Green Apartment Trends: Coming to a Community Near You!

As the green movement marches on, apartment buildings are starting taking notice. Green building has been largely focused on houses and remodeling, leaving the renter out of options for greening up their home. In fact, living in an apartment or shared housing situation decreases your carbon footprint greatly versus having a house.

As a renter of a house, I’m continually frustrated at the helplessness I feel at not being able to remodel my house to be more energy efficient. Yes, we recycle, limit water use, and use green products, but the house still has a long way to go before it is environmentally-friendly. The fact is that I don’t have the money to remodel a place I will move out of in a year or two. Most people don’t want to invest the time and money into making a place sustainable when they’ll leave eventually.

The Green Apartment Trend
Green apartment complexes are springing up to meet new demands for a sustainable place to live for renters. These complexes vary in their execution of what they consider to be green, but generally they are more energy efficient through building materials or alternative energy. They also will tend to encourage environmental practices, like having safe bike storage or offering free electronics recycling. Some places will even donate a percentage of their property management fees to an environmental cause.

The Boutique Apartments in Denver, Colo., is one such green apartment company that is trying to change the face of renting. They own eleven buildings throughout the city—each with a different theme, all with the same commitment to green living. They install energy efficient kitchen appliances, water heaters, and boilers. They use white roofs instead of black ones to keep the buildings cooler in the summer, thus using less air conditioning. Bamboo floors were installed instead of oak floors, as bamboo is a more sustainable resource.

Green AND Beautiful
The aesthetics of green, sustainable apartments in general are also unique and beautiful. I’ve always been depressed by the uniformity of giant apartment complexes: white walls, identical floor plans—boring. It seems as though the leaders in the green apartment business are interested in making beautiful spaces for their tenants with recycled art, funky appliances, beautiful low-VOC paint on the wall in an actual color. It’s these little touches that will make the green apartment trend blow up.

Some states are starting to give incentives to those that build apartments in a sustainable fashion. Even without the incentive, these buildings will eventually pay for themselves through energy savings. Renters are looking for the X factor when scouring complex after complex, and this is it.

Filling the Gaps in Energy Production with Cogeneration

In the late 1970s, John Gofman, co-inventor of plutonium, had second thoughts about his work with nuclear power over the years. He authored a book entitled Irrevy, in which he argued that the use of nuclear power for electrical production amounted to a bad tradeoff of inefficient and expensive power generation for an insoluble toxic waste problem and generations upon generations of unknown cancers and genetic defects.

While the portion of domestic electricity currently produced by nuclear energy is marginal, at that time there were quite a few more nuclear power plants and nuclear energy production. A perfect storm of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl together with movies such as The China Syndrome gave impetus to an anti-nuclear movement, of which, Gofman was a pre-eminent spokesman, which changed all of that.

Now, as the nation faces an energy crisis, not just of gas lines, but of all energy production, the idea of re-introducing nuclear energy with a vengeance has emerged. During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Republican candidate John McCain proposed building 50 new nuclear plants. As the electorate starts to forget why the moratorium on nuclear plants in the US went into effect in the first place and embraces the simplistic argument that 80% of France’s electricity is produced by nuclear plants, it becomes more imperative that we not only examine Gofman’s objections to the ‘nuclear option,’ but take a look at some of the alternatives he proposed.

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The Campus Green: Today’s Universities will Ensure a Greener Tomorrow

Going green is becoming all the rage at colleges and universities around the nation, and we’re not just talking about the Cal-Berkley’s of the world. I should know, since I’m a part of the growing crowd of environmentally-aware young adults! Our institutions of higher education are increasingly providing environments to foster critical thinking and creativity in sustainability with new course offerings and majors. Better yet, our exposure to new media and social networking provide access to the information and social “cool” factors necessary to drive eco-friendly actions from our future leaders.

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After Stab in the Back, Geothermal Poised for a Comeback

Whenever alternative energy is mentioned, solar and wind energy come most immediately to mind. Yet as promising as the futures for these energies may be, most Americans may not be aware that geothermal energy has been extensively utilized in the past and present. Moreover, its future appears to be virtually unlimited and initial capital outlay for its development might well be the most cost-effective of all alternative energy sources.

In a story that received very little media coverage at the time and even less coverage when the Bush Administration pulled funding for geothermal research shortly after, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) released a study concluding that a proposed form of geothermal extraction they referred to as “heat mining” could “provide a substantial portion of the electricity that the United States will need in the future.” Furthermore, the MIT study concluded that “heat mining” could do so “probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact.”

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Star Trek and Helium-3, Will Moon Mining Save the World?

Star Trek (2009)’s box office has already reached $80 million, received unanimously glowing reviews, as well as a few that might be over-the-top, such as the one that declared it is now cool to be a Trekkie. Now that space exploration is once again in the popular imagination, however, it might be useful to consider what, if any, contribution space science might be able bring to the energy, economic and environmental challenges that face mankind here on earth.

Many are probably aware that the earliest research with solar photovoltaics was a result of the space program. Some are no doubt aware that the monitoring of the effects of global warming would be considerably more haphazard and certainly less scientific without the use of satellite surveillance. Few, however, are likely aware that the Apollo 17 moon landing in 1972 revealed a potential alternative energy source that could provide almost unimaginable power production that would come with an almost neglible environmental risk. Best of all for Trekkies, exploitation of that resource would necessitate mining on the moon, a staple of sci-fi lure.

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Obama Highlights Alternative Energy in Economic Recovery Plan

In his weekly internet video address, President-elect Barack Obama offered an outline of his economic recovery plan Saturday, with jobs as his top priority.  The goal is to create 2.5 million jobs by 2011, in part by “building wind farms and solar panels, fuel-efficient cars and the alternative energy technology that can free us from our dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years head.”

You can watch the video of Obama’s address here:

Clean Coal is an Expensive Myth

If last week’s VP debate was any indication, Senator Biden and Governor Palin didn’t get the memo on “clean coal”.  It reads something like this:  ”Coal cannot be effectively cleaned, we should invest our limited government funds (see: Bailout) in energy solutions that are environmentally safe today.”

Clean coal technology is also VERY expensive, and will have rising variable costs over time (transportation of fuel, miners’ wages, maintenance of complex cleaning systems, etc).  Compare to solar and wind energy sources, which have fewer incremental costs once built.  How much does the transportation of sun and wind cost?  ZERO!
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