What’s news in Green Building

Posted on by Jeff Fobes

There’s a wealth of green-building-related information flowing daily through the mountainx.com Twitter feed (the yellow box on the right side of the homepage; click the “Green Building” tab at the top to see the feed).

Here’s just a sampling of what’s come through that feed in the past month, organized here into a few basic categories. (Most of the tweets were sent by WNC Green Building Council, BuildSmart and Boone Guyton.)

Local news:

• What’s happening in Avl: Prototype House Becomes First Passive Hemcrete Home in the World http://j.mp/87YKoo
• Leave it to AVL to be 1st place in US to build not just 1, but 2 houses largely out of hemp http://bit.ly/8mxrPm
• Building with hemp: Asheville on the forefront of a new green technique – Citizen-Times http://bit.ly/087UkOq
• Great video on Warren Wilson’s INSULATE! program. Less expense..less energy waste, less pollutn http://bit.ly/79Z0ql
• Downtown Asheville businesses get into the solar scene http://bit.ly/77tzEL
• Cherokee middle school has a proposal for a large solar installation http://bit.ly/4wimHq
• Working with Conservation Pros on the Asheville Red Cross Building.  Good alliance for a complete solution!!
• Appalachian State student union gets solar thermal system http://bit.ly/7BaWzj
• Carolina Timberworks gets federal grant for training in renewable energy http://bit.ly/5vvbya
• NC Botanical Gardens to be states first LEED platinum public facility http://bit.ly/6EiuP5

General and national news:
• NYTimes exposes smartmeter reality: higher prices, few benefits, and a growing consumer revolt http://bit.ly/7QUGej
• Gentle architect Malcolm Wells dies , “leave the land no worse than you found it..” http://bit.ly/6yVHmg
• Via @taylormadeplans: you need lead-paint training certification by April if you work in pre-1978 homes http://tinyurl.com/l24v3p
• Electric water heaters as renewable energy storage ,when the grid gets smarter. http://bit.ly/8pUSAd
• Cars vs houses in energy use and carbon output .  http://bit.ly/5rd5oM
• NationalGympsum intros ThermalCORE,new phase-changing drywall store heat in day, release in night http://bit.ly/54uIHP
• Phase-change material sheetrock / thermal mass effect now in US http://bit.ly/7Hwbwp
• Micro grids as virtual power plants to start up http://bit.ly/7uZEXW
• EPA establishes green home site http://bit.ly/47ewwR

Trends:
• Green building trends for 2010 http://bit.ly/5HacWa
• Smaller homes are selling and other building news from NAHB
• Clean energy economy shifts from commodity to service,“prosumer” participates as producer not just consumer http://bit.ly/5OGRPl
• Las Vegas bets Green building to triple by 2013 http://bit.ly/5vKoRV
• A solar powered bus stop / art http://bit.ly/5muqQT
• Emerging trends in energy efficiency and renewables http://bit.ly/6gjskq
• A Look Into the Future of Sustainable Building http://ow.ly/IW5z
• More from NAHB-consumers expect Eco -conscious materials in homes http://bit.ly/5YvdvL

Basic information:
• What to look for in a green home, by the Wall Street Journal http://bit.ly/4r4YM9
• Triple zero house , zero energy, emissions and waste http://bit.ly/6LPQy2

wind, solar, geothermal, windows:
• Honeywell Wind Turbine Coming Soon! http://bit.ly/6A93oa -Small scale low wind to be sold at ACE
• Nuclear vs wind power? Check out the comments dialog after the short article http://bit.ly/81dV1f
• Another solar shingle coming to market http://bit.ly/7eYs5v
• Should you add batteries to your solar electric installation ? http://bit.ly/8jTytX
• Solar costs come down 50% by years end. http://bit.ly/7EFJ3a
• Economics of Geothermal http://ow.ly/MEGN
• Windows can preform better than walls. Some good comments. http://bit.ly/8JdBBJ
• How much of your total budget should you spend on windows? http://ow.ly/KJ88 (via @green_connect)

LEED certification:
• LEED Platinum rehab in Gerogia http://bit.ly/4w60rA
• RT @organicthink: More than 48% of all #LEED certified projects were certified this yr alone! (via @elaineishere) 
• The LEED Reference Guide for Neighborhood Development is here! http://www.usgbc.org/store (via @usgbc)

If you want to see an archive of older green building tweets, go here: http://www.mountainx.com/media/twitter/xpressville/avlgb/400 .

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About Jeff Fobes
As a long-time proponent of media for social change, my early activities included coordinating the creation of a small community FM radio station to serve a poor section of St. Louis, Mo. In the 1980s I served as the editor of the "futurist" newsletter of the U.S. Association for the Club of Rome, a professional/academic group with a global focus and a mandate to act locally. During that time, I was impressed by a journalism experiment in Mississippi, in which a newspaper reporter spent a year in a small town covering how global activities impacted local events (e.g., literacy programs in Asia drove up the price of pulpwood; soybean demand in China impacted local soybean prices). Taking a cue from the Mississippi journalism experiment, I offered to help the local Green Party in western North Carolina start its own newspaper, which published under the name Green Line. Eventually the local party turned Green Line over to me, giving Asheville-area readers an independent, locally focused news source that was driven by global concerns. Over the years the monthly grew, until it morphed into the weekly Mountain Xpress in 1994. I've been its publisher since the beginning. Mountain Xpress' mission is to promote grassroots democracy (of any political persuasion) by serving the area's most active, thoughtful readers. Consider Xpress as an experiment to see if such a media operation can promote a healthy, democratic and wise community. In addition to print, today's rapidly evolving Web technosphere offers a grand opportunity to see how an interactive global information network impacts a local community when the network includes a locally focused media outlet whose aim is promote thoughtful citizen activism. Follow me @fobes
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