Though I’d rather the coastline remain unspoiled, this is an interesting idea for a resort in Montenegro that incorporates green roofing to the extreme. MVRDV, a Netherlands-based architecture and urban design practice company, has offered us a peek at their new design plans for a luxury holiday resort for Aston Martin. The project, named “Galije,” (which I believe means “ship”), is to blend into the natural landscape of the coastline  – according to MVRDV, it should be invisible. The plan is to combine exclusivity with sustainability, preserving the rough beauty of Montenegro’s undeveloped coastline.  It brings to mind a “hobbit hotel,” I’ve always loved the idea of hobbit houses.  The resort would contain 115 apartments, 87 hotel rooms, a restaurant, a pool, a parking lot and retail space.

An interesting idea… it will be neat to see this project progress.

My development Partner, Kurt Whitt of Planet Media, has teamed up with Erin Behrenhausen in a great new green website project, www.milehigreen.com. This website is a great resource for original articles providing information to metro Denver residents about ways to green Colorado and the planet.

This month: read about How to go Solar for FREE »

Interesting, Excel Energy is taking a hybrid solar-coal approach using parabolic-trough solar technology to provide heat to produce supplemental steam for power generation at their new Cameo Station Unit 2. The benefits:

• decrease the overall consumption of coal,
• reduce emissions from the plant,
• improve plant efficiency,
• test commercial viability of concentrating solar integration, and
• increase the opportunity for cost-effective renewable power generation.

Energy Firm Pairs Solar With Coal in Colorado

GetSolar Staff. 01, July. 2010 – Source»

Xcel Energy of Minneapolis said on Wednesday that it is demonstrating a unique, first of its kind solar hybrid power plant at its Cameo Generating Station in Grand Junction, Colorado. The plant uses a combination of burning coal and parabolic-trough solar mirrors, which focus the sun’s heat to reduce the amount of coal energy needed to turn water to steam.

The company is trying to create a solar solution that can be integrated with existing coal power plants to improve their efficiency and lower their emissions. In a conventional coal plant, burning coal boils water, which turns steam turbines to generate electricity. Xcel’s mirrors reduce the amount of coal needed to create the steam.

In many ways, Xcel’s technology is similar to that used in solar hot water and solar heating systems, which transform the sun’s rays directly into heat rather than converting it to electricity.

“If this project produces the successful results we expect, this type of solar thermal integration will help move the use of solar energy one step closer to being a potential technology for improving the environmental performance of coal-fired power plants for Xcel Energy and for utilities around the country,” said Kent Larson, Xcel Energy’s vice president and chief energy supply officer.

Here is a good article about how websites are green:

Greening Your Website Can Help Green Your Business
Source: Coopweb, April 6, 2010

On April 22nd, our planet celebrates its 40th Earth Day. I am a strong proponent that it’s the little changes that can help make big change in our businesses and ultimately our lives.

Listed below are some small changes to make that can help save our environment and it is all via our websites – so it is super easy to implement.:

* Use Your Website As Your Company’s Brochure – save a tree and your wallet. Your customers will become accustomed to viewing your site online and getting the most up-to-date information as it can be updated on the fly.

* Offer Your Catalog Online Only – imagine if Amazon printed out their online catalog. My gosh! It would never be current and it would weigh more than my dog, Cousteau (150 lbs). This would enable you to have an even larger offering of products, while keeping your inventory up-to-date.

* Use Online Marketing – as a primary source to get your message out. The advantages of this are saved money, saved environment and you can view the open rates and statistics to see true effectiveness of your campaigns.

* Use Social Media – Twitter and Facebook can offer you some quick information updates to your customers that nothing else can beat in terms of ROI. 140 characters can turn your new product viral. Take advantage of this and save some hard earned money.

* Blog – Internet Karma – that’s what blogging truly is. Give. Give your knowledge, give your information, give your expertise and watch your returns. Your information will be more valuable than any brochure spouting your amazing talents. It’s a wonderful, green and generous way to get the word out about your business.

* EFax – we use this service, but there are others out there. Use your email box to get faxes. It is a super paper saver and uses less energy having one less business appliance.

* Utilize YouTube – it’s free, it’s fab and even sometimes viral. Get a free YouTube account and post your business videos, link to your website, send out links via Twitter and Facebook – and you will get the word out.

* Produce Quotes, Invoices, and Checklists Right On Your Website – On our tools tab on our website, we offer online quotes, invoices and checklists for you to use. One of the ways we would waste the most amount of paper is by producing a quote. Our quotes usually ranged from 7 to 35 pages. Eek! And, of course a meeting would mean creating duplicates. It saves money and time for everyone.

* Use Skype – need to conduct a meeting? Why not do it over Skype? Everyone can meet from their own office, thus reducing transportation costs. Especially awesome for long-distance meetings.

* Offer Newsletters and Annual Reports Online Only – this one is a pet peeve of mine. We donate to a lot of organizations every month. (See our list of charities) So many non-profits send us their Annual Report and Newsletter via snail mail! My gosh! Do I really want our donation to go to paying for all that printing and postage? Not really. I would prefer that what we donated would go to the people that we are trying to help out. That is one of the reasons I chose CASA as our Charity of the Month for April. They sent me a postcard last month asking me to view their newsletter online. They are saving the money from printing, thus making sure that the children that they support get the benefits of the donations we make.

There are so many small ways we can make a big difference on our environment – our beautiful planet. Please make a commitment to green your business in one way this year. You will feel good about it and maybe even save a little green while you’re at it.

Please share your website green ideas below in our comments.

Volunteers Needed

Neighborhood Energy Blitz

Saturday, April 24, 2010

8:30 a.m. – Noon

City Park West, City Park

South, Bellevue-Hale, Mayfair

& Hilltop neighborhoods

On April 24, 2010, 5 neighborhoods – City Park West, City Park South, Bellevue-Hale, Mayfair and Hilltop – will partner with Greenprint Denver to bring energy efficiency services and weatherization upgrades to their community. Volunteers will go door-to-door to offer residents a free CFL porch light bulb, free curbside recycling registration, junk mail reduction, income-qualifying weatherization services, and sign-up for Xcel’s Windsource program or subsidized home energy audits.

If you’d like to volunteer, send your name and email address to greenprint@denvergov.org. We’ll send you all the information you need including training location.

Denver Ranks 4th of U.S. Cities with ENERGY STAR Buildings

April’s Green Tip: Mile High Million
Source: http://www.denvergov.org

In an effort to reduce residential energy costs and provide job training for military veterans, The Mile High Million has teamed up with Veterans Green Jobs to plant trees across Denver. Funded as part a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, the City’s Greenprint Denver programs will strategically plant 4,600 trees. The 2-3 year program will target 35 neighborhoods with less than 18% canopy coverage, including the Washington Virginia Vale, Windsor, and Lowry neighborhoods in District 5.

Trees will be strategically planted in front yards on the west side of homes to provide optimal shade for cooling homes in the summer. Residents in eligible neighborhoods will receive information about the program by mail and via door-to-door canvassing. Trees will be planted only with prior approval from the homeowner, which includes a commitment to provide ongoing care.

For more details about this program, please contact The Mile High Million at (720) 913-0620, or at million.trees@denvergov.org.

Check out the new Water Week website that I designed with my programming partner,  Planet Media. The website was designed for the documentary film, Tapped, in their recognition of World Water Week 2010. Check out the site – complete with Flash animation, video clips from the film, and great articles written by environmentalists for each day this week: www.tappedthefilm.com

You can also take the water bottle pledge to reduce your water bottle use here:
http://www.tappedthefilm.com/Take-The-Water-Bottle-Pledge.php

Putting solar gardens in communities is an interesting idea to help neighbors share in the initial cost of solar panels, and the benefit of their ongoing use, while reducing the strain on our power grid. An interesting idea –  I would suggest that these “solar gardens” be added to existing parking lots using solar trees rather than install on open space. Read on:

Collectively-owned solar projects may get new tax credit.

Have you ever heard our U.S. states referred to as “laboratories of democracy”? It’s a metaphor that political scientists and occasionally policymakers like to use to describe the situation created in federal systems whereby states “experiment” with policies and provide signals and feedback to the federal government about the viability, desirability and effectiveness of said policies. Well that is sort of what’s happening in the case of the community solar gardens idea. Except in this case, the federal government might even take the experiment out of the democracy lab in Colorado before that state hasn’t even had time to pass it, let alone study its impacts and effectiveness.

With U.S. Senator from Colorado Mark Udall Wednesday unveiling the SUN Act, a bill that would extend solar incentives to group-owned solar installations, the community solar garden concept has gone from relative obscurity into legislative darling in just a matter of months.

Taken at its most basic level, the new rules would open up solar investing to way more people than ever before. People who previously thought they could not own solar panels (or a portion of them) because they live in an apartment, condominium or do not have a viable solar resource.  And that increased access to the tax benefit is a good thing.

But left unchecked,  the proliferation of community solar gardens could also contribute to ‘energy sprawl.’ Tom Konrad explains the problem (with the Colorado bill) at Clean Energy Wonk:

“My greatest concern with the bill is not that it will cause a move towards large installations, but that it will lead to more ground-mounted installations taking up open space, contributing to Energy Sprawl. No matter what you think about the economics of photovoltaics, one advantage that they have over almost every other type of electricity generation (both fossil and renewable) is that they can be placed on otherwise unused rooftops and other structures, giving a use to otherwise wasted space. Only energy efficiency and conservation have less physical impact on the environment than rooftop solar…”

“Any law which makes solar more likely to be ground-mounted than rooftop is a step in the wrong direction. I think the bill should be amended to prohibit CSGs from being ground-mounted, effectively limiting them to large rooftops and other structures such as awnings for parking lots.”

This strikes me as perhaps one of the reasons Udall has opted to restrict the tax benefit to homeowners, not renters, which is not the case in the Colorado bill where renters could still take advantage of the incentive as long as they could substantiate a connection between their property and the shared solar array. People would then essentially own shares in the installation, shares that the Colorado bill would allow you to sell should you move out of the utility’s coverage area.

What do you think? Should Community Solar Gardens be open to not just owners but also renters or would that open up a whole new can of worms that our federalist laboratories of democracy might have trouble sorting out.

Early Registration for Bike Share Program Has Begun