Happy Earth Day!

Today marks another Earth Day & it's 45th anniversary! Every day should be Earth Day, but today is a special reminder to all that we live on a special planet & we need to do our due diligence to keep it healthy.

Aspen's Community Office for Resource Efficiency (CORE) is celebrating the 20th anniversary of their Renewable Energy mitigation Program (REMP). This program is the world's first of its kind. The program supports renewable energy use by requiring new homes to mitigate their environmental impact by either installing their own on-site renewables (solar panels, geothermal systems, etc.) or to pay fines that in turn fund various grant programs that lower carbon emissions in the Roaring Fork Valley. 

The City of Aspen is the destination for many wealthy individuals that desire to build very large homes equipped with snowmelt, outdoor pools & spas. We love these clients, but heating for these large homes as well as the snowmelt, outdoor pools & spas is required for the colder months & most often when the homeowners are not occupying the home. Requiring on-site renewables or paying a mitigation fee helps to reduce the environmental impacts of the large homes & ensuring that our Valley stays beautiful for the current & future residents & visitors!

If you're in the area, come celebrate Earth Day with the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies, The City of Aspen & CORE at Hallam Lake this afternoon from 5-7pm! More information here. 

What I Learned at Rocky Mountain Green

Rocky Mountain Green 2015 was an incredible experience! There was over 500 attendees, many incredible education sessions & building tours!

The Opening Plenary laid out the future plans for the National Western Complex. The Complex would like to connect the (3) adjacent neighbors & be a place that is used year-round complete with a farmers market, new transit stations & an emphasis on the South Platte River bordering the site.

The day then commenced with a full schedule packed with education sessions. Some topics included Greening Colorado's Marijuana Industry, Beyond the Building (what a business can be; not what it's supposed to be), Integrative Design & an introduction to Colorado's Contractor Challenge. The Contractor Challenge is an opportunity to be "green" even if your building isn't pursuing LEED Certification. Some of the examples include having a Green Team, recycling materials on-site, incentivising carpooling, using local materials, etc. 

The picture  to the left shows the different stages in integrative design.

To the right is a screenshot of the Contractors Challenge presentation highlighting how waste can be minimized. 

Friday is spent "off-site" with workshops in the morning and a choice of a bike tour or volunteering for the river clean-up in the afternoon. The workshop I attended was in regards to materials & the new applicable credits for the new LEEDv4 rating system. The credits now focus on the Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) of each material going into a project & the third-party verification of these materials. It's a definite game-changer for all of the suppliers & manufacturers involved! These credits are essentially asking for a "nutrition label" for each material on the job.There are 80,000 chemicals used in the construction industry & only 5 have been banned. That's a lot of unknown hazards & new LEED system has set out to evaluate these hazards.

Friday afternoon was spent biking around Denver looking & getting tours of the new green projects in town. These projects included the new LEED Gold apartment complex that sits right next to Union Station, the new Boathouse infill project which now occupies a once small, vacant lot & is home to offices of small start-up companies. We also biked down the new bike lanes that Denver had implemented & ended with a tour of the Alliance Center which is home to incredible non-profit groups devoted to sustainability. 

Looking forward to next year's Rocky Mountain Green!