Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal Musk, provides a unique outlook on the family ethos. Make no mistake, the Musk brothers are quite close. It turns out that Kimbal began “working with Elon to create Zip2 and PayPal. He also sits on the boards of Tesla, SpaceX and Chipotle.” Most recently, Kimbal has tried his own hand in building businesses including, “The Kitchen Restaurant Group and the non-profit Big Green.”
Last week, 19 mayors from around the world — from Paris to London to New York — signed a significant commitment to cut greenhouse gasses in their cities by ensuring that new buildings operate at net-zero carbon by 2030.
Green Mountain Power in Vermont says its virtual power plant system that involves up to 2,000 Tesla Powerwall residential batteries, saved it $500,000 during a recent heat wave.
Being able to anticipate a building’s carbon footprint from design to construction can make a real difference in GHG emissions.
AGU’s building — once finished — will be net zero energy, meaning it will produce as much energy as it consumes, all of it from renewable sources. The $41.7 million project has brought together dozens of technologies to meet this goal, “some of which had never been attempted in the United States.”
Patients, doctors and nurses at facilities in Escambia County, Florida, know what they’ll get when they turn on any faucet in the buildings — cold water. Yet nobody seems to mind, since the county saves about $14,000 a year by shutting off its hot water. It was John Lanza’s doing — he’s the county’s chief health officer — and it’s one of a few ideas he gleaned from My Green Doctor, a free online tool that helps medical facilities use less energy.
Want to travel in Europe and feel satisfied that you are doing your best to be eco-conscious?
The Green School in Bali is the brainchild of founder John Hardy who, in 2008 had just wrapped up a 20-year career in the jewelry industry and watched Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth which, in John’s words to us over dinner, “ruined his life” as it demanded action on his part.
As an addendum to our earlier article on passive solar house design basics, I thought that it would be worth providing an overview of some of the possibilities when it comes to the design of attached passive solar greenhouses and/or solariums.
Lyft has announced it will spend millions to purchase carbon credits to offset its carbon emissions worldwide. It will also invest in carbon reduction programs in the industry.
