Learn from Germany- Passive Housing Construction December 28, 2008
Posted by sunlightmyfire in business, development, economics, green living, politics, renewable energy, solar energy.Tags: Berkeley, construction, consumption, cuspers, elizabeth rosenthal, energy, Germany, green ideas, IREC, Montreal, nabih tahan, Obama, passive houses, solar engineering school, sweden, ventilation
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Super sales people become great by stealing. Stealing the greatest, most profitable ideas and executing on them immediately to change, enhance, our own profit margin in whatever sales game we’ve got going. Not a difficult concept and it makes a lot of sense – find out who is doing what better and then do it too. If you get in on it fast enough, the saturation point will be a delayed concern. And Germany seems to have all the best ideas at the moment. Simplified solar lending, feed in tariffs, since 2004 Germany has endorsed solar energy as the new way and society’s climbing on board, and Italians and Spanish citizens are coming along, following their lead. America woke up from Bush inspired dormancy, Berkeley First, the state of Connecticut and according to IREC, the Interstate Renewable Energy Council (celebrating 26 years, sends out emails if you want to update yourself firsthand), other states are coming along with market provisions for greater renewable energy endeavors here in the US. Slow progress but thankfully, we’re coming along. Obama and his ‘cusper’ crew are going to show us the way and if we’re smart, we’ll all move forward, fast, thanks to their visionary leadership.
Back to Germany, because they’ve been taking action and leading the pack. Elizabeth Rosenthal’s article on the New York Times (she is decidedly green and a great writer) put out a fantastic piece on passive houses. Passive housing construction really is the ultimate in green development as it uses minimal energy input to maintain perfect indoor temperatures no matter the weather. (The new renewable energy movement would be the penultimate solution, needing no energy for daily life being and even greater achievement.) The first physicist to develop the idea of warm houses without energy demand was Wolfgang Feist. As a German intellectual, he wrote in German, preventing **Americans** from being included in the dialog. Wolfgang Hasper of the Passivhaus Institut is publicizing the idea with his website, although written in German, has buttons for English and French translations of this brilliance. The idea is an airtight house with mechanical ventilation to create air flow in the home without heating or cooling, breezes or air recirculation resulting in 80% less energy consumption for comfortable living. Supposedly, the ventilation system is Swedish (where old people use kick sleds to carry their groceries over ice and snow to and from their walk to the markets and the sun shines infrequently in winter yet they have a huge FREE solar engineering school in Borlange). Go Sweden!
Now let’s talk visionaries. Nabih Tahan brings passive housing construction to the US from Europe and sets up shop where? Berkeley. Go California. For more information, check out any of these links. Green ideas are a go. Better to inform yourself on next wave ideas than check out Obama without his shirt (hot). If the media stays focused, we can all move forward together.
**What do you call a person who speaks three languages? Trilingual. (A regular Montrealer…)
**What do you call a person who speaks two languages? Bilingual.
**What do you call a person who speaks one language? You guessed it. American.
Citywide Solar Growing October 22, 2008
Posted by sunlightmyfire in business, development, economics, politics, solar energy.Tags: Add new tag, Berkeley, connecticut clean energy fund, green ideas, solar panels
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Just as I predicted, the Berkeley/Connecticut model of city-sponsored infrastructure development is spreading out from its point of origin to other neighbourhoods. Thank goodness, it’s a great idea.
New Hartford, Connecticut has agreed to purchase 20% of its energy needs via renewable methods by 2010.
Also the town of Pomfret in Connecticut. Anyone seeing a Connecticut connection? For more on Connecticut’s solar crusade check out this link to the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund.
It begins. I’ve decided that I’m going to wager on the fact that solar energy is going to change American consumption habits before the Volt goes into production on a large enough scale to change American driving habits. How do you like them apples GM?
VPs and recycling Montreal August 30, 2008
Posted by sunlightmyfire in business, green living, politics, recycling.Tags: breakfast, green ideas, McCain, recycling, Sarah Palin, thinking big
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McCain’s VP choice- Governor Sarah Palin. Am I surprised he picked a woman? Nope. Called that already. Way to play on upset democrats’ female presidential candidate desires. What does a ridiculously old, set in his ways, Internet retard need to balance out his Presidential ticket? A young, malleable, connected wild card- a woman would be the only choice enabling McCain to stand a chance. Way to use the Democratic Party’s great idea and twist it. According to republicans, a woman in the supporting role to the male lead is appropriate- now that America has been sensitized to the possibility of a woman leading the country… It’s not at if they’re so forward thinking that they came up with that idea on their own…
Wait- is that Fox news update about McCain suffering a stroke? Damn…
New and equally important topic- Recycling: Breakfast joints in the village of Westmount (in Montreal) must pay $450 to get a recycling bin to use every month. So instead of coughing up the money to recycle, they throw out plastic bread bags, dozens of glass juice bottles, milk cartons of various sizes, pop cans, sausage boxes… the list goes on. Employees aren’t allowed to take home the recycling either. They can’t be returned for money, left out for homeless people to reclaim, or even separated to give some good sumaritan the oportunity to do anything about it.
*The restaurants on St Catherine could form a recycling consortium to jointly get the recycling box and use it as one entity.
*The employees, 7 or 8, could divide up the recyclables and each do a part.
*They could lobby the village of Westmount to create recycling incentives by removing the fee, giving a tax credit, counter balancing the garbage pickup fee.
Unfortunately, by making green suggestions, jobs go on the line… After one job disappeared for attempted unionization, I’m not going it alone. It’s become an organizing challenge, one to be approached with care… Business owners are such Neanderthals. What century do we live in again? Where does it say that bad ideas never change and good ideas might end in tragedy?
Shout out to employers everywhere- if you find an individual who thinks big, doesn’t believe in “we can’t” and is willing to put in the extra effort to make things happen- you’d better recognize.
