Energy 101: Daylighting

Daylighting—the use of windows or skylights for natural lighting and temperature regulation—is one building strategy that can save money for homeowners and businesses. Highly efficient, strategically placed windows maximize the use of natural daylight in a building, lowering the need for artificial lighting without causing heating or cooling problems.

Oven

Saving energy saves you money. Buy energy-saving light bulbs.

Reinventing Batteries for Grid Storage

The City University of New York's Energy Institute, with the help of ARPA-E funding, is creating safe, low cost, rechargeable, long lifecycle batteries that could be used as modular distributed storage for the electrical grid. The batteries could be used at the building level or the utility level to offer benefits such as capture of renewable energy, peak shaving and microgridding, for a safer, cheaper, and more secure electrical grid.

Watch the First Green Schoolhouse Being Built!

Broadcasting live with Ustream

Check out our live streaming video from the Safari schoolhouse build at Roadrunner Elementary School!

Right now we are installing the ICF walls from Amvic.

The Importance Of Energy Efficient Buildings

"Going green" has become something of a fashionable expression, applied to everything from shopping bags to shoes, to emphasise the fact that various products now cause less harm to the environment than they were previously known to cause. However, when it comes to business, ensuring your employees carry their work home in hemp bags simply isn't going to be enough to save the planet. Of course it's a small step in the right direction, but the race to save the environment won't be won using a few small steps - we need to start running. One of the very best ways to reduce the negative impact your business has on the environment is to consider the effect of energy efficient buildings.

Given the sheer amount of paper, plastic and glass wasted by big companies, there is no doubt whatsoever that taking steps to improve recycling has had a profoundly positive effect on the environment. However, as popular as this strategy was a decade ago, these days recycling waste isn't even the least that the people of Britain, of indeed the British government, expect of big business. Although we must all take personal responsibility for our impact on the environment, a single big business alone can do harm to the planet than a small towns, so it is up to them to make the biggest and most important changes.

Of the changes businesses are expected to make, commitment to reduction of carbon emissions is amongst the most important. Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) is a new scheme aimed at slashing the amounts of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere by large companies by offering financial rewards for doing so. As sad as it may be that companies require financial incentive to stop destroyed the planet, this is the state we find ourselves in. Of course, there are myriad different ways in which a company can reduce its carbon emissions, though one of the most effective ways is by ensuring they are using energy efficient buildings. Every day, a massive amount of energy is wasted on fuelling commercial buildings; buildings with a lack of decent insulation, filled with energy inefficient machinery and devices, and lit by incandescent light bulbs with a lifespan a tenth as long florescent alternatives.

Simply investing in suitable windows, light bulbs and equipment in a commercial building will go a huge way to reducing the carbon emissions of the company as a whole. Turning off lights and electronic devices when not in use, as well as investing in eco-friendly boiler systems and furnaces will also help make a building more energy efficient and help your company get in line with new legislation.

While we must ensure we take every little step towards making businesses and households as eco-friendly as possible, we must ensure we don't overlook the big changes as well. If recycling and hemp bags are a small step in the right direction, ensuring our buildings are as energy efficient as possible is a huge leap.



Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4587311

An Article By Sue Pierce in The Latest Issue Of Evo

What would it take to make a school as green as possible without busting the bank? Sue Pierce, owner and principal of Pierce Energy Planning, has progressive and simple ideas on how to accomplish this task while keeping costs down and involving students, teachers, administrators and community members. Pierce runs a full-service consulting firm that specializes in energy management and strategic and facility planning services. She has extensive experience as a consultant for K-12 school districts and public entities and is working closely with Washington Elementary School District, recipient of two Green Schoolhouses. 

Read the rest of this article here

ASBO Annual Meeting & Exhibits

 

Annual Meeting & Exhibits 

October 12-15 2012

Sue will be speaking and debuting her new book

Phoenix Convention Center

100 North Third Street

Phoenix AZ 85004

Secretary Duncan Announces 2012 U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools

  

Presenting the First U.S. Department of Education

Green Ribbon Schools (ED-GRS) 

The U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools 2012 Winners Announcement

Today I had the honor to name 78 schools as the first-ever U.S. Department of Education Green Ribbon Schools.  When we set out a year ago to recognize comprehensive achievement in the areas of environmental impact, health and education, we didn't know about the quality of the applications we would receive.  But we discovered that these schools are engaging in some of the most innovative school reforms anywhere. 

Watch the video below as Secretary Arne Duncan announced the winners of the 2012 Green Ribbon Schools program at Stoddert Elementary School in Wathington D.C.

  

Read more at http://www.ed.gov/blog/2012/04/presenting-the-first-green-ribbon-schools/.

View the complete list of winning schools at http://go.usa.gov/yRF

How Microsoft is Using Data to Slash Energy Bills

Many companies already collect data to make sure their sustainability programs stay on track. But data collection also can go a long way toward helping companies set up an effective -- and potentially even profitable -- program in the first place.

That message was underscored in sustainability sessions at the OSIsoft user's conference in San Francisco this week. The software company's event ends Thursday.

“Every sustainability strategy should be built on a solid foundation of data collection,” said Andrew Fanara, OSIsoft’s chief sustainability strategist. Fanara notes that, from chemical plants to factories, there are many areas where essential company information can be collected. And the faster that data is collected -- preferably faster than every 10 minutes -- the bigger the advantage. “If you don’t have the fine contours,” he said, ”you run the risk of missing out on things that have value.”

OSIsoft has a working alliance with Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). And Bill Mitchel, Microsoft’s senior director of environmental sustainability, said his company believes it can reduce energy use by 10 percent through data monitoring and other adjustments at its Washington state headquarters. That monitoring includes tracking when employees are in the building and also reducing the unnecessary use of lights, heating or other utilities.

And those reductions would come on top of additional savings from more energy-efficient equipment and from changing worker behavior, such as by having employees turn off equipment at the end of their shifts. While those changes may not sound like much, they can have a big impact at Microsoft headquarters, the area’s largest power customer, Mitchel said.

That facilility has 60,000 employees working in 118 buildings and using 35,000 pieces of equipment, making it the largest energy customer in Washington’s Puget Sound region.

“Ten percent of that [energy bill] is millions of dollars,” Mitchel said. And he believes there may be additional savings to be found by further reducing the amount of lighting, heating and cooling used daily. “Frankly you don’t know the tolerance of people working in your building,” he said.

Experts are also using data in other ways, such as by monitoring when the wind and sun produces the highest amounts of power, and then directing energy harvesting efforts to those specific times. Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University, points to Google’s free PowerMeter tool, which allowed users to calculate their energy use, as a good example of such monitoring. Although PowerMeter was discontinued in 2011, many other companies are currently adding similar “smart meter” features.

But the direct benefits of such monitoring programs are not enough, said Reicher, who also has held top environmental positions at Google and at the Department of Energy during the Clinton Administration. He calls for additional federal funding for sustainable energy research, as well as government subsidies and higher energy-efficiency standards.

While sustainable energy makes sense in the long run, Reicher believes the big obstacle is how to get customers to buy in now.

“The ability to get people interested in a bad economy is not insignificant,” he said. “There is interest.”

Article Source: http://www.greenbiz.com

How a Holistic View of Buildings Can Cut Energy Use and Costs

By: Heather Clancy

Published April 26, 2012

Not only are energy-efficient buildings cheaper to run, but they also can be healthier -- and can even help companies attract employees and shareholders. That was the message from green building experts at a recent sustainability conference in New York.

"A green building is an efficient building," said Lisa Shpritz, senior vice president and operations executive for Bank of America. "It is a healthy and efficient place to work."

The theme pervaded remarks by green building experts at the Sustainable Operations Summit 2012 last week, inspired by statistics showing the need for additional energy efficiency across the existing portfolio of buildings operated by corporations and real-estate-management companies.

Andreas Schierenbeck, president of Siemens Building Technologies, cited data suggesting that 40 percent of energy is consumed by buildings. Much of the waste comes from inefficient operational choices, such as lights burning long after a building is empty at night or climate systems running 24/7.

"If we ran our cars like we ran buildings, we would run them all the time," he said.

According to U.S. Department of Energy figures, commercial buildings account for nearly one-fifth of U.S. energy consumption, with office, retail and educational space accounting for half of that amount.

Cutting that energy use can take a bite out of buildings' maintenance and upkeep budget, which makes up approximately 80 percent of the overall lifetime cost of the average building, according to Schierenbeck. (Construction makes up only 20 percent of the total.)

A few simple energy-saving strategies can lead to significant savings, he said, adding that the the biggest energy sappers are heating, lighting and air conditioning.

Energy efficiency is an ongoing consideration that needs fine tuning and recalibration on a regular basis, Shpritz said, but the reward is worth the effort.

John D'Angelo, senior director of facilities, construction and real estate for the Cleveland Clinic, said the healthcare sector isn't known for leading in green building initiatives because of concerns about the delivery of care.

But he offered several examples of how energy efficiency measures have had a direct impact on staff and patient satisfaction, saving the organization about $20 million annually in electricity costs over the past four years.

The most vivid example, D'Angelo said, involves the clinic's efforts to reduce power consumption related to its surgery rooms.

Surgical theaters tend to be a huge consumer of energy, he said. The bright overhead lamps throw off excessive heat, which requires surgeons to pump up the air conditioning. That, in turn, sometimes requires patients to be wrapped in thermal blankets to ward off hypothermia.

By switching to LED technology, the clinic broke this cycle of inefficiency, D’Angelo said. Because light-emitting diodes produce less heat -- and the heat dissipates above the lamps -- surgeons no longer need to keep the AC up high.

Staff also started dimming the hospital’s lights during the overnight shift, which saved additional power. This had the added benefit of boosting the Cleveland Clinic's "Quiet at Night" program, an initiative to help patients sleep better.

"It turns out people speak in more hushed tones when the lights are dim," D'Angelo said.

As Victor Olgyay, principal architect with the Rocky Mountain Institute, put it: "You get better results when you think beyond the savings and look at the holistic implications."

Photo of realtor on background of green building by Andrey Burmakin via Shutterstock.

Article Source: http://www.greenbiz.com