Can We Talk About This? --> "Greensumption"

Watch this video called "Greensumption". This is something that needs to be discussed. We think we have it all figured out, don't we???

Green is now a factor in pricing real estate: LEED

Green is now a factor in pricing real estate. It would be great if Solar companies could bundle energy efficiency into their mix somehow though. Is this already happening? I am not sure.

Solar companies are so hyped up on the sexiness of nanotechnology, that they are not taking a leadership role in promoting efficiency and positioning themselves as leaders in these two related and equally important fields. Efficiency and conservation first, BEFORE high-tech add-ons, I say.

I think that LEED certification will become the standard in real estate pricing. Like the ENERGY STAR seal on an appliance, or the MPG rating on a new car, I see the LEED rating factored into building purchases that will directly affect pricing. This means that investing in a sustainable home that is LEED certified, has financial benefits, like high resale values and savings on energy and water.

Check out Arno Harris's - CEO of Solar Company Recurrent Energy - blog on this topic: http://arnoharris.typepad.com/cleanenergyfuture/2008/06/class-a--its-got-to-be-green.html

Conservation and Efficiency: Two Often Overlooked Areas

Most people trying to save the planet think that the best thing that they can do is to buy a hybrid vehicle like a Toyota Prius or put solar panels on their home. However, two of the most important areas in environmental change are being overlooked: conservation and efficiency.

The two most important resource-savings take place in energy and water usage. Although this is much less sexy than getting some semiconductors installed on your rooftop, efficiency and conservation are the easiest areas to make a difference right now, and should be regarded as the most important first step for any concerned citizen. I am amazed by how many people make the big jump towards other more technology-heavy measures, before they consider the changes that are less interesting on the surface, but if everyone did them, could literally change the world.

Often referred to as the cleanest power source of all, efficiency is the most effective way to save resources. Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute in Snowmass, Colorado, is one of the world’s most respected efficiency technology gurus. He first coined the term negawatt in 1989 as a unit of conserved electricity, or a megawatt of power that the power plant never has to generate because of efficiency.

Both in the water and electrical industry, the incentives have to be changed for efficiency and conservation to flourish. In the past, water and energy companies have been rewarded by how much water or energy they sell, without any incentives to sell less or encourage efficiency and conservation.

Nowadays, utilities are changing that model and reforming the system to create financial incentives for utilities to promote efficiency. For example, the Northwest Power Act of 1980 allowed power generators to share a portion of their customers’ savings from using less electricity, giving them a financial stake in the efficiency game. Among utilities’ large-scale efforts in efficiency is market transformation, a program in which utilities and regulators promote the manufacture and purchase of energy-saving products (appliances, building materials, etc.) with rebates, industrial training, consumer education, and marketing assistance.

But in most areas in the United States, except for the Northwest, California, New York, and a few others, regulatory efforts to drive efficiency measures have a long way to go. The decoupling of utility sales and profits has not happened yet in most areas, which gives utilities the wrong incentives to encourage efficiency and conservation.

We must spread the word about this important and often overlooked agent of change. Visit the website Flex Your Power [www.flexyourpower.org] for more information about conservation and efficiency. Also visit H20 Conserve [www.h2oconserve.org] for water efficiency tips and advice.

Seeking experts to contribute to our blog.

We are looking for experts in different fields to post to our blog. If you think that you have any ideas on how to build local communities, please contact us.

Our Manifesto:
Ideas to build strong local communities. We believe that the internet should be harnessed to bring people back together, face-to-face. We would like to empower everyday people to make a difference, locally.

Here are some keywords to give you an idea on what we are looking for:

• social networking
• community building
  
• grassroots movements
  
• environmental experts
• clean-tech
• education
• healthcare
• renewable energy
• water
  
• biofuels
• green building
• technology

Build your own eco-community!

Do you ever feel like you are never going to buy that dream house of yours? What is your idea of a dream house, an isolated mansion on a hilltop somewhere with amazing views?

Lately, I have been thinking that it would be great to gather a few close friends and try to make something together. We could all pitch in to make it come to life, the cooperation of many minds and some sweat.

I had set myself the goal of owning a house by the age of 30. As the deadline draws closer (my birthday is in two months), and after looking around a bit in the San Francisco Bay Area, this goal seems almost impossible! I could get discouraged (which is easy), or I could get even. Well, not really even - but I could think outside the box a bit.

Most people my age who can afford to buy a house are earning a ton of money or their family helps them out by co-signing. I sadly fall into neither of those categories. I will just have to make it happen by involving other people. And that could lead to some amazing things, including having fun in a dynamic environment!

Communes, you say? This may sound like a “back to the earth” hippy idea, but so what? Maybe the hippies had some ideas right. It’s not the idea, but the execution of it to meet your OWN needs, that is important.

I sense a deep unsettled feeling in my generation that something is askew. It is very hard to put this into words, let alone speak for a whole generation, but I think we are all searching for something that we haven’t quite found yet: a real sense of community. You may say, “but, we have facebook.” I don’t mean community in the sense of an online world, but a REAL community of people who support and care for one another in our local environment on a day-to-day basis.

I challenge everyone out there thinking of buying a dream house to change their paradigm of what a perfect living situation is. We are already separated so much by technology and cars, shouldn’t our homes be a nourishing and social place? For a lot of us, the home become a reclusion, where we hide away.

For the past few months, I have had my eye on the affordable, high-quality and attractive designs of pre-fabricated modular homes, like Michelle Kaufmann Designs [http://www.mkd-arc.com/]. The benefits are many, including quick construction, higher quality building techniques and the most cutting-edge green technology already integrated into the design. It is as fun as Lego as the houses practically “snap” together.

MKD has a product called the mkLoft ™, a 2-bedroom 1350-2115 ft2 loft space that would be perfect for -but not limited to - more dense living areas. These big, semi-detached lofts simply fit together in a line and the more you put together, the cheaper each one gets. Each mkLoft ™ costs only $372,845 installed, including foundation preparation and everything. Not bad for a cutting-edge green building that will save you tons of money in the long-run, not to mention high resale values in the future.

This is only one idea.

The main point is that we need to start thinking differently about what we aspire to in our lives and how we structure our future. Our generation will perhaps see some of the biggest changes ever in the history of modern society. It is up to us to reconfigure the status quo more in line with our values. The key word of the next century is going to be: LOCAL. No longer can we live side by side in obscurity. We need to get out of our comfort zone and foster the communities in our direct vicinity.

For a cool blog about green living, visit Michelle Kaufmann's blog [http://blog.michellekaufmann.com/].