Water, Water Everywhere - April Event

 USGBC-CC and the Water, Energy, and Technology Center are pleased to present two renowned local water experts who will discuss the hot topic of California and Fresno area water supply. We will learn about how California's Water System, works and why it doesn't, as well as hear about the Fresno Metropolitan Water Resource Plan. Join us for this exciting event! 

Register for the event here today and don't miss this opportunity to learn BE informed on this hot topic! Join the USGBC-CC Chapter to stay informed here! Please also find information regarding parking near the WET Center here. 

In the mean time don't forget that every drops counts and we can all make a difference by incorporating these small habits into our daily lives. Not only do our lives depend on it, but those across the nation who depend on the food grown in our fertile Valley. 

SIMPLE WAYS TO CONSERVE WATER:

Laundry  

• Use the washing machine for full loads only to save water and energy.
• Washing dark clothes in cold water saves water and energy, and helps your clothes retain their color.
• Decrease the frequency of washing clothing, towels and sheets.

Bathroom

• Take five minute showers.
• Turn water off when brushing teeth, or shaving. When washing your hands or face, turn the water off while you lather.
• Turn the tap on low. You don't need a special faucet to decrease your flow rate, just don't turn the tap all the way on. Slightly more than a trickle is all that is usually necessary.
• Don't use the toilet as a wastebasket. Every time you flush a tissue or other piece of trash you're wasting 5 to 7 gallons.
• Turn off the water while washing your hair and save up to 150 gallons a month.
• Fill the bathtub halfway or less.
• When running a bath, plug the bathtub before turning on the water. Adjust the temperature as the tub fills.
• Take a (short) shower instead of a bath. A bathtub can use up to 70 gallons of water.
• Check faucets for leaks. A small drip from a worn faucet can waste 20 gallons of water per day.  

Kitchen

• Run the dishwasher only when full to save water and energy.
• When washing dishes by hand, don’t let the water run constantly. Turn it off while scrubbing.
• Dishwashers typically use less water than washing dishes by hand.
• If your dishwasher is new, cut back on rinsing. Newer models clean more thoroughly than older ones.
• Soak pots and pans instead of letting the water run while you scrape them clean.
• Use the garbage disposal sparingly.
• Wash your fruits and vegetables in a bowl of water instead of running water from the tap.
• Don’t use running water to thaw food. Defrost food in the refrigerator.

Outdoors

• Check your sprinkler system for leaks and broken sprinkler heads and repair them promptly. Doing so could save up to 500 gallons of water per month.
• To reduce evaporation, water your lawn during the cool parts of the day, like in the early morning or late evening, and don’t water the lawn on windy days.
• Set up your sprinklers so they're not spraying the sidewalk or driveway, and make sure to turn them off on days when rain is expected (you can get a rain sensor if you have automatic sprinklers).
• Set lawn mower blades one notch higher. Longer grass means less evaporation.
• Direct the water drain line from your air conditioner to a flower bed, tree base or onto your lawn.
• If your family wants to play with the hose or the sprinkler, make sure they do so in a dry part of the lawn that can use the water.
• If you have a pool:

• Use a pool cover - you'll save a thousand gallons of water from evaporating each month.
• Keep your pool water cool to reduce evaporation, and keep the water level low to reduce the amount of water lost to splashing.

• Check your pool for leaks often, and if you find a leak get it fixed as soon as possible 

EPA asks Americans to Join the Race to stop water leaks! 

Central Valley residents, learn about your city's current water conservation programs and find out how you can help save water: 
City of Fresno
City of Clovis 
City of Visalia
County of Madera

March Membership Madness! Save 40% Today!

Do you want to learn about the most critical sustainability issues in Central California? Do you want access to a plethora of interesting and inspiring educational forums, tours, networking events, and LEED & green building workshops? USGBC-CC membership provides you with a variety of ways to engage in green building activities in the Central Valley, an extensive network of forward-thinking professionals, and up-to-date learning opportunities. 

All membership contributions are tax deductible and go towards helping us achieve our mission to transform the way buildings and communities are designed, built and operated, enabling an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy and prosperous environment that improves quality of life. 

Join or renew until the end of March and save 40% off chapter membership! Support the chapter by becoming a member now! Enter code 2934858299123354 at sign up at http://usgbccc.org/join.

Thom Mayne's high-tech Emerson College LA campus opens in Hollywood

Thom Mayne's high-tech Emerson College LA campus opens in Hollywood

Located on Sunset Boulevard, in the heart of LA's entertainment and communications industry, the $85 million, 10-story, 107,000-sf multipurpose vertical campus takes the shape of a massive, shimmering aircraft hangar, housing a sculptural, glass-and-aluminum base building. The building’s exterior features a dynamic sun shading system that adapts to changing weather conditions to maintain optimal indoor temperature and natural light levels. Heating and cooling of the building is further optimized through an innovative passive valence system developed by Buro Happold. Additional green design initiatives include: the use of recycled and rapidly renewable building materials; installation of efficient water-saving fixtures; a high-performance glass curtain-wall to minimize heat gain; landscaping and a living green wall; and a central management infrastructure to monitor overall building efficiency. 

Anticipated to achieve a LEED Gold rating, the new center champions Emerson’s commitment to both sustainable design and community responsibility. Wrapping the building’s northwest corner, a green wall underscores the towers’ actively changing exterior skin. Connected to weather stations that track the local climate, temperature, and sun angle, the automated sunshade system opens and closes horizontal fins outside the high-performance glass curtain-wall to minimize heat gain while maximizing daylight and views.

Further green initiatives include the use of recycled and rapidly renewable building materials, installation of efficient fixtures to reduce water use by 40%, energy savings in heating and cooling through a passive valence system, and a building management and commissioning infrastructure to monitor and optimize efficiency of all systems.

For more information, read Emerson's article on the Emerson LA grand opening and the LA Times report.

Category: Project Highlight

Source: Building Design + Construction, http://www.bdcnetwork.com/thom-maynes-high-tech-emerson-college-la-campus-opens-hollywood-slideshow

Author: BD+C staff

Date of Publication: March 07, 2014

USGBC CC | Edison High School Partnership

Edison High School Students Partner Up With USGBC to Learn About Green Buildings 

USGBC-CC started 2014 off by partnering up with students from Edison High School’s Green Energy Academy to learn about green buildings.  The program, “Measuring Green Buildings”, had Architects, Engineers and Contractors actually go into the classrooms at Edison High School to provide the students with real-world learning experiences.  The experts engaged students with such diverse topics as:  construction management, commissioning energy systems, acoustical performance, “green” building materials, and architectural design strategies.  As part of the program, students had the rare opportunity to actually test the acoustical performance of one of their classrooms.  After the experience, one of the Edison students commented, “It was something new and new things are always great.  I didn’t really know much about buildings, but after this experience, I now look at buildings with different eyes.”

Green Energy Academy’s Teacher, Taylor Vizthum, expressed his excitement about the students’ keen interest in learning, "In a class of High School Seniors, during the last class of the day you typically expect the students to become ever vigilant "clock monitors", however, during this project, the guest speakers and content was so engaging, they persuaded students to remain after class because they still had questions they wanted answered."

After the educational hands-on learning experience students prepared posters that they presented at the “Green Schools Tour”, which took place at Edison High School’s new award winning building.  The tour provided another rare element of learning – networking opportunities.  This collaboration with Professionals actually working in the field is crucial for the seniors as they graduate from High School and plan their future.

“Industry partnerships are one of the key elements as we aim to prepare our students for the challenges of the 21st century, and meet the needs for better Science Technology Engineering and Math (STEM) education.  Opportunities as such bring context and relevance and help students connect to their learning.  We are grateful for having organizations like USGBC in our community, who are willing to help us connect with the industry and help better the educational experience of our students, and inspire them to pursue STEM fields”, reported Ellie Honardoost, Program Manager of the Office of College and Career Readiness at Fresno Unified.  Members of the USGBC and general public were invited to attend the event and learn about the High School’s program and building.  The event was a great success!

USGBC – Central CA Chapter would like to thank all of the volunteers from Edison High School, Architects, Engineers, and Contractors involved in the project.  A special thank you goes out to the Project Leader, Kjirsten Harpain from Darden Architects, who did an awesome job bringing experts together and working with the teacher to design the curriculum!

These programs are put on through the generous support of our Sponsors.  As a non-profit, USGBC- Central CA Chapter needs your support to educate and connect people in the Central Valley.  Sign up for sponsorship today!

New Software Calculates Environmental Impact

Tally provides AEC professionals with insight into how materials-related decisions made during design influence a building’s overall ecological footprint.

Architecture firm KieranTimberlake, in conjunction with PE International and Autodesk Sustainability Solutions, announce the commercial availability of Tally, a software application for Revit that calculates the environmental impact of building materials. Fully integrated into Revit, Tally is expected to provie architects, engineers, and building professionals with insight into how materials-related decisions made during design influence a building’s overall ecological footprint.

Backed by the rigor and credibility of GaBi data from PE International, the application enables life cycle assessment (LCA) on demand, documenting information across eight life cycle impact categories that align with LEED v4 and other rating systems.  While working in a Revit model, Tally users correlate modeled elements to a custom LCA database built on GaBi, the largest environmental dataset for LCA used by leading corporations worldwide for both internal and critically-reviewed published studies. The database combines material attributes, assembly details, engineering and architectural specifications with environmental impact data, including branded information from manufacturer environmental product declarations (EPDs).

The commercial release follows a three-month public beta, in which nearly 500 users tested Tally and provided feedback on a broad range of design scenarios.

Full article here

Category: Technology Highlight

Source: Building Design + Construction, http://www.bdcnetwork.com/meet-tally-%E2%80%93-revit-app-calculates-environmental-impact-building-materials

Author: Kieran Timberlake

Date of Publication: March 10, 2014

LEED V4

The Story of LEED: Part 3*

The latest version of LEED, LEED v4, launched in November 2013, continues the momentum in green building by increasing LEED’s technical rigor and facilitating its expansion into new market sectors, including data centers, warehouses and distribution centers, hospitality, and midrise residential structures. LEED v4 also brings an additional focus on user experience, with significant efforts put toward streamlining the LEED documentation process and developing helpful tools for project teams in LEED Online.

LEED v4 includes an entirely new section that awards points to project teams that use products and materials for which life-cycle information is available and that have environmentally, economically and socially preferable life-cycle impacts. The new credit also rewards LEED project teams for selecting products that are verified to minimize the use and generation of harmful substances. The LEED v4 approach paints a more complete picture of materials and products, enabling more informed decisions that have a greater overall benefit to the environment, human health and communities.

LEED v4’s renewed focus on material ingredient reporting and the use of sustainably harvested wood has also made USGBC and LEED the subject of new attacks from the chemical industry as well as the timber industry, which had previously come to a head in 2010 when USGBC members voted against including Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) standards in the LEED rating system (USGBC did not deem SFI rigorous enough for sustainable wood). In both cases, these entities are intent on preserving the status quo and are threatened by LEED’s recognition of environmentally friendly, healthy green building products. These groups have utilized a variety of tactics to undermine LEED, such as developing their own rating system, creating front groups and working to eliminate the use of LEED by federal and state entities.

*Full article here...and you you can also read Part 1: From a Simple Idea to a Several-Hundred-Billion-Dollar Industry and Part 2: A Green Building Explosion (2003-2009).

Category: LEED v4

Source: USGBC, http://www.usgbc.org/articles/part-3-challenges-and-opportunities-2010-present

Author: Jacob Kriss

Date of Publication: March 6, 2014

Ten Cities Get Funds to Assist Energy Efficiency Goals!

$9 Million to Help Ten Mayors Jumpstart Energy Programs

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Institute for Market Transformation (IMT) launched a new initiative to invest $9 million in energy-efficiency programs for large buildings in ten major U.S. cities. The effort is projected to cut a combined total of 5 to 7 million tons of carbon emissions annually and lower energy bills $1 billion per year.

The City Energy Project, which is funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, and the Kresge Foundation, will award a $9 million grant over the next three years to encourage energy-efficiency upgrades for existing large buildings in the following cities: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Orlando, Philadelphia, and Salt Lake City.

The program targets large cities that have set ambitious efficiency goals and have the capacity to make significant change but are currently strained for resources, according to Laurie Kerr, director of the City Energy Project. Each city will work with NRDC and IMT to develop and implement its own locally tailored program. While the goals of the program include promoting more efficient operations, encouraging private investment, modeling high performance in municipal buildings, and promoting transparency, each city may have its own focus. In a press conference, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti spoke strongly about directly spurring private enterprise to finance energy retrofits, arguing, 

In these ten cities, where buildings can account for up to 75% of carbon emissions, targeting the biggest energy hogs—large existing buildings—could go a long way toward cutting climate pollution. The amount of energy the program is expected to save is projected to be more than the electricity used by 700,000 American homes each year.

Read full article here! 

Category: Energy Efficiency Initiatives

Source: Environmental Building News, http://www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm/2014/3/3/9-Million-to-Help-Ten-Mayors-Jumpstart-Energy-Programs/

Author: Paula Melton

Date of Publication: March 3, 2014