Sustainable North

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Sustainable North

Two camps on climate change in Obama’s team

January 5th, 2009 · No Comments

From the New York Times on Friday, January 2, 2008:
But difficult debates lie ahead within the White House, between the White House and Congress, and within the Democratic Party, whose deep divisions on climate change break down along ideological and geographical lines.
The fight in November between two Democrats, Representatives John D. Dingell of Michigan and Henry A. Waxman of California, [...]

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Category: Energy, Information · Energy, Renewable · Legislation and Policy · Recycling · Sustainable Living
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More homeowners weatherizing homes to save on energy

December 30th, 2008 · 1 Comment

From the New York Times on Monday, December 29, 2008:
Call it CSI: Thermal Police — energy experts armed with mostly low-tech tools but strong sleuthing skills, finding flaws that let the air inside a house go through a full exchange with the outdoors twice an hour, instead of once every two or three hours.
Correct those [...]

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Category: Building Structure · Energy, Information · Energy, Renewable · Mechanical Systems · Sustainable Living
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Green ideas for Obama’s first 100 days

December 19th, 2008 · No Comments

From Yale Environment 360, retrieved on Friday, December 20, 2008:
Yale Environment 360 asked a wide-ranging group of environmental activists, scientists, and thinkers to answer the following question: If you were advising Barack Obama, what would you tell him are the most important environmental and energy initiatives that he should launch during his first 100 days?
Click here [...]

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Category: Energy, Information · Energy, Renewable · Legislation and Policy · Sustainable Living
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Obama and proposed Energy Secretary Chu differ on fundamental energy issues

December 15th, 2008 · No Comments

From the Wall Street Journal on Monday, December 15, 2008:
President-elect Barack Obama’s pick for energy secretary, Dr. Steven Chu, is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist who’s on the record calling coal a “nightmare” and advocating raising U.S. gas taxes to European levels to promote conservation. 
Mr. Obama himself has so far dismissed the idea of raising gas [...]

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Category: Energy, Information · Energy, Renewable · Legislation and Policy · Sustainable Living
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Australia announces pollution cut targets

December 15th, 2008 · No Comments

From the New York Times, on Monday, December 15, 2008:
Australia announced plans Monday to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 5 to 15 percent by 2020, angering environmental groups that had lobbied for much deeper cuts.

In a policy statement, the government said the final target would depend on whether developed and developing nations, including major [...]

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Category: Energy, Information · Energy, Renewable · Legislation and Policy · Recycling · Sustainable Living
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Wood heat warms home, pollutes air

December 15th, 2008 · No Comments

From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, on Saturday, December 6, 2008:

In early winter 2008, Fairbanks [Alaska] has had some of the worst air quality ever recorded, according to Jim Conner, an air quality specialist for the Fairbanks North Star Borough.
“We exceeded (federal air quality) standards in October this year for the first time,” Conner said. “It [...]

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Category: Energy, Information · Energy, Renewable · Mechanical Systems · Sustainable Living
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High school may use wood-fired boiler heater

December 10th, 2008 · No Comments

From the Anchorage Daily News, Wednesday, December 9, 2008:
The Alaska Energy Authority has agreed to spend $20,000 to analyze whether energy-efficient wood boilers would be cheaper to use than heating oil for the roughly 50,000-square-foot school being built near Talkeetna. The Matanuska-Susitna Borough, which requested the study, has also chipped in $5,000. …
Local residents cooked [...]

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Category: Building Structure · Energy, Information · Energy, Renewable · Mechanical Systems · Recycling · Sustainable Living
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Fairbanks mayor pushes for woodstove trade-in program

December 8th, 2008 · No Comments

From the Fairbanks Daily News Miner, on Monday, December 8, 2008:
The Fairbanks North Star Borough will look to create a trade-in program to reduce the number of older, inefficient home-heating systems — think old wood stoves and outdoor boilers — borough Mayor Jim Whitaker said this week.
Outdoor, wood-fired furnaces and older indoor wood stoves, particularly [...]

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Category: Energy, Information · Energy, Renewable · Legislation and Policy · Recycling · Sustainable Living
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Wood heat rising in popularity

October 22nd, 2008 · No Comments

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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Category: Energy, Information · Sustainable Living
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“Nutrition label” for green homes

September 29th, 2008 · No Comments

As mentioned in an article on nytimes.com from Friday, September 26, 2008, two architects have proposed a “nutrition label” to address “the need for a universal sustainability-labeling standard (much like F.D.A. labels on food) that would empower homebuyers to make smarter, more sustainable homebuying decisions.”
To read a q&a about green prefab construction, click here.
To read [...]

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Category: Building Structure · Energy, Information · Energy, Renewable · Legislation and Policy · Recycling · Sustainable Living
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