need for landfill space by as much as 90 percent.[3]  And cities, facing expensive “tipping fees” in landfill sites actually come out ahead, when fuel costs and dumping fees are considered.

In Europe, communities like the wealthy exurb Horsholm, Denmark, vie for the plants because they provide relatively cheap power and heat and because of their design-forward architecture.  “Constituents like [our W2E plant] because it decreases heating costs and raises home values,” says Horsholm Mayor Morten Slotved.[4]  “New buyers are usually OK with the plant,” says Hans Rast, president of the homeowners’ association there.  “What they like is that they look out and see the forest [and fields nearby],” he said, noting the plant’s 400-yard proximity to the subdivision’s carports.  The fact that the area gets 80 percent of its heat and 20 percent of its electricity from the plant doesn’t hurt either.[5] 

In the city where flawless design rules like the Sun King, Paris is home to Isséane, a few kilometers from the Eiffel Tower.  The plant is so well-concealed, it’s barely noticeable, and that’s exactly the way the plant’s designers intended it.

Rendering of Isseane waste-to-energy plant and recycling center in Paris, (From Industcards.com)

It reuses an old industrial site once owned by auto- and truck-maker, Renault.  Isséane’s architects sunk the “bathtub” foundation approximately 10 stories below ground.  The facility sports short stacks rather than sky-scraping chimneys.  Trucks bringing the city’s waste enter the plant through tunnels to diminish noise and smells to neighbors.  And the rooftop is covered with plants, making it almost invisible from the air.

W2E plants haven’t caught on in the United States like they have in Europe for two main reasons.  Europe is landlocked, and landfill space is at a premium.  The United States has historically had lots of room to grow – and dump.  Though considering metro areas like New York still have to ship their garbage afield, that argument may be waning.  Also the cost of heating fuel in Europe is higher than it is in the United States.  Therefore, W2E-generated heat and electricity are more valuable there.

Critics of W2E plants, like activist chemistry professor Paul Connett, call the technology dangerous, likening it to what they describe as the myth of clean coal or the devil’s tradeoff with nuclear energy.   Even with high-powered scrubbers and clean technologies employed, W2E plants still dump toxins like dioxins into the atmosphere in dangerous levels, they say.

Themelis dismisses these arguments outright, pointing to recent studies showing that the “ultrafine particles” produced by W2E facilities are significantly fewer than the vehicle miles associated with landfill activities.[6]  “Diesel trucks that move municipal solid waste to distant landfills and do other duties emit ultrafine particles at quantities several orders of magnitude higher than W2E plants, but we still use them,” Themelis says.  “U.S. coal-fired power plants combust 30 times more tonnage than W2E tonnage and have ultrafine particles much higher than W2E,” he says.

As of April 2010, no new W2E plants are planned in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.[7]  And technologies on the horizon (like plasma torch incineration) may render W2E plants obsolete.  As dumping trash in landfills grows more expensive – and land more precious – W2E may provide an interim solution. 

Yet arch-W2E critic, Connett, may have the best answer – manufacturers can solve the problem altogether by producing nothing that can’t be recycled or reused.  If it has to be burned at the end of its useful life, he says, manufacturers should find a better way to create it in the first place.

-Melissa Baldridge

[2] Elisabeth Rosenthal, “Europe Finds Clean Energy in Trash, but U.S. Lags,” The New York Times, April 12, 2010.

[3] www.wtert.org

[4] Rosenthal, The New York Times, April 12, 2010.

[5] Rosenthal, The New York Times, April 2010.

[6] Professors V. Faye McNeill and Nickolas Themelis, “Ultrafine Particle Emissions:  Comparison of Waste-to-Energy  Emissions with Coal- and Bio-mass-Fired Power Plants,” January 2010. 

[7] Rosenthal, The New York Times, April 2010.

HERS scores measure the "miles per gallon" of a house. (From Examiner.com)

If someone tells you a building is green, how do you know they’re for real and not selling you a bill of goods?  And how “green” is green anyway?   

There’s actually a way to measure the energy efficiency of a house, and it’s called the “HERS” score, or Home Energy Rating System.  While you may not have heard of HERS scores, you probably know some of the green certification programs they underlie, like ENERGY STAR and the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program.[1]  What’s more, MLS[2] listings across the country are starting to provide checkboxes for HERS scores – places like Memphis, northern Colorado and Traverse City, Mich.  Even where there aren’t bona fide HERS search fields, real estate brokers are voluntarily adding the scores to differentiate their listings from energy hogs.

What HERS scores do is assign a number to a house – its “miles per gallon,” or how the house uses energy.  A HERS rater takes detailed information about the home you live in, or a home you want to buy – insulation in all the nooks and crannies, appliances, heating and cooling ducts, and windows.  Based on that information, the rater creates a virtual model of the home, a geometric twin of the house as if it were built to code, assigning it a score of 100.  Then it measures that digital code-built home against the bricks-and-mortar house, to see if it performs better or worse. 

Is your home a gas guzzler? (From Chicagoist.com)

HERS scores are like golf – the lower your score, the better.  New ENERGY STAR houses require HERS scores of 85 or less, so they’re 15 percent more efficient than a comparable code-built house (100 minus 15).  Have you ever heard of “net-zero” or “zero-energy” homes?  That means a house has a HERS score of zero – it produces or saves as much energy as it consumes.

Did you know there are loan instruments known as “green mortgages?”  The really cool thing about HERS scores is that they can help you get money to improve your existing house or to work energy efficiency into a new home.  The mortgage industry 29 years ago developed HERS scores to help homeowners and home buyers include energy-efficiency upgrades when they purchase or re-finance homes. 

For example, let’s say you find a 1950s ranch-style house you want to buy.  But the house has old appliances, a few inches of insulation in the attic and a 30-year-old furnace.  In addition to your primary mortgage, you can apply for an “energy efficiency mortgage” (EEM) to help finance efficiency upgrades.  What the HERS rating does is calculate the present value of the energy savings those improvements will bring.  If that figure is greater than the cost of the improvements, the green mortgage lender can loan you the money.  And they tack the value of those savings onto your income because it’s money you won’t be paying to a utility company.

If your house is energy-efficient, HERS scores can make you look good compared to the competition. (From Montaraventures.com)

HERS ratings are different than “energy audits,” which can range in complexity and cost from a quick utility-company drive-by to several hundred dollars for thorough home testing and examination.  Expect HERS raters to charge $500 or more because of the exhaustive hands-on examination and the hours spent creating the virtual code-built twin.

HERS ratings aren’t necessary for everyone.  But if you’ve made upgrades to your house and want to set it apart from its clunker peers at sale time, it might be worth the money.  To find a certified HERS rater, contact the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET). 

-Melissa Baldridge

[2] Multiple Listing Service real estate listings

Icicles may look picturesque but often signal significant air leakage through ceilings and atics. From LakeAdirondack.com

It’s October already, and blessed cooler weather is on its way south.  So pull a fast one on your local utility company to lower utility bills by making your house more energy-efficient.  “An energy bill isn’t something you just pay every month,” says ENERGY STAR Brand Manager Maria Vargas.  “View it as a strategic resource.”  We offer some low-hanging fruit that can make your home more comfortable this winter and help you save money.

ENERGY STAR – The good people at ENERGY STAR tailor a simple winterization program for you based on your location and a few specifics about your home.  Click here for steps customized for your house and location.

START IT UP – You tune up your furnace for the same reasons you care for your car – they’ll run more efficiently and live longer.  Check with local heating and air-conditioning companies for winterization specials.  We recently saw one at Home Depot for $89.

CLEAN IT UP, Part I – One person tracks as much as 100 pounds of dirt from their feet into buildings every year.  Create a place at front and back doors to drop boots and shoes.  If you don’t have a bona fide mud room, create an entryway station with a bench, mat and baskets for outdoor gear so people leave dirt at the door.

LIGHT IT UP – If you love decorating with holiday lights, consider replacing old incandescent strings with LED lights, and put them on a timer to shine six hours or less a night.  LED light quality is brighter, prettier and uses much less electricity.  Don’t forget to turn indoor lights off when you leave.

CLEAN IT UP, Part II – Air filters not only provide cleaner air in your home, but they can add years to the life of your heater.  Dirty filters restrict air flow in the system, reducing your heater’s effectiveness by as much as 75 percent.[1] Changing filters every time you get an energy bill helps your system run more efficiently and lowers your heating bill.  And consider using a higher filtration.  Those filters cost a bit more but can be worth it in the long run.

Fireplaces feel great in winter. Be sure to close doors and flue when you're not using them. From Lisisoft.com

BUNDLE UP – Do you really need to watch football in your Snoopy shorts with the heat cranked up to 75 degrees?  For every degree you lower your thermostat (between 60 and 70 degrees), you can save as much as five percent on your heating bill.[2] So why not bundle up in a Snuggie to watch your favorite game or movie?  You’ll save money in the process.

FIRE IT UP – Fireplaces are literally chimneys that suck heat out of your home.  If you have one, make sure you have closing glass doors (a rubber gasket lining can make the fit even tighter).  Close the flue if you’re not using your fireplace (and REMEMBER to open it back up when you do.)

JACKET UP – Does your hot water tank wear a jacket?  It’s especially important if the heater’s made before 2004[3] because older models have less internal insulation.  Tank jackets with big insulation values can save you up to 10 percent on your water heating costs,[4] and jackets cost $25 to $50.

FREE IT UP – Are your radiators and air vents free and clear?  Move furniture off all vents to allow your heater to freely circulate warm air throughout your home.  Also, vacuum your vents to clean them out before you gun up the system.  Simply remove the vent grills and vacuum all dust and lint from the cavities.  It’ll keep your house and heater blower cleaner.

BULK IT UP – Does your attic have little or no insulation?  Bumping up your insulation significantly to an insulation value of R-38 can cut your heating bill by 5 to 25 percent.[5] Check for government and utility rebates to help offset the cost.

CLOSE IT UP – Do your kids swing on your doors?  Can you see daylight underneath them?  If you do, it’s equivalent to having a 2-inch gap in your walls.  Install door sweeps to tighten door seals.

From More4kids.com

SEAL IT UP – Does your house look like a picturesque winter wonderland, with icicles hanging from your eaves?  If so, it’s a sign you may have significant air leaks in your ceiling and attic.  Proper air-sealing can save as much as 10 percent on energy costs.  Adding insulation without air-sealing is a waste of money, and most utility and government rebate programs require air-sealing before they pay for insulation.

To make sure your home is safe, consider having a combustion-appliance testing performed on your gas-fired appliances like hot water heater, furnace and range.  Use a Building Performance Institute-certified professional to verify that you and yours are safe, warm and snug this winter.

-Melissa Baldridge

[1] Eric Stromer, HGTV home-improvement show host, Interview with author, 2007.

[2] California Energy Commission, Consumer Energy Center, http://consumerenergycenter.org/tips/winter.html#naturalgas

[3] City of Seattle, http://www.cityofseattle.net/light/conserve/resident/cv5_wh0.htm.

[4] California Energy Commission, Consumer Energy Center, http://consumerenergycenter.org/tips/winter.html#naturalgas

[5] California Energy Commission, Consumer Energy Center, http://consumerenergycenter.org/tips/winter.html#naturalgas

Air barrier in an example home. Does the thermal barrier run alongside it? (From Leedsmet.ac.uk)

Cool mornings and brisk, fall breezes remind us that winter’s right around the corner, the time when all God’s critters – including humans – dig in.  Thick sweaters, hot chocolate and warm fires act like magnets.

But Currier & Ives scenes of buildings with pretty icicle curtains are more than cozy winter images – they also signal significant air leakage through attics and roofs, causing snow and ice melt.  And that costs you money.

Now’s the perfect time to seal and insulate house before cold weather hits.  While air-sealing and insulating your home or office may not be an obvious or sexy way to save on energy bills, it’s low-hanging fruit with a much quicker payback than, say, window replacement.  And the beautiful thing is there’s money available from utility and government energy programs to help offset costs.

Before you race out to buy rolls of fiberglass insulation, job one is to properly AIR-SEAL your building.  Think of it this way – there are two “barriers” for any building that help it retain a comfortable temperature.  Air barriers (like sheetrock, plywood and glass) and thermal barriers (insulation).  Hopefully, both completely encapsulate your home or office and are contiguous with each other.  If you have a hot or cold house that’s drafty, that’s a clue they’re probably not.  And anyone who only installs insulation without air-sealing is wasting your money.  In fact, a lot of utility and government rebate programs require air-sealing before they shell out rebates.  (I’ve been in brand-new, million-dollar homes where the air and thermal barriers have significant gaps — no one is immune here.)

Infrared imagery can show where insulation is missing in floors and ceilings (From Shininghomes.com)

The QUALITY OF INSULATION JOBS also hugely impacts how energy-efficient homes are, too.  If you’re using fiberglass batts, does the installer mash or compress the insulation into cavities?  Are there gaps?  Are you blowing cellulose into walls?  That can settle, leaving air spaces that draw heat from a space.  Is your installer sealing the “knee” walls of attic rooms?  Does s/he merely scab foamboard onto the backs of those attic walls, or really seal them into the ceiling joists and roof rafters?  A quick-and-dirty job may look great, but leave significant spaces where air can still escape.

Also, think about the PLACES where you insulate.  A professional can use good infrared (IR) imagery to show you where insulation is missing.  Sure, everyone knows to add insulation in the attic.  Have you sealed the construction holes there first?  And what about your slab or foundation walls?  Can they use insulation?  And your rim joists (the band where floor joists meet the exterior walls)?  Does the insulation in those cavities match what’s in the walls?  Do you have attic rooms?  Do you know if there’s insulation on the attic-side of those walls?

IDENTIFY what you have first, what’s in your attic, walls, basement and crawls.  And when we’re talking about insulation, you see the term “R-value.”  That’s simply a number to measure insulation value.  For example, building code in many places now requires R-20.  But code is a low, low bar.  Some super-insulated homes have attic insulation as high as R-50 and walls R-30 (see our article on Passive House, June 15, 2010). 

(From Hennenlumber.com)

Now we can talk insulation types.  For most of us, that conjures images of pink fiberglass batts (cue Henry Mancini and the “Pink Panther” theme).  While batt is one way to insulate a building, it may not be best for your building.  A lot of insulation installers use blown cellulose (recycled plant material like newspaper) for attics and a denser-packed version in walls.  Spray foam (both open and closed-cell) is a super way to seal and insulate spaces with lots of cavities, but it’s pricey.  Closed-cell can also stiffen building assemblies like roof decks.  Foamboard is great for attic walls or brick/concrete walls in older homes, but your installers should carefully seal all edges.

If you’re altering your walls, ceiling and floor (foundation) by more than 15 percent, consider hiring an insulation professional who “tests in/tests out.”  What that means is they use a blower door to gauge the house’s air leakage before air-sealing, and after (see our article on energy audits, May 11, 2010).  Air-sealing alters building pressures, and that can adversely affect your gas-fired appliances.  Certified energy auditors test combustion appliances after their work is completed to make sure those appliances draft carbon monoxide safely.

The result?  You have a home or office that’s comfortable, safe and energy-efficient.

-Melissa Baldridge

Mesa, a hybrid restaurant/lounge

Mesa Restaurant was all about cool when its owners were brainstorming the Orange County project four years ago.  This restaurant/lounge hybrid would serve late-night food (a novelty in Orange County), sport five reservation-only cabañas and create a club vibe with DJs spinning music into the wee hours.  When it opened, the place even had speakeasy caché with no sign, no listed phone number or Web site.

But as the project grew from the drawing board to build-out, green building emerged as the sub-text.  And that was purely by accident, says co-owner and manager Peter Jaisel.  Jaisel says he and his partners felt like they were on a treasure hunt as they kept uncovering interesting building elements. 

“It [green building] evolved as we began gutting the building.  We noticed two I-beams, which ran parallel to the property.  We had the idea for a retractable roof, which opens over most of the property,” he remembers.  “We used airplane hangar doors engineered to go horizontally rather than vertically.  And we changed the sheet metal to glass.  It takes five minutes to open, and [when closed] it’s like a greenhouse.” 

Fireplace surround made of reclaimed wood

Jaisel overturned the myth that green is more expensive by reusing different materials in the space.  “For us, it was quite the opposite,” he says of the $1 million build-out.  “We started purchasing B-grade wood from lumber yards.  We took a lot of that.  We recut the lumber, reshaped to create one of the fireplaces with thin strips re-assembled,” says Jaisel, adding that when covered with stone sealer, the fireplace looked like stone.

He also created a 70-foot living wall of green ivy.  “We developed our own gutter system, one gutter below another below another.  Then we planted ivy.  The ivy ties all the gutters [together] so all you see is a green wall,” he says, noting that sunlight feeds the plant wall even when the glass-paneled roof is closed.

Since its 2006 opening in Costa Mesa, the restaurant has run through several top chefs, with the most recent, Jason Travi, taking over this spring.  Though not overly intentional about creating a green menu, Jaisel says that Travi is well-known for serving up farm-to-table dishes, supporting local farmers (an easier thing to do in California than in some areas of the country).  And Travi also dishes up organic offerings whenever possible.

A 70-foot living plant wall grows in the space

But as visionary and progressive as Jaisel and his business partners wanted Mesa to be, Jaisel said they really got a lot of pushback from area building inspectors as the project developed.  “A big challenge was with the city.  Whatever the city hadn’t seen before, they didn’t want to approve,” he remembers, noting that the convertible roof and fountain-adorned unisex restrooms were particularly challenging.  The inspector said, “I can’t approve it because I’ve never seen something like this before.” 

“We’re not going to do another cookie-cutter mall [restaurant] for you,” Jaisel remembers telling the building department.  He and the architect got in the face of building department deciders, demanding that they “show us the code book” before issuing thumbs-down on features in his space.

Jaisel eventually prevailed, both with the building inspectors and the health department.  He even now concedes that those people who gave him the hardest time have become his biggest advocates, noting they had to push and shape city code to allow for some of Mesa’s unusual design elements. 

Jaisel says that even though the restaurant’s patrons may not consciously dial into the green elements of his restaurant, they love the space, and the restaurant details convey a subliminal message.  “Our guests notice – ‘Wow!  They take this much care with the space.’  The perception is that there’s really good-quality food.” 

While Jaisel still minds the workaday details at Mesa, he’s already formulating his next venture.  One element he wants to incorporate is translucent cement, a building material he says European builders are playing with but that’s not widely used here because of cost.  Jaisel says the material has the effect of glass block, distorting images but allowing daylight. 

One key lesson he’s learned at Mesa is to find sympathetic ears wherever he’s building.  “Some of the beach communities are so restrictive,” he says.  “You hear such horror stories.”  Jaisel knows he prevailed with his outside-the-box restaurant because he refused to take “no” for an answer. 

So in his next restaurant iteration, he’ll enter in, eyes wide open – looking for ways to incorporate green building techniques, using whatever his new building provides and thinking outside the pale about the elements and features he can introduce to the space.

For more information about Mesa Restaurant (reservations, anyone?), click here.  Also the Green Restaurant Association helps restaurateurs green their operations.

-Melissa Baldridge

From Decordeprovence.blogspot.com

I recently took a green-building certification exam, and the proctor asked me, “What’s the first thing you can tell a homeowner to do to green their home?”  I immediately began thinking of complex building ventilation strategies and problems with gas-fired appliances.  “Don’t overthink this one,” he warned me.  “This is easy, one of the first things you get from a ‘green-your-home’ book.”  Ahh, it dawned on me – ridding homes of potential toxins from cleaners and cosmetics.

The beautiful thing is this is also one of the least-expensive things you can do to protect yourself and your family.  If you’ve ever baby-proofed a house, you’re on the right track.  But think about it – if you have to lock products away from your little ones, how good are they for you anyway?  And while people in household- and personal-care industries may say that the chemicals in their products are safe in trace amounts, the average American applies 9 to 15 personal care products every day, containing as many as 126 distinct ingredients.[1]

Step one – audit what’s under your kitchen sink and in your bathrooms.  Environmentalists originally applied the term “dirty dozen” to the top 12 foods that are harmful if grown with chemical pesticides and fertilizers.  But the term now covers cleaners and cosmetics.  Think of reading these labels like you do food labels – if you see lengthy paragraphs of terms you can’t pronounce, your best bet is to move on to products with simpler lists of ingredients and as few chemicals as possible.

From Apartmenttherapy.com

Here’s a list of the “dirty dozen” chemical agents that may be in your KITCHEN:  (1) AMMONIA (cleaning products like Windex, can irritate eyes and respiratory tract), (2) PERCHLOREOTHYLENE (may cause kidney and liver damage), (3) DRY CHLORINE (dishwashing detergent, number one cause of household poisoning among children[2], irritant to eyes and lungs), (3) PETROLEUM DISTILLATES (hair conditioner, paint thinner and solvents, may damage respiratory function), (5) HYDROCHLORIC ACID (drain and toilet bowl cleaners, corrosive and can hurt eyes), (6) FORMALDEHYDE (Yes, people, the stuff bodies are embalmed with – cleaners and polishes, damages eyes and respiratory tract and can cause allergic reactions.  Also a suspected carcinogen), (6) SODIUM HYPOCHLORITE (bleach and mildew and stain removers, damaging like formaldehyde), (7) SODIUM HYDROXIDE (cleaners, aka lye or caustic soda, irritant to eyes, skin and digestive tract, (9) XYLENE (solvents and varnish, can depress nervous system and even cause death in high enough doses), (10) PHENOL (disinfectants, irritating to eyes and mucous membranes, can even cause respiratory arrest), (11) DIETHYLENE GLYCOL MONOBUTYL ETHER (toilet bowl and oven cleaners, can affect cardiovascular system, kidneys, nervous and reproductive systems),  and (12) BUTOXYETHANOL (cleaners and stain removers, can cause fertility and reproductive issues.)

From Safehomehappymom.com

‘Same for the BATHROOM.  (1) ANTIBACTERIALS (soaps, toothpastes and deodorants, can cause bacterial mutation), (2) COAL TAR (dandruff shampoos and anti-itch remedies, found to be carcinogenic in lab animals), (3) DIETHANOLAMINE (DEA, possible hormone disruptor and carcinogen, can affect fetal brain development), (4) 1,4-DIOXANE (children’s bath products, possible carcinogen), (5) FORMALDEHYDE (soap, nail polish and hair dyes, see above), (6) FRAGRANCE (esp. PHTHALATES, endocrine disruptors and may cause obesity), (7) LEAD and MERCURY (in toothpaste and mascara, a neurotoxin), (8) NANOPARTICLES (cosmetics and sunscreen (zinc oxide and titanium dioxide nanoparticles), may cause brain damage), (9) PARABENS (methyl-, ethyl-, propyl-, butyl-, and isobutyl-, weak estrogenic effects and can cause sperm damage, banned in the European Union), (10) PETROLEUM DISTILLATES (mascara and foot-odor powder, possible carcinogen in humans, banned in the European Union), (11) P-PHENYLENEDIAMINE (hair dyes, can damage nervous system, lungs and cause allergic reactions), and (12) HYDROQUINONE (skin lighteners and moisturizers, a neurotoxin, allergen and possible carcinogen).

Even a simple greening exercise like this can feel overwhelming so take baby steps.  Think of greening your home as a process.  Set a goal for yourself of ridding or replacing one of these products with safer versions every week or two.  Health-food stores (bricks-and-mortar and on-line) carry safer alternatives minus the chemical alphabet soups.  Ask the sales clerks for help – they’re usually enthusiastic advocates who can help you find good alternatives.

There are also a number of great Web site references to help you identify potentially toxic products and better replacements:  The National Graphic Green Guide (from which these two “dirty dozen” lists came), The Big Green Purse and the Sierra Club Green Home are great places to start.

-Melissa Baldridge

[1] From Sierra Club Green Home, www.sierraclubgreenhome.com.

[2] “Household Cleaning Chemicals:  The Dirty Dozen,” www.ecollo.com.

From Myhomeideas.com

A friend was regaling us over dinner with a story about an architect who bought a mid-20^th-century ranch house down her street in Dallas.

“He loved the house because it was so well-ventilated and allowed fresh breezes to blow through it.  He thought the designers of that period were brilliant for building it that way,” she said.

“A building that allows fresh breezes” can mean several things – (1) A building sited on a property to catch prevailing winds (think beach houses), (2) a building with lots of operable doors and windows, and (3) a poorly sealed, old junker that leaks air like a sieve.

A lot has changed in 60 years since this architect’s dream house was built, including building technologies and a heightened awareness of the need for energy efficiency.  A house that’s open to the elements may be fantastic in a place like Key West or Bali.  But in a place like Dallas, where winter “blue northers” glaze the city with ice and summers stretch on and on like saltwater taffy, it could be a utility-bill nightmare.

Simply, buildings need air.  And there are two kinds of fresh air that enter buildings – (1) intentional fresh air, like that introduced by heating and air-conditioning systems, or continuous-air fans.  And (2) unintentional air that enters a building through basements and crawl spaces, floors, walls and ceilings through 140-plus-degree attics.

If you have gas-fired appliances, they require three things to fire properly:  fuel, heat and air.  Remove any of those, and appliances may not function properly, if at all.  Also, many of these combustion appliances VENT NATURALLY.  That means, they rely on air pressures in the building and in their exhaust vents to remove exhaust gases like deadly carbon monoxide.  It’s an old technology whose time has come and gone.  As builders are sealing new houses more tightly, naturally drafting appliances can be dangerous if they don’t vent correctly.

People also need fresh, safe air.  Proper ventilation removes building gases like carbon dioxide (a byproduct of breathing), carbon monoxide from gas-fired appliances and even water, which can spawn mold growth.  We release as much as 1.5 liters of water a day through our breath and skin. That water has to go somewhere.  ‘Same if you have lots of plants in your building, fish tanks and people showering and bathing.

In commercial buildings, a recent Canadian study shows that building ventilation in the Goldilocks-middle (not too much fresh air and not too little) can help people experience more “satisfaction.”[1] When you consider that 90 percent of some business’s operating expenses are labor, building owners and employers do well to keep employees happy, alert and productive.

Building scientists – those who study nature’s forces and how they interact with the built environment – have an adage – “Build tight, ventilate right.”  Adhering to that can, at best, provide healthful buildings that cost less to operate.  Do that sloppily, and you can set up grave, even deadly scenarios in a building, like the 2008 tragedy in Aspen, Colo., when a family of four died of carbon monoxide poisoning in their sleep.

One organization seeking to balance these imperatives – fresh air for buildings and people and energy efficiency – is the Building Performance Institute.  BPI-certified technicians understand that building systems are like a mobile – pull one part, and the whole responds.  For more information and to find BPI-certified technicians, visit www.bpi.org.  The Residential Services Network is also including combustion-appliance testing in its roster of services:  www.natresnet.org.

- Melissa Baldridge

[1] K.E. Charles and J.A. Veitch, “Outdoor Ventilation Rates in Offices and Occupant Satisfaction,” Institute for Research in Construction, Jan. 15, 2002.

From Comparenow.com

Though tongue-in-cheek, this warning label ought to roust somnolent building owners who’ve let their properties drift into inefficiency and obsolescence.  Especially the last two words – “potentially unsellable.”

Green building is leaving the realm of boutique niche and becoming the law of the land, literally.  In cities across the nation, green building designations are creeping out of MLS description fields into easily searchable boxes, and building codes are swallowing LEED[2] certification levels whole.  Some bellwether cities like Boulder, Colo., are even requiring green building metrics (quantitative proof of green-ness) as part of the building process.

The upshot?  Potential buyers and renters can easily see whether your building wears the mantle of green virtue or is an outdated, 20^th century energy hog.  And for every new building hitting the pavement today, 100 are 20-years-old or older.  Simply, buildings of yore can’t compete with today’s high-efficiency buildings and systems, and owners of inefficient ones are at a market disadvantage.

The city of Portland, Ore., boasts that it is the first to include green drop-down menus in MLS listings, highlighting categories like LEED and ENERGY STAR.  Real estate listings there also provide searches for features like high-efficiency furnaces and off-grid energy generation.

Last year, the city of Austin instituted the Austin Energy Conservation and Disclosure Ordinance (ECAD), requiring all residential property owners to have an energy audit before property sale closings.  Energy audits track how homes use and waste energy, examining things like appliance efficiency, insulation values and even combustion appliance safety.  (Think of it as an appraisal process looking specifically at energy use.)

From Galleyecocapital.com

Commercial building owners, if you think you’re off the hook, think again.  If your multifamily or commercial building performs 50 percent worse than the average building in Austin (measuring energy use per square foot), the city will require you to make efficiency improvements.

Boulder, Colo., long at the fore of earth-friendly building practice, instituted the BuildSmart program, requiring HERS scores for all new homes and remodels bigger than 500 square feet.  “HERS” ratings measure a home’s “miles per gallon” and essentially provide a window for prospective buyers and tenants to see and compare energy performance.

And in December 2009, the New York City Council passed the New York City Energy Code.  Among the code’s requirements, all large-building owners must perform energy audits, upgrade lighting and assess and tune major building systems.

Cities all over the country are requiring new commercial construction to meet LEED certification levels.  And not just left-leaning cities like Seattle, Boulder and Berkeley, Calif.  But “God-and-country” bastions like Kansas City, Mo., Atlanta and Dallas.  While there’s debate among industry professionals whether wholesale adoption of trade organization certification is a good thing, it’s happening, and new municipal construction in cities like these is towing the line.

Building owners ignore these trends at their own risk.  And trends they are.  Where cities like Boulder and Portland go, the rest of the country is sure to follow.  It’s easier to read the tea leaves and plan accordingly now while it’s optional rather than wait for mandates from on-high.

-Melissa Baldridge

[1] Peter Troast, www.energycircle.com

[2] “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” designation.  The U.S. Green Building Council’s designation for green commercial building, and the premier green building brand.

The Research Support Facility (Photo by Dennis Schroeder)

Greg Collette remembers when the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s project team was brain-storming their new, net-zero office space, they asked themselves – “What does net-zero energy use look like?”

Answering that question, along with the design-build approach, turned the vanguard project on its head, Collette, the project officer, says.  With conventional construction, a client hands down directives to the designers who bid it for construction.  But at the new Research Support Facility (RSF), everyone had to work hand-in-hand to meet the building’s breathtaking goal – net-zero energy use, balancing the energy needs of the building with über-efficient design, construction and renewable energy.

“It was a much friendlier process,” says Collette.

NREL isn’t simply on the leading edge of new technologies in energy efficiency and renewable energy.  It is the leading edge, whistling for others to jump in the water, too.  The Department of Energy, which funded the $64 million project, can’t preach energy savings without showing the way.  So the pressure was on the project team to deliver something amazing that would stand up under scrutiny.

Model of Top Floor of Building (Photo courtesy of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

They began with the LEED checklist for new construction, the U.S. Green Building Council’s designation for green building, targeting platinum.  But Collette says they consider the 222,000-square-foot building “platinum-plus,” surpassing even LEED’s highest certification rung.

Solar strategies were the obvious bases-loaded hit for the project team, as sunshine bathes the building site in Golden, Colo., 300-plus days a year.  The team tweaked the building footprint, settling on a 60-foot -wide “lazy H” to harvest as much sunlight as possible.  They also tuned the building’s triple-paned windows, using sun shades and low-e glass for sun-drenched exposures, while holding back on the north sides.

The team tilted the shed roof of the building to maximize the angle of the solar panel, which sit atop it.  And two nearby parking structures (under construction) will also sport solar collectors to feed the building’s energy needs.  Collette says the efficiency and renewable strategies will pay for themselves in eight years.

RSF Lobby with Beetle-Kill Wood Paneling (Photo Courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

The southern side of the building also has “transpired solar collectors” – an air space between the skin of the building and the wall.  The sun heats the air inside, and it circulates into a “heat sink” in the basement where it can be used to heat the building.  At night, the air space cools, and building engineers use that air to cool the building.

But RSF is hardly a charmless techno-wonder, wowing only the left-brained.  The team artfully executed even engineering details.  Plexiglas floor cutouts show the building’s insulation, radiant heating pipes and controls.  Wall inserts with reclaimed, machined “beetle-kill” wood layers and pumpkin-colored fluorescent light covers make the space feel more like a minimalist art gallery than a thinktank for scientists and researchers.  The skin of the southern side of the building is perforated to allow air flow.  And even the “gabion” security walls around the building are made of rocks pulled from the site and contained in wire cages – more desert art installation than federal facility security berms.

Collette says that the greatest challenge he and his team faced was balancing the energy efficiency of shared, communal living with peoples’ need for privacy – “we” versus “me.”  Most work spaces are open, with low cube tops and views to the outside.  “Anyone in any office space can see outside,” he says.  Even the closed offices have no ceilings so building engineers control one large air space rather a bunch of smaller, subdivided ones.

Construction with Reclaimed Gas Pipes Used in Building (Photo Courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

Every floor has kitchens with microwaves and big refrigerators, and in fact, employees are leaving any desk-sized models behind as they move into the new building.  Central copy centers have large copiers/faxes/printers, and all workstations print to them.  Collette says the team opened the work area to create an information agora – an open space – to foster dialog and collaboration.

Yet the project team considered peoples’ needs for privacy and quiet.  The only noises in the space are the building’s ventilation (upped significantly from energy code requirements) and sound masking.  Ceiling acoustic panels dampen noise.  The team also created “quiet rooms” outfitted with sofas, lockers, sink and vanity.  Each floor also has phone rooms for personal calls.  And both east and west ends of the building have courtyards with tables and chairs so workers can break or work outside.

The building opened last month, and employees are still moving in.  Another wing to house 500 more people than the RSF’s 800 is on the drawing board with stimulus money to fund its construction.  And NREL will no doubt incorporate whatever lessons it learns about net-zero living and working in the RSF into the next building.

For more information about NREL’s net-zero building, visit www.nrel.gov.

-Melissa Baldridge

From the Facility Management Association of Australia

We talked last week about things to remember when you enter into a “green” lease – questions like LEED versus ENERGY STAR properties, and existing building scenarios (LEED O+M, great for single-tenant) versus subdivided commercial interiors (CI, better for multi-tenant buildings).  This week, we look at that apparent roadblock in commercial real estate – triple-net leasing and how it dovetails with green leasing.

TRIPLE NET – Triple-net leases require building tenants to pay all expenses – utilities, taxes, insurance, etc.  Building owners collect dollars per square foot for expenses, additional to rent, and then pay building expenses with those funds.  If there’s money left over, it’s the building owner’s.  If there’s a shortfall, the owner bills tenants for the difference at year-end.  With gross leases, the building owner pays all expenses.  Both scenarios can work in green buildings because one important incentive is that s/he who pays gets the benefit.

So let’s say you own a building, and you invest in a primo HVAC&R system.  You have triple-net leases with your tenants.  If these capital improvements lower operating costs, which they do because high-efficiency systems use less energy, you can amortize the cost of that system and pass the depreciation cost through to the tenants as part of their operating expenses.  PRESTO! A building landlord gets the reward for investing in more-efficient equipment.  If you’re a tenant in such an agreement, a safeguard for you is to request your end-of-year expense reconciliation to validate that these savings really happened.

From Green Fever

The City of New York recently put this into practice.  In December 2009, the New York City Council passed a sweeping green-building ordinance, requiring owners to step up.  One rule stipulates energy audits every 10 years and subsequent fine-tuning of building systems.  The owner pays for the audit and upgrades AND saves money because the building runs like a top.

LESS IS MORE – Another way to slice and dice green-building occupancy is to reward reduced energy use.  Use less, you pay less.  Building occupants can tip the scales in whether green buildings succeed, or merely perform like their conventional peers.  And as anyone familiar with group dynamics knows, buy-in is vital.  Greening cannot be a top-down fiat, and in fact, will probably fail if it is.

Occupants can directly and indirectly influence energy use on HVAC systems by as much as 40 percent (hot calls, anyone?), plug loads (30 percent) and lighting (30 percent).[1] So landlords, get commitments up front – transparent and measurable – from your tenants about how they’ll help you reduce building electrical loads.

GREEN THROWDOWN – Green buildings aren’t places you can walk in, throw a switch and BOOM! – the building sings like an aria.  If you want your building to (significantly) outperform its peers, you must educate tenants how to use it.  Even as group as simpatico to green as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had to school its employees when it moved into its LEED gold Region 8 offices in downtown Denver with building systems like under-floor air ventilation, single returns on every floor and no-flow fixtures.

MAJOR TAKEAWAY – Green leases are the new, new thing, and owners and tenants alike can benefit from them, to say nothing of the planet.  Just as there is no standard green building (even LEED is multiple-choice), there’s no standard lease governing their occupancy … yet.  Be clear about what you want to accomplish whether you’re a building owner/manager or a tenant.  And communicate your needs up front.

For more information, get a copy of the Green Office Guide by the U.S. Green Building Council.  The Building Owners and Managers Association also publishes a BOMA Green Lease Guide.

-Melissa Baldridge

[1] Green Office Guide, Washington, D.C.:  U.S. Green Building Council, 2009, p. 40.

From the Facility Management Association of Australia

Green buildings are popping up like mushrooms after a hard night’s rain, and municipal building codes in cities like Dallas, Portland and Chicago have significantly raised the bar for government-funded new construction.  But if terms like vegetated roofs, semi-permeable parking lots and heat island are terra incognita to you, then navigating green leases can make you feel like Lewis and Clark exploring the western half of the United States for the first time.

Simply, green leases are agreements between tenants and landlords of green buildings, which can differ wildly from conventional buildings in their build-out and operations.  It’s a complex topic that belongs in the realm of legal eagles and the seriously OCD.  Yet if you want to live or work in a green building, we offer some points to consider in negotiating your lease.

GREEN IS GREY – And so is the word “sustainable.”  What do they mean to you?  Is greening your building all about energy efficiency and bottom-line savings?  Are you looking to have a healthful indoor air quality?  Are you concerned that everything in your space (office products, machinery, build-out construction materials) comes from nearby and has a small carbon footprint?  If you own a building, do you want to market it as green to set it apart from its peers?  Get clear on your goals.  It’ll inform great questions when you talk to leasing agents and help you spot buildings that are merely “green-washed.”

From GaiaDevelopment.com

BUILDERS AND MAINTAINERS - In LEED parlance, there are two sets of criteria governing existing buildings – operations and maintenance (O+M) and commercial interiors (CI).  Basically, O+M governs the workaday operations of a building – how much waste is recycled, how much water the building uses, how much air is pumped into the space, where products are purchased from, etc.  CI covers build-outs and tenant improvements – how remodelers handle construction waste, toxicity of materials like paint and carpet in a space, and how light and temperature are controlled.  If you don’t anticipate expanding your space over the term of your lease and you’re the only tenant in your building, O+M may work.  If you have even an inkling that you may need room to grow, you’ll want to weave CI considerations into your lease.  Even if you aren’t in a LEED building, you can cherry-pick elements that matter to you from LEED checklists.

DOOR NUMBER ONE, ENERGY STAR.  DOOR NUMBER TWO, LEED – Or Door Number Three, neither.  Basically, ENERGY STAR status means your building uses energy as efficiently as the top 25 percent of buildings in its size and class.  LEED is the leading commercial building green brand certified by the U.S. Green Building Council.  ENERGY STAR might be right if you’re on a quest for smaller utility bills.  Or you may want the whole enchilada with LEED.  Or neither.  You can bring elements of each into your space.  Again, knowing your goals upfront is key.

MULTI-TENANT VS. SINGLE-TENANT – Do you have one company using your building as a flagship, or do your tenants resemble a United Nations general assembly with people and agendas all over the map?  It’s easier to get everyone in one company on board with a green building program than corralling lots of different businesses and companies.  Yet it can be done.

TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY – If you’re a landlord, do you trust your tenants to adhere to prescribed levels of energy use in your space?  Or if you rent, how do you know what the entire building’s greenhouse gas emissions are?  Who’s responsible for what and public access to this information are cornerstones for trust between building owners and tenants.  Programs like the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Initiative and Climate Counts provide ways to report greenhouse gas and carbon emissions.  Including tools like these in a lease help you trust … and verify.

… To be continued. This topic is complex, and we’ll continue next week with part two, looking at the elephant in the room of commercial real estate – triple-net versus gross leases and how they relate to green building.  Stay tuned!

-Melissa Baldridge

We are green building professionals, not legal professionals.  Always consult legal counsel before signing real estate contracts.

Designer Ann Demeulemeester's shop with a living, green wall in Seoul, South Korea. From www.e-architect.co.uk

You don’t have to pay attention to the news to know the nation has been in recession.  Drive around any shopping district, and vacant storefronts dot some areas like Swiss cheese.  And as goes retail spending, so goes the value of retail space. 

Yet there’s one way to set your retail spaces apart from the rest – green them.  Tenants and customers alike say they prefer to work in and shop with businesses that walk the talk about protecting the environment.  A survey of global consumers showed more than half preferred to do business with green companies.[1]  Ninety-two percent of college graduates say they want to work for a company making a positive impact on the environment.[2]  And a 2009 CB Richard Ellis survey showed 82 percent of tenants saying they won’t pay more to be in a green building, but do anyway. 

So green away!  Corporate heavies like Office Depot, Wells Fargo and Starbucks are creating green homes for their businesses.  It’s time you do, too.  Here are some great ways to do it.

1.  BLOCK THAT FLOW – Do you have service doors that get opened a lot?  And left that way?  Vinyl-strip doors can help keep heated or cooled air inside.  Basic kits start at about $200, and they’re available on-line.   

From AirCanada.com

2.  LOOK AT THOSE BILLS

Evaluate your energy bills.  Are you paying “demand,” or high-use charges?  How many meters are you paying for?  Is your equipment driving peaks or spikes in your electricity use?  If so, the utility company could be taking it out of your hide.  If you don’t know how to evaluate your bills, contact GreenSpot for help.

3.  DAYLIGHTING – Are your retail spaces deep and dark?  Tubular daylight devices (TDDs or solar tubes) are the 21^st century’s skylights and can shine lots of natural light on spaces that would otherwise be dim or require electric lighting.  ‘Saves you money, plus the light feels better to tenants and customers.

4.  GREEN CLEANING AND PEST CONTROL – Improving your building’s air reduces respiratory illness by an average of 41 percent.[3]  Janitorial services that use earth- and people-friendly cleaning products are available in most cities now.  Also look for exterminators using less-toxic pest control methods. 

5.  ENERGY RECOVERY – Energy recovery systems divert heat energy to power other processes.  Think of showers – what if you could release the dirty water but capture the heat from it?  If you have building systems that waste heat, energy recovery may be a way to increase your efficiency and lower your bills.

6.  EYE IN THE SKY – A landmark study shows that when people monitor energy use, they save as much as 5 to 15 percent on their bills.[4]  Energy management systems can be as simple as home energy monitors or as complex as Mission Control.  When you can see what you’re using, it’s easier to change behaviors.

7.  UP ON A ROOF – Commercial spaces differ from residential in a number of ways, including square footage.  Does the roof of your building have a black top (asphalt) or other dark color?  If so, you could be creating a micro-climate around your building that’s hot, hot.  White or light-colored roofs generate less heat and less demand on your cooling systems.

Retrofits for Retail with Cost and Complexity Axes. Yellow items lower operating costs, green are more holistic, and blue are both.

8.  UP ON A ROOF, II

Another great way to use the generous square footage of retail is through rooftop solar.  Do you want to own your own photovoltaic system?  Financial incentives and municipal financing that assesses to your property (like property taxes) make that possible.  Or are you looking to lease solar equipment?  PPAs or Power Purchasing Agreements could be the way to go if you don’t want the upfront cost.

9.  LET THERE BE LIGHT – One key difference between retail versus other commercial spaces is the way light is used.  In some areas like storage areas or garages, you can retrofit lights with über-efficient fixtures.  But in your sales spaces, it’s vital to illuminate products well.  Though they’re not as efficient, halogens may still be the way to go for window and other high-visibility product displays.

10.  PASSIVE SOLAR – Does the sun pound one side of your building?  Work with what nature gives you, and plant deciduous trees on southern and western exposures.  Tree canopy can reduce heat gain by as much as 7 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit.  They also shade in summer and drop leaves in winter to provide solar warmth.  Exterior sun shades also shield windows from oppressive heat, but finding the right ones, and installing them properly, is key.

11.  INSULATE, INSULATE – Do you know how much wall and ceiling insulation you have?  Remember, code is only a passing “D.”  Consider bulking up the insulation in your space for greater comfort and energy-efficiency.  Utility company and local government rebate programs can help you offset the cost.

12.  HEALTHFUL INTERIORS – Look for low- or zero-VOC (volatile organic compound) paints and carpet systems.  Recent studies show it pays off in higher productivity, fewer sick days and employee turnover.  Also, consider polished concrete floors.  They may cost a bit more up front, but they’re less expensive to maintain.

We also suggest you read “Green Pays” and “A Dozen Ways to Green Your Office and Why It Matters” on this blog for more information about greening commercial spaces.

-Melissa Baldridge

[2] MonsterTRAK survey, 2007. 

[3] Center for Building Performance, Carnegie Mellon University, 2005.

[4] Sarah Darby, “The Effectiveness of Feedback on Energy Consumption,” The Environmental Change Institute of Oxford University, 2006.

From http://api.ning.com/files

True confession – we’re newbies to composting.  We halved our household trash when we started recycling several years ago.  Yet we’re appalled about how much of what’s left is kitchen waste.  And stats back us up.  Americans throw away over 200 million pounds of trash every day[1], and over 30 percent of what winds up in landfills is compostable.[2]

So I’m doing my homework and blogging the results.  Eddie Albert, move over ‘cause Green Acres, we are heeeeeere! 

Basically, composting is allowing natural microbes (fungi, bacteria and even worms) to break down your organic trash.  This can be a slow process (“cold” taking up to a year) or a quicker one (“hot,” in a few weeks with temps reaching 160 degrees Fahrenheit).  Good compost piles need three things – air, water and food.  And there are two essential food groups – carbon (brown stuff like leaves, hay, wood chips and dead plants) and nitrogen (green stuff like weeds, veggie and fruit kitchen scraps, fresh green grass, coffee and tea grounds). 

Compost systems come in 31 flavors – one-bin, two- (or more) bin, rotating drums, sheet or trench, commercial and worm bins.  A quick Internet canvass showed models from $19.99 to $495.  If you want an inexpensive, DIY project, build your own.  You can use all sorts of materials like cinder blocks, hay bales, chicken wire and lumber.  DIY bins contain the pile (not necessary but an aesthetic plus) and provide for easy aeration.  And some die-hard composters work with an unfenced pile or fill trenches with waste (ideally where you intend to plant food crops).  Check with your municipality first, though, as cities may have regulations about legal and illegal waste piles, even with something as virtuous as compost.  Your local government may even have a curbside compost program to save you the trouble.

Composting happens in all the best places, including Aspen, Colo. Here, composting was a requirement for waste disposal during the Aspen "Food & Wine Classic."

Manufactured bins come in all shapes and sizes – look for ones made of recycled materials.  Some composters go for the gold standard – worms.  Not just the garden variety but “red wigglers.”  Also known as “vermiculture,” worm-assisted composting breaks down waste FAST, but because living things turn nature’s wheels, it requires care and attention (‘can’t get too cold, must handle gingerly and fluff lightly).

Some super Web sites describe in detail what’s great compost food and what’s not.  (See below.)  But one way to think of it is that whatever you’re composting could wind up recycled on your dinner table again – so nothing toxic goes in (glossy paper, chemically treated wood), no meat, bones or fatty foods (salad dressing), and no manure of any kind unless you’re a composting whiz and have studied the subject carefully. 

Rules of thumb are to alternate browns and greens in two-to-four-inch layers, keep the pile moist (like a wrung-out sponge) but not soggy, turn it to air it (every few days to several months – experiment to discover what works.)  If the pile stinks, you’ve tipped over to anaerobic (sans oxygen) digestion.  You know it’s done when the pile smells like sweet, loamy earth (meaning the microbes have worked it over aerobically (with oxygen)). 

We’re city kids so for our first composter, I’ve identified three store-bought models.  ‘We outgrow it?  We’ll build our own.  Ease rules so we’ll look at the Green Eco-Composter ($170.54, resembling the Star Wars Death Star – my SO is all over this one), the Spin Bin Composter Tumbler ($169.99 and made in the U.S. of A.) and the Tumbleweed Compost tumbler ($189.99, recycled material).  If my low back agrees, we might even look at the 90 or 158-gallon non-tumbling Compost Bin ($99.99).

For more information, visit www.vegweb.com, www.cityfarmer.org, or the Natural Resource Conservation Service (http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/feature/backyard/compost.html).  And if you have great tips or Web sites to share, please do.

-Melissa Baldridge

[2] Eartheasy.com

The Weber House, from www.trendir.com

What’s the lowest your utility bills have ever been during summer or winter?  What if they were one-tenth that number?  Or even zero? 

This is one of the promises of the Passive House, or Passivhaus in German – low, low utility bills without the aid of renewable energy like solar or wind.  Born in Germany, Passive House design is a philosophy encompassing all types of building, including large-scale commercial – buildings that sip energy compared to their code-built twins.  Passive House designers use a number of techniques like super-tight building exteriors, massive amounts of insulation (two to three times code requirements housed in 10 to 14-inch-thick walls), elimination of elements like metal I-beams that conduct heat and cold to the outside, triple-pane windows and super-efficient mechanical systems.

Passive Houses, finely honed in northern Europe, can use as little as 1,000 watts to heat.  Mike Kernagis, co-founder and director of the Passive House Institute US, says he and his colleagues joke that the houses are so tight, you can heat one with a hair dryer.

Passive House, from blog.syracuse.com/green

When the buildings first jumped the Atlantic and hit American shores, they were a bit ungainly, “boxy and with low-rent finishes,” says Kernagis.    Yet recent projects are elegant, more like something out of Dwell magazine than windowless Communist-bloc bunkers.   “The projects have become beautiful,” Kernagis says.

For buildings to receive the Passive House label, they must meet three simple criteria. First, the buildings must be virtually airtight.  Current building code allows for seven “air changes per hour,” or the volume of air that turns over in a building every hour.  ENERGY STAR requires five to six.  But Passive buildings don’t allow more than .6 air changes per hour, a fraction of the other two.[1]

The buildings are energy dieters.  Code houses use about 45,000 Btus (British thermal units) per square foot a year to heat and cool, and ENERGY STAR about 38,000.  Passive Houses ring in at 4,755 Btus, a fraction of both.

The same goes for total energy use, including other appliances.  Code houses run about 30 kilowatt hours per square foot, and ENERGY STAR, 20.  Passive Houses?  (drum roll, please …) 11.1. 

Drawing shows some of the ways the Passive House is so efficient, including super-insulation, a heat exchanger, ground-source heat capture and triple-pane, low-e windows, From Passivehaustagung.de

The Passive House provides guidelines on ways designers can achieve these super-building metrics but largely leaves it up to them to weigh options and make choices.  Simple, but not easy. 

North Americans are so used to massive heating and cooling systems that the idea they may be unnecessary, or super-sized, is like a cannon shot across the bow of the building industry.  Yet Kernagis boasts that the air inside a Passive building is some of the safest and freshest around.  At the heart of Passive design is what’s called an “energy recovery ventilator (ERV),” a device that strips the heat and moisture out of stale air leaving a building and adds both back to fresh outside air pumped in.  Hot or cold air stays inside, and fresh air continually circulates.

Physicist Wolfgang Feist created the Passive House idea in Germany in the 1980s, inspired by the “super-insulated” houses of Canada and the United States from the 1970s.  Ironically, North American minds came up with these über-efficient structures during the 1970s in response to the Arab oil embargo.  And while North Americans enjoyed cheap petroleum in the 1980s and let languish the innovation, Europeans grabbed onto the idea, spurred by high-priced oil and gas, and ran with it.

Infrared image shows how a Passive House (foreground) keeps cool air outdoors and warm air inside. The building in background leaks heat (orange, red and yellow). From www.ourenergy.com

Feist founded the Passivhaus Institut in 1996 in Darmstadt, Germany, and since that time, Europeans have built 20,000 Passive-certified buildings, including multi-family housing, schools and university buildings.  In the 1980s, energy standards in Europe, especially Scandinavia, dropped significantly, so the building industry had to adapt.  To date, 17 percent of Austria’s new homes have been built to the standard, and in 2007, the Austrian state of Vorarlberg passed a law requiring all new state-funded construction to meet the standard.

Stateside, the idea has taken root more slowly.  As of April 2010, only 10 have achieved certification here, and a few dozen are in line for approval.  Several reasons contribute to the tepid growth rate here so far.

Passive Houses cost more to build here – 12 to 15 percent more.  In Europe, the cost premium is less – 2 to 3 percent because the price of fuel is so much higher.  Therefore, the payback is quicker. 

From www.livescience.com

Because the design concept hasn’t achieved scale in North America, some important building elements, like heating, air-conditioning and energy-recovery units, have to be imported.  And the ones that are available can be more expensive, like Canadian triple-pane windows at $40 to $50 per square foot. 

Passive House requirements suggest 214 to 540 square feet per person.  American houses mirrored these numbers in the 1950s but have ballooned significantly, tipping the scale at over 900 square feet per person today.

And designers are still working out the technologies in warmer climates, although Kernagis says that this isn’t rocket science.  “In hot, humid places, the biggest component of cooling is dealing with humidity,” he says, citing that the small heat pumps used in Passive Houses are popular in Asia. 

Kernagis is hopeful that Passive House will remake the housing industry, or at least catalyze it like LEED[2] has with commercial real estate.  He encourages anyone building a house to think of the energy it takes to operate it over its 40-year lifecycle.  Pointing out one of the early Passive Houses built in America (Urbana, Ill.), he says, “The highest monthly utility bill ever for all energy use was $45.”

For more information about Passive House, visit www.passivehouse.us. 

-Melissa Baldridge

[2] The “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” program of the U.S. Green Building Council

From airtightnoodle.files.wordpress.com

Lawn mowers hum, the smell of freshly cut grass drifts on warm air, neighbors wash cars, and the lines at big-box garden-center cash registers wind through the stores.

It’s summer, the season when we use more water.  And anyone who lives in drier parts of the country can attest that it’s a precious commodity.  In 1990, 30 states reported “water stress.”  In 2000, that number rose to 40, and in 2009, it jumped again to 45.[1]

More severely, water scarcity affects one in three people on the planet, says the World Health Organization.  And as the planet’s population balloons to 9 billion in 2050 from 6.5 billion people now, the problem will only worsen.  Even in the United States, freakish weather patterns are creating draught in formerly lush areas of the country that used to bank on water, water everywhere.

The average household can cut home water use by as much as 35 percent, or 44,000 gallons of water per year by using water-saving devices.[2] So, in good GreenSpot fashion, we offer some summer water-saving tips, including some you might not have considered.  And remember – when you save water, you pay less on your bills.

1.  LET THE MAN PAY THE BILL – That’s right.  A number of water providers offer rebates for water savers like low-flow toilets, high-efficiency washing machines and rain sensors.  Check before you buy to insure you follow utility company requirements.

2.  GREEN JEANS – Even plumbers have set up green certification for trade members.  When you let your fingers do the walking (or clicking), look for the ones who’ve been schooled in green ways to use and monitor water.  Here’s one great Web site to find them:  Green Plumbers USA.

3.  DRIP, DON’T SPRAY – We use 40 percent of our municipal water to keep yards and gardens rich and lush, and conventional sprinklers disperse about 50 percent of that, literally, into thin air.  Try soaker hoses and drip lines – they’re water-wise.

4.  SLICE AND DICE – Listen up, landlords!  When people start paying their own water bills, they’re more attentive with how they use water.  You can often sub-meter water use in commercial spaces.

5.  EURO TRASH – If you’ve been in Europe, you know that dual-flush toilets are commonplace on the Continent.  Depress the lever one way for liquid waste (releasing less water) and the other way for solids (for more water to flush matter through).

Roca toilet, from Treehugger.com

6.  THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN – If you really want to be outside the box, investigate combination sink-toilets, which have been in use in Japan for years.  You wash your hands in the sink, which doubles as a tank.  So that water then fills the toilet bowl for flushing.

7.  WATER FEATURES – Water features like fountains or water walls get a bad rap, particularly in arid places.  At best, they work like big outdoor evaporative coolers, lowering temperatures around them.  Make sure they recycle their water, though.

8.  COVER IT UP – Mulching flower beds and trees with 2 – 4 inches of mulch significantly reduces evaporation after you water.

9.  WRAP IT UP – Insulate the hot-water pipes in your house, especially through colder service areas like crawl spaces.  You can buy pre-cut foam pipe wrap at most hardware stores.  That way, you don’t waste water waiting for the hot to flow.

10.  McSTEAMY – Steam traps catch heat from other mechanical processes, condense it and divert the water to be used elsewhere.  If you’re a commercial property owner, look into process heat and water technologies.

For more information about saving water and money, check out the EPA’s water Web site, WaterSense.

-Melissa Baldridge

[1] www.eartheasy.com

[2] Ibid.

The Green Office, From eco-officegals.com

Greening your office is about more than soft, feel-good initiatives that are irrelevant to the business of your business.  Energy and resource efficiencies mean you’re using less electricity, supplies and natural gas so your operating costs are less.

If you’re like most, labor is your biggest expense – finding and retaining super people.  Keep them happy, and they’ll return the favor.  Study after study show that employee productivity has an impact on your operating expenses, and we covered this recently (see our post, “Green Pays” on May 4, 2010.)  If you’re looking to attract and hire the best people, get serious about green.

So here you go – 12 great ways to green your office that directly or indirectly impact your bottom line.

1.  CALCULATE YOUR OFFICE FOOTPRINT – If you don’t measure it, you can’t change it.  And yes, there are calculators for your office’s carbon footprint.  Do an Internet search on your fave search engine.  I found a good one at The Green Office.

2.  GET YOUR LANDLORD TO PONY UP – When you renew your lease, it’s standard practice for your landlord improve your space.  Insist the management company make green improvements, whether that’s installing better, more efficient lighting, repainting with less-toxic paints (“zero-VOC,” volatile organic compound) or instituting building-wide recycling. 

3.  ROCK-STAR PARKING – Give your green-conscious employees red-carpet treatment.  If they drive a low-emission vehicle (LEV) like a Prius or Smart Car, give them a preferred space right up front.  And if they cycle to work, install a secure bike rack so they can lock their ride up safely. 

4.  CO2-NEUTRAL DELIVERY – If it absolutely, positively has to be there overnight, look for ways to offset that first-class berth for your package with “renewable energy certificates” (RECs).  They’re a traded commodity that represents a certain amount of renewable energy.  The CarbonNeutral Company verifies that delivery of packages are offset, and even companies like UPS participate. 

5.  ENVIRONMENTALLY PREFERABLE PRODUCTS – Simply, anything you buy for your office that’s better for people and the planet – less toxic, smaller carbon footprint, etc.

From nature.org

The Environmental Protection Agency has an encyclopedic Web site that defines layers of products in all sorts of categories:  vehicles, conferences and meetings, cleaning, electronics, etc.  You’ll spend some time on the site, but it’ll provide you with vendors and products that pass muster.

6.  BYOM (“BRING YOUR OWN MUG”) – Americans love coffee, and 150 million of us drink it every day.  Think of the disposable-cup mountain that hits the landfill as a result.  Many coffee vendors, including Starbucks, offer coffee discounts if you BYOM.

7.  PRINT YOUR VEGGIES – If you have to mass-print, use vegetable-based ink.  Soy is the popular choice, but check its source.  Brazil is one of the leading producers of soy products (translate, soy farmers are clear-cutting valuable rain forests to plant soy for your edamame).  If the soy inks your printer uses are from the United States, double-good because you’re buying American.

8.  GO PAPERLESS – How many copies of important documents do you really need to print?  How about setting up e-filing systems and keeping documents virtually?  (BACKED-UP, PLEASE!)  Distribute mandatory company paperwork (like human resources material) in bits and bytes. 

9.  CLEAN GREEN – Make sure your cleaning crews use non-toxic cleaners.  It’s better for you and for them.  Look for third-party verification like Green Seal on the cleaning agents used in your office. It’s also easy to find green cleaning services now.  The U.S. Green Building Council lists some on their Web site, or you can search for them in your ‘hood.

10.  NINE TO FIVE IS SO 20^TH CENTURY – The City of Portland found that when it allowed employees to work four 10-hour days, its carbon emissions dropped by 20 percent.[1]  Consider allowing your employees to have flex-time or to telecommute.  The City of Los Angeles found that its employees were 18 percent more productive when they were allowed to set their own work schedules.[2] 

11.  LIGHTS – Lights account for up to 44 percent of office energy use.[3]  Have a lighting audit performed in your space.  Consider installing timers or occupancy sensors in little-used rooms like conference or copier rooms.  Many utility providers even offer rebates for replacing old, inefficient lights with state-of-the-art efficient ones.

12.  ENERGY SIPPIN’ – Computers waste $1 billion of electricity every year.[4] And screen savers may look cool, but they do NOT save energy.  If you set your computer for sleep mode, you can cut as much as 70 percent of its energy use.  Energy-hungry office equipment can slurp up to 16 percent of an office’s energy mix, says the Department of Energy.  And always, ALWAYS buy ENERGY STAR.  Even if an ENERGY STAR product costs more up-front, it’ll cost way less to operate over its lifetime. 

If this list feels overwhelming or your Neanderthal, nay-saying boss will never agree to some of these suggestions, start with three … AND TRACK THEM.  If you can prove you’re saving the company money, your boss just might divert that savings into raises or other perks.  At minimum, your stock with her goes up because she sees you care about the planet and the bottom line.

-Melissa Baldridge

[2] Ibid. 

[3] The Sierra Club, “The Green Life,” http://sierraclub.typepad.com.

[4] Sierra Club, “The Green Life,” http://sierraclub.typepad.com.

Michael Reynolds, by Kirsten Jacobsen, Earthship Biotecture

It’s no accident that Noah is Michael Reynolds’ hero.  Both men are plucky survivors, both saw apocalyptic disaster on the horizon and raced to avert it, and neither gave a whit what others thought of them.

Yet Reynolds makes Noah look like a member of the Optimist Club.  What Reynolds sees is the collapse of cities barreling down upon us like the Four Horsemen.  “New York’s infrastructure is within inches of failing,” he says.  “Cities are dangerous areas of chaos that can’t support themselves anymore.”

He graduated from the University of Cincinnati architecture school in 1969 and headed west, winding up in New Mexico to ride dirt bikes.  Seduced by western open spaces and crystalline sky, he made it home and began asking questions that redefined the American dream of home ownership.

“Do I want to build uninspired, cookie-cutter houses?  What if we could use building materials at hand, or even what society casts off?  What can we learn from nature, and how can we work in tandem with it rather than oblivious of it?  Can we release people from the gerbil wheel of mortgage servitude?”  That process of questioning and experimentation resulted over time in what Reynolds called the “Earthship house.”

He recalls an epiphany when he realized that the Earthship model was a gateway for people to own their own houses outright, and control their destinies.  Reynolds says people can show up, get a patch of land, build walls for other peoples’ houses during the day and work on their own places at night.  “We took thousands out of expenses and put it all in the houses,” he says.  “I had power.  I had heat.  I had food growing,” recalls Reynolds.  “Jesus Christ, I’m free!  I can do whatever I want.”

Reynolds defines Earthships as a series of u-shaped rooms connected with a green house.  They’re usually dug into berms or embankments, floating or riding on bedrock like a boat, thus the term “Earthship.”  The building material is laced with garbage and discards – tires, beer cans and bottles.  The buildings require John Henry-caliber labor (Reynolds estimates as much as 50 percent of their cost), and builders literally pound earth into tires with sledgehammers, expanding and packing them tight.

Reynolds says that tires were the inspiration for the Earthships’ rounded design.  “Tires are round organically.  They started us in that direction.  [The pod-like character of the rooms] was a product of the material we were using.”  He also sought a way to use society’s refuse, and the packed tires,

Tire wall, by Katy Tartakoff, www.katytartakoff.com

like adobe, held stable interior temperatures.  Though Earthships look rough as they’re being assembled one tire, bottle or can at a time, the interiors can rival the most gorgeous spaces in Santa Fe when finished and smoothed over with stucco.

Concepts behind Earthships are nothing new, drawing on what other cultures have known for millennia but modern builders have forgotten.  The buildings are completely off-grid, incorporating wind and solar power, and garbage (reused, recycled material).  They’re angled to absorb the sun’s heat, especially vital in the winter at 7,000 feet above sea level in Taos.  The roofs catch and filter water.  ‘Best of all, the houses don’t have (or need) heating or air-conditioning systems.  Reynolds recalls one frigid Taos night with temperatures 20 degrees below zero, and one Earthship had a comfy indoor temp of 68 degrees.  Reynolds and his wife, Chris, have a fireplace in their home, which he only lights at Christmas for yuletide ambience.

He brags that the houses don’t waste a drop of water, vital in arid Taos with 8 inches of rainfall per year.  Earthships recycle water four times – to wash dishes, water planters, flush toilets and water landscaping outside.  “I see these buildings as finely tuned machines that take care of people down to food.”

In the 1990s, he surrendered his license to avoid malpractice.  And he let go his national license after that.

Reynolds also confounded the county because it couldn’t figure out how to permit the buildings.  “They wanted me to be selling acres and lots and building repetitive little houses.”

By Katy Tartakoff, www.katytartakoff.com

And so in 1997, Reynolds shut his community down and went into an existential funk.  “I lost my method of livelihood, lost my respect, my credentials,” he says.  He was torn between thumbing his nose at the design and building community, or doing what he must to get his business running again.  He chose the latter, with a twist.

So began a years-long lobbying effort of the New Mexico legislature to set up “sustainable development testing sites.”  In the interim, Reynolds and an Earthship crew set out for the Bay of Bengal in 2005 to help coastal people recover from a devastating earthquake and tidal wave.  The team showed engineers and villagers how to rebuild their homes and lives with Earthships adapted to tropical conditions.

Redemption came 10 years later in 2007 when the New Mexico legislature finally passed the sustainable sites law, giving Reynolds some breathing room and legal status.  Because of his humanitarian work on the Indian Ocean, the architecture community restored his licenses.

Reynolds says he has projects going in places like Mexico, Belgium, Honduras, Scotland, Bolivia and Japan – Earthships for different climates around the world.  And not a moment too soon, he says, citing concern about climate change.

He has no time for people who can’t get beyond the rulebook because “beyond the rulebook is global warming.”  When Noah started building, the sky was clear, and people thought he was a lunatic.  ‘Same with Reynolds.  “It’s almost like a disaster has to happen to get the world to start preparing,” he says.  “And then it’s too late.”

If you’re interested in learning more about Earthships, visit www.earthship.org.  You can also rent Earthships for overnight stays if you want to experience one first-hand.  And if you want to learn how to build one, Reynolds’ nexus outside of Taos offers didactic and hands-on weekends.

-Melissa Baldridge

An energy audit is a wellness exam for your house focused on how it uses energy.  Energy-efficiency retrofits based on a well-performed audit can make your house way more comfortable and save you a bundle.

A certified energy auditor is a trained technician who pores over your house like a hound dog, looking at the major energy users – your air-conditioner, furnace or boiler, hot water heater and even your refrigerator (which can account for up to 20 percent of annual electrical use).  Even if you have super-efficient appliances, your house can leak like a screened-in porch.  So good auditors scrutinize the building’s shell – the construction holes that pierce it (like ventilation stacks and dampers, doors, windows, outlets, etc.) and how much insulation you have. 

Think of your house as a six-sided cube – four sides all around, a top and a bottom.  Do you know what’s going on inside your exterior walls?  Or underneath your floors?  What about beneath your house’s foundation?  Even if you built your house with your own two hands, insulation can settle or gap, leaving it unprotected to the exterior.

Energy auditors perform home inspections with a number of gee-whiz gizmos, including infrared cameras, which show temperature differences, and duct blasters, which measure how leaky your ductwork is.  But the energy auditor signature tool is called a blower door – a reverse fan that literally sucks air out of your house.

Blower door and sealed frame. From AC Tool Supply.com

If you pull the air out of something, what happens?  An equivalent amount of air rushes in to equalize the loss.  So auditors seal off an exterior door, fit the fan to the door and crank it up.  Then they use super-sensitive gauges to measure air flowing back into your house through your doors, windows, walls and improperly sealed construction holes.

A guy/gal with a blower door does not necessarily an auditor make.  Always insist on using certified energy auditors. The two industry-accepted certifying bodies are the Residential Energy Services Network (RESNET, www.natresnet.org) and the Building Performance Institute (BPI, www.bpi.org).  Both have lists of technicians in your area who’ve passed their training and certifying exams.

You hired an auditor and got your report.  Now what?  A few auditors provide bids to do the retrofits.  Again, be careful.  Some handy homeowners think they can do the work themselves or hire low-ball contractors.  Energy-efficiency retrofitting is specialized work that can, if improperly done, lead to serious or deadly conditions.  Get another bid if you need to, but hire qualified people to do the work.

Now’s a super time to get an energy overhaul for your house as there’s lots of money out there to help pay for it.  Check with your local utility provider for rebates.  Visit www.dsireusa.org to learn more about local rebates and tax credits.  And always feel free to contact us if you need help or questions answered.

-Melissa Baldridge

Think again.  With labor costs running as high as 90 percent in some industries, keeping employees happy and productive directly impacts the bottom line and a company’s ability to attract and keep top-notch people.

From CCDI, Inc. (ccdiinc.com)

We differentiate between “green” and “energy-efficient” here, though the two are often used interchangeably.  Green is more holistic, encompassing aspects like healthful indoor environments for employees and tenants, recycling and composting programs and purchasing products and supplies from sustainable sources.  Energy-efficiency is a bottom-line focus on reduced operating expenses.  It is entirely possible to zero in on whittling expenses and, oh by the way, benefit the planet.  Yet greening efforts in business have been perceived as soft add-ons, feel-good extras with no tangible, measurable benefits.  They’re not.  They’re essential to maintaining a competitive edge.

If you’re looking to attract and hire the best people (read young, eager and energetic), walking your talk about corporate responsibility (including green) is vital.  Eighty percent of college graduates said they’re interested in a job with a positive impact on the environment, according to a recent MonsterTRAK survey.  And a jaw-dropping 92 percent (!) said they would choose working for an environmentally friendly company. 

A 2009 survey that compared employees in green buildings to ones in conventional offices said green-space employees practically whistle while they work.  The CB Richard Ellis report said that for these green-space companies, 55 percent reported their employees were more productive after moving, translating into a $20 per square foot savings per year.  ‘Same with sick days – almost 3 percent decrease in reported days out equaled $5 per square foot savings for those companies.  Real estate consultant Charles Lockwood found the numbers even higher:  productivity up by as much as 15 percent, and absenteeism down by 14 percent.

All you landlords take note – the same study showed the employees in green buildings earn more than any other employee category.  Even though 82 percent of those surveyed said they wouldn’t pay a premium to be in a green building, most tenants do regardless of what they profess. 

LEED buildings, the leading commercial green brand, boasted that Class A office buildings had average rents of $39 per square foot compared to $29 for comparable conventional buildings.  And average occupancy rates and rents are higher for those buildings (4 and 13 percent respectively).[1] 

When companies like Bank of America, Toyota and IBM have embraced greening initiatives, it’s the price of entry.  Ignore it at risk of being sidelined and planning your own obsolescence.

-Melissa Baldridge

Money from under the Gold Dome (from coloradocontractors.org)

That’s right, people.  The Governor’s Energy Office here in Colorado is giving away free money to help you save Bennies on your energy bills.

Basically, the Governor’s Energy Office (GEO) is serving as a pass-through for rebates from the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) to the tune of $18 million.  The program launched on April 19^th at 8 a.m. sharp, and the past 10 days have been a bank run on rebates for everything from solar thermal heaters to duct sealing to residential micro-wind turbines.  So far, home appliances have far outstripped all the other incentives.

The GEO’s Facebook page has kept a running total rivaling the national debt clock, with Coloradans vying for the dollars, and as of this writing, 25,462 rebates have been spoken for.  A similar program in Texas, with appliance rebates alone equaling Colorado’s program total, caused a meltdown of the phone system with 4.5 million calls.

When President Obama signed ARRA four days after Congress passed it (Feb. 13, 2009), he unleashed a downpour of money through state agencies for all manner of reconstruction projects, like infrastructure, health-care system efficiencies and money for schools.  A couple of the stipulations were that the money be spent well … and quickly.

American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (from arts.gov)

So state agencies like the GEO threw themselves into high gear, devising programs to get stimulus dollars into the hands of average Americans who would spend on local projects and with local vendors to increase energy efficiency.

The GEO Web site is slick and logs everyone in as a residential or commercial visitor.  Users create an “action plan,” and money- and energy-saving tips dot the virtual journey.  GEO rebate “providers” are vendors who signed up via a GEO partnership with the Better Business Bureau.  The energy-efficiency rebates are pretty simple stuff, with the complexity rising as do the dollars awarded (like for renewable energy systems).  Providers get the ball rolling by reserving rebates in many of the categories but not all.

Some of the sexier and easier rebates are going fast (and may be already gone by the time you read this), but the pedestrian ones are moving more slowly.  On Tuesday, GEO Facebook breathlessly intoned, “Plenty of furnaces, insulation, energy audits and energy monitors are still available.”  Though efficiencies like these have an “eat-your-veggies” appeal, they are the building blocks for a super-efficient building.  What’s the point of having a gorgeous photo-voltaic solar array of panels if your house leaks air like a sieve?

So don’t wait.  If you think you want to take advantage of all this government goodness, now’s the time to do it as the GEO is closing wait lists every day. Visit www.rechargecolorado.com.   To find out even more about financial incentives for energy efficiency and renewables, visit www.dsireusa.org.  Type in your location to find all kinds credits and rebates (and yes, this site is nationwide.)

If you need guidance navigating any of this, contact us — we’re happy to help.

Look for the bright, blue ENERGY STAR label

If you could save money AND do the right thing for the planet, would you?

If you said “yes,” you’re in the majority.  Sixty-four percent of adults polled cited “saving money” as one of the top two reasons for taking environmentally friendly measures, according to a recent poll by Ipsos Public Affairs on behalf of Procter & Gamble.  And three-quarters said they would switch brands if price was equal AND provided savings on water and energy, and reduced waste at home.

ENERGY STAR products and buildings do the double duty, and anything bearing the bright blue label is a no-brainer.

When buyers choose ENERGY STAR, they get three things, says ENERGY STAR Brand Manager Maria Vargas.  More energy efficiency than conventional counterparts, and that results in less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  No sacrifice in quality or performance either, she says.  For example, an ENERGY STAR home is better-sealed and more comfortable.  Lastly, it’s a cost-effective investment.  Buyers recoup the investment within five years (usually quicker).

One helpful thing to remember when comparing ENERGY STAR to other non-branded products is to think net.  Keep in mind what it costs to operate a product or building over its lifetime. While buyers may get a smokin’-hot deal at point of purchase, it may cost more – a LOT more – to operate that product over its life cycle.

“Energy efficiency is a phenomenal opportunity that consumers aren’t availing themselves of,” says Vargas, citing lack of awareness about ENERGY STAR and conflicting product claims.  “Thirty percent of the energy used in this country is wasted, and the average house is responsible for twice the greenhouse gases that the average car is.”

Translation?  There’s a lot of room to save money and the planet.

The EPA spawned the ENERGY STAR program in 1992 as a way to reduce GHGs.  Vargas says the first product they looked at was computers.  “We walked around offices in the early ‘90s and saw that computers were ubiquitous.  And they were often on.  So we worked with manufacturers to help them power down the machines.”  The label now appears on over 60 different products and appliances, and ENERGY STAR constantly raises the bar on what qualifies.

Vargas cites the program’s success with the country’s building stock, and over 1 million houses have been dubbed ENERGY STAR since the program’s inception.  The label also signals better energy performance than code in commercial buildings, and owners can measure their properties’ energy use against similar buildings on a scale of 1 to 100.

“Let’s say you’re Marriott Hotels, and you have hundreds of hotels.  You can benchmark them,” Vargas says.  “It allows you to have conversations with performance contractors – ‘I’m a “30.”  If I hire you to do that work, what do I move to?’”

The most intriguing part of the program is what Vargas sees as the nexus between people and how they use energy-efficient products.  She says ENERGY STAR used to label programmable thermostats, for example.

“Use one correctly, and you can save $180 per year.  Considering they cost $50, that’s a pretty good investment,” she says.  “We took the label away, though, because we couldn’t guarantee the savings.  It’s how people use it.”

People have the power to create change, ENERGY STAR or no, Vargas says.  “We’re trying to make efficiency a part of everything we consider when we buy.  It is within peoples’ power to do something.”

Orbit basking in the warm, incandescent glow

I love my architect’s lamp.  I’ve had one since I saw them in college a generation ago and thought they were cool.  I bought this last one at an art supply store for $12, the price equivalent of the 100-watt incandescent bulb it uses to throw off light (and serve as a heater for my cats). 

We’re having a garage sale soon, and I can’t even sell it there because it has old-appliance quirks that only an owner can navigate – a sharp wrist snap with a pair of needle-nose pliers to muscle the on-off switch.  It’s a fixture whose time has come and gone, and a sleek, 21^st century LED desk lamp is on its way to replace the dinosaur.

We’re on a quest to green our lives and our business.  We’re not green activists who grew up in the early days of the movement.  We’re ordinary people like you – deeply concerned about the planet’s future, seeking to do the right thing, sifting vendors’ claims about what’s really environmentally friendly and what’s green-washed.  And we intend to make a difference – a big one.

We’re GreenSpot Global , a green real estate and services company.  What that means is we know green buildings inside and out – both residential and commercial.  Our team brings 20 years’ experience in corporate America and in writing about green building, design and living.  We know how to make your buildings safe, comfortable, less expensive to operate and easier on the planet.

Our goals are lofty.  And I mean, suck-your-breath-in-between-your-teeth BIG – zero emissions and zero waste streams in all buildings, products and services.  ZERO.  There are a number of ways to accomplish this, including super-insulating the shell, incorporating passive architectural features, fine-tuning or replacing building systems, recycling waste and water and using renewable energy.  We offer them all.

Here’s what you can expect from us.  At GreenSpot, we’re on top of news, legislation and financial incentives about the business of green, especially real estate.  We’ll keep you in the loop. 

Mining the Internet to find information about greening and energy efficiency can feel like tunneling through a mountain with a teaspoon.  So we’ve created the “Research & Resources” page of our Web site to function like a super green index.  We don’t intend it to be comprehensive but instead a “best-in-show.”  Visit it often when you need information about anything green.  And if you know of good Internet sites we’ve missed, let us know – we’d love to include them.

So much news about the state of the environment is dire.  While we never want to diminish the gravity of that, you can always come to us for positive stories and ways to make a difference. 

If you’re concerned about the polar bear, or simply focused on making your buildings run like a high-performance engine, you’re at home with GreenSpot.