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retrofits

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    Making buildings more efficient: looking beyond price

    Photo courtesy kimberlyfaye via Flickr Using energy more efficiently in buildings may be the fastest, cheapest way to substantially reduce carbon emissions in the short-term. How can we make it happen? Last week, New York Times‘ David Leonhardt wrote a great column about a new proposal bouncing around the White House: “cash for caulkers,” a […]

    David Roberts Culture

  • Merkley wants Senate jobs bill to help finance building efficiency retrofits

    Last week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid met with the chairs of six committees that might have some hand in developing the clean energy bill. The question at issue was whether the bill should be pushed back in favor of a short-term focus on finance reform, jobs, and the deficit. Though John Kerry argued vigorously […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • Why it’s better to invest in efficiency than to hold electricity rates down

    Joe Romm draws attention to some extremely interesting thoughts from Glenn English, head of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. NRECA represents 900-plus small, not-for-profit, typically coal-based utilities in the Midwest. We tend to think all coal utilities are after more free allowance allocations under a cap-and-trade system, but as Climate Wire (sub req) reports, […]

    David Roberts Politics

  • Weatherization will save us all

    Doug Letterman via flickrPop quiz: What saves money, saves energy, creates green jobs, fights climate change, can fix the economy, will make America great again, and is both a floor wax and a dessert topping? Answer: It’s weatherization! And both the U.S. government and the European Union are embracing its potential. In a report released […]

    Katharine Wroth Culture

  • You and me and a billion tiny spores

    The older man with the Coke-bottle lenses at the Boston GreenFest had a simple table — just a poster with a few pictures taped to it, and a sprig of something green. He looked grim and earnest, and although all the other booths were more alluring, full of enticing pamphlets about new green nonprofits, I […]

    Andrée Collier Cities

  • Not all green jobs are created equal

    The stimulus package and the climate bill recently passed by the US House and now being considered in the Senate will create jobs while delivering a boost to our economy. A “green” stimulus will create approximately three times as many jobs as the same amount of spending in traditional energy industries. But clean energy is […]

    Tom Konrad Technology

  • Sears Tower to get eco-overhaul — again? Plus: new name!

    Greenovations at “The Big Willie,” nee Sears Tower.First the Empire State Building, now Sears Tower: America’s iconic buildings are going green! The press is all abuzz about yesterday’s announcement by the owners of Chicago’s 110-story landmark — North America’s tallest, and the third-tallest in the world — that they will cut energy use 80 percent […]

    Katharine Wroth Cities

  • Getting to know the neighborhood — through its trash

    Left behind.coldcolours via flickrIt’s Sunday on Bourne Street. I am weeding at the JP Green House, furious at the reappearance of the Dog Strangling Vine that we battled hard last summer. A pernicious creeping vine, it takes over any neglected area around here: East Coast kudzu. An abandoned house is not really vacant, but inhabited […]

    Andrée Collier Cities

  • How we found 133 Bourne St., and how we almost lost it

    In May of 2008, the property at 133 Bourne St., Boston, Massachusetts was purchased from HBHC Bank by myself and Ken Ward. Ninety-nine years old at the time, it had long served the neighborhoods of Jamaica Plain and Roslindale as both a corner store and a family dwelling. At the time of purchase, the house […]

    Andrée Collier Cities