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What's the Dirtiest Time of Day to Use Electricity?

Are there "dirty" hours when the California electric grid is producing a lot of CO2 per kWh, and "clean" hours with low CO2 output? It seems that midday should have lower CO2/kWh compared to other hours, if a large fraction of power across the state is generated by solar photovoltaics (PV) during these hours. Looking at data, Beyond Efficiency did in fact find a midday reduction in CO2 emissions per kWh generated for 2014 onward.

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Gardens Dig Greywater

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.

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Two Reminders of Why I Do What I Do

I recently went to two events, a LEED for Homes Rater Training in Chicago and a Passive House California conference in Palo Alto. These separate events reinforced two things that I had lost focus of in the day-to-day business of being an energy and sustainability consultant. The first is that California is so far ahead of the pack when it comes to sustainable building. So much of what people in other parts of the country struggle with is already codified in California.

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Building Carbon Zero California: Friday, November 13 in Palo Alto

Building Carbon Zero Palo Alto
  • Friday, November 13, 8:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
  • Lucie Stern Community Center, Palo Alto, California

Beyond Efficiency will be presenting Case Study: 412 Olive Avenue Office, One Year Later. Come learn about the project's challenges, successes and performance results!

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Consultant to Consultant: Six Essential Lessons from the Trenches

Beyond Efficiency will be presenting at two upcoming Passive House conferences and we hope to see you in California, Maine, or both:

9th Annual North American Passive House Conference

September 11-14, 2014
San Francisco Bay Area, California
Presenter: Katy Hollbacher, P.E.

Controls, Co-gen and Cooling: Retrocommissioning at UC Santa Cruz

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.

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