By: Florence Hudson

I speak to groups all around the world on green issues and sustainability. In my travels I get to meet all types of people, from hotshot politicians to corporate bigwigs to average citizens.

Regardless of what part of the social ladder they occupy, I’ve noticed that many people are gamblers at heart; they have an abiding faith that somehow a big-bet, cure-all is just around the corner to deliver us into a greener and more sustainable world. It must be true – the logic usually goes – because there is too much money to be made; or there are huge benefits to reap. When such advancements do not arrive on schedule, it’s a conspiracy, of course.

Now, I am a huge believer in technology and its ability to help mankind leapfrog to a better future, but it seems to me we’re fooling ourselves if we put too much faith in deus ex machina solutions for our complex environmental problems.

We’re not going to become all-solar, all-the-time; and the replacement for the internal combustion engine – which has been “just around the corner” since I was a kid – will take more time, apparently. In the meantime we can make incredible progress towards a more sustainable future using the tools we have and the inventions that already exist – because some of them are quite powerful.

Take a gaze out of your window and you’ll likely see one of the most glaring environmental problems that can be rectified now, with the tools we have – the commercial buildings and structures that populate our planet. There are about 5 million of them in the U.S. alone.

The HVAC system, the lights, the water, the elevators, the power and cooling for technology, the heating and cooling for people: all contribute to making buildings a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions–and a leading energy user. Lights blaze and air conditioners hum in empty offices at night, and lawn sprinklers turn on even during a rainstorm. Commercial buildings can lose as much as 50 percent of the water that flows into them.

Consider:

The building sector is responsible for more electricity consumption than any other sector, 42 percent, and 15 percent of all greenhouse gas (GHG) Emissions.

In the U.S., buildings represent 72 percent of all energy usage and 39 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (pdf). Yet, up to 50% of that electricity is wasted.

In New York City, buildings account for 80 percent of carbon emissions.

By 2025, buildings will be the single largest energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gas on our planet.

Technology already exists that will allow us to utterly transform our buildings’ impact on the environment. It’s called the Internet. Along with cheap sensors (less than a penny each in some cases), the Internet becomes a network that can allow these buildings to be controlled for maximum energy efficiency; monitored for compliance; and customized to work better for inhabitants – floor by floor, room by room.

This is already happening today. Check out this example with the Calgary city school system in Canada.

We don’t need any new inventions or legislation to solve one of our biggest environmental problems. What are we waiting for?

A recovery in home improvement spending will soon be underway according to the Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity (LIRA) released today by the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. Remodeling spending is expected to increase on an annual basis by the end of the year, and the LIRA points to growth accelerating to the double-digit range in the first quarter of 2011.

“Absent a reversal of recent economic progress, there should be a healthy upturn in home improvement activity by year-end and into next year,” says Eric S. Belsky, managing director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Homeowner optimism is bolstering a trend toward investing in the home again. “The recovery in home improvement activity appears to be moving beyond simple replacement projects and energy retrofits to broader remodels and upgrades,” says Kermit Baker, director of the Remodeling Futures Program at the Joint Center for Housing Studies. “A wider activity base would help generate the expected growth in the quarters ahead.”

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By: Nathan Stubbs

When Corey Saft looked at the first utility bill for his newly built rent house on Whittington Drive, it was with more than the usual sense of apprehension. The UL architecture professor had spent the past two years dreaming, planning, designing and ultimately building the narrow home, with a footprint under 800 square feet, on the lot adjacent to his residential home, with much of that time devoted to ensuring the house maximized energy efficiencies.

Holding up the bill, Saft now had total vindication. Not only did it read “no amount due” but as it turned out, Lafayette Utilities System actually owed him 62 cents for the month. It was no anomaly. When the next bill came, for the month of April, Saft hardly batted an eye when he saw that utilities for the house had skyrocketed more than 500 percent, up to a whopping $5.

“There was a sense of relief, really,” Saft says of his reaction to the first two months’ bills. “You don’t want to be too optimistic. I mean everything you read says one thing, but usually it never comes out that good. So I was definitely pretty surprised. It was hoped for; I wouldn’t say anticipated. It’s the first time this was done in a hot, humid climate where everything kind of worked out the way it was supposed to.”

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by Jonathan Hiskes

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac claimed the first casualty in their attack on a promising clean-energy financing tool when Boulder County, Colo., canceled the latest round of its popular ClimateSmart Loan Program on Tuesday.

“We are extremely disappointed by the lack of flexibility and vision we’ve encountered with the FHFA [Federal Housing Finance Agency], and with Fannie and Freddie,” the county Board of Commissioners wrote in cancelling the program.

To date the program has helped more than 600 homeowners invest more than $10 million on rooftop solar panels, home wind systems, and retrofits that cut energy waste — work performed by local businesses. The current funding round had attracted another 173 applicants.

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As countries around the world seek ways to balance supply and demand of energy, so-called “smart grids” and related home automation sensor technologies are stepping up to fill the need. Bluetooth low energy technology promises to change the way we think about power consumption.

Imagine creating a network of tiny wireless sensors in your home that monitors energy costs and controls electrical appliances to save energy and reduce cost. That’s the idea behind the concept of a “Smart Grid” – a two-way monitoring system that allows consumers and utility providers to better control electricity supply and demand. Making that type of intelligent network a reality is closer than you might think.

It’s no secret that, over the past few years, increasing demand for electricity has strained electrical grids to the point of near or total failure. High-profile blackouts, like the August 2003 blackout that crippled New York City or the blackout that disrupted services in Italy and Switzerland just a month later, and overworked systems like the one in California, have made consumers and utility companies painfully aware of the need to reduce energy consumption.

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