Welcome to the IDT Energy Blog

How cool is this? A tree house which uses the trees themselves as an integral part of the structure (full story here):

“It’s not really built, it’s grown over five years, with its supporting trees trained to grow in the right direction with scaffolding holding it in place. Its creators, architects Mitchell Joachim and Javier Arbona, teamed up with environmental engineer Lara Greden to figure out how to grow vines, roots and trees to create a framework for a house that’s perfectly normal inside.
After the shell of the house is grown in the right shape, the walls are filled in with mud and plaster, and then the insides of the house are constructed using conventional building materials. The only sticking point so far is the windows, and the designers are now experimenting with transparent plastic materials made of soy they hope will expand as the house’s supporting trees grow.”

You can really get a sense of the project when you watch the video.

Who knew they had it in them? Really funny Energy Star ad, which manages to be sardonic while making a serious point. This send-up of a classic suburban family clocks in at just over a minute, and it is a minute well spent. Ability to laugh at themselves grabs attention.

Fascinating!

From New Scientist.com:

“In Holmes County, Ohio, home to the world’s largest Amish community, an estimated 80% of Amish families now have photovoltaic panels. They use solar power for basic electrical needs like home lighting, powering sewing machines, and charging batteries for lights on horse-drawn buggies. The Amish have gone solar partly for safety concerns - gas lamps are a fire hazard - and partly out of legal requirements - transportation codes require electric lights on horse-drawn buggies. Another reason they are embracing solar power is to avoid connecting to the electric grid, something they feel would endanger their efforts to remain separated from the rest of American society.”

But if a majority of America goes solar, would they go on the grid? Is it separation or dependency that is the issue here?

According to the New York Times:

“President Bush, fending off international accusations that he was ignoring climate change, proposed for the first time on Thursday to set ‘a long-term global goal’ for cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and he called on other high-polluting nations to join the United States in negotiations aimed at reaching an agreement by the end of next year… The proposal, delivered in a speech at the United States Agency for International Development here, reflects the difficulties the Bush administration is facing in grappling with climate change as the scientific consensus has continued to build in favor of action to control the buildup of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.”

The reactions:

“The speech was greeted with intense skepticism by environmental advocates and some European officials.
Some critics accused Mr. Bush of trying to hijack continuing environmental talks like those under the Kyoto treaty by substituting his own program, which even if successful would not bear fruit until he is about to leave office in 2009.
And, they said, the president delivered no clear statement on what steps the United States would take to limit emissions over the next 10 to 20 years, while he was working on long-term goals for the next 50 years and beyond.”

And where does this leave the Kyoto Protocol? A complement to Bush’s plan, or a competing force?

The jury is not yet out. This speech indicated a willingness to start looking at real numbers and concrete plans. Let’s hold the skepticism till we see what is on the table.

Some of the dialogue is about as interesting as hearing about how ethanol is made, but the display of green cars is neat. You can see of the sleeker models that you may not spot on the road.

Despite the recent press downplaying the positives of hybrids, this trend is on the up and up.

Energy saving tips for favoring your fan over your air-conditioner:
• If you use a fan in conjunction with your air conditioner, your air conditioner won’t have to work as hard to spread cooled air throughout the house.
• When it’s cold, you can reverse your ceiling fan motor. The blades move hot air up to the ceiling, and then the fan will propel the hot air downwards. Your room gets hotter, and the increased heat circulation can also help with the problem of condensation on windows.
• With ceiling fans using as little energy as a 60-watt bulb, about 98 percent less energy than most central air conditioners use, they are a smart choice in terms of your wallet and the environment.
• Do the math. Ceiling fans cost 1 cent an hour to run, air room conditioners cost 16 cents an hour to run, and central air conditioning costs 43 cents an hour to run.

Benjamin Maresca saw a Hummer H1 advertising Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream shops, and felt that did not jive with the company’s stated environmental goals. He shot off an email to the company – turns out the Hummer was using biodiesel, a perfectly respectable choice, environmentally.

But check out the reaction of the owner of the ice cream store who had sent the Hummer on its mission and the email that he sent to the Ben & Jerry’s rep and Marcesca:

“Instead, Yunis seemed to break the basic rules of ‘netiquette’ by copying Maresca on an e-mail to Perkins in which he called him an ‘imbecile,’ ‘hypocrite,’ ‘intellectually challenged’ and a ‘nincompoop.’

He then characterized Maresca as one of those people that “would ‘Rock the Vote’ for a Hillary/Obama ticket, and frankly we just don’t care anymore…

Speaking of the e-mail he said: ‘I really have no comment on them. The guy (Maresca) is an idiot.’

Yunis later added, ‘The person is a complete moron, and that’s as simple as I can make it for you.’ “

Click here for more delicious details on the incident.

The New York Times Magazine has slew of articles covering all aspects of green design:

Why Are They Greener Than We Are?
By NICOLAI OUROUSSOFF
When it comes to designing buildings that are good for the environment, Europe gets it.

The Accidental Environmentalist
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Whether with paper, old containers, glass or steel, Shigeru Ban makes buildings that waste nothing. Just don’t call him green.

An Eco-House for the Future
Diller Scofidio + Renfro show how sustainability can have style.

The Zero-Energy Solution
By MARK SVENVOLD
How a system installed in your own backyard may one day power your house and your car.

Al Gore Has Big Plans
By JAMES TRAUB
Another book, another slide show, another global rock concert — another run?

This Old, Organic House
By ADAM GOODHEART
Americans have been experimenting with green architecture since the very beginning.

The Worm Turns
By ROB WALKER
How one company strives to turn invertebrate excrement into a hip brand.

Hollywood and Green
By EDWARD LEWINE
Ed Begley Jr., the star of the HGTV reality show ‘‘Living With Ed,’’ tries to make his two-bedroom house in Los Angeles as environmentally sound as possible.

All joking aside, according to this TreeHugger article, the environmental damage of working from home may outweight the benefits (full story here).

This New York Times article hits the nail on the head with its focus on the bottom line. For all of our awareness and good intentions, people care about how energy efficiency will affect their pocketbook, and the results of this McKinsey study lead to some interesting conclusions.

From the article:

“At a recent conference on energy efficiency and investment strategy, Pedro Haas, an energy expert at McKinsey & Company, said his consulting firm recently asked people worldwide what payback time they would find acceptable before investing money to save energy.
One fourth of them said they would never spend any money to improve energy efficiency; 50 percent said they wanted to earn back the investment in two years or less.
“That means about 75 percent of the public will require economics that are just not there,” Mr. Haas said.
The alternative is to let utilities make the investment. James E. Rogers, the chief executive of Duke Energy, said he would like to persuade regulators to let his company invest in energy efficiency on customers’ premises, and receive a profit on those investments.”
We need a scenario where everybody wins financially or we are doomed to failure, in my humble opinion.