LiveGreenInPortland.com

Officials with Portland Public Schools are moving ahead with plans to open the district’s first school in the Pearl District with an opening date set for this fall.

Matt Shelby, spokesman for Portland Public Schools, said the school will cater to three and four-year-olds from the Ramona Apartments, 1550 NW 14th Ave, homeless families and Head Start-eligible families from inner Northeast and the River District.

The district will rent four rooms in the Ramona Apartments for the school’s classrooms. And the school will offer two Head Start classrooms, a transition classroom for special education students and Multnomah Education Service District early-childhood classrooms.

Oregonian reporter Kim Melton reported on the school when the Portland Public Schools board approved a lease for the school in 2009. In that story, Melton wrote about the steady uptick over recent years in the number of children living in the Pearl.

Shelby said the district is also in talks with community groups about using the space during hours when school is not in session. Information on the name and details of the staff for the school were not immediately available. Stay tuned to the Northwest Portland blog page for updates and news on the Pearl District school as they develop. -Molly Hottle   Source

Every Friday at 10:00am

Experience Portland the green and eco-friendly way. This award-winning walk clarifies why Portland is regularly recognized as one of the best places to live. By the end of our walk, you’ll want to move here too. You’ll hear about early and modern Portland as your guide shows you an enlightened city rich with artwork, parks, bridges, (free) downtown trains & streetcars, fountains and friendly people. Even locals are amazed and entertained by what they learn. This walk meanders through the most fascinating portions of the city, leading eventually to the waterfront.

This tour earned us the Best Tour from Citysearch and Willamette Week’s award for “Best Way to Fake Being a Native.” And don’t forget the camera for your shot of the world’s smallest park! When the City of Portland and the Portland Oregon Visitors Association want to show off the city, they send people on this tour. Come see why. Read more

February 23 – 27, 2011

Wednesday: 11am – 8pm
Thursday: 11am – 8pm
Friday: 11am – 8pm
Saturday: 10am – 8pm
Sunday: 10am – 6pm

$10.00 General Admission
Free to children under 12
Free (with ID) for American Horticulture
Society Members

The 2011 Smart Home, presented by U.S. Bank will be the most advanced, smart, cool and innovative homes we’ve ever built within the show. And, when we say build, we are talking from the ground up! In less than 48 hours, crews will be working non-stop, during all shifts, to pull-off building this amazing, gorgeous and modern home. Paolo Design Group & Robert Knowles Construction are heading up a team of 24 local companies to build this home inside the Expo Center. The designers, contractors, suppliers and show staff are excited to unveil the 2011 Smart Home on opening day – completed and ready for tours! Visit the Portland Home & Garden Show, this February 23 through 27 at the Expo Center. Learn more

l’d love to have a huge vegetable garden in Portland. Check out this incredible video.

Fresh vegetables, herbs, honey and new eggs every day; Jules and his family are living the farm life. It’s also a most unconventional lifestyle given that their home is in the middle of Pasadena, California. The family struggles to be as self-sustainable as they possibly can—their car drives on biogas, solar panels power their television, and each day they have fresh food from their own meticulously well-maintained crops.

Jules first began his farming life before moving to Pasadena, when he lived for several years in New Zealand. Jules embarked on his current lifestyle after becoming concerned about how the food industry controlled what he and his family ate. Jules wanted to be more in control and minimize his family’s impact on the environment.

Living this lifestyle doesn’t mean that you have to be old fashioned. After a day working on his urban-farm lot, Jules and the rest of the family sit down to watch movies on Netflix or work on one of their many websites. The Devraes family websites center around the idea of living a greener life, and are some of the biggest websites/communities about urban farming. It’s a growing movement; and a green revolution! Created by Nicholas Reid & Joris Debeij

Modernism Week
February 17 – February 27

For those Portlanders traveling to Palm Springs – Modernism Week is a celebration of mid-century modern design, architecture and culture in the Palm Springs area. This design aesthetic, originated in the 1950s and 60s, was typified by clean, simple lines and celebrated elegant informality which came to define desert modernism.

In the winter of 2006, a few local design and architecture aficionados created Modernism Week to showcase Palm Springs’ world-renowned mid-century modern architecture. It has since expanded into a 10-day period filled with a variety of events, including architecture tours, films, lectures, an architecture symposium, educational events as well as chic and fun parties in cool mid-century modern homes. The 6th Annual Palm Springs Modernism Week will take place February 17-27, 2011. Read more

The Solarchecker determines the solar radiation at the current location and calculates the ROI for a solar power system on the available roof area.

Considering investing in a solar energy system and want to know whether your roof is a suitable place for it? Since energy yields depend on factors such as local solar radiation, roof orientation, and roof surface inclination, the SMA Solar Checker, a new application for the iPhone, provides a quick way of finding out how much solar energy your system could provide.

The SMA Solarchecker reads information from a database to determine the solar radiation at a given GPS location. The application uses the phone’s magnetic compass to measure the roof’s orientation and its tilt sensor to determine the pitch. From these values it uses a mathematical model to provide a specific yield estimate in kWh/kWp/a.

Your only remaining task is to enter your available roof area or size of the system you’d like. The combined information is used to predict the potential annual energy yields and CO2 savings generated by your solar energy system.

Yet the SMA Solarchecker can do even more: it also lets you estimate the ROI you can expect from your PV system by simply entering the current revenue per generated kilowatt hour in addition to the system’s financing and maintenance costs. The app then uses that information to calculate net profit and anticipated returns.

Last but not least, the SMA Solarchecker suggests up to ten qualified solar energy specialists close to you – which means a solar energy system on your roof is not just a good idea, but it can also be quickly turned into reality.

By the way: users of the iPhone 3G (without compass feature) may also enter the orientation manually.  Read more

Friday, March 18th, 2011
Oregon Convention Center
10:00am-6:00pm
Free

Ecoroof Portland 2011 participants will learn how ecoroofs work, why they’re important, and what resources are available to help start their own projects. They can get information directly from ecoroof vendors including architects, consultants, contractors, landscape architects, manufacturers, nurseries, structural engineers, suppliers, researchers, and non-profit and community organizations.

Activities will include speakers and project tours with an emphasis on both commercial and residential ecoroof development.  Learn more

The Department of Energy’s new SunShot Initiative to make solar energy as cheap as coal has given fresh hope to industry enthusiasts. And it may even give life to a nearly dead effort in Congress to put solar panels and water heaters on 10 million of America’s roofs by 2020.

The 2010 legislation by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hasn’t had much momentum since the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee approved it in July, and November’s Republican gains in Congress has not helped the measure along. But experts say Energy Secretary Steven Chu’s SunShot Initiative may give the Ten Million Solar Roof Act new political legs.

Shayle Kann, managing director of solar research at GTM Research, said that the DOE plan could make the Sanders’ bill more politically palatable, because it would drive down the cost of solar installations. The legislation aims to finance the installation of up to 40,000 megawatts of new solar energy.

“These are two parallel but distinct programs. They could play together very well because — to the extent that the SunShot initiative is successful — it will lower the [financial] incentives that are required per project for the Ten Million Solar Roof Act,” he told SolveClimate News.

“Any program designed at reducing the cost of solar installations will be a service to any deployment program by lowering costs” to the government, Kann said.

Jared Blanton, a spokesperson for the national Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), said that the solar energy plans are aligned because “they both are focused on removing needless regulatory barriers that prevent Americans from going solar.”

The DOE initiative unveiled on Feb. 4 aims to accelerate research and development in its solar energy programs — valued at around $200 million annually — to reduce the total installed cost of solar electricity to $1 per watt by 2020, a 75 percent drop from today’s rates.

The idea is that unsubsidized solar power could then compete with the wholesale rate of electricity generated by fossil fuels that emit climate-changing greenhouse gases.

As part of the program, the agency also awarded $27 million to nine solar technology companies that are trying to make solar more affordable.

“Magic will occur when [solar] becomes cost-competitive with any form of energy,” Chu said at a Feb. 9 renewable-energy conference in Washington. “And when that happens without subsidies, it is going to shoot all over the country and all over the world.”
Read more

Just as cars are sold with miles-per-gallon labels, more new homes this year will sport labels estimating monthly energy bills.  KB Home, one of the nation’s largest builders, announced Monday its plans to have an EPG (Energy Performance Guide) on each of its U.S. homes by the end of this month, and other production builders plan to follow.  “This is a game changer… Once it’s out there, everyone will do it,” says Jeffrey Mezger, the company’ CEO. He says consumers will now understand that KB’s homes, all of which meet Energy Star standards, will “perform better than resales down the street.”  The push for an MPG-like label comes as U.S. home builders seek a competitive edge against low-price foreclosures, and as the U.S. government develops an efficiency score for existing homes.  “We’re rolling that (label) out this year,” says Jim Petersen of Michigan-based PulteGroup Inc., which includes Pulte Homes, Centex and Del Webb. He doesn’t have a specific timetable but expects California, Phoenix and Las Vegas will be among the first markets to feature the label.

Meritage Homes has been marketing all its homes, which are built to Energy Star standards, with such a label since 2009, said C.R. Herro, the company’s vice president of environmental affairs.  Lennar Corp. is taking steps as well to offer the label, says Steve Baden, executive director of RESNET, the Residential Energy Services Network, a private, non-profit industry group that has developed the label as part of its Home Energy Rating System (HERS).  The label features a home’s HERS score, determined by an independent auditor, that shows its energy efficiency (the lower the score, the better) and projects utility costs.  Read more