The City of Irvine has been ranked as one of the country’s “Smarter Cities,” by the Natural Resources Defense Council for its strides in environmental stewardship, sustainable growth, and livability. Irvine ranked 13th among the 178 medium-sized cities surveyed.–City of Irvine website

One of the programs that helped Irvine obtain the “Smarter Cities” award was the giveaway of over 60,000 CFL light bulbs to Irvine residents.

An ENERGY STAR qualified compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) will save about $30 over its lifetime and pay for itself in about 6 months. It uses 75 percent less energy and lasts about 10 times longer than an incandescent bulb.–EPA

Irvine’s award-winning program that distributed 71,706 to Irvine residents between 2006 to 2008 achieved the following benefits:

• An annual saving to Irvine residents of $392,000
• Annual carbon emissions reduction of 1,421 tons
• The carbon emissions reduction is equivalent to taking 241 cars off the road every year.

The City exceeded its goal of distributing 60,000 CFLs to Irvine residents.

To see a list of additional programs that make the City of Irvine one of the country’s “Smarter Cities,” see the City’s Environmental Programs page.

Graphic Courtesy City of Irvine

Today’s post lists some of SCE’s green rebate programs for businesses. Again, this information is straight from Irvine’s environmental programs webpage. But the rebates are available to all SCE businesses, not just Irvine businesses.

SCE provides a wide variety of rebates and other incentives to small, medium and large commercial customers. A brief description of each program is below.

• Express Efficiency - provides rebates for a wide variety of energy efficient products - lighting, refrigeration, food service, agriculture, air conditioning and premium efficiency motors to retrofit existing buildings.

• California New Homes Program - provides financial incentives to builders and developers for exceeding Title 24 Energy Standards in new home construction.

• Retro Commissioning - provides an in-depth investigation of building operation and maintenance improvements to HVAC mechanical equipment, lighting, refrigeration and related controls to optimize energy usage and reduce inefficiencies in existing commercial buildings.

• Savings By Design - provides assistance in the designing of energy efficient commercial buildings and incentives to owners to offset the costs of energy efficient buildings and to designers who meet ambitious energy efficiency targets. For more information visit www.savingsbydesign.com or call (800) 338-8502.

• California Solar Initiative - provides incentives on a per watt basis for solar generation.

For more information on SCE’s business rebates, see SCE’s Energy Management Solution webpage.

Source: City of Irvine, Green Building Resource Guide

Although the list is from Irvine’s environmental programs webpage, the rebates are available to all SCE residential customers. This includes separate rebates for homeowners and apartment owners.

SCE offers a rebate program that allows residents to save money and energy. The rebate program offers cash rebates on qualifying energy-efficient upgrades or improvements you make to your home. A brief description of available rebates is below.

Appliances

• ENERGY STAR® Qualified Refrigerator Rebate Program - Receive $50 back.
• Refrigerator & Freezer Recycling Program - Receive $50 back.
• Energy Efficient Electric Water Heater Rebate Program - Receive $30 back.

Heating and Cooling

• ENERGY STAR® Qualified Room Air Conditioner - Receive up to $50 back.
• Summer Discount Plan - Receive up to $200 back.
• Whole House Fan - Receive up to $50 back.
• Evaporative Cooling - Receive up to $600 back.
• Cool Roof - Receive up to $0.20 per square foot on qualified roofing materials.

Lighting

• ENERGY STAR® Qualified Lighting - Save up to $125.
• Lighting Emitting Diode - Save up to $6 per month.

Pool Maintenance

• Pool Pump Rebate Program - Receive up to $200 back.

Renewable Energy

• California Solar Initiative

For multifamily building owners and managers, SCE also provides rebates for energy efficiency improvements in the categories of lighting, HVAC, insulation and windows to retrofit existing multifamily properties of two or more units through the Multifamily Energy Efficiency Rebate Program.

For more information on SCE rebates for homeowners and multi-unit owners, see SCE’s Home Rebate and Savings page.

Green jobs on the county level:

Orange County will likely add 3,130 new energy-related jobs over the next three years, most of them in the realm of project managers for construction or design work, according to a new report by a local college-affiliated group.–Pat Brennan, “Report: O.C. to add 3,000 jobs in energy sector”

Green jobs on the state level:

From January 2007 to January 2008, green jobs in California increased by 5 percent, while jobs decreased by 1 percent in the economy as a whole.–Pat Brennan, “Need a job? Think ‘green’ - jobs booming in O.C., statewide“

Green jobs on the national level:

The push for clean energy could lead to explosive job growth in the United States, according to a new report by a clean-energy research group.

The report, Clean Tech Job Trends 2009, says activity is high in the renewable energy market, with some predicting the biggest chance for wealth and job creation since the rise of computers and the Internet.–Pat Brennan, “Report: job potential high in renewable energy“

Green jobs and national security:

According to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, going green is important not only because of the personal job benefits it might bring us, but also for our national security.

We are transferring our wealth to countries around the world who don’t agree with us and, in many cases, are funding the very terrorists that we are sending our young men and women out to fight….We have got to get somehow or other to [energy] independence. It’s doesn’t matter if you are a greeny or not. The bottom line is we cannot keep funding our enemies.–Michael Bloomberg on Meet the Press

For more information on green jobs and the economy, see:

• Energy Efficient Occupations in Orange County, Center for Excellance, California Community Colleges
• Green Business by Media Planet
• EDF’s Clean Energy Jobs State Fact Sheets
  

Graph Courtesy Wikipedia

In addition to being the first home of this type that Living Homes built, the Santa Monica prefab is the first residential building in the U.S. to receive the LEED Platinum rating.* The Newport Beach home mentioned previously as well as homes in Laguna Beach, Huntington Beach and Costa Mesa are competing for this title in Orange County.

You can view the Santa Monica home in two ways: You can take a tour of the Santa Monica house every Friday from 1-2 pm and the 4th Saturday of each month. Tickets are free and can be reserved through eventbrite.com. Or you can take a virtual tour.

Brown and the developer, Living Homes, hope to verify the greenness of the newly installed prefab by applying for the LEED Platinum rating. LEED is the predominate sustainable development rating system, and Platinum is the highest LEED rating.

Some of the characteristics of this home that will help to achieve the Platinum designation are the use of the following:

• 
• recycled material
• low-flow water fixtures
• solar panels
• ventilation system that improves indoor quality
• windows that seal in air
• low- or non-volatile organic compounds
• Energy Star appliances
• construction components that allow the building to be torn down in a way that allows for the easy reuse of  all the parts

The installed cost of this particular prefab green home (model LHKT 1.5), which is available nationwide, is $275 per square foot. This does not include the foundation or land costs.

Related post:

Going for the Green-and Platinum-in Orange County: The 319 Single-family Project in Huntington Beach

Going for the Green–and Platinum–in Orange County: The Environmental Nature Center in Newport Beach

This energy efficient and ecologically built residence will demonstrate how homeowners can conserve energy and dollars by adopting and
utilizing green building products and services. It will feature an unparalleled display of energy-saving systems and environmentally friendly materials in a fully operational residence.–Living Green Homes Construction and Development, Inc. on its newly built Huntington Beach home

Saving money and energy. Sounds like a good combination for our economically-strapped times, or any time for that matter. Developer Living Green Homes is attempting to prove a way to do this with its newly built Huntington Beach home that they are seeking a GreenPoint Rated designation from Built It Green as well as the LEED Platinum rating from the U.S. Green Building Council. The 3213 square-foot, three-story, single-family home has three bedrooms, three full bathrooms and two half bathrooms. It is located in downtown Huntington Beach at 319 21st Street.

If you want to tour this new green home, you can attend today’s grand opening from 1:30 to 4:30. The grand opening will include speakers as well as food and drink from local restaurants. These include 118 Degrees Restaurant, which is located in Costa Mesa, as well as  Andrei’s Conscious Cuisine and Portola Handcrafted Coffee Roasters, which are both located in Irvine.

If you can’t make the grand opening, tours will available in the coming months. During the tours, the sponsors will provide product demonstrations for environmentally friendly building products, appliances, hardware, and services. Eventually, this home will go on the market.

Note: A YouTube video that provides more background on this project is available. Also, thanks to Evan Little of Surtterre Properties for the tweet that informed me of this event.

Related post: “Going for the Green–and Platinum–in Orange County: The Environmental Nature Center in Newport Beach”

The green building market is estimated to be worth $30-$40 billion annually by the year 2010. By 2010, approximately 10% of commercial construction starts are projected to be green. According to a 2006 McGraw-Hill Smart Market report, every business day, $464 million worth of construction registers with LEED.–Wikipedia

“The new 8,500-square-foot facility was designed to achieve the highest level of ‘green’ building certification by the U.S. Green Building Council - LEED Platinum Certification. …Guests learn how to implement sustainable features in their own homes and businesses.”–The Environmental Nature Center (ENC), Newport, CA

As the opening quote shows, green building has economic benefits as well as environmental benefits. Here is another statement showing the economic benefits:

LPA estimates that the facility’s sustainable elements will save ENC [The Environmental Nature Center] ~$20,000 per year.–Jetson Green

The predominant system that is used for rating the “greenness” of a development is LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). Like all systems, it has its drawbacks and is evolving to address those drawbacks. Here is an overview:

LEED is a rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to ensure that the design, construction, and maintenance requirements result in buildings with some level of sustainability. The current LEED system has four possible levels that a project can attain. These levels, from lowest to highest, are Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. To determine which level a project will receive, points are given for each sustainable feature that fits into one of five categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality

For example, some of the characteristics that contributed to the Nature Center receiving the highest LEED rating, Platinum, are as follows: The building was designed and constructed in a way that that allows for daily operations that uses less resources. These include the ability to use natural ventilation, less water, and a reduced amount of energy by including solar and wind energy components. In addition, during construction renewable and recycled materials were used, and the building was constructed in a way that reduces light pollution.

For a list of Orange County projects with various LEED ratings, go to the USGBC-Orange County site.

Here are some more details on these green building fundamentals:

Use the features of a building site to achieve a desired result. For example, when conventional building practices are used, the location of the sun is ignored when deciding on which direction to orient a building. Sustainable design practices use a different approach. When sustainable design practices are used, the building is situated in a way that takes advantage of the heating or cooling that the location of the sun can provide. Conventional building practices force the home or building owners to rely heavily on costly, high-energy-consumption, mechanical systems to heat or cool a building.

Another example of using the features of a building site to achieve a desired result is using materials from the site as much as possible. The Nueva Hillside Learning Complex, which built sun screens, benches, and decks from the Cypress trees that were cut down to clear the building site, illustrates this point.

View the building site as a system and link that system to other systems. Another way of saying this is close the loop. The output or waste from one system is used as the input to another system. Or the output from one part of a system is used as an input to another part of the same system. For example, waste water can be captured and then reused in other ways, such as watering landscapes.

Recycle as much as possible. This might include finding new uses for construction waste but, in some cases, could include finding new uses for existing buildings instead of tearing down these buildings.

When possible, share the same building or site among multiple organizations. Of course, this is geared toward commercial and school buildings rather than residential buildings.

That is it for the Reader’s Digest definition of sustainable design. Of course, much more detail is possible. But this will do for an introduction.