Michael Prager

Note: I wrote a follow-up to this post. It's here.

I mentioned NESEA’s public forum Tuesday night in advance of it, but haven’t been able to report on it until now. It was, depending on your outlook, a spirited discussion, a rant, or a mugging. The topic was Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, the green-building rating system administered by the US Green Building Council. It is, without doubt, the winner thus far in the race to establish a nationwide standard for green building. Others exist, but there’s really only one in the public consciousness, which includes the actions by more than a dozen municipalities to incorporate LEED standards into building codes. The question was, does it warrant its status? Judging from occasional hoots and shouts from the crowd of about 200, and a couple pointedly angry comments during the audience portion of the event, a good portion would have answered no.

NOTE: This is a first for Sustainably, a story written by someone other than Michael. Please welcome Jeremy Marin of Arlington, a very committed advocate for energy efficiency who puts a great deal of effort behind his beliefs, as this story attests.

By Jeremy Marin

On March 7, about 60 [update: it was more like 45] people converged on two homes in Cambridge for what HEET (Home Energy Efficiency Team, www.audreyschulman.com/HEET/index.htm) terms a “barn-raising” as part of Brain Shift’s (www.brainfound.org/) Energy Smackdown competition (www.energysmackdown.com/) involving teams from Arlington, Medford, and Cambridge.

Modeled on the Yankee tradition of communities working together to help a neighbor, the group went to work sealing the homes’ building envelopes to reduce their energy bills. Participants were divided into teams: attic, basement, interior caulking (baseboards, windows, etc.) and water conservation (low-flow shower heads, aerators, etc.).

Mass. Power Shift is leading a rally against coal, and for renewable energy, on the south steps of the State House tomorrow, Saturday, from 3-4 p.m. 

The specific issue is a resolution in the legislature calling for the federal government to power America with 100 percent clean electricity within 10 years. Speakers will include resolution sponsors Sen. Marc Pacheco and Rep. Frank Smizik, as well as student and community environmental leaders. 

Simply put, if you haven't heard of Seth Godin, who blogs about marketing, you should check him out. I consider that a complete thought, and good content, all by itself.

But he's not really a sustainability guy ... actually, I think he is! OMG, yes he is — he's always talking about the long view, albeit in his realm of selling, rather than environmental. Yet another example of how sustainability is a very broad topic.

There are 14 recommendations in the commercial sector, a catch-all category excluding public buildings and residential buildings of less than five units.

Among them:

Establish energy performance standards for new construction and major renovations.

Improve the building code for energy requirements.

Require solar readiness for all new construction and major renovations.

There were two forks of work, an interim standard and for a demonstration project, as the governor requested in his charge to the group.

In the former:

Adopt prescriptive standards, such as optimizing building orientation or requiring solar-ready roofs.

Require advanced metering for both energy and water in new buildings or major renovations.

Require buildings to report their performance over time. 

Paul Eldrenkamp, chairman of the residential task force, introduced the recommendations saying that some people in the room will be challenged by them, and some will be threatened by the. They represent "a dramatic shift, and it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be comfortable."

Some of the recommendations: Amend the residential building code with a maximum HERS (Home Energy Rating System) rating of 70, with a "stretch" code of 50. HERS is a predictor of energy usage, and 100 represents a standard home today.

The topic is worth more than I can devote right now, but the governor's Zero Net Energy Task Force reports its recommendations this morning, one year to the day since Gov. Patrick announced his intention to form the group at last year's NESEA show.

I'm seated at the back of this year's show right now, as events get underway. I gather that it will be discussed at this plenary session this morning, but I got an embargoed copy of the report; here are the bare bones. The state should:

An earlier post from the MIT Energy Conference completely ignored Sven Thesen of Better Place, who sat on the Global Transportation panel with John Casesa and John Viera.

A presentation from Friday night that stood out for me was by Kevin Brokish, about adaptive load-leveling, which is akin to what the black box will do on the smart grid, but within that context, quite different.

For the smart grid, the box will allow communications between customer and grid, allowing, among others things, customers to set the rates they are willing to pay for the functions of each (i.e., run the dryer only overnight, when electric prices are at their lowest).