Sustainable North

BY Adam Wasch, Energy Outreach Consultant for CCHRC and UAF CES Energy Focus: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner April 16th, 2009, Section A3 Boilers today offer a wide range of customized options to maximize efficiency. If your boiler has an old pilot light that stays lit all the time, you’re probably a good candidate for a replacement [...]

[Read more →]

From the New York Times on Saturday, February 14, 2009: Wind turbines typically spin from tall towers on hills and plains. But in these green times, some companies hope smaller turbines will soon rise above a more domestic spot: homes and garages. An Energy Ball turbine.  Adam Bird for The New York Times The rooftop [...]

[Read more →]

From the New York Times on Wednesday, February 11, 2009: The modular housing industry likes to say that it has always had a few characteristics that today might be considered eco-friendly — from reduced waste to a smaller construction footprint. “In a modular plant, recycling is huge,” says Chad Harvey, the deputy director of the [...]

[Read more →]

From the New York Times on Tuesday, February 3, 2009: Wind and solar power have been growing at a blistering pace in recent years, and that growth seemed likely to accelerate under the green-minded Obama administration. But because of the credit crisis and the broader economic downturn, the opposite is happening: installation of wind and [...]

[Read more →]

From businessweek.com, posted on January 6, 2009 and retrieved on Friday, January 30, 2009: When the homebuilding industry descends on Las Vegas on Jan. 20 for its annual trade show, a highlight as always will be a project called the New American Home. This model house—a new one gets built each year—serves as a showcase [...]

[Read more →]

From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner on Wednesday, January 28, 2009: Education leaders look to be sharpening their focus on energy research, a move spearheaded by tentative plans to build a 31,000-square-foot building dedicated to energy research — everything from wind and hydrogen to coal — at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The plan is on [...]

[Read more →]

From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner on Wednesday, January 28, 2009: A document submitted as a state energy plan falls short of its mark, while renewable energy projects submitted for funding might go too far, legislators said. Members of the House Energy Committee, including Rep. Jay Ramras, R-Fairbanks, were critical of the Alaska Energy Authority’s state [...]

[Read more →]

  The State of Alaska has published its proposal for grant allocation from the Alaska Renewable Energy Fund. This money will fund the construction of a wide range of alternative energy projects throughout the state. The total proposed expenditure from the State of Alaska is $100 million, with a Federal match of approximately $300 million. [...]

[Read more →]

From the Chicago Tribune on Friday, January 23, 2009: Even before home designers and builders headed to Las Vegas for this week’s International Builders Show, they had a pretty clear idea of where residential construction was headed. Yes, the home-building industry is in the dumps, but there are still visionary designers coming up with a [...]

[Read more →]

From the Washington Post on Saturday, January 24, 2009: Frugality is finally showing up in new home developments. Although the number of new single-family houses sold this year will probably be down about 68 percent from the peak of almost 1.3 million sold in 2005, there will still be about 420,000 households buying new homes [...]

[Read more →]