April 6th, 2013 
Justin Manger 
Opower, which we profiled earlier, recent appeared in a New York Times article about the influence of peers and peer pressure on behavior. The article starts off by talking about a “social norming” experiment at Northern Illinois University to tackle the heavy drinking problem found on campus. Basically, by changing students’ perceptions about how much [...]
March 11th, 2013 Sean Connell 
Seattle is abuzz with the pending opening on Earth Day (April 22) of the Bullitt Center, which is considered to be the world’s greenest commercial building. This groundbreaking structure incorporates a diverse range of green energy technologies, sustainable and energy-efficient materials, and creative engineering and designs all intended to make the building’s footprint environmentally neutral. When fully operational, [...]
Posted in Behavior, Business, Clean Technology, Conservation, Education, Energy Efficiency, Green Building, Local Energy/Food, Real Estate, Renewable Energy, Sustainability, Sustainable Development 
Tags: Energy Conservation, Green Technology, LEED, Pacific Northwest, Sean Connell, Seattle 
No Comments » January 28th, 2013 Justin Manger 
The Bakken oil fields in North Dakota are releasing so much gas that, according to The Financial Times, oil companies at the heart of the US shale oil boom are burning off enough gas to power all the homes in Chicago and Washington combined. In the photo from space at the bottom of this post, [...]
January 25th, 2013 Eric Wilson 
The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) just released their top 10 list for 2012 in terms of the most LEED certified square footage (per capita). Despite a slowdown in LEED certification, the numbers are impressive. Here are a five facts from the report: Approximately 2.2 billion square feet of space has been certified worldwide [...]
Posted in Business, Clean Technology, Conservation, Eric Wilson, Five Friday Facts, Green Building, News Tags: Energy Conservation, Green Technology, LEED No Comments » January 18th, 2013 Eric Wilson Prior to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, we wrote about how the village was planning to extract waste heat from the sewer system to provide a sustainable solution to heating the housing for athletes. Last year, a company in Brainerd, MN set out to accomplish a similar goal. Now we bring you a Five Friday [...]
January 9th, 2013 Justin Manger 
The once all but certain trend of rising electricity use may now be coming to an end. This may not be good news for electricity companies tied to a business model that depends on growth in electricity consumption (and therefore the need to produce more and get more revenue) but it is good news for [...]
Posted in Behavior, Energy Efficiency, Green Economy, Justin Manger, News, Policy, Smart Grid Tags: Clean Energy, Energy Conservation No Comments » January 8th, 2013 John Basalla If you read articles on this website you are most likely interested in green technology and sustainability and would probably be interested in working in a green job. There is lots of talk about the new green economy and the job growth that all the new green technology will create. But how do you get [...]
December 21st, 2012 Eric Wilson During our first year in existence, Christmas fell on a Friday, so we had a special Five Friday Facts – Christmas Edition. Today’s Five Friday Facts also has a Christmas theme: the energy savings from LEDs vs. conventional light bulbs. We mentioned in that first Five Friday Facts the savings from LEDs (our first fact [...]
December 17th, 2012 Sean Connell 
Three noteworthy developments in Japan over the past couple of weeks highlight continued progress there towards bringing new renewable energy generation and conservation on line—and developments to be watchful of along the way.
December 14th, 2012 Eric Wilson As a follow up to last week’s Five Friday Facts, here are the top 5 things you may not know about electric vehicles. The full list can be found on the Department of Energy’s website. The battery technologies in almost all of the electric vehicles on the road today were created with support from the [...]
