Thursday, February 21, 2008

Homebuilders Reach for High Performance Green Standards

ORLANDO, Florida, February 20, 2008 (ENS) - All homebuilders are invited to participate in the U.S. Energy Department's Builders Challenge, a voluntary national energy savings effort to build 220,000 high performance, energy efficient homes by 2012.

Energy Department Secretary Samuel Bodman announced the Challenge Thursday at the International Builders Show in Orlando, Florida where 92,000 building industry professionals from around the world convened to see the latest in building products, services and technologies.

A high performance home would use at least 30 percent less energy than a typical new home built to meet criteria of the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code, Bodman explained.

Thirty-eight homebuilders have already pledged to build an estimated total of 6,000 high performance homes.

The goal, Bodman said, is to build 1.3 million homes of this high standard by 2030, allowing Americans to save $1.7 billion in energy costs, or the carbon equivalent of taking 606,000 cars off the road annually.

"The Department of Energy's Builders Challenge aims to redefine the way homes across this nation produce and use energy," he said.

This energy efficient home in Westminster, Colorado features south face glazing, solar panels on roof, self-powered solar air heater, and a computer to turn lights on and off, raise and lower shades by the weather. (Photo by John Avenson courtesy NREL)

Homes account for 21 percent of the energy used in the United States every year, with an average annual utility bill of $1,767. Homebuyers are increasingly concerned about rising energy costs, and the impact of fossil fuels as a major source of greenhouse gases.

In order to meet Builders Challenge requirements, a high-performance home must score a 70 or lower on DOE's EnergySmart Home Scale, also called the E-Scale, which rates a home's energy performance, enabling homebuyers to make smart energy decisions when purchasing a home.

An E-Scale label would be placed on a home's electrical panel to identify it as a Department of Energy Builders Challenge home and to provide an understanding of the home's energy efficiency.

Typical homes built today average a score of 100 on this scale. The Builders Challenge aims for a rating of 70 or lower, making these homes 30 percent more energy efficient than a typical new home.

The ultimate goal, said Bodman, is to have all new homes rate a zero on this scale. Also called zero-energy homes, these homes produce at least as much energy as they consume.

The Energy Department is making "builder option packages," available for the Builders Challenge, which provide guidance for building high-performance homes specific to different climate zones. Meeting particular criteria outlined in these packages can also allow homeowners to qualify for a $2,000 federal tax credit enacted in section 1332 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005.

In order to qualify for this credit, each home must have a level of annual heating and cooling energy consumption at least 50 percent below the annual level of heating and cooling energy consumption of a comparable home.

The Builders Challenge will be easier to meet once the new National Green Building Standard is in place early this spring.

The National Association of Home Builders, NAHB, which held a Green Day at the show in Orlando, says the national standard will maintain the flexibility of green building practices while providing a common national benchmark for builders, remodelers and developers.

The National Green Building Standard is based on the three year old NAHB Model Green Home Building Guidelines, but enhanced to include residential remodeling, multifamily building, lot and site development - the first such standards in the country.

The standard is expected to be approved by the American National Standards Institute, ANSI, and published this spring, a panel of builders and those involved in the standards process told reporters in Orlando.

Miles Haber, a multifamily developer in Rockville, Maryland, said, "The National Green Building Standard will make it easier for builders to build green. Having this information available in an ANSI standard means that it's in the language that builders don't need a special consultant to understand."

The National Green Building Standard requires builders to include features in seven categories - energy, water and resource efficiency, lot and site development, indoor environmental quality, and homeowner education.

Copyright Environment News Service (ENS) 2008. All rights reserved.

Thursday, February 14, 2008

The Economy and The Environment

Volunteers at the South Plains Food Bank in Lubbock, Texas are doing their part.


In addition to helping the local economy like many food banks do these people are going the extra mile and helping the environment as well.

Exerpt from latest GRUB newsletter:

This week on the farm we are thinking green. How can we be more ecology-minded and how can we teach the GRUB (GROWING RECRUITS FOR URBAN BUSINESS) kids this important lesson? BY EXAMPLE! I must say that one of my biggest lessons was learned from one of our shareholders, Sara Hanna. Last year following a work day at the farm she asked me where to put plastic waterbottles for recycling. I was embarrassed and ashamed to tell her that we didn't recycle anything but aluminum cans at the farm (and that is only to get $). Sara quietly gathered up all of the plastic bottles and took them with her. This scene has haunted me since. I made a new year's resolution to begin a recycling program at home, and I have stuck to it. I even recycled glass bottles from the farm after kids all had sodas out of glass bottles one week. But how do we truly incorporate this into our lifestyle? Good question. I am starting a "Green Corner" section of the newsletter beginning this week. I welcome input, advice, tips, suggestions, etc. from all of you. Since I have begun my recycling efforts at home I have more questions concerning what is and what isn't recycled in Lubbock (and why). Here's to learning together.

Debbie Cline


Read More about GRUB at hungershope.org

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Biofuel Crops Increase Carbon Emissions

From: , Organic Consumers Association, More from this Affiliate
Published February 12, 2008 11:25 AM

/pollution/article/31038

The conversion of forests and grasslands into fields for the plants offsets the benefit of using the fuel, researchers find. Greenhouse-gas output overall would rise instead of fall

The rush to grow biofuel crops -- widely embraced as part of the solution to global warming -- is actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them, according to two studies published Thursday in the journal Science.

One analysis found that clearing forests and grasslands to grow the crops releases vast amounts of carbon into the air -- far more than the carbon spared from the atmosphere by burning biofuels instead of gasoline.

"We're rushing into biofuels, and we need to be very careful," said Jason Hill, an economist and ecologist at the University of Minnesota who co-authored the study. "It's a little frightening to think that something this well intentioned might be very damaging."

Even converting existing farmland from food to biofuel crops increases greenhouse gas emissions as food production is shifted to other parts of the world, resulting in the destruction of more forests and grasslands to make way for farmland, the second study found.

The analysis calculated that a U.S. cornfield devoted to producing ethanol would have to be farmed for 167 years before it would begin to achieve a net reduction in emissions.

"Any biofuel that uses productive land is going to create more greenhouse gas emissions than it saves," said Timothy Searchinger, a researcher at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and the study's lead author.

The studies prompted 10 prominent ecologists and environmental biologists to write to President Bush and congressional leaders Thursday, urging new policy "that ensures biofuels are not produced on productive forests, grassland or cropland."

Since 2000, annual U.S. production of corn-based ethanol has jumped from 1.6 billion gallons to 6.5 billion gallons -- supplying about 5% of the nation's fuel for transportation, according to the Renewable Fuels Assn., an industry lobbying group.

Full Story: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-sci...
8feb08,1,7253036.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Erosion Takes a Toxic Toll in Alaska

It has been widely reported that global warming threatens to sweep scores of coastal Alaskan towns into the sea.

Now, the Anchorage Daily News reports that severe erosion is also threatening the ocean by dumping toxins from landfills and garbage dumps into the water.

"A (dump) is kind of like a Pandora's box of surprises," said Tamar Stephens of the state's Department of Environmental Conservation, the Daily News reported.

Among the materials of concern are heavy metals and biological contaminants.

The U.S. military has spent millions of dollars to try to halt the erosion at Cold War-era landfills, but funding is in short supply for many small town dumps and some former military bases.

At least five military bases threated by tidal erosion have no cleanup scheduled, the paper reported.

The Baltimore Sun reported on the quest of Stanley Tom, a resident of Newtok, Alaska, to try to raise funds to relocate his entire village.

The mostly Native American town is in such a precarious situation that the next big storm could wipe it out, activist Deborah L. Williams told the Sun.

"The situation is very urgent," she told the newspaper. The area's permafrost is "melting like chocolate ice cream in the sun."

Newtok is just one of 180 Alaskan towns that are threatened with extinction as increasingly rapid erosion sweeps them into the ocean.

Historically, sea ice has protected the land from the brunt of winter storms, but scientists say that global warming has reduced the amount of sea ice, causing erosion to accelerate.

--Will Crain/Newsdesk.org

Sources:

"Fierce erosion sweeps wastes into Alaska waters"
Anchorage Daily News, Jan. 18, 2008

"Warming menaces Alaska villages"
Baltimore Sun, Jan 13, 2008

Friday, February 1, 2008

Environmental Dilemma

Over the last several years a new trend is developing in the big-box retailers across the country: floor-ready garments shipped directly from the manufacturer to the clothing retailer stores. These garments are pre-hung and pre-ticketed before shipping so that all the individual store has to do is to open the box and hang up the garment.

But this convenience comes at a huge cost. With this new supply trend municipal landfills are receiving millions more hangers than in years past.1 Add on top of that the expected lifespan of most hangers on display: sometimes 2-3 months, often just weeks or days. The result is an environmental catastrophe.

Plastic and wire hangers have become so commonplace in the retail environment that they have become virtually invisible. That is until it’s time to dispose of them. Municipal recyclers won’t and can’t take them. Made of 7 different types of low-grade plastic (if marked at all), they are extremely difficult to identify and segregate on a rapidly moving recycling line. Made from multiple materials (plastic, wire, non-slip vinyl pads, etc.) the components are costly to separate. Most of all wire hooks are notorious for jamming the lofting cams in expense recycling machinery, bringing entire recycling lines to a grinding halt.

So where do all these plastic hangers go? Every year an estimated 8-10 billion unrecyclable plastic/wire hangers end up clogging our municipal landfills, requiring over 1,000 years to break down. That's 4.6 Empire State Buildings full of plastic hangers--every year. An estimated 3.5 million wire hangers end up in landfills and can take over 100 years to decompose.

And once in landfills these billions of hangers leach dangerous chemicals into our ground water, chemicals such as Benzene ([6] PS-Polystyrene) a known carcinogen and hormone disruptor Biphenyl-A ([7] PS-Polycarbonate) into our ground water.

Groundbreaking Ditto Hangers solve these industry-wide problems by designing hangers made from the most widely recycled materials in the world: Recycled Paper and PET Plastic. By choosing these two vastly different materials we provide an alternative for both the short-term “floor-ready” system and the longer requirements of floor reused hangers.

Either way, once the product’s lifespan is at an end, it continues to become a valuable, recyclable material for many other product generations.

From dittohanger.com