"Water shortages are expected to become more and more common in the coming decades. A 2003 report by the U.S. General Accounting Office reported that 36 states are likely to experience water shortages by 2013."

"Water use in and around buildings, from both public water supplies and well water, accounts for about 47 billion gallons (180 billion l) per day, or 12% of U.S. water use... Residential indoor water use is dominated by toilets, clothes washers, showers, faucets, and (significantly) leaks, according to a 1999 report from the American Water Works Association Research Foundation."

"There are strong indications that water will become a more limited resource over the coming decades, and it is important for building professionals to pay close attention to these trends and build up the expertise needed to reduce water consumption in and around buildings should supply become further constrained."

— Water: Doing More With Less
(Environmental Building News, February 2008)

The Master Plumbers' and Mechanical Services Association of Australia (MPMSAA) created a training and accreditation program called "GreenPlumbers" in 2001, and has since accredited over 5,000 plumbers in that country — where water consumption is down by nearly half from 1990 levels. Now the educational and environmental training program has been introduced in the U.S. as GreenPlumbers USA by the non-profit California PHCC (Plumbing, Heating, Cooling Contractors) Education Foundation through an agreement with MPMSAA.

The program is available — for free — to journey-level plumbers; registration fees are subsidized through government, agency, utility, and manufacturer partnerships. The training workshops are arranged with local and state jurisdictions, utilities, and water agencies.

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Greg Kats of the venture capital firm Good Energies has argued for a while now that a company's carbon emissions can have a material impact on its financial performance, and by failing to disclose that risk the company may be liable to shareholder action. That argument was used to explain part of the appeal to corporations of green (low-carbon-emitting) real estate in our article on valuing green buildings.

Now, according to a report in today's New York Times, New York attorney general Andrew Cuomo has taken that argument a step further. Cuomo reached an agreement with Xcel Energy of Minneapolis that requires Xcel to disclose a detailed assessment of the long-term financial risks from its ongoing investment in coal-burning power plants. He got that agreement using a legal mechanism that could have led to criminal as well as civil charges if they failed to disclose those risks, and he's still pressuring four other companies to go along. How can a NY AG control a Minnesota company? Because they issue securities on New-York-based stock exchanges.

The Times suggests that the other companies may not be as cooperative, because Xcel is already quite proactive in its reporting. I have anecdotal evidence corroborating that — after a little prodding, an Xcel engineer gave me an estimate of the carbon emissions behind the high-pressure steam they distribute in downtown Denver. (I needed that figure for a case study of EPA's Region 8 headquarters.) It's 185 pounds of CO2 per thousand pounds of steam.

A wind turbine ad on the New York Times homepage! Sure, Web ads are relatively cheap, but it still looks like a sign that alternative energy is hitting the big time.

And the day after this ad ran, the Times ran a page 1 story (in print as well as on the Web) about wind power, exploring concerns that while some say wind could provide as much as 20% of the U.S. electricity supply, the existing grid isn't up to the task of transmitting power from the often remote places that have the best wind resources to the populous regions that need it.

How to retool for a more sustainable energy future is a discussion that eventually has to shift from the specialized realm of energy experts and environmentalists into more popular venues. Here's an indication that that's happening.

As a key component in polycarbonate plastics such as those used for reusable water bottles, baby bottles, canned-food liners, and some building materials, bisphenol-A (BPA) has become the new chemical to fear.

Despite that, I had to track down a paper from the Transactions of the Wessex Institute on research conducted at Dresden University to understand better what may be the next problem area to emerge for BPA: toilet paper.

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Talk about appropriate technology. They cooperate with nature on all levels — the design, the materials, the function... and gorgeous to look at besides. How would we build something like this today? This is very sexy stuff, even if it's all about pigeon poop. Click the image for a high-res narrated slideshow (or here for low-res.)

From Jadid Online:

The pigeon towers of Isfahan are a perfect example of man working with nature in common alliance. Before the use of chemical fertilisers alternative means had to be found for generating large quantities of fertiliser.

Using their knowledge of the natural environment the architects of Isfahan created pigeon towers. By attracting wild pigeons with seed and a safe place to roost the towers acted as a natural collection point for waste which could then be used as fertiliser.

The Iranian filmmaker, Mohammad Saeed Mohasesi who has studied the pigeon towers of Isfahan explains the background to these ancient buildings.

Finding an energy-efficient air purifier technology that actually works can be a tricky proposition. Most purifiers use ionizers that generate ozone or have HEPA and carbon filters that require inefficient fans that run constantly. Oh sure, you could try to keep toxins out of the house in the first place, but if you should find yourself living with a cigar-smoking roommate with a humidor made from non-CARB-compliant urea-formaldehyde particleboard (and, honestly, who hasn't?) and happen to be searching for a purifier, what are ya gonna do? As we look to the future of air-purification technology, maybe we need to take a look back to the Middle Ages for a possible solution. Zhu Huai Yong, from Queensland University of Technology, studied medieval stained glass and found that windows colored with tiny gold particles work as a "photocatalytic air purifier with nanostructured gold catalyst" (see article in Science Daily). When sunlight hits the windows, an electromagnetic field is formed that destroys volatile organic compounds, with only small amounts of CO2 as a by-product. Sure, gold mining is an environmental disaster, the long-term environmental impact of nanotechnology is unknown, and the frames of the stained glass windows were probably lead, but still — this is as viable as some air purifiers we've seen submitted to GreenSpec! Now if someone can market a cost-competitive, triple-glazed, krypton gas, low-e version with a U-factor of 0.20...

Across the nation a teardown epidemic is wiping out historic neighborhoods one house at a time. As older homes are demolished and replaced with dramatically larger, out-of-scale new structures, the historic character of the existing neighborhood is changed forever. Neighborhood livability is diminished as trees are removed, backyards are eliminated, and sunlight is blocked by towering new structures built up to the property lines. Community economic and social diversity is reduced as new mansions replace affordable homes. House by house, neighborhoods are losing a part of their historic fabric and much of their character.

Kim Del Rance of Gould Evans wrote in a post to the COTE forum today:

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This press release just came through; sounds like it will be a pretty great resource. It's not up yet though — check it out in a few days.

The Natural Environment Research Council — the UK's leading organisation that funds research into the environmental sciences — is launching an online version of its award-winning magazine, Planet Earth, on 29 September 2008.

The website will be updated daily and feature news, features, blogs, opinion, podcasts and video from the environmental science community on climate change, biodiversity loss, volcanoes, earthquakes, the rainforests, oceans and poles. The content will appeal to a wide, non-specialist audience.

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The U.S. Green Building Council has announced that LEED 2009 is open for a second public comment period, from now until September 2, 2008.

LEED 2009, according to USGBC's update, is "a new version of the rating system that delivers against key environmental and human health impacts" (emphasis added). Forgive my tendency for flip comments about LEED that past readers have called out, but doesn't it sound like an action hero, a sort-of take-no-prisoners version of Captain Planet for the built environment, in that sentence? I'm pretty sure that use of the verb "deliver" without an immediate object, such as "deliver mail," "deliver actual energy data," etc., is reserved for action heroes in the mold of Stephen Seagal. Deliver against kind of drives it home.

If we're going to be seeing more action from LEED 2009, I think that's a good sign. Here are some highlights of the revised LEED 2009 that USGBC noted in its announcement:

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Here's a fun exercise that a group of architects, designers, and others completed today as part of the Designing for a Living World symposium that I'm attending, hosted by Interface at Shelburne Farms in Vermont. It's a little thing I call... "Headlines from the Future."

Here's the deal. Take these ten topics:

1. Oceans
2. Agriculture
3. Energy
4. Poverty
5. Terror
6. Climate
7. Water
8. Health
9. Cities
10. Geopolitics

Write a headline for each of those ten topics. Take about 10 minutes to do this.

If possible, do this in a group. A group from school, from work, your family, friends, you name it. Share what you come up with. Discuss.

I'll give some examples in a sec.

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