From the category archives:

Buildings & Environment

A Must-Read: Krugman’s Building a Green Economy

Pat Heffernan on April 30, 2010

Sometimes I agree with him. Sometimes, passionately, I don’t. But after reading Paul Krugman’s “Building a Green Economy” in the Sunday New York Times magazine, mostly I just wanted to hug him. Klugman begins in a matter of fact way by observing that in the debate over climate economics, the “casual reader might have the [...]

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Four Must Do Steps to Win
the Energy Challenge

Bill Maclay on March 15, 2010

Image by geofones via Flickr At the 2010  Efficiency Vermont’s Better Buildings Conference, Andy Shapiro of Energy Balance and I offered an “Energy Challenge” to the audience of architects and building owners to begin a broad based campaign to track building energy performance. This challenge extends not only to collecting the data for your business [...]

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Building Energy Metrics

Bill Maclay on March 5, 2010

Image by Paul Garland via Flickr How many people would buy a car without knowing its estimated mileage? Comparatively, how many people would build a building without knowing an estimated energy performance? While all consumers have documented miles per gallon estimates for their vehicles, almost no building owners know how much energy their building uses, [...]

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What if Vermont were to produce more energy than it consumes?

Bill Maclay on February 12, 2010

Should we, as Vermonters, be congratulating ourselves for leadership in the green economy and creating a renewable energy future? Van Jones, former green jobs czar of the Obama administration, thought so when speaking at the 2009 Vermont Business Expo. But is this deserved? I am not so sure. Yes, we all can point to great [...]

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Net Zero Energy Buildings: Stable Returns in an Unstable World

Bill Maclay on September 18, 2009

Faced with multiple challenges from environmental pressures due to climate change, energy price volatility and the economic downturn, we have never had a better time to build wisely. But we’re not talking about any ordinary buildings—we are talking about the design and construction of buildings that minimize the use of natural resources and energy. Such [...]

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