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.

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More on Green Building

 
Distributed Generation and Solar Energy

Distributed generation allows for the use of small-scale power generation technologies located nearby the load being served. It can be applied in many different forms. There are various methods by which customers can generate their own electricity, with or without the backup grid.

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By the Light of the Sun

After four hurricanes passed through Florida in 2004, leaving a tangle of downed power lines and outages, the most reliable power source proved to be solar.

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Producing Green Power

An important consideration for any “green” building is its electric power supply. Commercial buildings currently consume more than one-third of the total electric energy produced in the United States. The U.S.

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Making New Waves

A 500-kilowatt solar power system supplements 15 percent peak power to water treatment operations in northern New Jersey. A 250 kW fuel cell helps manage electricity demand and address ongoing air-quality concerns at a Southern California water reclamation plant.

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Here Comes the Sun

Solar-power cells, also known as photovoltaics (PV), are semiconductors that convert sunlight directly to direct current (DC) electric power. “The sun’s light dislodges free electrons in each cell on the solar panel and collects them on conductors to create a volt.

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The Energy Effect

I once read that Thomas Edison tried to sell houses made from preformed concrete panels without success.

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In the Spotlight

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Energy Star program, lighting consumes 25 to 40 percent of the energy used in commercial buildings and is a primary source of waste heat.

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