The PBS video about the first large all electric school in Colorado in many years is being shown again this Saturday, Jan. 4th at 5 PM. I was heavily involved in the development and design of this building and was active in promoting the idea of an all-electric building in this challenging location/climate. Please feel free to share the link below with anybody you think may be interested.  If you want to view the video but can't make that date/time work, simply go to the RMPBS link to stream it anytime: Sierra Grande on Heart of a Building:

https://video.rmpbs.org/video/all-electric-near-passive-house-school-hpdfkn/

Sustainability and Human Factors clash at the Olympics: What is going wrong in Paris?

When we emphasize building performance over human performance, we inevitably compromise both.

I am frequently asked about the name of my new company, so it seems fitting this blog would answer the question. Entropy derives from the second law of thermodynamics and may be simply stated as the spreading of energy until it is evenly distributed. Even distribution is a high level of Entropy, and concentrated energy is low Entropy.. The Entropy of any system plus the environment in which it operates increases over time, and this is often interpreted as implying that disorder, randomness, and chaos also increase over time.

On May 21, I had the opportunity to present about the recent Buy Clean Colorado legislation (HB21-1303). Having testified at the state capitol on behalf of this legislation a few years ago, I was particularly keen to participate in this event, held at the Association of General Contractors of Colorado (AGC) office. The meeting included professionals from three different organizations - the AGC, The American Council of Consulting Engineers (ACEC), and the American Institute of Architects (AIA). I was there representing a new group called the Colorado Embodied Carbon Collaborative, founded by my good friend and longtime collaborator, Bob Redwine. We were joined by three members of the Office of the State Architect - Tana Lane, Rod Vanderwall, and Bailey Vigil.

In our experience, it’s challenging to proceed from knowing your company’s emissions profile to crafting a climate action plan to reduce it. Successful companies will adopt the right mix of strategies for them — which is where the bigger challenge comes in.