Environment Forum
Global environmental challenges
Is this the greenest office on Earth?
Every workstation has a view. Much of the lighting comes from reflected sunshine. It’s so naturally quiet that unobtrusive speakers pipe in “white noise” to preserve a level of privacy. The windows open, and they’re shaded in such a way that there’s no glare. Even with the windows closed, fresh air circulates through vents in the floor. Extreme recycling prevails, not just of bottles, cans and kitchen refuse but beetle-blighted wood.
Welcome to the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which contains some of the greenest office space on the planet.
NREL’s headquarters in Golden, Colorado, is also the home to cutting-edge research on biofuels, photo-voltaics for solar power and other renewable energy technology, but the physical plant is a living lab for green building. At $63 million, or $259 per square foot for its construction cost, including interiors and furniture, the Research Support Facility as it is called, was hardly cheap to build. But with 220,000 square feet of space, it is the biggest energy efficient building in the United States.
The recycling is evident at the entrance, which is decorated with angled wall panels made of golden-colored pine. Look more closely and you see a bluish tinge on the wood, from fungus that grew after the pine tree that formed the lumber was attacked by pine beetles. A warming climate in the Western U.S. has enabled pine beetles to survive winters and reproduce to assault pine forests.
New Jersey has best payback on residential solar in U.S.
California may be the Golden State, but it’s New Jersey where U.S. residents get the best deal on their solar power systems, new research shows.
A survey by Global Solar Centertried to give an “apples to apples” comparison for the cost of solar power in all 50 states, the center’s chairman Jack Hidary told Reuters.
Another reason for bats to like Halloween
Halloween is just around the corner, and it may be better than most years for one of Earth’s most unpopular species: the bat.
Something sinister is happening to bats in the United States — not only are their numbers declining due to a mysterious malady, but large numbers of them are also being caught mid-flight in the spinning wind turbines that are cropping up rapidly across the nation.
