How lessons-learned from a state-of-the-art net-zero project can help us all reduce our impact

Now that everyone is finally talking about green buildings, the question becomes “Where do we need to go from here?”

The answer? Net-zero.

That’s what a panel of experts told an audience assembled last month at Rocky Mountain Institute’s symposium in San Francisco, RMI2009.

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The economy definitely had an impact on this year’s West Coast Green with less venders but with less money that mean that people just had to get more creative with less moola such as the floating island, show gardens and even the sustainability built Jewish Sukkoth. The usual green rock stars like Eric Corey Freed and Michelle Kaufman made their presences felt with their energetic personalities.

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A yurt cupola is especially nice for tropical environments. Claire Wolfe, who wrote about her yurt building for Backwoods Home Magazine, replaces the dome skylight for a cupola. She utilized a powder-coated steel frame with an architectural fabric cover. The cupola was raised six inches around the perimeter. As a result, there’s shade and a natural cooling system with maximum air flow.

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2k Manufacturing based in Luton, England has come up with a process that can take any type of plastic - clean, dirty, or defected - and remake it into what they’re calling ‘EcoSheets’.  These EcoSheets are a composite material made to have the same mechanical properties as plywood.  They are the end result of a process called powder impression molding, which takes all forms of plastic and makes it into a fine powder.  The powder is then sandwiched in between two polymer films and is heat treated to form a viable substitute for plywood, a ubiquitous building material.

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Designing a yurt entails color decisions. Of course material swatches are always best, but playing with an interactive tool is a great start.

The Colorado Yurt Company has the greatest exterior color tool available. You can play with the roof and valance choices in addition to the bottom band.

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In recent posts on Planetsave and EcoWorldy about moratoria on soya and cattle products related to Amazon destruction, it was mentioned that McDonald’s is helping to save the Amazon. With the company also delving into green building, progressive energy saving software, and charging stations for electric vehicles, is McDonald’s a green company?

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Researchers from the University of Bath will be constructing a “BaleHaus” this summer made from prefabricated straw bale and hemp cladding panels.

The house will be a model for building carbon zero homes of the future. And because straw and hemp efficiently absorb carbon dioxide while they grow, the buildings made from them might even have a negative carbon footprint.

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Remember the last time you had the flu or a lingering cold? Get much done? When we’re healthy, we take our good health for granted. Despite what our politicians and healthcare providers might suggest, good healthcare does not necessarily provide good health. Our lifestyle and daily habits contribute to feeling great just about every day of the year.

Some companies provide a good healthcare plan when it comes to physician access and medical coverage. But what does that matter when the stress-filled, unhealthy environment in a cubicle – with no access to the outdoors and fresh air – ends up giving us poor health? The American healthcare system is great – perhaps the best in the world – if we crashed in our car. It’s designed for treatment, not prevention. It’s a healthcare system based on the poor health of relatively well-off people who can pay (by credit or otherwise) for the services it provides.

Given all the debate on a national healthcare plan offered by the United States, below are a few promising trends many people are discovering.

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Yurts appear logical for my tropical climate where elements of nature aren’t so severe. Well, surprise, but no worry. Just know that maintaining yurt warmth can be an easier task than keeping cool.

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By the middle of next year, the nine campuses that make up the nation’s largest community college system plan to be completely energy self-sufficient.

It’s a huge step, and it will begin saving money immediately.

The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) started down this path in 2001, the year voters approved the first part of $5.7 billion in bond funding to renovate the campuses.

The LACCD Board of Trustees was thinking about much-needed modernization work and its first new construction in 35 years, but it was also thinking ahead. It passed a sustainable building policy mandating that all new buildings that use 50% or more of bond funding be LEED certified. The board had previously developed a renewable energy plan that aimed for a minimum 10% renewable energy standard.

At the time, the trustees were afraid that anything beyond that would be too costly, says Larry Eisenberg, executive director of Facilities, Planning and Development for the LACCD.

The system’s chancellor and the implementation team saw greater potential, though.

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The purpose of constructing a yurt may be for a home, office, store, workshop, rental, or vacation lodge. The yurt design may include a loft, be surrounded by a large deck, or be a two-story structure. It can be permitted to satisfy building codes, temporary, or off the grid. What’s really fascinating is how many climates a yurt is feasible to be comfortable in.

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Yet the study of indoor air pollution can get complex. Hence, no surprise of this month’s announcement that the LEED accreditation system introduced by the U.S. Green Building Council was revamped.

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The Fourth Annual Sustainable Industries Economic Forum will feature ecopreneur Ray Anderson, founder and Chairman of Interface, a company specializing in sustainable carpets and other industrial products.  The event will showcase a panel discussion with rock stars of the green business world, representing a broad swath of green industries.  The timely discussion for this year’s event will focus on the current economic realities of the green business sphere.

Other speakers and panelists including Anup Jacob, founding partner of Virgin Green Fund, a consulting and venture capital firm affiliated with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, Laura Rodormer, Division Manager of Green Construction for

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The natural garden consists mainly of 3 types of vegetation: the forest, the hedge, the grass and a Solar Fountain

The natural garden is related to the garden low maintenance, which it shares with the efficient exploitation of natural dynamics, thus diminishing the cultural action, if it differs for the use of native flora and to improve compliance with forms of animal life .

The idea of the natural garden is based on the one hand the growing feeling that the natural environment is now a rare and seriously threatened, the other on a deeper awareness of the most negative of human actions - any action, including those which are the “cure” of the garden - on balances of great complexity, only partially known.

What is not natural in the garden

Garden in general

• The conversion of any natural garden area is analyzed and compliance with the existing vegetation as possible
• Do not remove the existing artefacts, whether covered by vegetation or useful as ecological niche of small animals
• Do not use synthetic fertilizers or pesticides of any kind
• Do not run any fight against the “parasites”, seen as important elements of natural food chains
• Do not place beds
• It is not intended to massive poaching (but there are routes to natural or semi-paved)

The Hedge

• Do not rake up the leaves and you do not remove dead branches fallen (create humus)
• There is no crop or the trees or bushes
• There is no sickles herbaceous vegetation
• Do not remove the trees are dying except when real danger
• It is not sticky fires under trees
• Do not you do any pruning
• Do not create a hedge with a single species, but several alternate species and evergreen evergreen
• When chipping, do not remove the cut branches, but in part it leaves a protective strains, in part, are crowded into a corner, because it slowly turns into humus, and in the meantime is a shelter for many small animals .

The Grass

• Do not compost the lawn with the greatest biodiversity requires a soil poor in nutrients
• Do not water the lawn with the greatest biodiversity requires alternating periods of wet and dry
• Do not seed a lawn of grass alone: it encourages the establishment of as many species of flowering
• Do not cut the grass frequently, and not using lawnmowers to cut the crushed on the ground (the grass should be cut removed as completely as possible to reduce the fertility of the soil)
• Do not implant trees around the place of the trees is the forest

Financing Model is Key to Success

LACCD’s financing model is an important piece of the puzzle: It will allow the colleges to make the conversion to renewable energy without investing any money up front.

Banks are investing the capital, and the LACCD has agreed to pay back the loan with every kilowatt-hour by buying electricity out of the campus system for the next 25 years. Their rate for electricity will still be less than what they were paying the utilities, even with the capital cost, maintenance cost and bank profit margin rolled in.

The banks have the additional bonus of monetizing the depreciation of the equipment through tax write-offs, along with taking advantage of federal, state, local and utility incentives.

Eisenberg says that any entity, public or private, can do the same thing.

The LACCD is using a similar financing model for its energy efficiency measures, from which it hopes will reduce energy use by 15% to 20%.

Each campus has an ESCO (Energy Saving Company) that won the job in a bidding process. Among the nine campuses, there are five different companies including Chevron, Siemens and Ameresco. The ESCOs come in and do an investment-grade audit, recommending retrofits and other efficiency measures. They cover the cost of the upgrades, and the LACCD pays them back out of the energy savings achieved. The ESCOs guarantee a minimum amount of energy savings, so there’s almost no risk.

Community Colleges Leading the Way

“It’s interesting because people never thought of community colleges as being terribly innovative or cutting edge,” says Eisenberg. “We’ve demonstrated that we are. No one else is where we are in terms of renewables and financing. It’s made people stand up and take notice.”

The community college system has received recognition, and even signed a partnership with the Clinton Climate Initiative. It was also one of the first educational institutions to join the Climate Registry and the first community college district in the nation to report their greenhouse gases in accordance with the protocol set by the Registry.

“It goes back to the board of trustees in 2002,” Eisenberg adds. “They knew that someone needed to be first and provide a model that others can follow and that’s what this project is doing. It’s a model showing the technology and financing mechanism that anyone can use. It will hopefully lead to a rapid expansion of this technology across California and the U.S.“

The project has other benefits, as well, that go to the heart of its mission, as Eisenberg explains:

“It’s attracting students that want to learn about the technology and how to implement it. At the end of the day, we’re a learning institution and the more students we can train, the more of them will go out across the United States and implement this technology.”

Clark sees similar micro and macro importance to the project.

“The LACCD sees sustainable campuses as a key in the community for demonstrating how this can be done for other building complexes like shopping malls, office buildings, housing units, etc. and thus educating students, faculty and staff on the installation, operation and maintenance of renewable energy systems.

“Some scholars call this ‘The Third Industrial Revolution’, or how we – people all over the world – must change dramatically from ‘The Second Industrial Revolution’ that was totally dependent on fossil fuels, into an era that stops violating our environment.”

Image credit: Los Angeles Community College District

See also:

Start-Ups Rise to Push Solar on College Campuses

Interview with Nobel Prize Winner Woodrow Clark

Universities Start Tailoring Degrees to Green Jobs

How would you design your ultimate green home? My green home is one that incorporates Earth, Wind, and Fire!

Think of what technology might make possible in the next few decades and how we can use it to build homes that have a positive impact on the environment.

The growing awareness of the fact that buildings are responsible for 39% of our energy consumption, helps explain why green building and energy efficiency at home is one of the most pervasive trends in the construction industry — even as the economy struggles and home-building is at its lowest level in a generation.

Lets take a journey through our imagination and envision the green homes of tomorrow.

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North of the border a controversy is starting to gain steam in the nation’s largest city, Toronto. The city has proposed a by-law that would make ‘green roofs’ mandatory in new construction of condos higher than 7 storeys and office or retail complexes greater than 54,000 square feet (about 1/4 of a Wal-Mart Supercenter). The proposed law would require 30-60% of the surface area of buildings’ roofs to be green (depending on the size of the building) and violators would be subject to fines up to $100,000.

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A project of SEA (Social Environmental Aesthetics) at Exit Art, “Vertical Gardens is an exhibition of architectural models, renderings, drawings, photographs and ephemera that depict or imagine a vertical farm, urban garden or green roof.” The exhibit features over 20 projects, both imaginary and real, by artists and architects envisioning solutions for building greener urban environments.

Details for the FREE two-day event (featuring eco architects, artists, professors, and poets) at Exit celebrating Earth Day 2009 are as follows:

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