The US Green Building Council hosted their annual conference, Sustainable Arkansas, today in Rogers at the John Q Hammons Center. It was a great lineup of speakers and vendors on display.
Adam Werbach provided the early morning keynote address to about 150 attendees. At 23, Werbach became the youngest president in the history of the national Sierra Club. Since then he started Act Now which led Wal Mart's Personal Sustainability Project for associates and now heads up Saatchi and Saatchi S. In short, he's big time!
My favorite though was Ron Judkoff from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. He presented on the viability of zero energy homes and it turns out we're not that far away. NREL has hundreds of economic and energy analysis data points on new construction including LEED buildings so it is statistically significant. The data shows that if designed properly, buildings should achieve at least 58% greater energy efficiency than ASHRAE's 90.1 standard. 90.1 is the national code requirement for energy effiicient design.
That's exciting stuff for energy geeks like myself!
Jason Hainline from ESMI in Springfield, MO had an interesting presentation later in the day on creative financing for green schools. Several of our local architects and engineers in the room reiforced his points about bringing the architects, engineers and contractors into a project before the building has ever been designed in order to get the most quality project.
Local schoolboard member, Jim Halsell, was in the room soaking up as much as possible so that was encouraging to see considering the upcoming decisions on the high school.
Really, the only downside to the conference is that it had to be held at John Q Hammons. That place is an anti-green building if there ever was one.
Adam Werbach provided the early morning keynote address to about 150 attendees. At 23, Werbach became the youngest president in the history of the national Sierra Club. Since then he started Act Now which led Wal Mart's Personal Sustainability Project for associates and now heads up Saatchi and Saatchi S. In short, he's big time!
My favorite though was Ron Judkoff from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Colorado. He presented on the viability of zero energy homes and it turns out we're not that far away. NREL has hundreds of economic and energy analysis data points on new construction including LEED buildings so it is statistically significant. The data shows that if designed properly, buildings should achieve at least 58% greater energy efficiency than ASHRAE's 90.1 standard. 90.1 is the national code requirement for energy effiicient design.
That's exciting stuff for energy geeks like myself!
Jason Hainline from ESMI in Springfield, MO had an interesting presentation later in the day on creative financing for green schools. Several of our local architects and engineers in the room reiforced his points about bringing the architects, engineers and contractors into a project before the building has ever been designed in order to get the most quality project.
Local schoolboard member, Jim Halsell, was in the room soaking up as much as possible so that was encouraging to see considering the upcoming decisions on the high school.
Really, the only downside to the conference is that it had to be held at John Q Hammons. That place is an anti-green building if there ever was one.
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