Sustainability (18)

With the passage of Georgia’s Constitutional Amendment 4 on November 2, 2010, the State of Georgia took a major step forward for energy efficiency in state facilities via Guaranteed Energy Savings Performance Contracting (ESPC).   Georgia taxpayers and citizens will see the following potential benefits:

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Natural Body Spa and Shop was recently named the recipient of the 2010 Stevie Award for Women in Business' ‘Environmental Stewardship Program of the Year.’  The Stevie Awards selection committee, comprised of business advisors and entrepreneurs, based their decision on Natural Body Spa’s significant and innovative organization of environmental resources and stewardship. 

I love the holiday season with its festive spirit. We shop for holiday gifts for our loved ones, and ring in the New Year with hope for a better year to come. What could be more fun? Unfortunately, it is one of the least kindest seasons of the year to Mother Earth.

By Wayne Robertson of Energy Ace and featured in the AIA Georgia Design Awards magazine.

Energy Ace, Inc., is a full-service sustainability consulting firm specializing in green building, energy conservation, and environmental stewardship.  When it came time to move to new space, the Energy Ace group felt we should “practice what we preach” and develop the greenest office space we could and do it in a way that would exemplify our slogan “Green Made SimpleTM.”

There are more than 650,000 Web pages about LEED and the LEED certification process, according to Google. Many days, you probably feel like you have to comb through them all for the advice you're looking for.

This month I want to persuade you to buy a car. It’s a compact sedan with a small trunk, good gas economy although the performance is nothing to write home about. Not a great start I hear you cry. And it gets worse. I am going to charge you several thousand dollars more for this car than other highly efficient and better equipped cars on the market.

The House approved a new economic stimulus bill that could lead to thousands of dollars in "Cash for Caulkers" rebates for homeowners who renovate their homes with better insulation and energy-saving windows and doors.

The South Carolina Energy Office has received $1.7 million in stimulus funds to provide energy audits and assessments for public, non-profit and private, for-profit entities, helping them identify ways to operate with greater energy efficiency.

“Experience is the best teacher,” someone (probably Adam) once said. For LEED projects, that maxim holds especially true because ours is a new field without a long history of accepted wisdom, rules of thumb, tricks of the trade, or other well-documented and long-held truths from which the practitioner can learn.