Passive Houses: Look Ma, No furnace

Keep this out of the hands of the finance guys and gals down at the electric and gas utility, and don’t show it to your home fuel-oil supplier either.

Information like this can get your new year off to a really bad start if you’re in the business of providing what it takes to heat American homes.
Blame it on German engineering. New York Times writer Elizabeth Rosenthal tells us that architects in that country have come up with a way to make houses with “no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace. “

“Using ultrathick insulation and complex doors and windows, the architect engineers a home encased in an airtight shell, so that barely any heat escapes and barely any cold seeps in. That means a passive house can be warmed not only by the sun, but also by the heat from appliances and even from occupants’ bodies.”

It’s quite an interesting read. You’ll find it here.
Feel free to provide comments below.

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High-voltage line before NJ Highlands Council

Is Public Service Electric and Gas’s proposed Susquehanna-Roseland 500-kv Transmission Line consistent with the Highlands Plan?
The staff to the New Jersey Highlands Council doesn’t think so.

In a recent analysis, they concluded that the project would disturb numerous sensitive environmental resources, with the path of the power line crossing a special environmental zone where no development is permitted. 

Now the Council wants to hear from you.  It is soliciting public comment (until January 7) on the PSE&G proposal and may discuss the issue at its January 15 meeting.

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USGBC hires director to run growing NJ chapter

The New Jersey chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council, which has seen its membership mushroom to 770 individuals and 650 companies since it started out in 2002, has outgrown its volunteer-based member management and hired an executive director to oversee its programs and future growth.

Florence Block, who had served as president of the Morris County Chamber of Commerce, was introduced to the membership at a packed holiday gala event Monday night in Princeton.
A proud USGBC-NJ Chairman Andy Topinka told the group that Block’s appointment capped an “exhilarating” year for the state chapter which last year had set a goal of becoming the “go to” organization in the state for green building. Since then, he said, the New Jersey chapter has spoken at more than a hundred meetings, conferences and trade shows through its 50-member speakers bureau and had raised its visibility with a 30-second public service announcement broadcast on NJ Network.
Block said she was “proud and humbled” to be selected to manage such a dynamic organization in a field that promised significant energy savings and environmental benefits to the public.
In addition to her Chamber of Commerce experience, Block has a 25-year background in New Jersey corporate real estate management and office planning industries, including service as Senior Vice President of Project Management for Trammel Crow.
The USGBC is the national organization responsible for developing LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), a voluntary green building rating system establishing
criteria for sustainable buildings.
According to the organization, LEED standards addresses all building types, including new construction, commercial interiors, core and shell, operations and maintenance, homes, neighborhoods and specific applications such as retail, college campuses, schools, health care facilities, laboratories and lodging.
LEED standards are becoming familiar benchmarks in numerous “green building” bills that have been popping up in the New Jersey, Pennsylvania and New York legislatures, as well as in other states.
The association’s membership includes architects, designers, engineers, real estate developers, green materials and equipment suppliers, construction contractors and companies and individuals in many other sectors. Members attend educational and networking events throughout the year that are offered by the chapter’s three regional branches.

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Daily Kos weighs in on Jackson-EPA debate

On the day that President-elect Barack Obama will announce his selection of former NJDEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson as the next EPA Administrator, the popular liberal blog, Daily Kos (519,000 daily visitors), added its two cents to the debate over her qualifications. You can read it here.
By now, we all know that New Jersey’s mainline environmental organizations like Environment New Jersey and the Sierra Club have lined up in support of Jackson.
Governor Corzine has extolled Jackson’s personal qualifications and her record at the state DEP in a video and his endorsement has been echoed by the state’s senior Senator, Frank Lautenberg, by John McKeon, chairman of the state Assembly’s Environment and Solid Waste Committee, and others.

The griping over Jackson’s possible nomination started out with one outlying organization, The Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER), a platform for government agency whistleblowers or malcontents (based on your point of view).

PEER put out a press release attacking Jackson’s “disastrous record” which it compared to the environmental policies of the Bush EPA. In what proved to be a media coup for the relatively obscure organization, the release gained the attention of the national media and major bloggers.

It followed (by one day) highly critical comments in the Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s leading daily newspaper, by Bill Wolfe, a former employee at the DEP and PEER’s New Jersey director.

In a personal blog post, Wolfe declared that Jackson ” has proven ineffective in saying “no” to the Governor, legislators, local officials, and powerful business interests, most specifically developers, energy, chemical, and pharmaceutical industries, who have called the shots behind the scenes on big environmental policy decisions.”

Since then, others in New Jersey have chimed in, including Robert Spiegel, executive director of the Edison Wetlands Association, and Zoe Kelman, a former DEP supervising engineer. You’ll find their comments here.

Will the criticism spread and will it have any effect when Jackson’s confirmation comes before Congress?

Outside of providing Obama critics with some ammunition to make a fuss–and giving the aforementioned organizations a possible chance to testify in Washington–the likely answer is no.

What’s more likely is an organized counter-campaign to generate an avalanche of public support for Jackson’s confirmation from leading national and New Jersey figures, organizations, editorial writers, columnists and bloggers.

Have an opinion you’d like to share on all this? Please do, below.

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Two NJ environmental blogs worth a look

If you haven’t yet checked out Green Politics New Jersey and Green Jersey, you should.

Green Politics New Jersey has been exploring a variety of themes but focusing on the development of green business and technologies in New Jersey.

The blog’s editor, who modestly identifies himself only by his email address (joe@greenpoliticsnj.com), recently authored three interesting posts that explore the roles of two green business incubators–the NJ Meadowlands Business Accelerator and the Institute for Sustainable Enterprise at Fairleigh Dickinson University.

You’ll find them at:

A good place to start in exploring Jennifer Weiss’s blog, Green Jersey, are her recent posts tracking the opinions of those–for and against–the apparently imminent nomination of former NJDEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson as the next administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. You’ll find them at:

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Yesterday’s top environmental new stories

Three of the top stories that readers of our daily newsletter, EnviroPolitics, got to see yesterday were:

Meet NJ-DEP’s New Commissioner

When Gov. Jon Corzine recently announced the inside promotion of geologist and New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection lifer Mark Mauriello, 51, to head of the department, even critics conceded they couldn’t question Mauriello’s commitment to the job .



Smoke and Mirrors
The Philadelphia Inquirer chronicles the Bush Administration’s subversion of the EPA in a four-part series with an introductory video.

NY environmental wrangling driving gas firms to PA Despite falling energy prices and a faltering economy, energy companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to develop wells and infrastructure to tap the gas-rich Marcellus Shale formation in Pennsylvania. They’re not making the same investment so far in New York State where Governor David A. Paterson has ordered a review of state permit requirements in light of environmental concerns.

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To receive a copy of yesterday’s issue, containing all three stories–and more–just send a blank email to: sampleandtrial@aweber.com Write: “Sample Issue” in the subject line.

As a bonus, we’ll send you an entire month of our daily newsletters without charge.

There is absolutely no obligation on your part. We will not automatically subscribe you at the end of the month and you can cancel at any time.

Questions? Give us a call at 215-295-9339

Frank Brill
Editor@EnviroPolitics.com

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