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Practical Sustainability
Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying: “It can’t be done,” are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.
In 1902, Puck magazine noted that ‘Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying: “It can’t be done,” are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.’ This has certainly been my experience working in the practical sustainability field for the past thirty years.
A few weeks ago, a business partner and I visited the Clay Brook high-performance home in New Hampshire that was recently built to the Phius single-family new construction standard. If you’re not familiar with Phius, it’s one of the leading “passive building” certification standards in North America. The basic idea is to use modern materials and smart techniques to build structures in any climate zone that don’t require conventional heating and air conditioning. Instead, these super-efficient buildings use sunlight, ground temperature, and natural breezes (“passive” heating and cooling) to do the heavy lifting to maintain comfortable indoor conditions all year.
Talking with the people involved with that project, to understand what worked well and what could be improved so we can apply lessons learned to the commercial and residential energy-efficient construction work my company does, is so much more fun for me than going to a climate rally. Those…
