Appraisal Podcasts

Company Tops EPA Green Power Partner List, Vows to Drive for Greater Efficiency While Spurring Growth in Renewable Market

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Jan. 28, 2008 – Intel Corporation said today it will purchase more than 1.3 billion kilowatt hours a year of renewable energy certificates as part of a multi-faceted approach to reduce its impact on the environment, making Intel the single-largest corporate purchaser of green power in the United States, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The company said it hoped the record-setting purchase would help stimulate the market for green power, which should lead to additional generating capacity and ultimately, lower costs.

The purchase placed Intel at the top of EPA’s latest Green Power Partners Top 25 list, and also at the No. 1 spot on EPA’s Fortune 500 Green Power Partners list. The EPA’s Green Power Partnership program encourages and recognizes voluntary green power purchases as a way to reduce the impact of conventional electricity use.

“EPA applauds our Fortune 500 partners for protecting our environment by purchasing green power,” said EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. “By voluntarily shifting to renewable energy, Intel is proving you don’t need to wait for a signal in order to go green.”

“We have a long history of commitment to the environment and energy efficiency is an important consideration in everything we do, from building transistors to designing microprocessors and running our factories,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini, who is also a member of the Copenhagen Climate Council, a global group of leaders working to achieve an effective global climate treaty at next year’s UN Environmental Summit in Copenhagen. “Our renewable purchase is just one part of a multi-faceted approach to protect the environment, and one that we hope spurs additional development and demand for renewable energy.”

Renewable Energy Certificates
Renewable energy certificates, or RECs, are the “currency” of the renewable energy market and are widely recognized as a having credible and tangible environmental benefits. The EPA estimates that Intel’s REC purchase has the equivalent environmental impact of taking more than 185,000 passenger cars off the road each year, or avoiding the amount of electricity needed to power more than 130,000 average American homes annually.

Intel’s REC purchase, which includes a portfolio of wind, solar, small hydro-electric and biomass sources, will be handled by Sterling Planet, a leading national supplier of renewable energy, energy efficiency and low-carbon solutions. The purchase will be certified by the non-profit Center for Resource Solutions’ Green-e® program which certifies and verifies green power products.

“Intel’s outstanding commitment to renewable energy provides significant support for market-based mechanisms for renewable energy technologies of all types,” said Mel Jones, Sterling Planet president and CEO. “We commend Intel for their vision and leadership in all aspects of corporate responsibility. Intel’s support for renewable energy technologies echoes its mission to deliver advancements that become essential to the way we work and live.”

Intel, EPA, and the Environment
Intel and EPA have worked together for several years on a variety of fronts, from Energy Star® to Climate Leader and Performance Track programs, to broad industry efforts such as the Climate Savers® Computing Initiative. The Agency recently recognized Intel with a 2007 Water Efficiency Leader award for its efforts to reduce, reuse and recycle water in its Chandler, Ariz. manufacturing facility. Intel was also recognized by the EPA as the most commute-friendly employer in the nation in 2006.

In addition to promoting and funding ideas for greater energy efficiency in its facilities, Intel has consistently specified high-energy-efficiency equipment in its manufacturing facilities with a view to ensuring greater energy efficiency and environmental benefit. Over the last 7 years, the company invested over $20 million in more than 250 energy conservation projects that saved in excess of 500 million kilowatt hours, enough energy to power about 50,000 U.S. homes.

To learn more, visit the press kit at www.intel.com/pressroom/kits/green/rec.

Building a Bright Green Future: Financing Home 2.0

While predatory lending practices in the mortgage industry have been getting a lot of press lately, there’s a far more positive trend within the same industry: green mortgages.

Jon Lebkowsky blogs:

“What do I know about finance? Though in these columns I focus on social media, I’m often in discussions about sustainability, and many of those focus on the built environment. I’m aware that big developers like Stratus here in Austin are completely serious about green buidling, and there are more and more LEED-certified construction projects in development, and various green building experts looking beyond LEED for better ways to ensure sustainable design and building.

Large construction projects are incentivized by the energy-efficiency ROI realized through green building practices, but how about smaller residential builders and buyers? Are there sufficient and completely clear bottom-line incentives for sustainable residential building and retrofitting? How is sustainable defined at that level?”

For a complete review of the article, jump here. 

Building a Green Buzz

Conrad van Oostrom, a Dutch entrepreneur who built his startup into the Netherlands’ most successful real estate development company, had his light bulb moment when he was invited to a breakfast on climate change with former U.S. Vice-President and environmental guru Al Gore in Amsterdam in the summer of 2006.

The future is green, decided van Oostrom, chief executive and founder of OVG, a 10-year-old Rotterdam company specializing in office buildings, with 2007 revenues of $651 million. The host of the breakfast, Peter Bakker, chief executive officer of global express delivery giant TNT (TNT.AS), came to the same conclusion.

Bakker decided to replace six of the company’s office buildings in the Netherlands—including TNT’s headquarters—with new energy-conserving buildings representing 70,000 square meters (more than 750,000 square feet) of new office space. After going out to competitive bid, in December TNT announced it had awarded the contract to OVG. One reason: OVG is harnessing technology to convert its green designs into real buildings more quickly.

For the full article, follow this link 

LEED certification’s hot topic for builders in Nashville

The city of Nashville joins a growing list of cities that are think green. All new Metro buildings over a certain size have to be more energy-efficient under a law the Metro Council passed last year, but it’s private development that is leading the way. The Metro Council passed a law last year mandating that all new Metro buildings over 5,000 square feet and $2 million in construction costs be LEED certified. LEED projects in general cost more in construction costs, but many say the investment creates savings down the line.

Existing buildings undergoing renovations that are currently over cost and size thresholds also will have to be certified. The law passed in the late spring applies to all planning and construction done after Aug. 1, 2007. While the bill applies to all Metro agencies, departments and boards, the legislation exempted the Metropolitan Board of Public Education, The Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Metropolitan Housing and Development Agency, all of which make major investments in capital projects. According to the Metropolitan Charter, those three agencies have autonomy over their own buildings.

For the complete article, follow this link.

HDR Tutorial - New and Improved for 2008!

HDR (High Dynamic  Range) photos really pop and this website has a great tutorial on how to make them.  Wikipedia describes this technique as follows:

In photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI now often called HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of expsoures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDR is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.

Not everyone is a fan of the photos but some of them, particularly night scenes can be remarkable.  Check out this link to a Flickr Page with thousands of photos.

The Best Web 2.0 Software

The overall trend: We have begun moving all our software, data, and even our social activities onto the Web en masse and the demand for high-quality online sites and applications that support this shift in primary focus from the PC to the Internet is there in vast numbers (there are now 1 billion users on the Web today).  The net result is that some of the best online applications ever have been created and you can see the results for yourself by following this link.

The Social Side of Sustainability

If you had the power to cause an evolution in your organization, what would it be? Productivity? Accountability? Responsibility? Leadership?How would you get there?

Office Building of the Future, Just Like a Tree!

This is a preview of what William McDonough (you know, Cradle to Cradle and Time’s Hero for the Planet) will be talking about this week in Abu Dhabi at the World Future Energy Summit.  Dubbed the “Tree Tower” by Building Magazine, a leading UK construction magazine, the speculative Office Building of the Future was originally just a concept for Fortune Magazine in 2006.  There is no commission for the building, but at the very least, it illustrates principles of good design for all buildings.

Ok this post is what I would refer to as narrowcasting to the extreme. I ran across a whitepaper that outlines a data storrage system that focuses on significant power reductions.

From the synopsis:

“This whitepaper explores the energy saving features of ETERNUS storage systems such as virtualization to improve capacity utilization. Fujitsu shows how its MAID (Massive Array of Idle Disks) technology enables significant reductions in power consumption.”

The whitepaper can be found here

First LEED Project Completed in Singapore

Architecture and design firm HOK’s office is the first project in the country to achieve the certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The firm earned Silver in the LEED for Commercial Interiors (LEED-CI) category for the facility’s green design. To offset greenhouse gas emissions generated from 100 percent of electrical use, the company purchased carbon credits from a China wind farm that will send clean power to a local grid.