Green Building

 

A blooming industry, green building is rising with greater public demand, legislative focus, and code and standard mandates. With programs like Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) becoming more popular, contractors are finding new building processes and technologies to be more efficient and environmentally minded. The below articles dive into alternative energies, energy efficiency, the smart grid, and more and include editorial from our annual special issue on the subject.

New Year’s Day brought wind-energy developers a belated holiday gift when Congress included in its fiscal-cliff budget deal a one-year extension of the production tax credit (PTC) that helps wind farms operate profitably.

Transformative change often requires major societal shifts to reach and cross the proverbial tipping point.

In the ongoing push for a cleaner and more sustainable energy society, growing popular and political support for renewables are two strong indicators of success.

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), which is the coordinator of the U.S. voluntary standardization system, and the Interstate Renewable Energy Council Inc.

NSi

More on Green Building

 
Solar and Energy-Efficiency Program to Generate $43 Million in Savings for School District

East Side Union High School District in San Jose, Calif., and Chevron Energy Solutions announced the completion of construction for the largest K–12 solar and energy-efficiency program in the United States.

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Wind Power Has Blustery Start in 2011

All the policies, rhetoric and tax incentives may be finally starting to pay off. New statistics reveal that wind power and other renewables are showing sustained and consistent growth, a sign that they may have reached a new stage of maturity in the American energy market.

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Lawmakers Push Efficiency

Lately, efficiency has emerged as one of the driving forces of the effort to reform national energy consumption—an equal partner with the likes of solar power, windmills and electric cars.

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Florida Utility Offers Rebates for Solar

With no shortage of sunlight, solar power is an attractive option in Florida. To help ramp up the appeal, the state’s largest electric utility has thrown in some generous financial incentives. This summer, Florida Power & Light Co.

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Virtual Power Plants

“VPP” is the latest electricity-system-of-the-future phrase in the expanding smart-grid lexicon.

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Strategic Approaches

According to the Division of Energy Resources (DOER) for the Rebuild Massachusetts Program’s strategic energy management booklet, it is useful to think of energy management as a three-phase process within which the effort and resources expended on gaining control of energy use, maintaining control

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Payback Time

One of the biggest hurdles electrical contractors must jump when marketing their energy services is owners’ concerns about the initial investment they must make in order to reap the savings from a project.

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