Brown on Green

CRES seeks proposals for Denver Sustainability Park

By Jerry Brown
BrownOnGreen.Net

The Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES) is requesting letters of interest from organizations interested in developing projects or programs for a “sustainability park” to be built near downtown Denver. The letters are due by December 14.

CRES and the Denver Housing Authority are partnering to develop Denver Sustainability Park on a 2.7-acre site at 2500 Lawrence Street, five blocks west of Coors Field.

The park “is a first-of-its-kind demonstration and testing site for a full spectrum of sustainable technologies and strategies,” CRES said. It also will include an outdoor commons area serving as an open-air classroom and venue for community and cultural events.

“Denver’s Sustainability Park will be a place to showcase and demonstrate established and emerging earth-friendly strategies,” CRES added. “It will serve as a hands-on learning laboratory for students, developers, green industry professionals, municipal leaders and the public at large.”

CRES said proposed projects or programs should include at least one of five elements: renewable energy, green building, urban agriculture and sustainable site development, community outreach and education, or transportation. The proposals can include established technologies or “emerging or nontraditional ideas.”

The proposals will be evaluated by a committee of renewable energy and green-building experts, design professionals, community stakeholders and representatives from CRES and the Denver Housing Authority.

The letters of interest should include a brief description of the project or program, space requirements including any special siting requirements and an explanation of how it will enrich the sustainability park’s mission of “advancing a holistic model for developing health sustainable communities,” CRES said.

CRES said it “understands that all information submitted may not be 100% firm and accurate. At this stage, specifications or other information regarding your proposal are not meant to be binding contractual commitments.”

CRES said it expects visitors to the sustainability park to number “in the tens of thousands” annually. “With strategic involvement in events like the World Renewable Energy Forum coming to Denver in May 2012, and the Annual Green Route Festival, the park and its supporting partners and exhibitors will get local, national and international exposure,” CRES said.

Letters of interest and questions should be submitted to DJ Cardi, program manager, Colorado Renewable Energy Society, 3245 Eliot Street, Denver, CO 80211. He can be reached at 303-882-5300 | d.cardi@cres-energy.org.

Simple Stove Improves Human Health, Environment

By Jerry Brown
BrownOnGreen.Net

A simple $25 cook stove developed by Colorado State University is improving human health and the environment in parts of the Third World.

The stoves were designed and developed at CSU’s Engines & Energy Conversion Laboratory (EECL). It’s located in a building near the main campus that used to be the home of Fort Collins’ main power plant.

In parts of India, Africa, Asia and South America, families cook their meals over fire pits or rudimentary wood-burning stoves.

“It’s a huge human health problem,” Dr. Morgan DeFoort, EECL co-director, said during a recent interview at the lab. “It’s also a huge environmental problem.”

“We now have easily half a billion people who desperately need a cook stove,” DeFoort added.

To address the problem, DeFoort said, EECL developed a simple but durable and efficient stove that fits the cooking style of families throughout the Third World.

The stoves are marketed and sold by Envirofit International, a nonprofit spinoff of the lab. Envirofit currently sells about 10,000 stoves a month -- more than a quarter million in all.

“So we now have lots and lots of people breathing cleaner air, families breathing cleaner air, because of this device,” DeFoort said.

Health improvements aren’t the only benefit, though. There’s also an environmental benefit.

“We have deforestation and unsustainable harvesting of wood that’s leading to global impacts on greenhouse gas emissions,” DeFoort said.

EECL focuses on “large, global problems around energy and combustion where we can have an impact,” DeFoort said. “Cook stoves is certainly one of those areas.”

The stove developed by the lab reduces fuel consumption by about 50 percent and reduces harmful emissions by 50 to 70 percent, DeFoort said.

 

Business-based path to sustainability without the histrionics

By Jerry Brown
BrownOnGreen.Net

One of the things I like about the annual Sustainability Opportunities Summit in Denver is its business-based focus on protecting and improving the environment without the histrionics that seem to dominate so much of our political discussion of these issues.

I recently attended my second Sustainability Summit, co-sponsored by CORE and the Deming Center For Entrepreneurship, CU-Boulder Leeds School of Business. Like last year’s summit, this year’s version featured presentations and dialogue about why sustainability is the smart thing for businesses to do -- not just the right thing to do.

Saving energy saves money. Increasing efficiency increases profitability. Well-designed green buildings increase employee morale and productivity. And so on.

“There are two critical goals with this summit for CORE,” said Pete Dignan, CORE’s new executive director. “One is awareness raising. We try to attract folks who are perhaps new to business sustainability, haven’t been very involved yet in this issue. And the second goal is really education. This is an opportunity to learn what’s going on in terms of best practices, what some of the newest thinking might be. And, in fact, what are some of the ways people have failed that have provided some insight or education about how to be more successful in the future with their sustainability.”

The two major keynote speakers -- Auden Schendler, vice president of sustainability for Aspen Skiing Company, and L. Hunter Lovins, president and founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions -- both encouraged companies thinking about making their operations greener and more sustainable to just do it. And to take credit for it even if they know they could be doing more than they are.

“Corporations seem to be scared to talk about the good things they’re doing,” Schendler said. “And they’re scared because they don’t want to be accused of greenwashing.”

“Let’s say you were promoting the hell out of your company and it was pure greenwashing,” Schendler added. “You weren’t doing anything. All you were doing was giving a little money to charity. Just by doing that, you’ve created incentive to change.”

Or, as Lovins put it:  “All you have to do is start. Even greenwashing is good. As I say, hypocrisy is the first step to real change.”

 

Chief Evangelist in the Church of Sustainable Living

By Jerry Brown
BrownOnGreen.Net

In the Church of Sustainable Living & Saving Energy, Steve Stevens would surely qualify as Evangelist in Chief.  He preaches sustainability, conservation and frugality – and practices what he preaches.

Retired after a 35-year career at Bell Labs, Stevens has almost single-handedly turned his modest house in Golden, Colorado, from a typical suburban dwelling into a building that produces more energy than it consumes.

He’s added enough insulation – it’s shoulder high – to his attic to give it an R100 rating.  He’s adding enough insulation to his exterior walls – 8½ inches – to give them an R60 rating.  And he dug up much of the foundation of his house and added R29 worth of insulation to the outside of his foundation before filling it back in.

Stevens uses solar energy for most of the heat and electricity in his modest suburban home – in the form of 48 photovoltaic panels on his roof capable of producing 9,920 watts of electricity and a once-rotting south-facing deck he’s converted into a sun room he calls his “solar furnace.”

He says his solar furnace and the “super insulation” he’s adding to the walls, attic and foundation of his house eventually will let him get rid of the high-efficiency gas furnace in his basement.

“I won’t need a furnace anymore,” he says.  That’s a pretty bold statement for someone living in a community where below-freezing temperatures are common at least six months out of the year and below-zero temperatures can linger for days at a time.

I have no doubt he’ll succeed and his furnace will show up on Craig’s List someday.  It’ll be like one of those pristine used cars that some little old lady just drove to church and the grocery store for 10 years.

Stevens is an active participant in the Colorado Renewable Energy Society (CRES) was named CRES’s volunteer of the year for 2010.  He helped plan this year’s Denver solar-homes tour for CRES and his house was on the tour.

So, I showed up at his house expecting to have him show off the solar panels on his roof and tell me how much money he’s saving bypassing Xcel Energy.

We eventually got to the solar panels.  But they were pretty much an afterthought in my tour.  Stevens wanted to show off the other things he’s doing to his house.

What I experienced over the next 90 minutes felt like a combination of watching a proud papa show off his family and sitting in the classroom of a teacher who’s so excited about what he’s teaching that you get excited about it, too.

What Stevens is doing to his house is impressive.  What’s makes it even more impressive is that he’s doing most of it on the cheap.

“The American dinner table generally has a dog underneath to eat the scraps that fall off,” he says.  “I’m the dog on the American construction dinner table.  I’m down there as things get thrown off the edge. I see what use I can put them to.”

For example, he used glass from discarded patio doors – purchased for $15 apiece from Habitat for Humanity – for the south-facing windows in his “solar furnace.”  Most of the lumber he uses is cull lumber he buys from Lowe’s at 75 to 80 percent off.  And he has light fixtures throughout his house that he bought from Habitat for Humanity for next to nothing.  He uses 1-, 1½- and 2-watt LED bulbs in many of the light fixtures.

You’ll see some of what I saw if you watch the video accompanying this article.  But there was more.  Much more.

Oil and “green” do mix, author Peter Fusaro tells CORE audience

By Jerry Brown
BrownOnGreen.Net

Oil and water may not mix.  But oil and “green” do, author and energy consultant Peter Fusaro told a Denver audience today.

At a forum organized by CORE, Fusaro said:

•    “Green” will be so mainstream in 10 years that we won’t call it green any more.
•    There’s never been a better time than today to be in the oil and gas business.
•    We’ll be using fossil fuels for many decades to come.

I spoke with Fusaro for a few minutes after his presentation.  We started the conversation with me asking him how he ties those three ideas together.

His answer is on the video accompanying this article.

Douglas County wants citizen input on sustainability

By Jerry Brown
BrownonGreen.Net

Douglas County is looking for ideas from its citizens for maintaining the county’s economic, community and environmental sustainability.

The input will be used by the county’s Sustainability Initiative Advisory Committee (SIAC) to develop a sustainability vision and objectives for the county, said Elizabeth Kay Marchetti, a senior planner with the Douglas County Planning Services Division.  Kay Marchetti described the effort recently at a meeting of the South Metro Denver Chamber of Commerce’s Renewable Energy Task Force.

The SIAC includes nine Douglas County residents and business owners appointed by the county manager; the heads of the county’s Economic Development, Human Resources and Open Space and Natural Resources departments; and three representatives from Douglas County Green Partners, a subcommittee of the Partnership of Douglas County Governments.  The Green Partners representatives are from the Town of Castle Rock, the Town of Parker and the Douglas County School District.

The advisory committee is expected to complete its work by late summer or early fall, Kay Marchetti said.  Once it’s done, she added, a sustainability working group will review the vision and objectives and develop “the most cost effective programs and collaborative efforts that should be recommended to the county manager.”

The county is soliciting ideas from the public and recruiting members for the working group at a series of “listening and recruiting” meetings this week and next.

Turnout at the meetings held so far has been light, Kay Marchetti said, “but we’re getting great ideas.  The people who are coming understand the subject.  We’re asking them to identify what sustainability means to them and their household, what the components of an economically sustainable community and household are for them.”

Schedule of Listening and Recruiting Tour meetings:

Wednesday, May 26
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Larkspur Elementary
1103 West Perry Park Avenue

Thursday, May 27
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Highlands Ranch Library
9292 Ridgeline Boulevard

Wednesday, June 2
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Parker Library
10851 South Crossroads Drive

Thursday, June 3
6:30-8:30 p.m.
Roxborough Primary School
8000 Village Circle West

Saturday, June 5
2-4 p.m.
Philip S. Miller Library
100 South Wilcox Street, Castle Rock

County residents also can submit ideas through a county sustainability blog at http://blogs.douglas.co.us/sustainability.