AIA Asks for Carbon Neutral Action Plans

This sounds like a smart program for AIA members, Energy Engineers, Facility Managers and Plant Managers to implement today! Thanks to AIA for reaching out to its membership. This type of action plan should reach a wide audience of commercial and residential building owners and managers. For businesses it may be a good first step to assign a team to the task. Empower this group to analyze current energy usage and then develop the multi-year action plans for owners, managers and employees to follow with the carbon neutral goal always in mind. Read below and start your action plan!
AIA Announces Results of First Year of Projected Energy Use Data from Firms Participating in 2030 Commitment Program
For immediate release:
New Orleans – May 12, 2011 –In 2009 the American Institute of Architects (AIA) introduced the 2030 Commitment Program, a voluntary initiative for AIA member firms and other entities in the built environment that asks these organizations to make a pledge, develop multi-year action plans, and implement steps that can advance AIA's goal of carbon neutral buildings by the year 2030.  At the end of the 2010 calendar year, firms were asked to submit an assessment of their 2010 design work using a toolreleased by the AIA last year.

"The findings are a good first step to see where we are as an industry in reaching the ultimate goal of achieving carbon neutrality in buildings by 2030.  It is encouraging to see the number of participating firms in this program and the large amount of real estate that their projects account for," said AIA EVP/Chief Executive Officer, Robert Ivy, FAIA.  "That said it is also a wake-up call for the profession that we need to be more steadfast in the prediction of energy usage in design projects, as well as collecting actual post-occupancy performance data."

A new report, Measuring Industry Progress towards AIA 2030 Carbon Reduction Goal, includes data from 56 firms accounting for nearly 385 million gross square feet (GSF) nationwide.  The key findings include:

• Firms reported a combined average 35.1% predicted energy use intensity (PEUI) reduction from the national average EUI.
• The largest PEUI reduction reported by a firm is 70.6%
• The smallest PEUI reduction reported by a firm is 11.6%
• The combined firms design portfolio that is meeting the current goal of a 60% reduction in carbon emissions reduction from the national average is 12.1%
• The largest percentage of GSF of active projects meeting goal reported by one firm is 69.8%
• The smallest percentage of GSF of active projects meeting goal reported by one firm is 0% (reported by multiple firms)
• GSF of projects currently being energy modeled is 58%
• The percentage of projects that will collect actual data is 38%

The full report also contains participating firm demographics, energy reduction initiatives undertaken by firms and anecdotal accounts of the challenges and lessons learned through participating in the 2030 Commitment Program.
About The American Institute of Architects
For over 150 years, members of the American Institute of Architects have worked with each other and their communities to create more valuable, healthy, secure, and sustainable buildings and cityscapes. Members adhere to a code of ethics and professional conduct to ensure the highest standards in professional practice. Embracing their responsibility to serve society, AIA members engage civic and government leaders and the public in helping find needed solutions to pressing issues facing our communities, institutions, nation and world. Visit http://www.aia.org/.

This blog post was approved by http://www.igreenbuild.com/, a New Venture Communications web property.

LEED Silver for UC Riverside Research Building

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (http://www.ucr.edu/) -- Friday marks the official unveiling of a building at the University of California, Riverside that will not only house the first public medical school in California in more than 40 years but also serve as model for sustainable design.
The three-story, 58,000 square foot School of Medicine Research Building is designed to meet the LEED Silver standards of the U.S. Green Building Council.
The building has cloud cover sensors that activate motorized shades which deploy during peak sun hours to keep the building cool in Riverside's desert climate. With this system, it's estimated that lighting won't be needed 80 percent of the time.
Also, through a process called "night flushing," air is filtered into the building at night to cool the concrete slab the building sits on. The slab remains cool into the day, limiting the need for air conditioning during summer days when triple-digit temperatures are common.
"The building is smart enough to be run by its own weather station," said Don Caskey, campus architect at UC Riverside.The goal is to cut energy use to one-third of a typical lab building, Caskey said.

Within the building, water use is expected to cut 30 percent and outside, through water-efficient landscaping, irrigation use is expected to be cut 50 percent.
The building was designed by SRG Partnerships, Inc. and built by Barnhart Balfour Beatty.

University Of California, Riverside, 900 University Avenue University Village 204B, Riverside, CA 92521 United States

This blog post approved by http://www.igreenbuild.com/.

Rooftop Solar Panels for PSS Distribution

PSS Distribution Services Replaces Annual Electricity Consumption With Rooftop Solar Panels
Leading logistics/supply chain management company, PSS Distribution Services, takes warehousing and transportation to a new level of environmental responsibility as its Dayton, NJ headquarters undergoes construction for the installation of solar powered rooftop panels.
Dayton, NJ – March 15, 2011 – PSS Distribution Services aims to replace its annual headquarters’ electricity consumption with clean energy generated by rooftop solar panels during a six-month project consisting of a 200,000 square foot operation on the roof of the company’s Dayton, NJ facility.
The goal of PSS Distribution Services’ solar energy project is to replace its annual electricity consumption of 550,000 kWh with clean solar power. Successful completion of the project will be equivalent to eliminating 2 million miles driven in a car per year or preventing the production of 750,000 lbs of carbon dioxide. To accomplish this goal, more than 2,000 230-watt solar panels are currently being installed on a rooftop mounted non-penetrating self-ballasting racking system.  The project is scheduled to be completed by the end of April 2011.
The solar panels will utilize power inverters to convert DC power to AC power.  Because the building will still be connected to the grid through a Net Meter, the solar panel system will be able to generate more power than the building uses during sunny times, in order to draw that power back during non-sun times.
According to officials at PSS Distribution Services, the company is committed to demonstrating environmental awareness through corporate example because PSS understands its environmental responsibility as a leader in logistics, warehousing and transportation.
“This solar energy project is a big step for PSS in its commitment to environmental awareness,” says Gary Borne, President of PSS Distribution Services. “As we proudly make this transition to solar energy, we look forward to dramatically reducing our environmental impact while maintaining high levels of productivity.”
PSS Distribution Services provides third party logistics services throughout the Northeast.

For more information, visit http://www.pssdistribution.com/.
About PSS Warehousing & Transportation
PSS Warehousing & Transportation is the Northeast's premier services provider and a leader in warehousing, storage, transportation and distribution since 1983. PSS is an industry-leading third party distribution services provider whom Fortune 500 companies have come to rely on for their expertise in consumer product distribution, reverse logistics, transportation and packaging services. The company's state-of-the-art Warehouse Management and Road Transportation Systems offer applications that include: EDI, Radio Frequency and Bar-coding, Comprehensive Inventory Control and Activity Reports, Lot Code and Shelf Life Management and Monitoring, Document Imaging, Product Recall Program and our Net View Internet Enabled Access.
For more information, visit PSS Warehousing &; Transportation online at http://www.pssdistribution.com/

Blog post approved by www.iGreenBuild.com.

EPA Issues Second Annual Ranking of U.S. Cities with the Most Energy Efficient Buildings

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a list of U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest number of energy efficient buildings that earned EPA’s Energy Star in 2009. The list is headed by Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Houston, Lakeland, Dallas-Fort Worth, Atlanta and New York. Energy efficiency saves building owners money and fights climate change.


"These cities see the importance of taking action on climate change," said Gina McCarthy, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. “Communities from Los Angeles to Louisville are reducing greenhouse gases and cutting energy bills with buildings that have earned EPA's Energy Star."

EPA first issued its ranking of cities with the most Energy Star labeled buildings last year. This year, Los Angeles remains in first place; the District of Columbia picks up second; Denver and Chicago move into the top five; and Lakeland and New York City are new to the top 10.

Continuing the impressive growth of the past several years, in 2009 nearly 3,900 commercial buildings earned the Energy Star, representing annual savings of more than $900 million in utility bills and more than 4.7 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Since EPA awarded the first Energy Star to a building in 1999, nearly 9,000 buildings across America have earned the Energy Star as of the end of 2009, representing more than a 40 percent increase over last year’s total. Overall annual utility savings have climbed to nearly $1.6 billion and greenhouse gas emissions equal to the emissions of more than 1 million homes a year have been prevented.

Energy use in commercial buildings accounts for 17 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions at a cost of over $100 billion per year. EPA awards the Energy Star to commercial buildings that perform in the top 25 percent of buildings nationwide compared to similar buildings. Thirteen types of buildings can earn the Energy Star, including schools, hospitals, office buildings, retail stores and supermarkets.


View a list of the Top 25 Cities in 2009 with Energy Star labeled buildings: http://www.energystar.gov/ia/business/downloads/2009_Top_25_cities_chart.pdf


Access EPA’s real-time registry of all Energy Star labeled buildings 1999-present:

http://energystar.gov/buildinglist


Learn more about earning the Energy Star for commercial buildings:

http://energystar.gov/labeledbuildings

Solar incentives threaten local ownership

Minneapolis, Minn.—(May 28, 2008). Large, remote concentrating solar power systems are the new darlings of the solar industry. Some observers now see centralized, not decentralized solar as the future. But a new report by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance reveals that the economic advantage of centralized solar and absentee owned solar arrays rests on federal tax incentives that discriminate against locally owned, decentralized solar arrays.

John Farrell, the report's author and a strong voice in the energy community, calls for Congress to change federal tax incentives to give equal benefits to residential solar arrays, instead of favoring commercial and centralized projects.

"Decentralized solar arrays avoid the cost and hassle of building new high voltage transmission lines", says Farrell. "They also enable local ownership, which should be a goal of public policy."

Concentrating solar power plants work more like conventional power plants than solar photovoltaic panels. They use large arrays of mirrors to focus sunlight for heat, using the heat to create steam and generate electricity. These plants, mostly built in the deserts of the American Southwest, must send their power over long-distance transmission lines and are much larger than the rooftop solar panels that were previously the dominant form of solar power production.

The size of concentrating solar plants precludes local ownership, a benefit that renewable energy policy must factor in. "Ownership converts citizens into energy producers, which in turn gives them a personal stake in expanding the use of renewable energy," notes Farrell. "It also encourages them to maximize energy efficiency, because the greater the efficiency the more independent they become, perhaps even becoming a net exporter of electricity."

The full report, Concentrating Solar and Decentralized Power: Government Incentives Hinder Local Ownership, is available online at http://www.newrules.org/.

For more information, or to arrange an interview with John Farrell, please contact Brooke Gullikson.

About ILSR and the New Rules Project: Since 1974, ILSR has worked with citizen groups, governments and private businesses in developing practices that extract the maximum value from local resources. A program of ILSR, the New Rules Project was designed to build community by supporting humanly scaled politics and economics.

Used Oil Recycling Furnaces Save Big

Yesterday we received a case study about the use of used oil recycling furnaces at four companies in the United States and the before and after energy saving results caught our attention. One firm claims to recycle 10,000 gallons of used oils per year and points out that by doing so they have reduced their liability associated with transporting the used-oils to a disposal site and are doing something positive for the environment.

Read Before and After – Comparing Energy Bills on iGreenBuild.com and share your thoughts with us here on the blog.

Wind Turbines Used At Major Airport

Massport, The Massachusetts Port Authority, announced on March 5, 2008 that it will be installing 20 building integrated wind turbines at Boston Logan International Airport. This is an impressive and promising project for the renewable energy community and iGreenBuild.com is very happy to report this news.

The complete article has some great details about this major project.

Energy Film On iGreenBuild.com

Energy efficiency is a huge topic in the green building business and products that save home and business owners money on energy bills are booming. Energy Film, a window covering similar in form to window tint, blocks 70% of Solar Energy and rejects 97% of UV light with outstanding optical clarity. It blocks 38% of a windows heat loss in winter months. Talk about savings!

Recently Energy Film was featured on the popular Internet web portal http://www.igreenbuild.com/ and the single advertising campaign netted the firm more than sixty-five serious inquiries from home owners, U.S. government offices, schools and universities, architects, major businesses and home builders. The people requesting information were intrigued by the simplicity of the product, its easy installation and the bottom line dollar savings that can result from its use.

Take a look at this product and feel free to contact Energy Film for more information. Here's a link to the product page on iGreenBuild.com. Energy Film page.

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