Wood - Nature's Stroke of Genius

A great video about wood from our friends in Denmark. I wish I could find (and promote) a similar video promoting the use of wood in North America. Odd that one doesn't exist given how large of a role wood has played in the economies of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia.



The team over at Go Wood is promoting this video on their website

Go Wood: "The World's Most Environmentally-Friendly Raw Material"

And here is Michael Green speaking about using wood in tall buildings at TEDx in Vancouver.

Premature Scaling? Number one cause of Startup Failure

Take the money and run (a company)?

Startup Genome released the report. Registration required to download a copy or you can read about it elsewhere at websites like this one.

Taking money too early makes life difficult for any business, but even more so for cleantech. There haven't been many successful cleantech exits for VCs and given how negative some investors are on the sector, one must be very careful indeed. Check out the Don of the Paypal Mafia, Peter Thiel, on VC investing in cleantech.

San Francisco Exploratorium’s New Home to Become Largest U.S. Net-Zero Energy Museum

The new Exploratorium is finally coming to life. Mignon O'Young of the GABreport posted a great update on the project on July 7.

The project is very ambitious on many fronts and is located on the busy Embarcadero next to the Tcho chocolate factory (look forward to exploring some chocolate before and/or after visiting the new location).

Rick Feldman of EHDD architecture is the project manager and has been involved with the Exploratorium team for ten years.

The new building is scheduled to open in 2013 and you can explore progress here.

Ecocities: The future of green development?

The online discussion about large-scale ecocities continues to grow and with more images and videos being released from ongoing projects like Masdar in Abu Dhabi and New Songdo City in South Korea, we can only expect more controversy on the viability of green development at an urban scale.

I discovered this recent working paper on the topic by researchers at Harvard Business School which profiles some of the best-known projects. Unfortunately none of them are in North America.

The Swedes are so forward thinking that they recognize the potential of eco cities as an export product and service. Greentechmedia has an article on this strategy. The featured district is the Stockholm Royal Seaport, a former brownfield industrial area now being transformed into a showcase eco community.



Technology companies like Cisco recognize the potential of integrating a smart grid with green development. Cisco CEO John Chambers is giving his smart grid team an "an almost unlimited budget" for development in projects like New Songdo City.

Treehugger Debate: Is Prefab a Greener Way to Build?

Watch live streaming video from treehuggerlive at livestream.com

The debate continues - from May 26, 2011

Comments can be found at the treehugger site here.

Push Pop Press - Al Gore's "Our Choice"

Great interactive content.

Al Gore's Our Choice from Push Pop Press on Vimeo.

Futuristic Japanese Smart House by Sekisui House

And when will Steve Jobs call so we can start work on the real iHome using even better technologies?

Prefab - Revisiting the hype circa 2007

It is interesting to look back at lessons learned from the era when Michelle Kaufmann was discussing offers of $100 million, dozens of factories, and thousands of homes.

I suggest reading this "It isn't easy being green" April 2010 article from the New York Times. Then consider that "prefab" continues to become more efficient and capture a growing share of the market in Europe and Japan. Will the North Americans fall even further behind and attribute the lack of innovation to the weak housing market or will the efficiencies of prefab lead the rebuilding of the industry?

National Passive House Conference in Portland

The 5th National Conference starts on November 4th and includes an impressive list of speakers including Wolfgang Feist.

Green Building in the European Union

New York Times article on legislation requiring very energy efficient building in various countries. Consider how many high-performance buildings Europe already has, and then imagine how much additional innovation this will drive.

Sustainable building in Japan

An interesting resource for sustainable buildings in Japan.

Ken Tadashi Oshima is the most knowledgeable and best resource for prefab and industrialized housing in Japan. A great video interview with him can be found at this website (interview #63)

Swiss High-performance building - 15,000 proofs-of-concept

From a 2009 conference in Washington DC. 12 page PDF introduction to the Swiss Minergie standard with comparisons to the USGBC's LEED program.

IDEAbuilder in Sustainable Industries magazine

The March issue of Sustainable Industries featured an article on European green building by Justin Moresco. Both Stefan and I were extensively interviewed for the article and much of the information we shared with Justin was included. You can read the article here.