While attending a United States Green Building Council (USGBC) meeting recently, someone mentioned that a local university was building to a 500 year standard. I had never heard the term prior, but the idea was all too familiar. The university was constructing buildings to last the next 500 years. This is incredibly difficult to fathom [...]
Posts Tagged ‘USGBC’
USGBC Launches Its Green Teacher Certificate
March 29th, 2012 
Eric Wilson As an educator, this next story is the type I love to read about. The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) is now offering a Green Classroom Professional Certificate Program. According to the Center for Green Schools, the certification program “encourages sustainable practices in classrooms to further the mission of creating green schools for everyone [...]
Bloom Energy Servers Installed at JMB Realty
March 24th, 2012 Eric Wilson Just about two years ago we first wrote about Bloom Energy. At the time, the company’s revolutionary energy servers (Bloom Boxes) seemed like the next big thing in clean energy (or the next big miss). While the cost was sky high, the technology enabled computer-like servers, which stacked fuel cells in close proximity, to generate [...]
Posted in Clean Technology, Eric Wilson, News 
Tags: Bloom Energy, Electric Vehicles, LEED, Los Angeles, USGBC 
No Comments »Design with Landscape in Mind: Al Boeke’s Obituary
November 21st, 2011 Eric Wilson Among other things, I like to think of myself as well-informed. As an undergraduate I majored in Anthropology (biological, not cultural) and had a secondary focus in Art History. Today, I sit on a US Green Building Council committee focused on green schools and my dissertation proposal for my doctorate incorporates green schools. Given this [...]
USGBC Colorado’s Green School Summit Wrap-up
November 7th, 2011 Eric Wilson Although I did not “live blog” the US Green Building Council Colorado Chapter’s recent Green School Summit, here are my notes from the event: There are numerous free resources for energy efficiency available in Colorado. Two key ones are the Governor’s Energy Office and the Community Office of Resource Efficiency. Sangre de Christo School District [...]
Posted in Business, Conferences, Conservation, Education, Eric Wilson, Green Building, Green Economy, Live Blogging Tags: Colorado, Green Schools, LEED, USGBC No Comments »Energy Efficiency and Economic Recoveries
August 28th, 2011 Eric Wilson Although the United States economy generates something on the order of 15 trillion dollars in GDP, several figures in terms of expenditures have become particularly worrisome. A Five Friday Facts from a few months ago contained the following figure: $202 billion is spent annually on home heating and cooling bills in the United States. In [...]
Posted in Behavior, Energy Efficiency, Eric Wilson, Featured Posts, Op-Ed Tags: Coal, Electricity Generation, Energy, USGBC No Comments »Making Road Construction More Environmentally Friendly
July 9th, 2011 Eric Wilson Let’s face it, there’s nothing really sustainable about the current transportation sector in this country. While bike sharing programs and walkable, carless cities have emerged both domestically and abroad, the reliance on infrastructure – namely roads and rails, not to mention air travel – alone comes at a great cost to both the pocket book [...]
Posted in Economics, Eric Wilson, Recylcing, Sustainability, Transportation Tags: Bike Sharing, Carless Cities, Coal, Environment, Lifecycle, Natural Gas, Solar Roadways, USGBC No Comments »May Clean Energy and Sustainability Events
May 2nd, 2011 Eric Wilson This month brings the usual assortment of conferences, workshops, and symposiums to the green events calendar. Here are a number taking place throughout the United States and Canada, as well a couple of interest overseas. As per usual, California, Washington DC, and New York are well represented. A few of the conferences deal with “greening” [...]
The Third (and Final?) Environmental Movement
April 17th, 2011 Eric Wilson I recently read the following quotation, “the problem with history is that it repeats itself.” Although I cannot recall who said it, the point is that we need to learn from the past, not just repeat it. In a recent discussion with a co-worker, I started to think about the ebb and flow of environmental [...]
Two Small Town Champions Bring Green Building to Nebraska
December 18th, 2010 Eric Wilson The other night I attended the annual holiday party for the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) committee for which I volunteer. The Green Schools Initiative, out of the Colorado Chapter of the USGBC, brings together educators, architects, engineers, government employees, and other interested parties. Before the meeting kicked off I had the opportunity to [...]
Posted in Eric Wilson, Green Building, Sustainability, Sustainable Development Tags: Green Schools, LED Lights, LEED, USGBC No Comments »
