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Nega-gallons and Aqua-vores: New Approaches to Water Conservation

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

More than 20 years ago, the energy expert Amory Lovins introduced the term “negawatts” to indicate that conservation of energy would be a reliable alternative way to supply “megawatts” of projected electricity demand. This “least-cost, end-use” approach distinguishes between supply (of energy) and usage (energy end-use demand). Lovins showed that it’s a lot cheaper (and faster) to conserve energy and use energy-efficient appliances than it is to buy more kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is because infrastructure investments (supply) usually cost a lot more (and take a lot longer) than investments in efficiency (demand reduction).

Learning from Australia’s Continuing Drought

Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Areas of urban Australia have reduced per capita daily water use to as low as 34 gallons (130 liters). By comparison the average per capita water use in California is 135 gallons per day, with a U.S. average of 150 gallons. Australia’s current multiyear drought has impressed a “culture of conservation” on the public.

I’m in Stuttgart for German Sustainable Building Council annual conference

Monday, June 21, 2010

In a continuing effort to stay updated on the progress of green building in Germany, Jerry is attending the annual conference of the German Sustainable Building Council in Stuttgart, 22-23 June. For a good background, see Jerry’s book, Green Building Trends: Europe, highlighted elsewhere on this website.

Green Building Growing Rapidly on Campuses

Thursday, June 03, 2010

New Yudelson Associates white paper shows that more than 600 green buildings have been LEED certified on America’s college and university campuses and more than 3000 projects are registered for LEED certification, about 15 percent of the total LEED project registrations, as of the end of 2009.

Jerry Yudelson featured in Ecolibrium Magazine

Thursday, April 29, 2010

Green building consultant Jerry Yudelson gives this interview about high-performance buildings to EcoLibrium, Australia’s leading magazine for building engineers, based on his presentation, “If it doesn’t perform, It can’t be green” to Australia’s Green Cities 2010 conference in Melbourne in February.
Download the article (PDF 1MB)

New book tells inside story of Civano development in Tucson

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Two friends of mine, Al Nichols and Jason Laros, have written a new book with the definitive account of the largest solar village in the U.S., proving once again that green homes and green development are viable in the marketplace.

German green home wins Solar Decathlon

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Team Germany from the Technical University in Darmstadt won the biennial Solar Decathlon for the second time in a row, beating out a spirited challenge from the University of Illinois team. The German house generated twice as much energy as it used during the just-ended weeklong competition on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

Green Building Home Certifications Continue to Grow

Friday, October 16, 2009

The NAHB GreenHotLine told us that they had just certified their 504th home since announcing the program about 18 months ago. LEED for Homes latest data show more than 3,000 certified with more than 19,000 registered.

Learning from European Green Buidings

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Future green development in the U.S. is going to look a lot more like the European models I profile in “Learning from Europe,” my article in Urban Land Green, Spring 2009 issue.

Greening existing buildings takes off like a rocket

Thursday, June 04, 2009

My new book, Greening Existing Buildings, will be published in October by McGraw-Hill. In researching the book, I’ve taken a close look at LEED for Existing Building Projects, and I’m amazed by how rapidly this program is taking off.

Clean Tech: Is the Bloom Off the Rose?

Saturday, April 18, 2009

Saturday’s New York Times reports that venture investment in the clean tech industry fell 84 percent from the 4th Quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009, back to levels of four years ago.

Green thinking for a more Sustainable Los Angeles

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Read the text of L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s “State of the City” speech this week to get a good look at some of the more advanced thinking in the nation’s second largest city.

Green Buildings Go International

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Check out what the U.S. State Department is doing to promote green buildings through its Office of Building Operations. There is always an inherent conflict between green building openness and the need for tight security at embassies and consulates, but State does a pretty good job with greening its facilities. And making facilities green is pretty good foreign policy as well.

Is There a Climate Change Tipping Point? Green Buildings May Provide an Answer

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Leading climate scientists argue about whether we need to take drastic action in the face of certain climate change, that we have a “planetary emergency.” Count me as an agnostic in this debate over a precise timetable for climate change; it’s clearly going to happen. What’s also clear is that green buildings and energy retrofits are critical to any climate action program.

What Do They Know (about Sustainable Design) That We Don’t (and Should)?

Sunday, March 22, 2009

U.S. and Canadian Building Teams that fail to use green technologies and innovative design approaches already common in western Europe are going to fall behind competitors who adopt them.

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