With renewable energy and efforts to combat global warming high on the list of national priorities, Dan Chiras, Mother Earth News contributing editor and founder of The Evergreen Institute recently announced the opening of the Center for Renewable Energy and Green Building, an educational center in east-central Missouri.

The Center for Renewable Energy and Green Building offers hands-on instruction in solar electricity, wind energy, passive solar design, residential energy efficiency, green building and natural building.

The courses are taught primarily by author and educator, Dan Chiras. Chiras has taught at the college level for 32 years. His books include The Homeowner’s Guide to Renewable Energy, Power from the Wind, Green Home Improvement, the Natural Plaster book, The Solar House and The Natural House.

Chiras consults on residential green building and renewable energy throughout North and Central America.

The first three courses at the Center (April 18, 19 and 20, 2009) are Home Energy Efficiency, Basic PVs and Intro to Wind.

The Evergreen Institute also offers Certificate Programs in Residential Green Building and Residential Renewable Energy for individuals interested in pursuing a career in green building and/or renewable energy or individuals interested in furthering their professional credentials in these burgeoning fields.

The Evergreen Institute is working in partnership with the Midwest Renewable Energy Association and The University of Colorado’s Continuing Education and Professional Studies Program.

To learn more, visit The Evergreen Institute, e-mail info@evergreeninstitute.org or call 303-883-8290.

Americans have become conditioned to expect immediacy. Cell phones, faxes, computers, Internet access, overnight mail and text messaging give us instant access to friends and families and a wealth of information. It’s all there at our fingertips.

Thanks to computers and the Internet, we can go online today, research a product in depth, order it, and have it on our doorsteps the next day. We can text a friend in China or India and receive an immediate response. And, we can access a boundless amount of information without so much as a single trip to the local library.

Unfortunately, our conditioning is a detriment. As we struggle to rebuild our economy, impatience is rearing its ugly head. Critics are already casting doubt on the economic recovery plan recently signed by the president, not giving it a moment to take effect.

We forget that it took us a while for the crisis to unfold. The economic crisis probably started with the burst of the tech stock bubble. Then came 911, an event that knocked our economy to its knees. Then came the invasion of Iraq, and the high price tag, which drained our economy.

And don’t forget hurricane Katrina, with a price tag of over $150 billion, and countless other disasters all brought on by global warming. Each one cost us dearly — in lives, in property loss and in dollars. Each one helped weaken our economy.

Tax relief to America’s wealthiest probably hurt the economy as well, decreasing revenues in a time when spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan reached record levels.

The high price of gasoline, dealt a blow to our economy as well. And then came the subprime mortgage meltdown. It was the last straw and knocked the already severely weakened legs right out from under our economy.

Let us not forget that the current crisis took a long time to unfold, and will take a long time to solve. We must remain patient — and do our part to prevent the kinds of things that got us here in the first place.

Many people who are contemplating installing solar electric systems on their homes struggle with the high initial costs. To pay for a system, they either have to dip into their savings or take out a loan. A 3- to 5-kW grid-connected solar system, suitable for most homes, can run $30,000 to $50,000.

Even with recent legislation that provides a 30 percent tax credit for solar and wind systems for homes and businesses, the cost of such as system will still cost $21,000 to $30,000, which is a substantial piece of change.

Isn’t there some way to reduce this cost?

There is. It's called efficiency.

Richard Perez, founder of Home Power magazine, ran the numbers. He found that every dollar invested in energy efficiency could reduce the cost of a photovoltaic (PV) system by $3 to $5.

How?

By reducing the size of a system one must install to meet his or her needs. The economic savings from efficiency are quite substantial. For instance, a $2,000 investment in home energy efficiency — for example, weatherization, insulation and energy-efficient compact fluorescent or LED light bulbs — will reduce the demand for electricity. This, in turn, will reduce the size of the PV system required to meet one’s needs. It could easily save $6,000 to $10,000 on the cost of the system of a 3- to 5-kW PV system before tax incentives. Taking into account the 30% federal tax credit, the savings would be $4,200 to $7,000.

Spend a little more on efficiency and the cost of the system drops even more. If you invested $4,000 in efficiency, the total system cost would decline by $12,000 to $20,000. Taking into account the federal tax credits once again and the decrease in initial cost would be $8,400 to $14,000.

That’s not a bad return on an investment in efficiency.

Instead of spending $21,000 to $30,000 for a system, you’d pay $12,600 to $16,000.

So, if you're thinking about installing a PV system, think efficiency first. It’s a gift you give yourself and the planet. It will reduce energy demand, reduce pollution, and reduce the cost of a system substantially. Moreover, the savings will provide dividends for the life of the house.

Want to know more about where that $787 billion dollars in the stimulus package is going? Here are links to a couple of timely articles with all the details about how the stimulus package will encourage renewable energy and energy efficiency.

 • “Will the Stimulus Help Wind and Solar?” from the New York Times blog, Green Inc.

 •  “What the Stimulus Means for EcoGeeks,” from the EcoGeek blog.

 • “Stimulus Act Expands Clean Energy Tax Credits for Homes and Businesses” from the Department of Energy's EERE News site.

Also worth knowing about, there’s a new government website, Recovery.gov, designed to help people learn more about the recovery package and track how the money is being spent.

Free Green offers free plans for green homes. Some plans include energy consumption comparisons between building to code and building with green features. Each plan explains green features.

I downloaded plans for one house to check things out, and the amount of information was impressive. I was expecting floorplans and elevations, but the PDFs included cost estimates, links to products featured in the design, projections of energy costs and a detailed listing of how the house rates in LEED.

The site is searchable, and plans are customized to your location before you download them. You also can purchase blueprints, too. If you're looking for plans, be sure to check out this site.

MAX is getting its first 21st century body part fitted — a snug, low frontal area fender. Goodbye, classic charmer, hello, sports racer. When this project is done, we'll hardly recognize the old girl.

Don't worry, we're not throwing away any of the pretty stuff. We'll be able to swap back and forth between antique and zooty in a 10-hour day ... that is, once the zooty part is finished. Besides, the slicked-up version of this body may have some charm of its own.

Photo by Jack McCornack

So here you see the first new part out of the first new mold. In keeping with the keep-it-simple-keep-it-cheap philosophy, we're using one mold for both front fenders. We've put MAX up on blocks and removed the suspension spring from the right front wheel, so we can move the wheel up and down and see if/when/where it hits the fender. So far so good; once we have the fender positioned correctly we'll add the fender fairing (see Update No. 23 to understand what I'm talking about — it's the part that tapers back from the fender and blends into the rest of the body), then start building the “pontoon” that runs along the side of the car.

I think the front fender assembly will be the last MAX body part we build the old-fashioned way, where we measure drawings and saw templates and bend sheets and shape foam with big files and ... heck, even this part wasn't done totally the old-fashioned way — at least I had my Rhino CAD (computer aided design, if you're new here) drawings I could print full size and trace on the wood I was carving. Still, it took a loooong time.

Maybe not long if you're a redwood tree, but plenty long for a human being. I figure I can build a computer-operated foam carving machine quicker than I can sculpt a whole car by hand, and we'll soon see if I'm right. But right now, it's nice to see the streamlining starting to take shape in real, live, go-out-and-touch-it form.

Browse previous MAX Updates.

Read the introductory MAX article, Here Comes the 100-mpg Car.

Visit the Kinetic Vehicles website for more technical details on MAX.

PHOTO BY JESSIE FETTERLING

Usually when people talk about using greener lighting, they're talking about compact-fluorescent light bulbs, or CFLs. But what about the other green light bulbs, LEDs?

LEDs, or light emitting diodes, are all around us. These long-lasting, efficient light bulbs are used for all kinds of applications, and they’re especially good for those that involve gently glowing, bright-colored light. That includes stoplights, Christmas tree lights, exit signs, the display on digital clocks and the indicator lights that show when electronics are switched on.

Although LEDs are also being developed for general lighting, most of them still aren’t bright enough for say, reading. That may all change soon though, because there’s a lot of research happening in this area.

More Info:

For a good general description of what LEDs can do, check out this article from Scientific American.

For a mind-bending trip into the world of semiconductors (a world that also includes solar panels) check out this article on LEDs from How Stuff Works.

And for more on LED research, take a look at this article from the New York Times.

PHOTO BY ISTOCKPHOTO

PHOTO BY ISTOCKPHOTO

Above: Photos of LEDs in action. The top photo is an LED bulb used for general lighting. Below: An LED stoplight and LED holiday lights: two common uses for LED bulbs.

President Obama signed the $787 billion economic stimulus package today, and it includes a lot of green spending. An article in Grist says that a total of about $82 billion of that money will be used for green initiatives, including investing in renewable energy, energy efficiency, public transportation, improvements to the grid, and training for green jobs.

The hope is that by investing in green energy, both economic and environmental problems will be solved at the same time. Right now about 400,000 people work in the renewable energy industry in the United States, but that number is predicted to be in the millions in the near future. (Read 37 Million Green Jobs Are Possible.) An example of a source for green jobs is in the wind energy industry. According to the Worldwatch Institute, every megawatt of installed wind energy capacity creates 4.85 full-time jobs in the United States. Not bad, but let’s hope this stimulus package works.

The United States is struggling to restore its economy, when it should be working to reshape or rebuild it. There’s a profound difference between the two.

Unfortunately, in our panic to revive the economy many of our congressional representatives have failed to fully realize one fundamental fact: Not all dollars are created equal.

New highways, bridges, and economic stimuli that return the economy to its former state and end up putting more people back into gas-guzzling RVs or too-large or energy-stupid homes do not hold a candle to stimuli that promote home weatherization, new wind farms and green transportation.

Let’s be fair. The economic recovery package recently passed by Congress provides funds for jobs and businesses that promote sustainability like energy retrofits, renewable energy and green transportation. But I fear that much of the rest is meant to simply restore business as usual.

As many who have responded to my first blog realize (A Smart Road to Economic Recovery), we can’t solve the problems we’ve created with the same logic that created them. So what do we do?

I urge all readers to write or call their legislators and write editorials in their local newspapers emphasizing the need to promote sustainable economic activity. What should we be promoting?

How about a solar hot water system on every home in America? How about incentives or requirements that all new homes be built to exacting energy-efficiency standards? How about incentives or laws that require solar electric modules on every government building, office building and new home? How about moving forward the deadline on which auto manufacturers are to achieve higher fuel efficiency standards?  How about laws or incentives that promote the use of green building materials, recycled products in all aspects of society, organic farming, environmental education in K-12, water conservation, and restoration of damaged waterways, farm fields and forests?

Let’s be specific.

Let’s propose a list of action items that contributes to a truly sustainable society — one that makes sense for people, the economy and the environment now and over the long term. 

And as some of you have suggested, let’s vote with our dollars, too. Let’s take steps personally to promote these activities, starting in our own homes and businesses. We can’t wait for Washington to solve our problems. We must take action individually. If not us, who? If not now, when?

UC Irvine students Bryan Le and Kyle Good stumbled upon the “What’s Your Crazy Green Idea” X Prize competition while searching online for contests they could enter. And surfing the web never paid off this much because — not only did they participate — they won the $25,000 prize!

On Sept. 10, 2008 the X Prize Foundation announced the competition and asked contestants to submit two-minute videos through YouTube that address a possible breakthrough on an energy-and-environment-related issue. (For more information, read Think Crazy Green Thoughts and Maybe Win $25,000.) More than 100 videos were submitted and three finalists were chosen. Then, it was up to the public to determine the final winner.

Over 4,000 viewers decided that the “craziest” green idea was “The Capacitor Challenge,” which challenges the X Prize Foundation to develop a new storage medium. You can see the winning video below.

For future X Prize reading, check out Jack McCornack’s blog about building a 100-mpg car for the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize.

As the U.S. economy continues its downward spiral, the media’s role in promoting growth and consumption become blatantly obvious.  Newscaster after newscaster and analyst remind us that roots of our downturn are weak consumer spending brought on in large part by the subprime mortgage fiasco.  Some in government propose tax cuts to prop up spending. The central theme in the discussion is that if consumer spending can be sparked once again, all will be well.

Not-too-subtly, we (the spending public) are enjoined to perform our “duty” as good citizens of the economy — to consume more. We’re told that we can pull a nation out of the crisis and restore economic prosperity by simply prying open our wallets.

It’s no surprise that citizens of this country are no longer referred to as such, but as “consumers,” a term that emphasizes our vital role in a consumer culture led by corporations and advertising firms paid to do their bidding 

Over the years, we’ve become a nation of consumers addicted to growth. We uncritically subscribe to the notion that “growth is good, indeed essential.”  Growth is predicated on the consumption of goods and services, some essential, many not, by good citizens like you and me.

Now spending is seen as the salve for this wounded economy. No matter that our continued acts of consumption could very likely lessen the chances of our long-term survival on the planet. What is even more distressing is that we’re raising our children on the same logic.

In recent days, we’ve learned that citizens are saving more. Some economists view that as bad for the economy, even though saving rates in the United States have previously plummeted into the negative range (we’re spending more than we make).

As we reshape our economy, not only must we restore jobs, but we must restore sanity: careful buying, judicious saving and living within our means. My hope is that we can create an economy that also focuses on sustainable activities, like renewable energy and long hikes in the wilderness, not big screen TVs and monster SUVs.

My fear is that to create a recovery, we’ll embrace any idea that puts people back to work, regardless of its impact on the environment, our long-term economic health and environmental sustainability.

Contributing editor Dan Chiras is the founder and director of The Evergreen Institute and president of Sustainable Systems Design, Inc.

The buzz around the nation is that the Senate may vote on the economic stimulus bill as early as this evening. The legislation currently includes a clean energy financing initiative, which, according to NPR, “would provide loan guarantees and other measures to encourage the private sector to invest billions of dollars in green energy.”

Some senators are trying to cut funding for clean energy investments from the bill, however. President Obama put more pressure on Congress earlier today to pass the bill, so with time running out, it’s imperative that we speak up in support of clean energy technology, which will stimulate the economy by creating green jobs and reduce global warming in the process.

Use the Senate website to find your senators’ phone numbers, and call them now to encourage them to keep the stimulus green.

Many people might think the terms "environmentalist" and "Christian" are mutually exclusive. But the number of Christians who are environmentally conscientious seems to be growing. The New York Times recently published an article, Praise the Lord and Green the Roof, about a group of nuns who are living the green lifestyle and have plans to build an eco-friendly convent.

Vineyard Church in Boise, Idaho, is also concerned about the environment. They host a special website, Let's Tend the Garden. And in 2007, the church's third-acre organic garden produced over 20,000 pounds of food for those in need.

If you missed the Brink TV show last week, or it's not part of your standard cable package (grrrr), you can still see the program about MAX, captain Jack McCornack and the victory in the Escape from Berkeley race. Visit the Brink video page and click "Brink Package: Escape from Berkeley" if the page doesn't load with that video.

If you're not familiar with our MAX project, read the introductory article, Here Comes the 100-mpg Car and browse through the MAX Updates. For more about the Escape from Berkeley Race, read MAX Wins 800-mile Race, without Gas.

Former Vice President Al Gore addressed the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last Wednesday, telling them that America needs a climate bill this year, especially since there’s supposed to be an international negotiation in Copenhagen in December. Gore already has a bold plan — to reach a goal of 100 percent clean electricity within 10 years. And with President Barack Obama in office, this may be the year to go through with it.

On Gore’s Repower America website, you can find the detailed plan on how he believes America could reach this goal through use of plug-in cars, clean electricity and, of course, renewable energies. The first thing on the list — just like in Obama’s inauguration speech — asks for a little help from everyone. So, start by looking at the site, and then think about following the advice on the site by writing to your elected officials and telling them that you want the economic recovery package to focus on new jobs and clean energy. Like both Gore and Obama have said and continue to say, it’s going to take everyone to make the change that you want in our economy and environment. So, start now!