U r b a n T r e k k e r

Growing Greener Schools

I'm going to attend the premiere of "Growing Greener Schools," tonight at the first LEED certified hotel in Maryland. As I'm preparing to educate myself about the program - since I'm going to interview them for my other blog: EcoTwist - went to read more about the initiative. 

Why do we care about greening the schools?

There are over 115,000 K-12 schools in the United States. One in five Americans — 55 million students, teachers, administrators, nurses and janitors — spend five days a week at school.  And billions in tax dollars go to building, maintaining, and operating school facilities.  Every future leader and environmental steward of tomorrow is growing up in a K-12 school. Yet ironically, American schools have become models of un-sustainability and significant contributors to our society’s broader environmental and public health problems.

[via Growing Greener Schools]

That is very striking statistics there.

Here's an example of how one local school initiated the change. The teachers didn't know anything about green, but they want to do something about it. Watch how Riverdale Baptist Middle School in Maryland decided to go green. BTW, the film will be on PBS, so check your local schedule.

Energy Plan for Arlington County Community

This post has been entered into tcktcktck's (a coalition of 300 NGO's working towards real progress in climate change) contest: send a blogger to cover Rio+20 Earth Summit to join the tcktcktck's team. For me, covering the Summit and become part of the movement - is a dream! Please head off to tcktcktck's Facebook page and "like" this post there. Thank you - Dewita

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I attended a townhall meeting last Saturday in the county where I live, Arlington county, Virginia. For those not familiar where it is, Arlington it's a throw stone from Washington DC. We're just across the Potomac river. 

Jay Fisette, Chairman of Arlington County Board hosted the first ever townhall meeting for community energy plan. "No communities that I know of - virtually none - have created a community energy plan, and this is now coming into the forefront," says Jay. 

Arlington county definitely has a competitive advantage. Unlike other counties in the Commonwealth of Virginia, the county started early in the game (30 years ago) with its smart growth that links transportation with land use planning. 

To kick off the community energy plan, the county has created a task force made up of its stakeholders, from utilities, property owners, citizens, to conservationistas. The purpose of this task force, Jay said is, "to draft and recommend to the county board a community energy plan that will reshape where we get our energy from, whether it's from cogeneration, renewable energy, energy efficiency, that will ultimately reduce our energy use and make ourselves more sustainable and help the environment."

The community energy plan is a holistic approach that can paved the way for the county's transformation to move away from a fossil-fuel economy towards a clean energy economy. The idea is to look into how energy is being used - from neighborhood to neighborhood - then comparing scenarios between business as usual with efficiency.

Energy use in the county is divided into heating, cooling, lighting and other type. The types of buildings stock for the county includes hotels, offices, retails, homes (condominium, single family, townhouse) and other. For that, the county has identified its biggest energy sucker: the big buildings. That's why, they have property owners, landlords sit on the task force. For the county to move on with their plan, they need everybody's buy-in (which is a smart strategy).

 

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image: citizens discussing the plan at the meeting.
 

The primary driver for this community energy plan is to make Arlington competitive. 

This image below shows the baseline of county's energy use. You'll see here how countywide, big buildings consumed 45% of its energy use vs. residential 23% and transportation 28%.  So if energy use can be efficient, just by reducing the use from this sector alone, the move could save businesses' money that in return would be good for bottom line.

Furthermore, more than half (56%) of its energy comes from electricity (coal-fired plants). Knock this off (or reduce it), will make the air cleaner.

   

After the preliminary presentation, we then break up into groups. Listening to inputs from the residents, one of the things mentioned was the language in condominium document that couldn't make assessment when they tried to something for newer more efficient, that the language of the doc says ".. improvement has to be in-kind." It has something to do with Virginia Condominium Act. It is a universal language, at this moment. Only Virginia assembly can change this. 

What do I say, this is just the beginning. We obviously have some work to do. This will be a work-in-progress. However, I applaud the county board, for leading the change.

Making the case

While at the meeting, I caught up with Jay about Arlington's energy plan. Listen to what he has to say about the plan..

 

 

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Green Bicycle Lanes in Copenhagen

I was at a meeting yesterday, when one of the presenters speak so highly about Copenhagen clean energy economy, this and that. So, it prompted me to explore more what else does the Danes have? Something that we can learn from them in addition to their clean energy economy. The answer is: their life style. For example, biking.

"Cycling, is like brushing your teeth," they say. Because they just don't think about it. It's part of their daily life. About 37% of its residents bike to work, school or university. What's good about the traffic system, is this.

Cyclists have priority over cars and pedestrians at many major junctions and traffic lights.

Maybe this is why Copenhagen is voted as the world's best bike city.

Catherine Mohr Builds Green

Catherine Mohr is a geek. This less than 6 minutes video walks you through her geeky decision when building her green new house. She also blogs about it on 301 Monroe. Love it when people share their knowledge with others.

Arlington Community Energy Plan

Image via Wikipedia

Arlington is leading the way to progressive change in community energy plan. This is probably the first community energy plan in Virginia aimed to get everyone from the community to participate in setting the direction for the future of the county's energy use.

The community energy plan is part of the initiative from Energy Planning and Management. 

Arlington County is embarking on a community energy planning process to address the  burdens and opportunities of energy supply, delivery, and use in our community.  Energy planning and management is needed to minimize the economic costs and environmental harm from energy use.  Smart energy planning can produce opportunities for economic growth and sustainability.

The process of developing the Community Energy Plan is divided into two elements:

1. Community dialogue, where Arlington will host 2 community town hall meetings in 2010 and want participation from the community to share their thoughts on energy challenges and opportunities for the community.
2. Community Sustainability Task Force. This is where County Board Chairman, Jay Fisette, convened a group of local energy and business leaders to form this task force.

Got voice? 

Come to their energy townhall meeting, which is going to be held on Saturday, April 17, 2010 from 2-5pm at Washington Lee High School Commons Room, 1301 N. Stafford Road, Arlington, VA 22201. The info for the invite to the townhall meeting is here.

High Performance Buildings: Perspective and Practice

Very interesting video clip and educational. 

at Great Energy Efficiency Day 2010

I attended Great Energy Efficiency Day 2010, hosted by Alliance to Save Energy, last week. There's no question that energy efficiency is the low hanging fruit, and it's going to be the next big thing (trust me..) - especially with cash-for-caulkers programs like Home Star (residential properties retrofit) and Building Star (commercial retrofit)  - that will be part of the mix. (we'll explain more about this in another post).

There is a correlation between housing market, construction industry (and workers), study that shows that 96% of manufacturers for basic retrofit for homes and commercial is All-American business, the economy and jobs.

Anyway, while there, I had the opportunity to interview three distinguished individuals. Interview is below.

• Dr. Marilyn Brown, Professor of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who is nominated by President Obama for one of the two vacant seats on the nine-member Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors. She’s been involved with getting the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance going.
  
• Andy Holzhauser, with GCEA talks about his organization plan to outreach targeted neighborhoods to get the retrofit program going.
  
• And Faren Dancer, who is the current chair of the Santa Fe Green Building Council. Faren just completed the Emerald Home, HERS-2, the pilot for Santa Fe’s new building codes.
  

There's more to this story, here.

at Great Energy Efficiency Day 2010 from Dewita Soeharjono on Vimeo.

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A DC Homeowner Story on Weatherization

There's a non profit organization in DC, DC Project doing Weatherize DC, making its stride into homes energy efficiencies through weatherization. Weatherize DC is working towards its goal to weatherize 200 homes by March 2010.

This is the story of one of the homeowners, Judy Herbert, who participated in the program.

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Top 5 greenest cities in the world: Reuters

Over the last few months, we’ve seen serious discussions taking place globally as countries and cities pledge to go green.

Some cities have made greener strides than others, which puts them at the top of the list for sustainability goals.

The five greenest cities in the world aren’t necessarily those that are nothing but green space, but they’re on the right track to improving their footprints.

via blogs.reuters.com

Of all major cities, only Portland, OR, gets to the top 5.

$300 Million Cash for Appliances, $12+ Mill. for DC, MD, VA

If you are in the market for new'energy efficient' appliances, check this out. The Department of Energy recently allocated $300 million for cash for its Energy Star rated appliances. The funding is part of the Recovery package.

The states that already have the program in place, via Christian Science Monitor.

The program will start in several states over the next few months, with New York State’s program kicking off Friday. Eight states – Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, New Jersey, Oregon, Vermont, and Wisconsin – have already launched their programs. Other states will launch in coming months, many around Earth Day in April.

What's in the bag for the Greater Washington DC.

• District of Columbia receives $568,000. Program expected to start in April 2010.
• Maryland receives $5,405,000. Rebates expected to start in March 2010.
• Virginia receives $7,445,000. Program expected to start in April 2010.

 
 

Links to the states rebate program websites: DC rebate, Maryland rebate program, VIrginia rebate program.

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