LEED Professional Project Experience

USGBC Central CA Chapter is partnering with GreenStep and Green-Buildings.com on the LEED® Professional Project Experience Program, which provides LEED AP exam candidates with an opportunity to actively work on a LEED registered project, thus qualifying participants to take the LEED AP exam while gaining real-world, hands-on experience.

OBJECTIVES - Participants will: perform LEED credit calculations, evaluate credit costs, troubleshoot potential setbacks, review documentation for compliance, review Credit Interpretation Requests, and complete LEED Templates.

AUDIENCE - This course is intended for LEED AP candidates and Green Associates seeking to earn the LEED AP credential as well as Building Professionals who have some level of familiarity with the LEED Rating System who are looking to gain a thorough understanding of how to manage the LEED documentation process.

COST

MEMBERS $360

NON-MEMBERS $400

Members: Email info@usgbccc.org to receive the discount code!

Register for the Project Experience Program

This program is limited In size. Once seats are filled, candidates wishing to participate may contact Green-Buildings.com to be added to the list for future projects.

Taylor Teter Partnership Becomes GOLD Sponsor

Many thanks to Taylor Teter Partnership, LLP and Loren Aiton for their joint sponsorship of $2,500! This makes the first GOLD LEVEL SPONSORSHIP for the year! The Central California chapter relies on the support of like-minded individuals with a shared vision of creating a built environment based in sustainability and awareness, and thanks Loren and the Partners of TTP for their generous support.

If you are interested in supporting the efforts our chapter please visit our Valued Sponsor Web page to learn more or make an immediate gift here. Your tax-deductible gift to the chapter will help us to continue to promote and advance healthy, sustainable, socially responsible, and economically viable environments through collaboration, diversity, education, networking, and environmental stewardship. Your sponsorship will allow us to provide first-rate educational programs and a full range of valuable services to chapter members and the communities we serve.

Again, our thanks to TTP for vital and generous support. It is because of YOU that we do succeed!

Go Green Expo | April 15-17

USGBC Members receive a 33% discount when registering for the upcoming Go Green Expo event in Los Angeles. Use promo code USGBC for $5 off (normally $15).

Go Green Expo
April 15-17, 2011
Los Angeles Convention Center - South Hall G
1201 South Figueroa Street, Los Angeles, CA 90015

Go Green Expo is one of the largest eco-friendly showcases in Los Angeles with hundreds of exhibits for eco-minded consumers & businesses. Learn from keynote presentations and panels from environmental leaders such as Captain Paul Watson of Whale Wars, Ed Begley Jr., Eric Cory Freed, Mariel Hemingway & dozens of others! See the latest eco-friendly options for the home & office, green health & beauty, pet and baby products, enjoy an eco-film screening and much more!

The 2010 Go Green Expo in LA showcased more than 300 exhibits featuring the latest in eco-friendly products and services. More than 10,000 Los Angeles residents and over 250 media outlets were in attendance – GoGreenExpo.com received more than 4,000,000 hits. This is an event you don’t want to miss!

Details & Tickets: http://www.GoGreenExpo.com
Purchase discounted tickets online in advance.
Use promo code: USGBC for $5 off (normally $15)

Los Angeles Convention Center - South Hall G
1201 South Figueroa Street
Los Angeles, CA 90015

Trade Only Day (free with proper business ID)
Friday, April 15, 2011 • 10am - 5pm

Open to Public
Saturday, April 16, 2011 • 10am - 6pm
Sunday, April 17, 2011 • 10am - 5pm

Exhibiting
USGBC member companies receive a $250 discount on the standard booth price. Only a few spaces remain - if your company is interested in exhibiting please contact Bradford Rand: BRand@GoGreenExpo.com or 212.655.4505 ext. 223

Event website: http://www.GoGreenExpo.com
Purchase discounted tickets online in advance.
Use promo code: USGBC for $5 off (normally $15)

Cool It With Concrete

“Cool It With Concrete”

By Paulette Salisbury, FCSI, CDT

How can the color of a pavement make it more sustainable? The answer lies in the materials chosen by design engineers and public works agencies. Long known for its durability and strength, concrete has withstood the test of time on millions of miles of highways and local streets and roads. Now another attribute of concrete pavements is emerging as a benefit to owners, engineers and citizens. Concrete’s light color improves light reflectivity and makes it a cooler material for pavements, roof tiles and building facades. Concrete has been recognized as a solution to the Heat Island Effect by the US Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu.

Urban areas are usually warmer than their rural surroundings, a phenomenon known as the “heat island effect.” Heat islands can affect communities by increasing summertime peak energy demand, air conditioning costs, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, heat-related illness and mortality, and water quality.

Portland cement concrete absorbs less energy from light so it stores less heat and thus has a cooler surface temperature than black pavements such as asphalt. Typical summertime pavement surface temperatures can range from 120-150 degrees. Dark pavements hold heat internally and re-release it at night. Hot pavements also heat stormwater and run-off that flows into local waterways decreasing the water quality and its ability to support plants, fish and wildlife.

In many U.S. cities, pavements represent the largest percentage of a community’s land cover, compared with roof and vegetated surfaces. As part of EPA’s Urban Heat Island Pilot Project Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is investigating the impact of utilizing light-colored paving materials including concrete to reduce temperatures and the green house gas (GHG) emissions associated with energy production.

While decision-makers generally choose paving materials based on the function they serve, many private and public owners are considering how the pavement can provide a dual role in reducing energy bills from excessive air conditioning as well as providing a smooth, stable long-lasting driving or parking surface. Studies show that parking lots typically make up a large portion of paved surfaces in urban areas and therefore most of the research has been done on them. Streets, roads and highways also have a significant impact on urban temperatures. Support is growing among public works agencies for using concrete overlays on asphalt roadways to improve the longevity of the pavement and increase reflectivity thus “cooling” the environment. Recent “thermographic” images show the ambient temperature an average of 15 to 20 degrees cooler on concrete surfaces than asphalt pavements.

The US EPA’s Cool Pavements Compendium indicates that concrete is one of the most readily available solutions for the heat island effect. They also explain that concrete’s high albedo or solar reflectance is 40% compared to black asphalt at 5%. Concrete’s albedo can be increased to 70% by using slag or white cement. (http://www.epa.gov/heatisld/resources/pdf/CoolPavesCompendium.pdf ).

Even when a concrete pavement is worn and dirty its solar reflectance is high (about 25%) while asphalt may get lighter in color as the petroleum-based matrix wears away or ages reaching a maximum reflectance of 15-20%. At this point the asphalt usually needs to be resurfaced in a perpetual maintenance cycle making it black again diminishing its solar reflectance.

Concrete’s light reflectivity makes it an ideal material to enhance night time visibility. An AASHTO standard illustrates that illumination demands are roughly 40 to 50 percent lower for concrete pavements than for asphalt pavements. Another report comparing the two pavement types suggested a cost savings of as much as 31 percent in initial energy and maintenance costs for lighting concrete pavements. This finding is important for municipalities where utility costs associated with street illumination are often a large budgetary item.

In order to create sustainable communities architects, engineers, public works agencies and all government officials need to embrace all options. Concrete as a building and paving material is clearly one of the most promising solutions.

"If you look at all the buildings and if you make the roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of color rather than a black and if you do that uniformly, that would be the equivalent of... reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars in the world by 11 years – just taking them off the road for 11 years.”

Stephen Chu – Energy Secretary

ASHRAE San Joaquin Chapter Meeting

Heavy Question: Can Green Building Save The Planet?

Experts in architecture and design gathered in New York recently to talk about green building, and its role in sustainability and all things environmental.

Discussion ranged from controlling impact, incorporating nature into design and even got into the definition of "green." A lot of ground was covered. Here's a link to a recap in smartplanet.

Sierra Leadership Institute Energy & Climate Program

January 6, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media Contact:

Program Manager, Betony Jones, betony.jones@gmail.com, 530-563-8384 and Communications Director, Nikki Streegan, nstreegan@sbcouncil.org, 530-582-4800

Climate Change Optimists: program sees opportunities for Sierra Nevada Communities

Green energy and climate change innovators on the verge of greatness listen up. A group of unlikely allies are throwing down the gantlet to encourage Sierra Nevada community teams to take their percolating ideas to the next level at the Sierra Leadership Institute’s Energy and Climate Program 2011.

Over the past decade, 300 community leaders from Lassen County to Mariposa County have graduated from Sierra Business Council’s innovative Sierra Leadership Institute. This year the institute will shift its individual leadership focus to team-building and collaborative leadership skills with a climate change and green energy imperative.

“Individuals will apply for and attend the program as part of a community team representative of their community’s diverse interests,” says Steve Frisch, president of the Sierra Business Council (SBC).

The five-day workshops will be hosted in Auburn, Calif. and build upon SBC’s existing institute to create a model focused on energy and climate issues. In addition to the traditional leadership skill-building segment, SBC will provide energy and climate training and support team projects in these areas to demonstrate that climate change presents opportunities, not just challenges, for Sierra communities.

From biomass and solar technologies to water conservation and energy saving innovations, possible areas of concentration are limited only by the imaginations of the applicants.

Betony Jones, founder of Fourth Sector Strategies, one of the institute’s developers, explains the ethos behind its new direction.

“It’s about working with community teams and giving them the collaborative and technical skills and resources to implement projects,” she says. “Communities can turn climate change obstacles into financial savings and investment opportunities. The talent and the resources are here. We have a program to get them together and put them in action.”

The Sierra Business Council (SBC) is now accepting applications for the Sierra Leadership Institute to provide fully funded leadership training and technical project assistance to teams around the Sierra Nevada. Successful applicants will be awarded a full tuition waiver, room and board for participating.

Five teams consisting of four to six individuals will attend a week-long training workshop, June 20-24, 2011 in Auburn, Calif. Participants will learn collaborative leadership skills with special attention to the climate and energy policy landscape in California, climate and energy science, California energy regulatory agencies, energy efficiency strategic planning efforts, and opportunities and resources for clean energy transformation. Importantly, after the course program staff will provide technical assistance and guidance to turn concepts developed in the course into viable pilot projects.

SBC is partnering with a variety of state and national partners and funders on different components of training and leadership courses they refer to as the Green Prosperity Initiative. The program is primarily funded by Pacific Gas and Electric Company as an Innovator Pilot Project. The overarching regional Green Prosperity concept is part of the California Stewardship Exchange, coordinated by Collaborative Economics and funded by the Morgan Family Foundation.

Please contact Sierra Business Council at 530.582.4800 or visit www.sbcouncil.org/SLI for more information. Deadline for the application is March 4, 2011.