Grist | Topics | 7 Results

RESULTS		Results 1 – 7 of 7
Headline	Author	Published	Section
Let buildings heat and cool themselves How to kill coal in 10 years	Jon Rynn	20 Feb 2008	Gristmill
We know that coal is the enemy of the human race, what with carbon emissions, deadly air pollution, and unsafe and destructive mining practices. The supply of coal is becoming more problematic as well: recently, a Wall Street Journal article described a 'coal-price surge,' and Richard Heinberg has warned that coal may peak much sooner than most people expect. So what's to like? Not much. But since coal-fired plants provide almost half of our electricity, we can't ge ...
Topics: coal, energy, energy at home, energy efficiency, green building, placemaking, renewable energy, urban planning (all these topics)

Portland of the Fee Portland, Ore., will pay builders to build green		09 Nov 2007	News
Posted at 2:07 PM on 09 Nov 2007 Portland, Ore., has unveiled an innovative plan to slash greenhouse-gas emissions. The city will require an energy-efficiency inspection of new homes, then levy a tax on builders who have merely complied with Oregon's efficiency requirements. Builders who construct homes 30 percent more efficient than the state building code requires will escape the fee; those who go above and beyond, with cons ...
Topics: carbon tax, energy, energy efficiency, green building, innovation, news, placemaking, Portland (all these topics)

Loan star Making energy efficiency possible for cheapskate homeowners	Clark Williams-Derry	20 Jul 2007	Gristmill
Apropos of my recent realization that if I had bought a new furnace on credit rather than waiting to save up the cash I'd have saved a bundle of money over the last 5 years, here's something I've been meaning to write about for months: a Vancouver developer that came up with a smart -- I mean, diabolically smart -- financing scheme to build a super-efficient condo complex. (Proving, I suppose, biodiversivist's point that spreadsheets are, in fact, wonderful thi ...
Topics: energy, energy at home, energy efficiency, green building, green living, placemaking, Vancouver (all these topics)

Clinton foundation energy efficiency plan: An offset by any other name ... New financial instruments may one day plug cities' building codes into global carbon market	Adam Stein	17 May 2007	Gristmill
The William J. Clinton foundation has arranged billions in financing to help a coalition of sixteen cities cut urban emissions by applying a range of energy efficiency measures to aging buildings. Efficiency measures tends to get lumped in under the heading of conservation, but they really deserve to be their own full-fledged category of solutions to global warming. If conservation is simply doing less of a polluting activity, efficiency is doing the same activity with ...
Topics: Bill Clinton, carbon offsets, energy, energy efficiency, green building, placemaking (all these topics)

Material intensity Indirect greenhouse-gas savings	Gar Lipow	18 Apr 2007	Gristmill
(Part of the No Sweat Solutions series.) Previously I pointed out that efficiency, doing more with less, is a key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. (A lot of people on Gristmill are fans of conservation, doing less with less. I have nothing against this, so long as it is a voluntary choice, but I won't be spending a lot of time on it.) Normally, when people think of efficiency they think of direct savings -- insulating homes, electric cars, and so on. That is: ma ...
Topics: Amory Lovins, energy, energy efficiency, green building, placemaking (all these topics)

LEED Is Broken; Let's Fix It	Auden Schendler, Randy Udall	26 Oct 2005	Soapbox
By Auden Schendler and Randy Udall 26 Oct 2005 In the last five years, something exciting has happened in the green-building world. Conferences on the topic used to be love-ins, featuring hippies in beads and Birkenstocks, with friends of Dennis Weaver pitching tire houses. Okay, it wasn't really that bad ... but close. Recently, however, the U.S. Green Building Council1 has given the field a professional sheen, and helped it blossom. The USGBC attracted 8,000 people ...
Topics: energy efficiency, green building, placemaking (all these topics)

LEEDing Us Astray? Top green-building system is in desperate need of repair	Auden Schendler, Randy Udall	26 Oct 2005	Soapbox
By Auden Schendler and Randy Udall 26 Oct 2005 This piece is excerpted from the essay "LEED Is Broken; Let's Fix It." The full essay can be found here. Pan of green gables. Once the narrow province of hippies in beads and Birkenstocks, the green-building world has in the last five years blossomed and taken on a professional sheen. That's thanks in large part to the U.S. Green Building Council and its flagship p ...
Topics: energy efficiency, green building, placemaking (all these topics)

Stories About: energy efficiency AND green building AND placemaking