A satellite photograph of New York City reveals a dark blot fronted to the north, west, and east by a sea of light green forest, and to the south by an actual sea: the pastel blue of the Atlantic Ocean. Into this blot, on hot summer days, soaks enough solar radiation to turn its denizens into sweaty, irritable, iced-latte swilling malcontents prone to cranking the air-conditioning full blast 24/7 while daydreaming about a weekend upstate. Those who live in fear of sweltering July subway rides days may soon have a respite, from an unlikely source. A just published study by researchers at ... Read More
Real Utility: Accounting for Energy Costs Makes Mortgage Sense
October 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Mortgage underwriters generally weigh several numbers when deciding whether a family can afford a new home. They look at income, of course, and tally up expenses in the form of a home’s property taxes, insurance premiums and monthly payments. There is one number they ignore: how much a household spends on its utilities, a figure that averages more than $2,000 a year in the U.S. In fact, most U.S. families spend more powering, heating, and cooling their homes than they pay in real estate taxes and insurance. At the margins, that number can spell the difference between a home a family can ... Read More
Compact Fluorescents Not the Only Light of the Future
September 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Well-intentioned journalists, for simplicity's sake, often frame soon-to-be-enacted efficiency standards as a "ban" on incandescent bulbs in favor of compact fluorescents, or CFLs. Michael Scott Moore is the latest to pick up this narrative, which, unfortunately, tends to sow more confusion than clarity. Specifically, we're referring to the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which sets minimum efficiency standards for household light bulbs, standards similar to those for refrigerators, dishwashers and other appliances. While the law will, in effect, lead to the phasing out of the ... Read More
Last Charge of the (Incandescent) Light Brigade
September 7, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Over the weekend, like a lot of people in Europe, I stocked up on light bulbs. The European Union has been phasing out old-fashioned incandescent bulbs for a couple of years, and on Sept. 1 a ban on 60-watt bulbs — the most popular kind — came into effect. Now, no nation in the EU manufactures the filament style of bulb, the kind Edison patented in 1878, at least not at 60-watt strength. (Weaker incandescents will be produced until next year.) It's legal to sell off stock, but the plan is to cut carbon emissions by compelling Europeans to buy more durable, less wasteful, but initially ... Read More
Solar Entrepreneurs’ New Sales Pitch
August 19, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Solar power has taken root — not in the U.S. where it supplies but 1 percent of the power generated only from renewable sources — but in energy-deprived villages of the developing world. Because costs for electricity in the U.S. are already low, unlike in rural India and Africa, the incentive to turn over to solar is lower for American households. But in poor areas around the world, some communities have skipped an entire generation of coal-powered electricity. Despite the attractiveness of solar cells and solar concentrators lighting up and heating poor villages, solar brings its ... Read More
Is LEED the Gold Standard in Green?
June 13, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
It is telling that the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., wants the design of a biblical theme park that will showcase a 500-foot-long replica of Noah’s Ark to qualify for certification by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program, an industry standard for sustainable buildings. Mike Zovath, senior vice president of Answers in Genesis, the “apologetics (i.e., Christianity-defending) ministry” that built the museum, is a climate change skeptic who told The Washington Post that he liked the idea of energy efficiency: “There is a pretty significant return on ... Read More
Saving Energy Means Getting the South on Board
May 23, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The American South is not known for its energy conservation. Coal is plentiful, and electricity is cheap. Washington, D.C., and 16 Southern states from Delaware to Texas use 44 percent of the total energy consumed in the United States but account for only 36 percent of the country's population. The South is responsible for 41 percent of U.S. carbon emissions. Of course, it also has an outsize industrial base, too. The South accounts for slightly more than half the industrial energy use in the nation, most of it from iron and steel, pulp and paper, oil refining and chemicals ... Read More
Energy and the Empire State
May 2, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
Anthony Malkin, the owner of the Empire State Building, is an environmentalist — but he's also a capitalist. If he's going to spend $20 million on an energy retrofit of his famous skyscraper, he wants a guaranteed three-year payback and long-term savings. "There was no assurance that what we were going to do was going to be successful," Malkin recalled this month, a year after he launched the project with a green light show at the historic landmark, the 10th tallest building in the world. "We knew that if we could do this work at the Empire State Building, one of the largest tourist ... Read More
Buildings Compete to Work Off the Waste
April 27, 2010 • By • 1 Comment
With a nod to a popular TV reality show, the U.S. has launched its first-ever National Building Competition, choosing 14 energy-conscious contestants made of concrete, brick and steel to vie for the title of "biggest loser" of kilowatt-hours. The finalists were selected from a pool of more than 200 energy efficiency crusaders by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and announced Tuesday as part of the Energy Star program. They include a 12-story Glenborough LLC office building in Arlington, Va.; a Marriott hotel in San Diego's historic Gaslamp District; an elementary school in ... Read More
