Here is a neat idea from Japan (well, I’ve seen them sprouting up everywhere here, too) – Green Curtains. The idea is to plant a living fence that shades a cool air pocket between the “curtain” and the building. Of course, vines have been growing over house walls since we started building, so this is not a new idea.

Also, check out  Patrick Blanc’s “Vertical Garden” website for a slew of cool photos of his thermic isolation system: www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com

Article & Image Source: www.livingwallart.com

Kyocera – a Japanese company – took living walls and tried to maximize their energy and cost savings through a Green Curtain. It’s a stellar idea that involves planting vines on what looks to be similar to a massive chain link fence. The fence is set just off the building which allows a cool air pocket between the living wall and the building. That air dramatically diminishes the work the company’s A/C unit has to do to cool the building.

The length of the vertical gardens in all of Kyocera Group locations are 294m (965ft), which actually covers a total area of 775m² (8,342ft²). The growth of these Green Curtains will be able to absorb roughly 2,713kg-CO2 (5981lb-CO2) per year, or roughly the same amount as 194 cedar trees.

I can’t believe how quickly the vines covered that space. Those must be some ridiculously quick growing vines.

For the energy savings of this living wall/green curtain, Kyocera found that the Green Curtains can decrease the temperature by as much as 15 degrees C (27 degrees F). That’s amazing. – Article & Image Source: www.livingwallart.com

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Here are some more cool “living walls” from around the world:

Patrick Blanc’s “Vertical Garden” at the CaixaForum, Madrid – a new cultural center.
See more of Patrick’s work at: www.verticalgardenpatrickblanc.com

Source: www.justplants-bristol.co.uk

Oulu, a bar in Williamsburg, NYC – Source: www.inhabitat.com

Photo by Laenulfean via Flickr

Here’s an interesting article about petroleum-eating bacteria – which have been eating the naturally-occurring oil that seeps up from the ocean floor  (about 500,000 barrels of oil seeps into the gulf each year by bubbling up from cracks in the ocean floor.) So nature already has a remedy to oil spills – since they already occur naturally. That’s not to say our drilling efforts shouldn’t be carefully monitored and include safety measures, but it’s good to know we have mother nature on our cleanup crew!

Study: Petroleum-eating microbes significantly reduced gulf oil plume

By David Brown | Tuesday, August 24, 2010 | Source: Washington Post

The Gulf of Mexico ecosystem was ready and waiting for something like the Deepwater Horizon blowout, and seems to have made the most of it, a new scientific study suggests.

Petroleum-eating bacteria – which had dined for eons on oil seeping naturally through the sea floor – proliferated in the cloud of oil that drifted underwater for months after the April 20 accident. They not only outcompeted fellow microbes, they each ramped up their own internal metabolic machinery to digest the oil as efficiently as possible.

The result was a nature-made cleanup crew capable of reducing the amount of oil in the undersea “plume” by half about every three days, according to research published online Tuesday by the journal Science.

Read the rest of this entry »

And that my friends is why the chicken crossed  the road. Now you know!!!

Chevrolet Volt

Here is an article about electric cars from the Daily Herald by Marni Pyke. Maybe nobody will kill the electric car this time.

I love how my Tesla goes from 0 to 60 mph in less than 4 seconds. All right, technically, it’s not my Tesla since it costs $109,000, but it was for 15 minutes Friday.

I had a chance to test-drive the all-electric car, courtesy of Tesla Store Chicago. The two-seater sports roadster resembles a vintage Porsche with one big exception – it runs on a 990-pound battery with a 245-mile range per charge.

It’s an odd experience driving a car with a single-speed gearbox, meaning you don’t feel the gears shifting, but it’s easy to get used to. The Tesla has a regenerative brake system that kicks in when you ease off the accelerator, which slows down the vehicle eliminating the need for excessive pumping.

And the 0 to 60 feature? As good as a roller coaster.

Tesla’s coming out with a sedan priced around $50,000 in 2012 with similar features – I can just see the acceleration factor coming into play at the mall parking lot.

Typical buyers range from collectors to sports car fanatics to people who want an alternate fuel vehicle, Tesla Store Chicago General Manager Dustin Krause said.

And speaking of green cars, General Motors announced this week the Chevrolet Volt – its much-awaited electric car – goes on sale this fall with a $41,000 base price.

The four-door Volt, runs on electricity for up to 40 miles when a gas generator kicks in, powering the battery for another 300 miles.

Consumers can cut the cost with a $7,500 federal tax credit, which also applies to the Volt’s competitor, the $32,780 Nissan Leaf, set to debut in December and the Tesla. Both GM and Nissan offer $350-a-month leases.

But Illinoisans shouldn’t expect to drive off with a Volt in 2010. The car won’t be sold here for at least 12 months.

And what about the vast majority of us, who want to drive green but don’t have the cash for a $41,000 car?

Argonne National Laboratory’s Don Hillebrand, a mechanical engineer, has got some picks.

For starters, he recommends looking at diesel vehicles manufactured by the likes of Volkswagen, Audi, BMW and Mercedes-Benz. The Volkswagen Golf two-door hatchback starts at $17,620, for example, and gets 22 mpg city/30 mpg highway.

To figure out the fuel economy of a diesel engines, “take whatever vehicle you have and add 30 percent,” said Hillebrand, Argonne Center for Transportation Research director and a former Chrysler research manager.

Then, there are hybrids. Hillebrand likes the Toyota Prius.

“As hybrids go, it’s still a generation ahead,” he said.

But other hybrids he recommends include the Ford Fusion, which starts at $19,695, and the Honda Insight.

When choosing an alternate fuel vehicle, “it all comes down to what you do,” Hillebrand said. “If you live in Peoria and commute, get a diesel. If you live in the city and commute within the city, buy a Prius. And if you’ve got a set commute with not many places to go and a garage to charge a vehicle – you might want an electric vehicle.”

If you’re looking for more advice on green cars, check out the website chicagocleancities.org.

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