Sustainable North

About a new New York State campus that is using sustainable building practices. From the New York Times July 27, 2008:

“Stony Brook Southampton will certainly be among a limited number of campuses with this level of commitment to sustainability,” says Judy Walton, acting executive director of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. “Sustainability is really a change in the mind-set of how we operate. It’s like seeing the world through a new lens.”

But most significant is how Southampton, a part of Stony Brook University, is writing into its courses the concept of sustainability. Students study it when they study literature, economics, architecture or statistics.

Click here to read the whole article.

From the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner August 17, 2008:

Interest is surging in the potential of Alaska’s powerful river currents to generate electricity using underwater turbines, but some researchers and resource managers are cautioning against unintended consequences if interest too quickly turns into commercial development.

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From the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer August 15, 2008.

“What I’m trying to do is save the planet in my own way,” da Luz said before an audience of a few dozen people who assembled at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center for a demonstration.

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From Reuters, July 31, 2008:

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - A U.S. scientist has developed a new way of powering fuel cells that could make it practical for home owners to store solar energy and produce electricity to run lights and appliances at night.

A new catalyst produces the oxygen and hydrogen that fuel cells use to generate electricity, while using far less energy than current methods.

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From the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer August 14, 2008.

A solar-powered car on three wheels arrived in Fairbanks on Wednesday evening, creating a spectacle as the spaceship-like vehicle made its way down the Johansen Expressway to the Cold Climate Housing Research Center.

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BY: Dave Misiuk, Cold Climate Housing Research Center
Energy Focus: Fairbanks Daily Newsminer August 14th, 2008, Section A3

This is the second article in a series on residential wood heating. The series will include information about firewood, different heating appliance options, applications, installations and other aspects that will hopefully help us conserve our resources, keep our environment healthy and…keep us warm. [Read more →]

From the Fairbanks Daily Newsminer August 11, 2008.

Here’s an amazing fact: About 10 percent of the energy used by a regular incandescent light bulb goes to produce light. The rest is wasted as heat. Though heat is always nice in our cold winters, it is very inefficient heat at a very high cost.

Energy-efficient lights produce more light than heat with the electricity they use. As a result, they can provide the same amount of light as a standard bulb while using less energy. Since lighting can make up as much as 20 percent of the house energy bill, conservation here can amount to considerable savings.

Click here to read the full article.

From the Fairbanks Daily News Miner August 7th, 2008

Passing even more of private energy costs in Alaska to state government is a policy fraught with long-term peril, but since the current emergency has made action inevitable, the Legislature should adopt a simple, limited program with a clear expiration date.

The program that best fits those criteria would pay only for the cost of heating oil above a particular price. The payments would not go to individual Alaskans but to oil distributors, which already keep the necessary records. The dealers would charge customers a set price, say $2.50 per gallon, and collect the rest of the market price from the state.

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From the Fairbanks Daily News Miner August 8th, 2008

FAIRBANKS — The last remaining Nunamiut Inupiat Eskimo community settled Anaktuvuk Pass just 60 years ago, trading in nomadic life for village life in a valley tucked 2,200 feet up in the central Brooks Range. In the one-airstrip town with no roads in or out, some 300 residents live crowded into 1970s era wood-frame houses perched on the windswept, arctic mountain pass.

But innovative designers now want to help the villagers build homes following a modern design that is actually inspired by the sod igloos that the Nunamiut first carved from the land.

Click here to read Full Article

BY: Mike Musick, Cold Climate Housing Research Center
Energy Focus: Fairbanks Daily Newsminer August 7th, 2008, Section A3

A few days ago I received a phone call from a remodeling contractor who was very concerned that quite a number of Fairbanks residents were buying cheap slider type windows from one of the newer building supply stores.  He suggested that we issue a consumer warning on this issue.

I shared his concern regarding sliding windows having lived in an old home with single pane double-hung windows with exterior storm windows.  The windows were covered with ice until we learned to apply a shrink wrap clear plastic window kit.  This solved the icing problem but still allowed a lot of heat to pass around the perimeter of the windows.  This summer we replaced those windows with triple pane units with 2 low E coatings and argon gas in the two chambers.  We did a fair amount of research prior to making this investment.

[Read more →]