Submitted by Jennifer Love on Sat, 04/29/2017 - 10:25
With record setting rain and snow fall the past 5 months, 75% of California is out of the drought. Still it will take years to fully recover and recharge the groundwater deficit. As Jeremy Miller outlines in the New Yorker “California’s drought may be over, but its water troubles aren’t.” Now is not the time to go back to the old ways.
Submitted by Lizzie Adams on Thu, 07/31/2014 - 06:19
As part of the year-long PG&E Retrocommissioning class, the 20 or so participants and three teachers took a two-day field trip down to UC Santa Cruz. There are three aspects that make UC Santa Cruz a retrocommissioning dream location: a) the very invested and progressive facilities staff, b) the wide variety of complex systems on-site, and c) the campus-wide system interactions. As a bonus, UC Santa Cruz also has a gorgeous campus—small clusters of buildings hidden amongst soaring redwoods and cool, misty air.
Submitted by Lizzie Adams on Tue, 11/19/2013 - 08:05
For the past four months, I've spent a day a month at the Pacific Energy Center in an intensive retrocommissioning class. For those not familiar with retrocommissioning, it's essentially a treasure hunt for poorly performing systems in existing buildings. Identifying and fixing these "poor performers" can save energy, water and resources, as well as improve comfort. And the savings can be significant- typically between 5 and 20% of operating costs depending on the facility.
Submitted by Lizzie Adams on Mon, 09/16/2013 - 11:36
What if every project we worked on committed to five things? "
This is the question I asked Katy while BARTing back from a meeting recently. The discussion that ensued was very nerdy and distracted us to the point where we ended on the wrong line. But this is what we decided on:
Submitted by katy hollbacher on Thu, 01/20/2011 - 08:27
Advanced framing (Optimal Value Engineering) is a collection of design and building methods that reduces lumber use, minimizes wood waste, and maximizes a structure’s energy efficiency. For every piece of unneeded lumber eliminated, a builder saves four times: once by not purchasing, once by not moving around, once by not installing, and once by not paying for waste cuts to be hauled away. And eliminating unnecessary wood allows more space for insulation—making buildings more energy efficient and saving money in the long run.
Our team recently completed LEED for Homes Platinum certification for The Grinnell, a 63-unit affordable housing project in Berkeley, California developed by Sa
Beyond Efficiency is highly motivated to solve the nation’s housing crisis and planet’s climate crisis through our technical work, but the traditional building consulting model isn’t going to cut...
Have you ever wondered how solar panels capture energy from the sun to produce electricity? Or perhaps you want to learn how to get the most power output of your own PV array?
We are grateful to the more than 120 respondents that took the time to complete our survey in early April and share honest insights on the impact of the global health crisis on themselves.
The built environment has a hot water distribution problem. There historically haven’t been any analytical tools available for hot water distribution systems.
Earlier this year, The New York Times published an article by Kendra Pierre-Louis called "Americans Are Staying Home More. That's Saving Energy." The article refers to a...
I am reminded every day that the old adage “The devil is in the details!” rings true in our quest for high performance building construction—as much any other endeavor.
I was lucky to be in Jackson Hole, Wyoming—virtually smack-dab on the "blue line" in the narrow path of totality—for the first coast-to-coast total solar eclipse in 99 years on August 21.
Thanks to a recent presentation by Pierre Delforge from the Natural Resources Defense Council (select sides below), the case for deploying heat pump water heaters to replace both electric and
With the passage of Assembly Bill 802 earlier in 2015, California became the first state in the nation with the mandate to provide energy use data to users so they can measure or benchmark the...
Our flights are booked and hotel is reserved for Vancouver- we can't wait and hope to see you there! The Canadian Passive House Institute (CanPHI) will host the first North American Passive...
High Performance Details For California Climates: Lessons Learned--Passive House advocates Katy Hollbacher, Bronwyn Barry and Mary James are delivering this presentation at the upcoming 2012 ACI...
Advanced framing (Optimal Value Engineering) is a collection of design and building methods that reduces lumber use, minimizes wood waste, and maximizes a structure’s energy efficiency.