Sustainable North

BY Adam Wasch, Energy Outreach Consultant at CCHRC
Energy Focus: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner October 30th, 2008, Section A3
This is the first of a series of columns exploring how solar energy can be used at home to reduce your energy costs.
Science guys and green types have been using miniature solar panels to animate Legos and twirl dream [...]

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From the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, October 27, 2008:

Not everyone likes seeing oil prices plunge.
This decade’s historic high prices for oil and natural gas have stoked the rise of renewable power and alternative fuels. As fossil fuel prices smashed record after record, options like ethanol, hybrid electric cars, solar power and wind looked better [...]

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From the Chicago Tribune on Sunday, October 26, 2008:

With all eyes on the money crisis, homeowners and builders may find it hard to believe the words of Little Orphan Annie—the sun will come out tomorrow.
But one segment of the housing industry that continues to grow by banking on that idea is the residential solar-energy business.
Even [...]

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From reuters.com on Wednesday, October 22, 2008:
The U.S. Interior Department said on Wednesday it would make more than 190 million acres of federal lands in 11 western states and Alaska available to energy companies to develop geothermal energy resources for generating electricity.
“These federal lands … hold a huge energy potential,” said Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne.
He [...]

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BY: Ilya Benesch, Building Educator at CCHRC
Energy Focus: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner October 23rd, 2008, Section A3
In severe cold climates, roofs face two important challenges; retaining heat effectively, and controlling moisture trying to escape from the living space. The colder the weather and the longer the winter, the more pronounced the issues can become. Deficiencies and [...]

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From the Wall Street Journal on Monday, October 20, 2008:
Companies looking for new profit opportunities should remember one simple idea: Everything old can be new again.
More than 130,000 companies across the U.S. have gotten into the business of reconstruction — taking used products and processing them for resale. These products bring in annual sales of [...]

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From the Christian Science Monitor on October 17, 2008:
Whether or not it makes environmental sense to inflate car tires with nitrogen instead of air is a matter of much debate. Proponents of nitrogen say it is a smart choice primarily because it leaks from tires at a slower rate than air, so tires stay fully [...]

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From the Christian Science Monitor on Monday, October 21, 2008:
Both traditional and pellet-burning wood stoves are in high demand as cold weather begins to grip the northern United States and Canada. Sales of wood stoves are up 55 percent so far this year over last, according to industry figures. And sales of wood pellet stoves [...]

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Created by researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of Minnesota, “The Efficient Windows Collaborative” website offers “unbiased information on the benefits of energy-efficient windows, descriptions of how they work, and recommendations for their selection and use.”
Click here for the website.

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The Union of Concerned Scientists yesterday (October 15, 2008) released “Coal Power in a Warming World,” which
examines the pros and cons of a proposed technology that would capture coal plant carbon dioxide emissions and store them underground. UCS supports construction of five to 10 full-scale demonstration projects to test carbon-capture-and-storage technology’s ability to cut emissions. [...]

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