What room is (or has the most potential to be) the greenest room in your home? It’s the kitchen – by a mile. You can drive a hybrid or even walk to work, take water-sipping showers, and put solar panels on the roof, but nothing can match the benefits of a green kitchen. It requires […]
Solar Increases Home’s Value
My wife and I live and work in a solar-powered home. I’m writing this from my office using a computer running on the freshest electrons you can get, produced just a few feet away, from photons only eight minutes old. That’s how long it takes light to travel 93 million miles from the sun to […]
Solar Hot Water – Be the Change!
We live in interesting times. Never before have we witnessed so much change in so little time. Whether we resist or embrace change, it is still inevitable, but if we actively embrace the changes we like we can often minimize the change we’d prefer to avoid. For example, almost everyone in this country uses some […]
Earth Day’s GREENFest
For green living aficionados, nothing beats Earth Day, the greenest holiday of the year. Unlike most holidays that celebrate significant past events, Earth Day celebrates our future. It’s an event that is increasingly relevant to more people every year. The coolest thing about Earth Day is that people gather not only to celebrate and have […]
The Insanity of Nuclear Energy
Lately it’s difficult to think about anything except the recent horrific events in Japan. My heart goes out to everyone involved. Disasters like the earthquake and tsunami are mostly unavoidable; they are a natural part of our planet’s evolution. The ongoing nuclear disaster is another story. The world would be quite a different place without […]
Passive House – Ultra Efficiency
This column often explores the exciting transformation taking place in the building industry. Green building programs have grown and multiplied at an amazing rate in recent years. We’ve looked at Energy Star, LEED and even the Living Building Challenge. These programs are important because they raise the bar and provide real-world examples of what is […]
Why Pay More? Why Not?
Have you ever looked back on a traumatic or difficult period in your life and realized that you actually benefited from the experience? It’s not just that time provides a different perspective. Challenges present opportunities for growth, innovation and learning. We can all benefit from difficult experiences. Sometimes fear and resistance keep us from moving […]
Green Your Clean
There are many reasons why the art and practice of Green Living make sense; from the biggest picture to the smallest detail. Take household cleaning products for example. These small details have a huge impact on our homes, our health and our planet. Slick television commercials advertise the latest “new and improved” products, that “kill […]
New Solar Thermal Incentives
Timing is everything, as the saying goes, and that certainly applies to act of purchasing a renewable energy system. There seems to be a constantly changing landscape of costs, rebates, incentives and supply that influence the final price of these systems. It would be great if we could gaze into a crystal ball to determine […]
Getting a Green Workout
I got to the gym a little late yesterday and it was already dark outside. After checking in at the desk at Sun City Anthem’s Liberty Center, I headed for the locker room. As I opened the door, the lights were out and it was pitch black inside. It wasn’t that late and the place […]