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This book compares four mainstream green building styles, including: Insulated Concrete Forms (ICFs), Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs), Advanced Framing, and Earth Shelters. Also included are case studies and story problems for deciding which renewable energy systems work best for specific areas.

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More than 90 percent of the power generated in the United States comes from large, centralized, highly polluting, nonrenewable sources of energy. It is delivered through long, brittle transmission lines, and then is squandered through inefficiency and waste. But it doesn't have to be that way. Communities can indeed produce their own local, renewable energy.

Power From the People explores how homeowners, co-ops, nonprofit institutions, governments and businesses are putting power in the hands of local communities through distributed energy programs and energy-efficiency measures.

Using examples from around the nation – and occasionally from around the world – Greg Pahl explains how to plan, organize, finance and launch community-scale energy projects that harvest energy from sun, wind, water and earth. He also explains why community power is a necessary step on the path to energy security and community resilience – particularly as we face peak oil, cope with climate change and address the need to transition to a more sustainable future.

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Increasing the energy efficiency of your home can save you money, help the environment and enhance your comfort, but how do you decide which improvements are the most beneficial and cost-effective? Completely revised to incorporate the latest developments in green technology, The Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings is the definitive resource for consumers who want to better their home's performance while reducing their energy bills.

Well-organized and highly readable, The Consumer Guide to Home Energy Savings begins with an overview of the relationships between energy use, economics and the environment. Updated and expanded chapters focus on specific aspects of any home, such as heating and cooling, ventilation, electronics, lighting, cooking and laundry, and provide helpful explanations for each, including:

• Energy use characteristics
• Comparisons between available technologies
• Cost-effective repair and replacement options
• Step-by-step guidance for finding the right equipment

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MOTHER EARTH NEWS and GRIT come together to bring you 600 pages of expert advice, recipes, do-it-yourself projects and more information on living a self-sufficient life. This set covers everything from organic gardening to bees and honey, from backyard rabbits to self-reliance and country skills. The do-it-yourself projects include energy-saving household updates as well as instructions for constructing chicken coops, outdoor bread ovens and permanent garden beds. Follow recipes for baking sourdough bread, preparing rabbit meat, fixing delicious egg dishes, and cooking with honey. Discover how to save money with energy-saving tips for your home, and how to cut your food bills in half by growing your own food right in your own backyard.

This set includes:
MOTHER EARTH NEWS Guide to Organic Gardening, 4th Edition
This glossy-paged guide is perfect for beginners or expert gardeners. It covers everything from perennial vegetables to choosing a greenhouse, from organic pest control to making compost. Read how poultry is the secret weapon for organic pest control. Learn how to make the best homemade tomato cages. Or plan out your kitchen garden with four delightful herb gardens plans.

MOTHER EARTH NEWS Guide to Self-Reliance and Country Skills, 2nd Edition
With more than 20 articles, this guide has hundreds of great ideas for self-reliant living. From preserving food to small-space gardening, from backyard chickens to making your own yogurt and cheese, this special guide has a wide variety of information that will help you lead a sustainable life.

GRIT Guide to Homemade Bread, 3rd Edition
Bread, bagels, pretzels, pizza crust, cookies and more! All of these delicious homemade creations can be found in this Guide to Homemade Bread. This guide includes more than 53 keys to successful bread making, outdoor bread oven plans, fail-proof no-knead breads, top bread machines tips and more.

GRIT Guide to Backyard Rabbits, 2nd Edition
You'll find more than 25 keys to a successful rabbit-raising enterprise in this special Barnyard Series guide. Learn about raising rabbits for meat and breeding stock. Build rabbit homes and learn what equipment you'll need. Read about a basic bunny diet that will keep them happy and healthy, and also discover so much more.

GRIT Guide to Backyard Chickens, 4th Edition
Calling all chicken enthusiasts! The fourth edition of this popular guide is overflowing with expert advice, key facts and easy chicken coop plans that will have both beginner and seasoned chicken owners crowing for joy! Read how to build a broiler coop on a shoestring budget. Build the perfect chicken tractor. Learn which heritage hens are the best for laying eggs. Follow the wide variety of delicious chicken recipes this book has to offer.

GRIT Guide to Backyard Bees and Honey, 3rd Edition
This treasure-trove of bee knowledge has more than 75 ways to get more from your bees. Cover-to-cover, this guide includes tips on saving money while building your own beehive or honey extractor with simple materials available at your local hardware store. Read how to use a top-bar hive, a less expensive method to raising bees that will pollinate your crops and provide tasty honey fresh from the comb.

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Are you looking for creative ways to lower your energy costs, generate more of your own power, or become less reliant on the grid? Energy expert Paul Scheckel offers practical advice for taking matters into your own hands. Understand the fundamentals of solar, wind, water and biofuel energy production as you make your home ready for renewables. Each chapter of The Homeowner's Energy Handbook provides a comprehensive discussion of renewable energy sources, along with "green guides" for building your own energy-saving (and energy-producing) equipment. Step-by-step instructions show you how to build a bicycle-powered generator, biodiesel processor, thermosiphon solar hot-water collector, biogas generator, smokeless wood-gas camp stove, and more. Whether you want to button up your house to be more energy-efficient, find deep energy savings or take your home entirely off the grid, this guide has the knowledge and skills you need to reduce your use, then produce!

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A compelling book about the water crisis facing the West, grounded in history and important for residents as well as readers nationwide. This narrative weaves together the stories of human folly and grandiose endeavor that shaped the states and reveal the background of the critical economic and political issue that is how water is used and misused today.

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Based on scientific and professional understanding of how to make quality alcohol in considerable quantities, this book is filled with detailed articles on distillation principles, how stills are designed for optimum production and several recipes for mashing corn. Other articles cover the complete process of making alcohol fuel. Also featured are plans for making several experimental stills, an 8-inch packed column still, mash cookers and other equipment for production of alcohol fuel. Detailed charts answer the many questions sure to be asked by the novice distiller.

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The Sun-Inspired House evolved from the questions about passive solar, passive cooling, energy efficiency and green building that home owners, builders, engineers and architects asked author Debra Rucker Coleman over the last 25 years. Although the book includes more than 50 house plans, its primary benefit comes from its in-depth coverage of passive solar home design, green building, energy-efficient construction, working with architects and many other resources.

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Winds sweeping through the Great Plains once robbed the Farm Belt of its future, stripping away overworked topsoil and creating the dreaded Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Today, those winds are bringing new hope to the declining rural communities of the central United States. Nowhere is wind’s promise more palpable than in Cloud County, Kansas, where the soaring turbines of the Meridian Way Wind Farm are boosting incomes and bringing green jobs to a community that has, for decades, watched its children drift away.

In Harvest the Wind, Philip Warburg brings readers face-to-face with the people behind the green economy–powered resurgence in Cloud County and communities like it across the United States. This corner of Kansas is the first stop on an odyssey that introduces readers to farmers, factory workers, biologists, and high-tech entrepreneurs—all players in a transformative industry that is taking hold across America and around the globe.

In this illuminating book, Warburg reveals both the remarkable growth of a breakthrough technology and the formidable challenges it faces. He visits epicenters of anti-wind opposition as well as communities that have embraced wind farms as neighbors. He guides readers through an Iowa turbine assembly plant that is struggling to compete in a global marketplace dominated by European and Chinese manufacturers. And he looks at the thousands of miles that wind-generated power will need to travel to reach American consumers.

Harvest the Wind is an earthly antidote to loftier treatises on global warming and green energy. By showing us how practical solutions are being implemented at the local level, Warburg offers an inspirational look at how we can all pursue a saner and more sustainable energy future—while at the same time investing in the nation’s infrastructure and jumpstarting its economy.

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In The Silent Epidemic, physician Alan Lockwood describes and documents the adverse health effects of burning coal. Lockwood's comprehensive treatment examines every aspect of coal, from its complex chemical makeup to details of mining, transporting, burning and disposal (each of which generates significant health concerns). He describes coal pollution's effects on the respiratory, cardiovascular and nervous systems, and how these problems will only worsen; explains the impact of global warming on coal-related health problems; and discusses possible policy approaches to combat coal pollution.