Progressive Lighting & Energy Solutions

One of a handful of ardent LEED skeptics, Joe Lstiburek, a licensed engineer and principal of Massachusetts-based Building Science Consulting, said the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design building-rating system is a sham.

LEED-certified buildings, he said, are no more efficient than typical structures built in the 1960s. In fact, Lstiburek said, poorly designed LEED-certified structures such as the Seattle City Hall, a building on the Yale University campus and an office building in New York are “energy pigs.”

Builders, architects and governments across the country are enthusiastically using the popular rating system that, in this decade, has become the standard-setting leader in the multibillion-dollar, green-building industry.

Under LEED, buildings earn points toward certification by using such green features as recycled building materials, porous pavements, low-flush toilets and green roofs. And most owners of LEED-honored buildings heavily market the awards because prospective tenants turn starry-eyed at the promise of lower utility bills and clean-green surroundings.

But Lstiburek and other critics complain the system puts relatively mild building improvements, such as installing bike racks and being close to mass transit, on the same level as aggressive energy-saving features.

As a result, some buildings aren’t performing as advertised when it comes to the most important part of green building: saving energy.

“Put that bike rack in front, and you are going to get LEED points,” Lstiburek said. “That’s what it’s all about, chasing points and not saving energy.

“How can you have a green program that doesn’t have energy at the center? But (LEED proponents say), ‘I have recycled materials and that bike rack.’

“Stop with the social engineering, give me a building that doesn’t suck, and, until you do that, go away.”
Another problem with LEED buildings, Lstiburek said, is they tend to have too much glass, 50 to 70 percent in some cases. Glass brings a lot of daylight into a building, but it is an inefficient insulator. Lstiburek argues a building’s outside walls should be no more than 30 percent glass.

Many older buildings from the 1960s may not be as artsy as some newer structures, but Lstiburek said they often functioned better. He goes as far as to say big-box retail stores often work better than those snazzy, award-winning buildings with LEED-certification plaques.

“Wal-Mart is outperforming these green buildings,” he said.

For 2009 budget planning, California corporations should expect substantial increases in electric rates due to recent increases in natural gas prices. Since California power generation is highly dependent on natural gas, the California electric utilities will be increasing 2009 electric rates to recover the increased cost of power.

SB 1473 (Calderon; D - Montebello) strongly supported by the business community has passed both houses of the legislature and is one step away from the Governor’s desk.

The bill clarifies that the Building Standards Commission is the primary state agency responsible for proposing and adopting non-residential Green Building Codes. Although the BSC has traditionally worked on commercial building codes, there has been pressure in recent years from the environmental community to shift that authority to the Environmental Protection Agency and/or the Integrated Waste Management Board.

A new poll shows 91% of Democrats, 85% of independents and 61% of Republicans in California support strong state action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The poll was released June 23, just a few days before the Air Resources Board released its AB 32.   The poll shows that 73% of voters say the state can grow the economy at the same time it fights global warming, and 58% support these energy policies even if they result in higher prices.

The poll also found that 69% of California voters support state government making its own policies in the absence of federal policies to address global warming and 83% believe California “can be a leader in new technologies to improve efficiency and reduce global warming.” As for individual actions that could be undertaken, respondents expressed support — in figures ranging from 84% to 90% — for the following strategies: requiring new appliances and homes to be more energy-efficient; requiring energy companies to produce one-third of their electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar; protecting forests and natural areas that naturally remove global warming pollution from the air; reducing development in outlying areas and encouraging more mass transit to reduce traffic; requiring carmakers to make more efficient cars that pollute less and use less gasoline.

WASHINGTON (May 18) - Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject.

Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study released Sunday.
In the past, Knutson has raised concerns about the effects of climate change on storms. His new paper has the potential to heat up a simmering debate among meteorologists about current and future effects of global warming in the Atlantic.

Ever since Hurricane Katrina in 2005, hurricanes have often been seen as a symbol of global warming's wrath. Many climate change experts have tied the rise of hurricanes in recent years to global warming and hotter waters that fuel them.

Another group of experts, those who study hurricanes and who are more often skeptical about global warming, say there is no link. They attribute the recent increase to a natural multi-decade cycle.

What makes this study different is Knutson, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, N.J.

He has warned about the harmful effects of climate change and has even complained in the past about being censored by the Bush administration on past studies on the dangers of global warming.

He said his new study, based on a computer model, argues "against the notion that we've already seen a really dramatic increase in Atlantic hurricane activity resulting from greenhouse warming."

It's cheap, it's dirty, ad it's fueling the burgeoning number of electric plants that provide power to China.  Coal consumption has more than doubled since 1990, and even the world's largest coal producer can barely keep up.  China is constructing the equivalent of two mid-size coal-fired power plants EACH WEEK - adding a capacity comparable to the entire U.K. power grid each year.  What does that mean for the planet?  China recently surpassed the United States in carbon dioxide (CO2) emission.