Greenovation: Eco-Certified

  • When doing home improvement projects, WaterSense, EnergyStar, GREENGUARD, and FSC certifications are some to keep an eye out for. (Photo by Michelle Miller-Freeck, courtesy of FEMA)

When you’re planning a home
improvement project, you can
be overwhelmed with decisions
about the right materials, the
right quality, and the right
design. Trying to keep it eco-
friendly on top of everything
else just adds to the confusion.
Lester Graham reports it can be
as simple as finding a label:

Transcript

When you’re planning a home
improvement project, you can
be overwhelmed with decisions
about the right materials, the
right quality, and the right
design. Trying to keep it eco-
friendly on top of everything
else just adds to the confusion.
Lester Graham reports it can be
as simple as finding a label:

Julia Weinert and her boyfriend like the idea of making their place nice, but even something as simple as painting causes concerns.

JW: “We want to support environmentally friendly options and we just don’t want to be smelling it for three days out and have to be running the fans. We just want it to be convenient and we think it would be an easy thing to do.”

LG: “Well, you’re in luck. We’re at the local Home Depot and we just happen to have Greenovation.TV’s Matt Grocoff here. Matt, you’ve got some advice for her.”

MG: “And it’s really, really simple. When you’re trying to find a paint that’s healthy for you or another product, you shouldn’t have to be a chemist when you go to the store. There’s a really simple thing you can look for. Just look for the simple GREENGUARD label. GREENGUARD is an independent organization that lets you know with a simple label that that product is safe for you.”

So, none of the really strong paint smells that mean polluting chemicals are being released. GREENGUARD Environmental Institute sets indoor air standards for products and buildings. Julia and I sniffed a can of paint WITH the GREENGUARD label, and then one without.

LG: “I’ll let you sniff first.”

JW: Okay. Oh! Yeah! Oh my gosh! That is ridiculous. I mean, it smells so much stronger than this one. You can’t even smell that one compared to this one.”

A gallon of paint with the GREENGUARD label DOES cost a few dollars more, maybe as much as ten bucks.

Matt then herded us to another part of the store, the plumbing section, where Julia and I were confronted by all kinds of shiny chrome and brass faucets.

JW: “There’s a whole wall, a whole aisle of faucets here and I just don’t know which ones to look for.”

LG: “So, Matt. You got any fancy labels here?”

MG: “Absolutely. Again, if you’re looking for that eco-friendly option, a way to save yourself some money and some water, it’s simple. Just look for the WaterSense label. The EPA does EnergyStar labels for appliances. The EPA also does WaterSense label for plumbing fixtures.”

WaterSense means the fixture – whether a faucet, shower head or toilet – will use less water but still works well.

As we wandered over to the lumber section of the store, Matt told us the last label he wanted to show us is the most ignored label – and it might just be the most important one.

MG: “FSC stands for the Forest Stewardship Council. And what that means is they’ve made a commitment that they’re not going to be tearing down forest and clear-cutting them in order for you to build some bookshelves in your home. This is one of the biggest causes of greenhouse gases is that we don’t have these forests capturing this carbon any more. Instead of having to have a PhD in forest management, you can just simply look for a piece of wood that has an FSC label on it.”

So, labels. Julia says, works for her.

JW: “It’s going to be great, taking my boyfriend around the store and showing him all these cool things I can get to make our home improvements a little more cheap and environmentally-friendly.”

LG: “Alright remind me, go over this again. What am I supposed to be looking for?”

MG: “It’s very simple. If you’re looking for paint, look for GREENGUARD. For plumbing, WaterSense. For lumber, FSC, Forest Stewardship Council certified.”

LG: “That’s Matt Grocoff, Greenovation.TV. Thanks again, Matt.

MG: “Lester, it’s always a pleasure. Thank you.”

For The Environemnt Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Lessons From a Skyscraper

  • Shawn Allee gets a tour of a roof atop the Willis Tower from co-owner John Huston. The skyscraper will undergo a environmental rehab that will include replacing windows, adding wind turbines and cutting overall energy use. (Photo courtesy of Shawn Allee)

You might have heard the Sears Tower
in Chicago is now called the Willis
Tower. But there’s more changing for
America’s tallest skyscraper. Soon,
the Willis Tower will start an environmental
facelift that could cut eighty-percent
of its energy use. You might wonder:
what could a homeowner learn from what
the Willis Tower is doing? Shawn Allee thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask,
and went on a tour for the answer:

Transcript

You might have heard the Sears Tower
in Chicago is now called the Willis
Tower. But there’s more changing for
America’s tallest skyscraper. Soon,
the Willis Tower will start an environmental
facelift that could cut eighty-percent
of its energy use. You might wonder:
what could a homeowner learn from what
the Willis Tower is doing? Shawn Allee thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask,
and went on a tour for the answer:

One of the co-owners of the Willis Tower is John Huston. He says there’s plenty for
people to learn from the tower’s green rehab plans. To start – we’re at the base of the
tower, and we’re craning our necks up.

“We’re facing north. We’re looking at a hundred and ten floors, so that’s 16
thousand windows in total.”

Huston says those windows are the old single-paned kind common in 1974 – back
when the Willis Tower was finished. In the summer, the windows let heat in, and
during the winter, they let heat escape. And that black metal you see in photos? It
does the same thing.

Huston: “The building is clad in aluminum if you went outside in the winter, you
certainly wouldn’t want to wear an aluminum ski jacket.”

Allee: “You’d freeze.”

Huston: “Exactly.”

So, Huston says the first thing they’re gonna do at the Willis Tower is what he calls
“tighten the building’s envelope.” It means insulating the building from the outer
walls and replacing the windows – all sixteen thousand of ’em.

“It’s an incredible job. That’s what we have to change in order to conserve the 80%
of energy that we anticipate doing.”

Huston says energy consultants pretty much give homeowners the same energy
advice. He says, the nice thing is, once you do that it’s easier to figure out what’s
next.

“Watch your step.”

Huston takes me into the guts of the Willis Tower. This is where it’s heated and
cooled. He says since the building’s gonna waste less energy, he won’t need such
powerful equipment.

Huston: “A lot of what’s in here will disappear or shrink.”

Allee: “So what is this?”

Huston: “This is an electric boiler. It provides hot water to heat the building. Each
one of these consumes enough electricity to heat and light a town of 6,000 people.
We have eight of these throughout the building. It’s not just the boilers. in this
section behind us, you have all the pumps that move hot water throughout the
building. Each one of those pumps is hooked to an electric motor, and 50% of them
can be eliminated.”

Huston says the take-away here is that once a building requires less energy to heat
and cool it, the other savings can kind of cascade from that.

But there’s another lesson homeowners can learn from the Willis Tower’s green
rehab.

The architecture firm that planned this project is called Smith and Gill. Gordan
Gill tells me, their work was made easier by the fact the Willis Tower owners keep
records of their power use.

“When you’re designing something new, you’re predicting the performance of
something. Here, you can actually test it, since you have records of how much
energy was spent, how much energy was used – you know where you stand, exactly.
And so now, you can do mock-ups and tests and things like that.”

Gill says that’s a good reason for homeowners to hold onto their power and heating
bills, too. He says if you’re confident in your actual costs and likely savings, you’re
more likely to follow through with your rehab project.

“And that’s important because you’re avoiding the obsolescence of these buildings,
and I think that’s true from everything like Willis to people’s houses.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Energy Tax Credits for Next Year

  • Tucked away in the bailout package were energy tax cuts for Americans (Source: Man-ucommons at Wikimedia Commons)

We’ve all heard about the 700-
billion dollar bail-out for Wall Street.
Getting a lot less attention was another
17-billion dollars for energy tax credits.
Lester Graham reports you can take advantage
of some of that money for your house:

Transcript

We’ve all heard about the 700-
billion dollar bail-out for Wall Street.
Getting a lot less attention was another
17-billion dollars for energy tax credits.
Lester Graham reports you can take advantage
of some of that money for your house:

Starting in January you can earn as much as $500 in tax credits for home
improvements that save energy. The credit will be taken right off the top of taxes you’ll
owe for 2009.


Ronnie Kweller is with the group Alliance to Save Energy. She says the credits can
cover a lot.


“Energy Star windows. It also includes lower-cost products like additional insulation,
sealing and caulking and weather-stripping – all those kind of things to tighten up your
home and make it energy efficient. As well as highly-efficient heating and cooling
equipment.”


Kweller says her group has details on the new consumer tax credits on its website:
ase.org.


Keep your receipts, and you’ll have to remember to file the right IRS form to take
advantage of the tax credits.


For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Dam Removal’s Balancing Act

  • The continued operation of hydroelectric dams will be up for debate in the next decade. Currently, the Army Corps of Engineers is looking to remove the Boardman River dam in northern Michigan. This dam removal could impact how all future dam removals are completed. (Photo courtesy of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

The Army Corps of Engineers is tackling a dam removal project that could affect how the Corps approaches future dam removals. In the next decade, communities will be deciding whether to keep operating tens of thousands of hydroelectric dams on rivers across the country. This project is significant because it involves several dams being taken out of production along the same stretch of river. The GLRC’s Bob Allen reports:

Transcript

The Army Corps of Engineers is tackling a dam removal project that
could affect how the Corps approaches future dam removals. In the next
decade, communities will be deciding whether to keep operating tens of
thousands of hydroelectric dams on rivers across the country. This
project is significant because it involves several dams being taken out of
production along the same stretch of river. The GLRC’s Bob Allen
reports:


(Sound of water)


The Boardman River is beautiful. It winds and turns and tumbles
through forested hillsides and passes along northern cedar swamps.
Sections of the upper river qualify as a blue ribbon trout stream, but a
series of dams along the lower half of the river changed some of the best
river water.


Steve Largent has worked on repairing damaged banks along the
Boardman for the last fifteen years. He says removing the dams will
restore faster flowing sections of the river, and clearing out the sand and
silt built up behind the dams will be good for trout and other critters.


“The sediment that is building up in the back of Brown Bridge pond
continues to move upstream as it fills in the upper end of the pond it’s
aggregrating upstream. It’s moving upstream further and further destroying
habitat further upstream.”


So a free running river will help wash away that sediment, but these days
it’s not just anglers who are interested in the Boardman River. Recently
river engineers have been drawn to the Boardman like trout to a fly
fisherman’s lure. They’re interested in landing the job of studying the
Boardman River and its dams. The million dollar study will look at
whether to keep or tear down three hydroelectric dams along a 17 mile stretch of river in northern Michigan just before it flows into Lake
Michigan.


Craig Fischenich is a research engineer with the Army Corps of
Engineers. He says the potential to remove three dams along the same
stretch of river is not something you’re going to find anywhere else.


“Whereas in many parts of the country they’re removing individual dams, they’re on systems that have other dams on them, and so this is an
opportunity here to actually try to restore an entire watershed.”


Fischenich says taking out the dams would mean improvements for
native fish. But there are risks too. If the dams go, invasive species
such as the parasitic sea lamprey could get upriver, and introduced
species such as steelhead and salmon could swim into the river and
compete with the native fish.


That prospect doesn’t exactly thrill John Wyrus, who lives on the
Boardman. He’d rather see some kind of obstacle down near the mouth
of the river to prevent introduced species from entering.


“So that these steelhead and salmon can’t get up the river. I would just
like to see it a brown trout and brook trout fishery.”


That’s the kind of scenario the study of the Boardman River would
consider.


(Sound of people talking)


Recently a lot of the engineers vying to do the study gathered at a
conference put together by the Corps of Engineers.


Gordon Ferguson works for ENSER Corporation. His company
is one of a dozen that submitted bids to land the study.


“This is a particularly interesting project because it involves a lot of
complex issues both from an engineering standpoint and also local
community issues. Property rights issues of homeowners along the
watershed.”


What they learn from the Boardman could be important to communities
near rivers across the nation.


Many of the tens of thousands of dams across the country are aging, and
in coming years, just like on the Boardman River, those with hydroelectric generating stations will need to be upgraded to keep their operating license.


The local utility says the dams on the Boardman don’t generate
enough power to make it worth fixing them. So they’re giving up the
licenses to generate electricity. Ownership of the dams reverts to the
local governments, and local officials are asking the Army Corps of
Engineers to pay for the study of the Boardman. The federal agency is
eager to be involved in this project.


The Boardman River study offers a chance for researchers to figure out
how to count less tangible values. Like how removing dams will affect
other wildlife such as eagles and osprey along the river.


Jock Coyngham is an ecologist for the Army Corps of Engineers.
Typically, he says, wildlife and recreation get discounted in this kind of
study because it’s easier to quantify things like hydropower, but it’s
important to figure out what value they have.


“If you make all your resource decisions as a state and as a country over
a long period of time pretty soon there won’t be any substantial fish
populations, any wild reproduction. Just because traditional cost-benefit
analysis tends to underestimate those ecosystem services and values, let
alone aesthetics.”


The Army Corps is waiting final approval for funding. Once given the
OK, the study of the Boardman River and its dams… could very well lay
the groundwork for other dam removals around the country.


For the GLRC, I’m Bob Allen.

Related Links

Drawing Up an Energy Efficient Mortgage

  • A mortgage program through Fannie Mae can help people buy older homes and make them more energy efficient with one loan. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Winter is here, and homeowners are preparing for another
round of expensive home heating bills. The U.S. Energy Department
says depending on the fuel you use, home heating costs will rise between
nine percent and 30 percent this winter over last. The high cost of energy
has prompted at least one family to go deeper into debt to save on energy
costs in the future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner has
more:

Transcript

As homeowners face another winter of rising heating bills, one loan officer in the
region
is promoting energy efficiency when people shop for a mortgage. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The government and government-chartered companies such as Fannie Mae offer Energy
Efficient Mortgages. But relatively few homeowners take advantage of them. Under the
program, new or existing homes are inspected and rated for energy efficiency. The
homeowners decide which energy-efficient improvements to do, and then roll the cost of
them into their mortgage.


Joel Wiese is a loan officer. He recently closed one of the few non-governmental
energy
efficient mortgages in the Great Lakes region.


“When you start looking at the total housing expense, utilities on top of the rest
of what
you’re doing, you’re basically going to spend less money than you normally would.
Because you’re reducing your utilities. Even though you’re increasing your mortgage
slightly, you’re reducing your utilities significantly. It’s a win-win.”


Wiese says there haven’t been more energy efficient mortgages in the region because
few
realtors, loan officers and lenders know how to use the program.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

DRAWING UP AN ENERGY EFFICIENT MORTGAGE (Short Version)

  • A mortgage program through Fannie Mae can help people buy older homes and make them more energy efficient with one loan. (Photo by Lester Graham)

As homeowners face another winter of rising heating bills,
one loan officer in the region is promoting energy efficiency when
people shop for a mortgage. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

As homeowners face another winter of rising heating bills, one loan officer in the
region
is promoting energy efficiency when people shop for a mortgage. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The government and government-chartered companies such as Fannie Mae offer Energy
Efficient Mortgages. But relatively few homeowners take advantage of them. Under the
program, new or existing homes are inspected and rated for energy efficiency. The
homeowners decide which energy-efficient improvements to do, and then roll the cost of
them into their mortgage.


Joel Wiese is a loan officer. He recently closed one of the few non-governmental
energy
efficient mortgages in the Great Lakes region.


“When you start looking at the total housing expense, utilities on top of the rest
of what
you’re doing, you’re basically going to spend less money than you normally would.
Because you’re reducing your utilities. Even though you’re increasing your mortgage
slightly, you’re reducing your utilities significantly. It’s a win-win.”


Wiese says there haven’t been more energy efficient mortgages in the region because
few
realtors, loan officers and lenders know how to use the program.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links