CU officials are working with cellular providers to better cover the campus | Jeremy Papasso

LEED-certified green buildings are great for the environment, but as it turns out, they maybe not great for your cell signal.

At the University of Colorado, where the number of bars on your cell phone goes up and down as you walk across campus, things are particularly grim in the newly constructed LEED buildings.

From the Colorado Daily:

For most CU students, spotty cell phone reception has become the norm on campus and has gotten worse with the construction of new environmentally friendly buildings. University officials say they’re hard at work on ways to improve cell phone service on campus.

A recent analysis of signal strength found that there are weak spots across campus, particularly in newly constructed buildings that meet LEED environmental standards, said Greg Stauffer, communications manager for CU’s Information Technology Services.

“The problems in LEED buildings had to do with improved insulation and UV filtering windows affecting signal strength,” Stauffer said. “It was an unexpected effect of the new construction, but we’re working on addressing the issue as quickly as possible.”

Read more about CU’s cell signals at ColoradoDaily.com.

That means they’re eligible to be named one of five groups that would be awarded $20,000 — and the voting takes place online. Anybody can cast a vote once a day through Sept. 10.

If it won, the CRC would be using the money to jump-start a program we’ve been hearing rumblings about for months: The ReSource Tool Library.

As the name suggests, a Tool Library is a place where citizens can borrow tools from a comprehensive, centralized tool inventory. By sharing resources, a Tool Library leverages communal purchasing power to ‘do more with less’, and puts tools in the hands of those with limited means. In today’s tough economy these are valuable assets for a program that also educates, conserves resources, and strengthens civic infrastructure.

CRC is the only finalist from Boulder, and there is one other finalist from Colorado: Rock the Earth, out of Denver.

Confluence Park in Denver | flickr user jessicareeder

EPA blog Greenversations just gave a shout-out to a part of Denver that looks very different now than it did a few short years ago:

Confluence Park seen from REI, across the S. Platte River | flickr user Payton Chung

While visiting Denver over Memorial Day weekend, I walked from my downtown hotel to the lower downtown area and the South Platte River. I did not expect to see a revitalized waterfront with very busy bicycle paths lining the river along with new apartments and condos.

I had the same experience! I lived in Boulder before from 2005-2007, left, and came back in 2009. On my first trip back to downtown Denver, I was really impressed with the changes. The river is a much more prominent part of the city now thanks to that area, which is called Confluence Park (due to the confluence of the South Platte River and Cherry Creek).

ClimateSmart is in limbo.

Laura had written here that ClimateSmart was in trouble — and at the Camera that the ClimateSmart home loan program is indefinitely suspended (though the ClimateSmart commercial loan program is not). The trick is that it’s yet another loan and multiple entities have claims to that debt — and they all want to have the first claim to it. Not surprisingly, the Wall Street Journal does a far better job of explaining the financial side of the PACE/Fannie/Freddie entanglement than I do.

More recently, Grist caught up with a Longmont teacher who came this close to retrofitting her home, but ended up frustrated with ClimateSmart.

“I was looking forward to a warm winter,” she said.

That’s when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac threw the program into confusion by sending letters suggesting that mortgage lenders should steer clear of PACE, arguing that PACE liens could not take priority over mortgages. The government-chartered mortgage giants are concerned about losing out if homeowners with clean-energy assessments default on their loans.

Boulder County commissioners, along with Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter (D) and others, urged Fannie and Freddie and their federal regulator to clarify their cryptic letters and resolve the issue. But last week, after having already delayed the program once while awaiting resolution, the county felt compelled to cancel the latest round of ClimateSmart funding.

“We had a couple hundred homeowners who were applying for $3 million in financing for projects who have essentially been hanging in limbo,” County Commissioner Will Toor said. “We initially hoped the issue would be quickly resolved. It hasn’t been. While we still believe that it will eventually be resolved, we couldn’t ask our homeowners and local green building contractors to just remain in limbo.”

Read more of Kayla Thomason’s story over at Grist.

The stone wall on the South Facade absorbs heat during the day, lowering the heat gain on the interior of the house. At night as the air cools the heat is given back into the surrounding air, warming the house naturally | photo and caption: flickr user Jeremy Levine

Taking advantage of the sun doesn’t mean you need costly solar panels. Passive solar is the heating and cooling of a building naturally by means of efficient site placement and energy efficient materials. Strategic positioning of a building in relation to the sun can be enough to heat your home and seriously cut your costs. Here in Boulder, we get a lot of sun, and you’re either fighting it or you’re working with it. Architects in Boulder know the value of passive solar:

If you’re building from scratch, siting a building correctly can save 20 to 30 percent in energy costs, says Joseph Vigil, formerly of VaST Architecture and currently creating a new firm, Workshop8.

Southern facing windows are the key to passive solar design, Vigil says.

“In the winter months when the sun angle is very low, it’s easy to get direct sunlight through the windows,” he says. “Then if it has a slight overhang in the warmer months, the overhang protects the south-facing glass from the sun’s rays. You don’t get a heat gain.

Colorado with its 300 days of sun a year is particularly well suited to passive solar design.

Architect Kelly Lerner told Mother Earth News more about the passive solar basics:

Kelly Lerner, architect and author of Natural Remodeling for the Not-So-Green House, says there are four things to consider when designing or remodeling a building to most effectively utilize solar energy: south-facing glass (glazing), shading, insulation and thermal mass.

“In most North American climates, the right amount of south-facing glass is 7 to 12 percent of the floor area of the building — a lot less than you might think if you’ve seen solar home designs from the ’70s,” she says. “In the ’70s, we really used too much glass with too little thermal mass, so instead of passive solar heat, we had something more like ‘passive-aggressive’ solar heat, creating buildings that were too hot during the day and too cool at night. Too much glazing can be a detriment on cold winter nights, allowing heat to escape.”

-Hannah Gentry

Ben

Smart growth. Sustainable cities. These terms get tossed around a lot. And, typically, they are used in reference to new buildings and new communities. What about our existing buildings and our aging cities?

Living City Block is taking aim at this question. By combining urban revitalization with a focus on energy-efficiency retrofits and cutting-edge renewable technology, they are trying to set an adoptable standard for urban sustainability.

Raising the bar

Typical building renovations increase energy efficiency by 10 percent. Pretty marginal. If you consider the fact that 80% of the existing buildings in the U.S. will still be in operation 50 years from now, that’s not exactly pushing the envelope to a sustainable future.

What if you could cut the energy consumption of an entire community by half? Even better, what if that community could produce more energy than it consumes?

A possible starting point for the Living City Block | Courtesy livingcityblock.org

This is exactly what Living City Block intends to do, starting with its pilot project in Lower Downtown Denver. They’re calling it LCB LoDo. The site chosen encompasses a full city block between 15th and 16th, on Wazee and Wyknoop Streets. Here, the organization will showcase advanced renewable energy and efficiency practices, while enhancing the “livability” of the community. Essentially, they want to create an environmentally friendly place where people come to “live, work and play.”

What a living city block might look like | Courtesy livingcityblock.org

LoDo is already a thriving community. Once a seedy skid row of abandoned warehouses, the neighborhood underwent revitalization a couple decades ago. It is now a lively center of restaurants, coffee shops, businesses and upscale lofts. So in that respect, this project has a bit of a head start. Nevertheless, achieving the energy goals set forth will be extremely difficult.

Greatest Hits of Green

So what will a Green LoDo look like? At first glance, not a whole lot different than it does now.

Much of the work involved in retrofitting buildings involves maximizing insulation, rearranging mechanical systems, upgrading lighting systems and installing high-efficiency windows. Though not as sexy as solar panels, this kind of work is by far the most important when it comes to creating green buildings.

As the energy needs are brought down through efficiency improvements, cutting-edge green technologies can be much more effective at creating a building that produces more energy than they consume.

That’s where the fun stuff comes in — what we’re calling “a greatest hits of green.” After a few years, the block should feature a range of technologies, such as wastewater treatment, composting, rooftop gardens shaded by solar panels, ground source heating and cooling, and my personal favorite–permeable sidewalks, which allow rainfall to absorb through walkways and into the soil below, reducing runoff in the streets, the need for storm drains, and in turn the mixing of water with dirty oils and chemicals.

Barriers

LCB Lodo has already gained some support, most notably from Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. Still, the future of this project must contend with a fair amount of obstacles, particularly regarding behavioral and business norms.

“We need new models of collaboration that can be applied to real estate development and urban revitalization throughout the country,” says Chad Riley, project lead for Business and Economic Development project at Living City Block. “And to do that we need to unite numerous players toward to a common goal.”

So the team has held several intensive meetings at the famed Tattered Cover Bookstore, one of the buildings on the block. These workshops have brought together leading architects and designers, local utilities, representatives from various government offices, and the owners of the buildings on the block. The goal: to break through conventional planning and financing practices and find practical opportunities to really make the project work.

Translating sustainability

The team is confident that it can reach these goals with a financial payback as quick as 5 years. The hard part is communicating and visualizing the work in a way that will inspire support. So they’re working with the design programs of Denver University and Metro State College of Denver’s to create various interactive media that will show what the block will look like at various stages of the project. These displays should start rolling out sometime this summer.

This also relates to the community vitality element of the project. Living City Block is working with University of Colorado-Denver’s Planning and Health Departments to better understand what makes a community thrive. In tandem with the actual retrofits, there will be an extensive research component to this project.

“We want to get a better idea of what a community needs and wants and then go forward with improving social connectivity in the area,” says Lindsay Franta, head of Community Research and Development for LCB.

Spreading the idea

Ultimately, the organization hopes to encourage others to replicate their work by making available a laundry list of recommendations and best practices. In addition, they will work with other organizations and building owners around the country to launch “sister-neighborhood” projects. Like LCB Lodo, these sister projects must include an NGO that will organize the project, a local city council on board, an academic institution that will commit to research to the project. And the site chosen must be mixed use, with nearby access to a transit hub and a group of tenants and owners that are committed to sharing the costs of retrofitting their buildings.

As a nonprofit organization, Living City Block is currently trying to drum up support and funds to keep the project moving. If you’re interested creating an LCB of your own, you can contact the organization. First you need to identify an NGO that will organize the project, a local city council on board, an academic institution that will commit to research to the project. And the site chosen must be mixed use, with nearby access to a transit hub and a group of tenants and owners that are committed to sharing the costs of retrofitting their buildings.

Ben Holland is Outreach and Marketing Coordinator for Rocky Mountain Institute. Focused primarily on external activities, he is the point person for all public inquiries, partnerships, conferences and speaking engagements. He also lends support to RMI’s marketing efforts by developing strategy and writing extensively about the Institute’s research and programmatic work.

Residents of the Southmoor Park neighborhood gathered Thursday night at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church to question the necessity of removing 169 trees around the creek in order to expand the channel and reduce the risk of area flooding, according to the city.

The approximately $5 million project, funded by the 2007 Storm Drainage Bond approved by Longmont voters, is intended to reduce destruction in the event of a 100-year flood, according to city officials.

Plot Summary: “Furry Vengeance” is a live action family comedy in which an ambitious young real estate developer, Dan Sanders, faces off with a band of angry animals when his new housing subdivision pushes too far into a pristine part of the wilderness. Led by an incredibly clever raccoon, the animals stymie the development and teach our hero about the environmental consequences of man’s encroachment on nature.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The movie opens this week.

Here’s what I would have written for the logline: A skunk and a raccoon hot-wire a car in an attempt to stop Brendan Fraser from whatever in a movie that features Sr. Chang from “Community” as the bad guy. And a bear knocks over a portable toilet with Brendan Fraser in it.

Because those are obviously the highlights and because I kind of doubt the ability of the film to “teach our hero about the environmental consequences of man’s encroachment on nature.”

But hey! Maybe I’m wrong!

Boulder is getting tough on rentals.

In its bid to actually meet the carbon-cutting goals laid out by the Kyoto Protocol (to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2012) the city has realized that it has to find some way to make landlords step up to the energy-efficiency plate.

The problem is the “split incentive.” Why pay to upgrade a rental unit when you’re not footing the monthly energy bill?

And in a university town like Boulder, where rentals make up more than 50 percent of the housing stock, getting landlords on board is key.

This week, the city unveiled a proposed set of point-based rules for a program it calls “SmartRegs.”

From the Daily Camera:

Under the program, landlords would be required to make improvements that could include installing energy-efficient appliances, sealing ducts or better insulating.

The city’s overall goal is to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions coming from homes by 94,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2012. The SmartRegs program, it’s estimated, could make up about 45,000 tons of that goal.

If approved, rental properties would be required to achieve 100 “points” — including two points of mandatory water conservation — based on a lengthy list of possible improvements.

Read the full story at DailyCamera.com.

Pica's Boulder opens in May

Like Mexican food… and reclaimed wood tables?

I know Laura’s excited about this place, with which I have no personal experience, but here’s something cool about Mexican restaurant Pica’s, whose Boulder location is slated to open in May: They wanted to used some kind of reclaimed materials for their tables.

Who do you think had the answer for them? Yep, it was ReSource.

The solution – birch veneer doors of which there were an abundance of at Resource. Our fine carpenter in-residence for Picas the next few weeks, Shawn Watt-Hoven, gave the thumbs up and got to work right away. Each door produces two tables.

Really, I just think it’s cool that they’re blogging the process of opening this location. Pretty neat.

Anyway, the place apparently has a loyal following (though the Yelp reviews look sorta love-it-or-hate-it, don’t they?), and I’m never opposed to new Mexican food places with sustainable sensibilities.