I think businesses like Google are doing an excellent job in raising awareness for energy conservation. The Google home page is “blacked out” as they have “turned out the lights” as symbol to raise awareness for Earth Hour 2008. It’s quite striking to see the normally white background on the Google home page suddenly go [...]
Filed under: Energy Conservation | No Comments »
On March 13th, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) issued a report stating “buildings represent the greatest opportunity for considerable reductions in CO2 emissions”.
“Every year, buildings in North America cause more than 2,200 megatons of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere, about 35 percent of the continent’s total CO2 emissions. In the United States [...]
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We have selected furniture for the Thinkspace office and the one piece that I’m most excited about is the Phillippe Starck designed Emeco stool. We have purchased these in bar stool height (14″ W x 14″ D x 30″) for the cyber cafe.
The stool is produced in the United States and is environmentally friendly. 80% [...]
Filed under: LEED, furniture, green interior design, sustainability | 1 Comment »
Puget Sound Energy (PSE) has awarded a $13,000 conservation grant to Thinkspace for energy efficient lighting retrofits. Thinkspace’s plan calls for a reduction in energy consumption by approximately 21,106 KWH. Annual energy cost savings are estimated to be a little over two-thousand dollars per year. Our discussions with PSE have been on-going for three months. It [...]
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I have five office chairs and a desk which a previous tenant had left behind when they moved out. I knew that these items need to be given away so I decided I would give “freecycle” a try and see how it compares to Craigslist. I’ve used Craigslist a lot in the past, as I tend to [...]
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Over the past few months, I have been searching for companies, organizations, government agencies that encourage other companies to go green with their tenant improvements. One of the first places that I called was PSE (Puget Sound Energy). I talked with an Energy Management Engineer and he was happy and willing to meet me at [...]
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In addition to using HEPA air purifiers to maintain air quality during the demolition of the existing space, we also took a close look at the existing HVAC system. Inside the space we have existing VAV (variable air volume) boxes. VAV boxes are used to zone areas in large commercial buildings and also contribute significantly to the [...]
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Electricity is one of the largest expenses in a commercial office building. Whether you’re the building owner or a tenant that is occupying a large space, it is good business to look for ways to reduce your energy consumption. For a building owner it means lower utility costs, a more energy efficient, and desirable building. For [...]
Filed under: Energy, LEED, green building | 1 Comment »
One of the LEED Certification goals is to divert construction, demolition, and packaging debris from landfill disposal. Our personal demolition goal is to recycle 95% of all materials. We started off our project with the Site Foreman telling all of our subcontractors that we don’t use the word “dump”. All of the existing materials in [...]
Filed under: LEED, Recycle | 1 Comment »