Energy Challenge « Colorado Green Building Post

January 28, 2010

Engaging the Community in Energy Conservation with Zerofootprint

Filed under: Events — Tags: Energy Challenge, Zerofootprint — uswx @ 8:56 am

Boulder and Boulder County have partnered with Zerofootprint, a Toronto-based organization, that helps cities and individuals track, compare and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Zerofootprint’s ClimateSmart online carbon calculator and other tools can help you determine your own carbon footprint, and understand steps to reduce your score into the future. The tool permits groups and organizations to aggregate their efforts to participate in carbon reduction challenges, so business, schools and cities can compare their efforts to other groups.

You don’t have to be a Boulder resident to use Zerofootprint’s Personal Carbon Manager. They offer a range of tools for individuals and business, including a One Minute Calculator and Calculator Widget. There are also calculators and educational materials for children, youth and schools.

Commerical Retrofit Technology
Zerofootprint also sponsors the ZEROprize and the Re-Skinning Award to stimulate “market-disrupting” improvements in the design and development of retrofitting and re- skinning technologies (They use the term re-skinning as a shorthand for a holistic retrofit). These are the newly evolving technologies and building systems that improve the energy efficiency, sustainability, and livability of older buildings.

Energy management
Zerofootprint also developed a web-based software for large, multi-location organizations who must measure, manage, and report their environmental footprint. VELO facilitates data integration across operations while also automating the measurement, monitoring and modeling of an organization’s carbon emissions.

They have recently announced the TalkingPlug, a smart electrical outlet that contains energy measurement instruments, on-off relays, appliance identification tags, and wireless networking technology. The TalkingPlug outlet serves as a wireless communication node on a building energy network. These nodes continuously send appliance-specific energy consumption data to a local gateway for data collection and storage. Zerofootprint is currently working with utility companies, appliance manufacturers and technology resellers to bring the product to market.

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November 23, 2009

Charlotte’s Neighborhood Challenge

Filed under: Climate Change, Events — Tags: Carbon Footprint, Energy Challenge, Energy Efficiency — uswx @ 10:33 am

By Jim Morrill, The Charlotte Observer

Nov. 23, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) — Want to share an electric mower with your neighbor? Plant more shade trees? Install a drinking fountain or bench at the corner bus stop to make public transit a little more appealing?

Those are some of the ideas that city officials say could come out of a Neighborhood Energy Challenge designed to save energy and reduce the city’s carbon footprint.

The program is one piece of a $6.5 million conservation plan that the Charlotte City Council is expected to vote on tonight. If passed, it would go to the U.S. Department of Energy for approval. The money would come from federal stimulus funds.

The plan, developed after two public hearings, is made up of 18 separate proposals. Some would allow improvements in energy efficiency to homes and other buildings or install energy-efficient lighting in public parking areas. One would put 15 recycling containers on uptown streets. Another would pay for up to 10 charging stations around town for electric vehicles.

City officials estimate that the plan could save $2.5 million a year while creating up to 147 jobs.

“For the most part it’s something that’s very meritorious, primarily because it’s looking for ways we can save money,” said Republican council member Edwin Peacock, who chairs the council’s Environment Committee.

One proposal that got a lot of interest at the public hearings was the Neighborhood Energy Challenge.

If the overall plan is approved by council and federal officials, the city would split $650,000 among five neighborhoods. Tom Warshauer, the city staffer who would oversee the program, said details have to be worked out but that neighborhoods would compete to come up with plans that would save energy at the neighborhood level while rippling down to individuals.

“When people sort of know what their neighborhoods are doing it’s a really positive motivator for them to change their own energy consumption patterns,” he said.

Warshauer said the city would encourage neighborhoods to come up with a variety of strategies, whether in recycling, neighborhood lighting or by encouraging people to use more energy-saving technologies at home.

“The more multifaceted the strategy probably the better,” Warshauer said. “What you’re really trying to do through this is help more neighborhoods help more people develop strategies to reduce their carbon footprint and reduce energy.”

Outgoing Mayor Pat McCrory said he supports the conservation plan, even if it does have a lot of moving parts.

“When you ask for feedback and get feedback from everyone — it’s kind of the way the stimulus package is going — it’s a lot of little things,” he said. “The main thing I’m looking for is sustainability. Long-term value not short-term fixes.”

Jim Morrill: 704-358-5059

Newstex ID: KRTB-0038-39935516

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