1. Home
  2. Featured (Page 49)

Featured

XMAS Trees: Real or Fake?

It’s the holiday season again – albeit a warmer one – and for those of you who purchase xmas trees you’re probably wondering which is best, real or fake?The one year I had a tree, we bought one and planted it. About 6 years later, it’s growing into a beautiful tree. I feel good seeing it grow and the precious memories it brings forth. I’ve always felt uncomfortable about the idea of a “throw-away” tree – yet another ‘product’ for us to consume – but now with our new knowledge of carbon sequestration, it looks as though they’re not a bad option. According to AFreshSqueeze.com, a Chicago e-newsletter on green lifestyles, live trees are a better choice than fake trees, which are usually made from PVC, a hazardous plastic that’s hard to recycle. Yes, they’re reusable, but we imported 9 million fake trees from China last year – the energy it takes to get them here probably cancels out their reusability.There’s over 500,000 acres planted with Christmas trees in the U.S., providing oxygen for 9 million people a day! Since younger trees produce the most oxygen, continuously planting young trees soaks up the most CO2. Dawn Peterson, co-owner of Oney’s […]

Read More

Hybrid Solar: Coming Soon?

Hybrid technologies are the new kid on the block. In addition to hybrid cars, emerging technologies combine hydrogen with wind, and solar with lighting. 25% of the electricity used in the U.S. powers indoor lights, and inefficient ones at that. Three quarters of the electricity drawn by incandescent lights is completely wasted, and worse than that, the heat they reflect increases the need to cool buildings by 10%. A hybrid solar lighting (HSL) project, with the potential to vastly increase lighting efficiencies, is on track to enter commercialization in early 2007. Developed by the federal Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), HSL technology places 4-foot wide mirrored dish solar collectors on the roof that track the sun with the help of a GPS receiver. The collector focuses the sunlight onto 127 optical fibers, which act as flexible light pipes to deliver the electricity to indoor light fixtures. Each collector powers about eight hybrid light fixtures, which spread the light in all directions through diffusion rods, illuminating about 1,000 square feet.What makes it a hybrid? HSL control systems continually monitor that amount of natural light that’s available and switch between artificial and natural light as needed. On cloudy days, and in the […]

Read More

2006 Top Green Building Products

Each year, BuildingGreen, Inc., selects the most innovative green building products, an increasingly complex task considering the surge of new products coming to market in the booming green building industry. BuildingGreen is one of the pioneers in the field, producing the much respected Environmental Building News newsletter and GreenSpec directory. “The range of product types showing exemplary innovation is amazing,” says co-editor Alex Wilson. Three of the top ten products this year primarily save energy, two products save water, three are made from recycled waste and one is a system to salvage material. One product was chosen because it turns ordinary concrete into one of the best flooring options for commercial buildings. Another winner provides renewable energy credits, an excellent way for building owners to support renewable energy. “Most of the Top-10 products this year have multiple environmental attributes,” he says.BuildingGreen’s Top-10 product selections are drawn primarily from new additions to the company’s GreenSpec product directory, which now includes over 2,100 products. More than 250 product listings are new to the GreenSpec database this year. “New products seem to be appearing at an ever-faster pace,” says Wilson. Some of the winners are new to the market. “In some cases, we […]

Read More

Another Inconvenient Truth – Meat is a Global Warming Issue

by Dan Brook, August 17, 2006Al Gore’s movie (and book), An Inconvenient Truth, is playing to rave reviews. His laudable project is an urgent message on the vital issue of global warming. We all must heed the call.If we didn’t realize it already, we now know that we are overheating our planet to alarming levels with potentially catastrophic consequences. 2005 was the hottest year on record. Think of an overheated car; now imagine that on a planetary scale.There are many human activities that contribute to global warming. Among the biggest contributors are electrical generation, the use of passenger and other vehicles, over-consumption, international shipping, deforestation, and militarism. (The U.S. military is the world’s biggest consumer of oil and the world’s biggest polluter.)What many people do not know, however, is that the production of meat also significantly increases global warming. Cow farms produce millions of tons of carbon dioxide and methane a year, the two major greenhouse gases that together account for more than 90% of U.S. greenhouse emissions.According to the United Nations Environment Programme’s Unit on Climate Change, “There is a strong link between human diet and methane emissions from livestock.” The 2004 State of the World is more specific […]

Read More

Weekly Clean Energy Roundup:November 15, 2006

News and Events Washington State Voters Mandate Efficiency and Renewable Energy International Energy Agency Points the Way to a Clean Energy Future DOE Research Project Yields New Low-Speed Wind Turbine Blade Geothermal Power Continues to Grow Rapidly in 2006 Waste-to-Energy Projects Gain Momentum in the United States Wal-Mart Approves of LED Lights but Remains Unsure About Wind Power Energy ConnectionsOil Companies Plan to Modify and Expand U.S. Refineries News and EventsWashington State Voters Mandate Efficiency and Renewable EnergyVoters in Washington State have approved Initiative Measure 937, which calls for the state’s investor-owned utilities to draw on new renewable energy sources for 15 percent of their electricity supply by 2020. The measure allows utilities to buy renewable energy credits to help meet the requirement, and gives double credit for smaller, customer-sited systems, so long as the utility buys the renewable energy credits for those systems. The renewable power can be produced from wind, solar, geothermal, or ocean energy, as well as hydropower and certain types of biomass energy. The measure also calls for utilities to pursue all available energy-saving efforts that are cost-effective, reliable, and feasible, allowing credit for customer-owned facilities that generate both heat and power. See the full text […]

Read More