energy

Fitzgerald, Joan (2010) Emerald Cities: Urban sustainability and economic development. Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.

This book seems well-researched but it was dense with data. I had trouble absorbing the flood of statistics in the narrative and found my mind wandering. I was most interested in the first chapter that talks about Freiburg, Germany, because I traveled there. Fitzgerald approaches the challenges realistically, with no rose colored glasses about how quickly we can get off fossil fuels.

Guide to Green Mortgages / Energy Efficient Mortgages

What’s a “Green Mortgage”? It is a term that many, even the most environmentally focused of us, have not heard before. And it’s not what you might think. It is not a marketing or public relations effort. It is a program backed by private and government mortgage programs designed to help you make your home more energy efficient.
Green, or “Energy efficient” mortgages, let you borrow extra money to pay for energy efficient upgrades to your current home or a new or old home that you plan to buy. The result is a more environmentally friendly living space that uses fewer resources for heating and cooling and has dramatically lower utility costs. The types of things that are covered include upgrades that you may have thought you couldn’t afford like double paned windows, tankless water heaters, modern HVAC systems, and new insulation.
At this time, Energy Efficient Mortgages aren’t second mortgages. Though they are created separately from your primary mortgage, they are ultimately rolled into your primary mortgage—so you only make only one payment per month.
Like most people these days, you probably already do your share of “green” practices like recycling and turning off the water when you brush your teeth. But you probably thought that really big things, like renovating or upgrading your home to make it more energy efficient were financially out of your reach.
Here are a few facts that will give you an idea of how upgrading your home can help save you a lot of money and reduce your home’s carbon footprint:
    •    Overall, heating and cooling accounts for 50–70% of the total energy used in the average American home.
    •    60% of the existing homes in the US are not properly insulated.
    •    Updating your home’s insulation can save you up to 20% on heating and cooling costs or up to 10% of your total yearly energy bill.
    •    According to the Department of Energy, energy loss from outdated windows accounts for nearly 25% of the annual heating and cooling costs for the average American home.
    •    Even the most basic double-paned window can reduce energy use by up to 24% in cold climates during the winter and by up to 18% in hot climates during the summer.
    •    In houses with central air and heating, about 20% of the air is lost due to faulty, outdated duct work.
    •    A new Energy Star-rated dishwasher can save you up to 13 energy (the dishwasher accounts for 2% of your gas or electric bill) and as much as 1,200 gallons of water a year.
    •    Programmable thermostats can save about 2% on heating bills and more than 3% on cooling bills. These numbers can translate into savings of up to $180 a year.
Green mortgages are a concrete way for families to both save money and make a large scale change in the way that they live their lives in regard to the environment. Green Mortgages, either as part of a mortgage refinance or added on to a new mortgage, are a smart way to pay for energy efficient features to your current house, a house that you plan to buy, or to get credit for the features that your new home already has.
Making your house more energy efficient isn’t just about helping the environment and saving you money. Energy efficient homes are cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, cost less to maintain, have lower monthly utilities costs, and generally last longer. Overall, an upgraded home is more comfortable all around. This means not having to deal with drafts in the winter, not worrying about the cost of cranking the AC when company comes over, and having peace of mind that your children, pets, and older visitors will always be in a comfortable, healthy environment.
Green Mortgages can help you do the following:
    •    Get money to invest in energy efficient upgrades for a new house.
    •    Help you to qualify for a larger mortgage to pay for a house that is already energy efficient.
    •    Qualify you for money for green renovations when refinancing a mortgage.
    •    Make older homes more comfortable and more affordable with lower utility payments.
    •    Help you to use less energy to maintain the temperatures in your home and therefore lessen you family’s footprint.
Whatever your reason for wanting to pursue this type of mortgage, the results are the same: a more comfortable, energy efficient, environmentally sound home that is cheaper to maintain and has lower monthly utility costs.
 

For more information about this tool, go to..

http://www.mortgageloan.com/environment/

Brune, Michael (2008) Coming Clean: Breaking America’s Addiction to Oil and Coal. San Francisco, CA: Sierra Club Books.

The author is the executive director of Rainforest Action Network. Each chapter includes startling facts and recommended actions you can take personally (behavior and activism). But in the end, I couldn’t get through the book, even after renewing it at the library a couple times. Something else always seemed more appealing to read. After a while, my brain goes numb from facts and angry accusations. I recognize that there is an important role activists have but I’m not one of them. It doesn’t make sense to me to blame people. For example, in the book, Blume points out that the amount of money Citi and Bank of America will spend to invest in or finance renewables is a fraction of what they have invested in traditional energy. Um, well, have you checked the mutual funds in your 401-K recently? This is a societal problem and vilifying certain organizations seems counter-productive to me. I’ll admit that sometimes they need a shot across the bow but I don’t care to be the one with the cannon.

That said, this book is well researched so there are a lot of good factoids here that (in moderation) could spice up a presentation:

• Alberta tar sands oil: to get one barrel of oil, you dig up 4 tons; it has 3x the ghg’s of conventional oil.
• US subsidies for oil: $39 billion including guarding the Alaskan pipeline and Persian Gulf (2007)
• Transportation: US spend about 1 billion on Amtrak (2003) but China is spending $16-20 billion on passenger rail. The EU allocates about 20% of their transportation budget to this; US, 2%
• Coal: American Lung Association estimates that coal plants cause 550,000 asthma attacks, 38,000 heart attacks, 12,000 hospital admissions and 24,000 premature deaths.

For those of us in the US where we still don’t have an energy policy, it’s sobering to see the investments that China, Europe, Japan and even Mexico are putting into things like high-speed rail. However, since the book was published in 2008, many of the factoids are now several years old.