Industrial Revolution 2

DOE: Building Energy Codes – Home

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Energy Codes Program is an information resource on national model energy codes. We work with other government agencies, state and local jurisdictions, national code organizations, and industry to promote stronger building energy codes and help states adopt, implement, and enforce those codes.

The Program recognizes that energy codes maximize energy efficiency only when they are fully embraced by users and supported through education, implementation, and enforcement.

Here’s the site.

Technorati Tags:
Construction, Building Codes, Green Building Codes

By AL GORE</ br>Published: February 27, 2010</ br>It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it. </ br>Of course, we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

via Op-Ed Contributor – We Can’t Wish Away Climate Change – NYTimes.com.

Note from IR2: Worth a look….

Boing Boing

Rethinking NIMBY: Why Wind Power Could Lead To New Ways of Defining (and Dealing With) Public Naysaying

True story: A small college in the Midwest wanted to put up a wind turbine on their campus. The school, being on top of a hill in the middle of the prairie, had enough wind to produce upwards of 3/4 of their needed electricity, so the project made good sense. But when it came time to talk to the people living nearby, the school ran into some opposition. In particular, from a farmer who thought the noise and appearance of the wind turbine would lower property values.

The punchline: He was a pig farmer.*

Here’s the article…

Technorati Tags:
Green Policy, Wind Power

I guess you can tell I’m a fan….

NYTimes.com

In Japan’s Stagnant Decade, Cautionary Tales for America

By HIROKO TABUCHI
Published: February 12, 2009

TOKYO — The Obama administration is committing huge sums of money to rescuing banks, but the veterans of Japan’s banking crisis have three words for the Americans: more money, faster.

Heizo Takenaka, seen in 2002, headed the Japanese efforts that, though resisted, exposed the full extent of bad bank loans.
The Japanese have been here before. They endured a “lost decade” of economic stagnation in the 1990s as their banks labored under crippling debt, and successive governments wasted trillions of yen on half-measures

Here’s the article…

SF Gate

(01-08) 04:00 PST Washington – –

Silicon Valley venture capitalist John Doerr, whose early investments helped launch Google and Amazon, delivered a stark warning to Congress on Wednesday that the United States is on the verge of being left behind in the green tech revolution.

Here’s the article…

Technorati Tags:
Economic Stimulus, Sustainable Economy, Sustainable Investing