GreenClips.44 03.27.96 POWER COMPANY DESIGN MARRIES ENERGY AND ART Minden-Ravensberg Electric Company (MREC), a power company in northwest Germany, has long campaigned to educate the public about renewable resources and energy conservation. Its engineers, for example, staff town kiosks to demonstrate photovoltaics, discuss wind and solar energy, and encourage customers to replace old refrigerators with more efficient models. Yet MREC had never considered architecture as a medium to convey its ideas on energy. Or on art - its operations were for the most part housed in bland, conventional buildings. The company's new Communication and Technology Center presented an opportunity to do both. Fascinated by his Vitra Design Museum, MREC hired architect Frank Gehry. Besides Gehry's artistry, the new building incorporates various energy-saving features including a trombe wall – a sandwich of external glass and internal concrete with a filling of transparent insulation. The heavy concrete wall gathers and stores the sun's heat during the day, then radiates it to the interior at night. Gehry would have preferred to express the energy saving aspects of the design more clearly. "We tried to let the energy question generate the form," he explains, "but we failed. In this sense, the building doesn't have the clarity we would have liked." - Architecture, March 1996, p. 100, by Colin Davies. DO ENVIRONMENTAL LAWS CAUSE JOB LOSS? Critics of environmental regulation, particularly the Endangered Species Act, have long argued that these laws kill jobs and stifle businesses and the economy. Yet a recently released California State Senate report concludes that environmental regulations have not been a major cause of job losses. Leveraged buyouts, mergers, taxes, and other forces cause job loss, says the report, not business shifting to other states or countries with less stringent laws. The report relied mainly on research of Stephen M. Meyer, director of the Project on Environmental Politics and Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meyer studied the relationship between strong environmental laws and economic growth in all 50 states. His research indicates that states with stronger environmental policies even economically out-perform states with weaker policies. But Lynn Scarlett, vice president of research at the Reason Foundation, a conservative research organization in Santa Monica, California, says that states with the most productive economies may have more stringent environmental laws because they have more money to spend on such "luxury items." - The New York Times, March 18, 1996, p. A8. GREEN WALL DIVIDES COMPANIES The consulting firm Arthur D. Little Inc. says that a "green wall" divides corporate environmental, safety, and health staffs from business strategists and marketing executives. Research shows that companies often ignore these staffs, says a recent Little report, because they have "set up a separate culture" and are unfamiliar with the rest of the firm's priorities. Some companies successfully meld these two camps into a corporate culture that sees a bottom-line payoff in pollution control, recycling, or other environmental initiatives. But this requires environmental managers to move from mere technical advisors to business strategists, says Arthur D. Little corporate environmental management expert Robert Shelton. And business managers must view the environment as a potential business opportunity, not a liability. - Chicago Tribune, March 15, 1996, p. 1 Business, by Casey Bukro. SEATTLE'S ENVIRONMENTAL HOME CENTER The Environmental Home Center is a 3,000 square-foot environmental building supply store in downtown Seattle, Washington. Owner Matt Freeman-Gleason sells sustainably harvested wood, organic cotton drapes, natural and recycled plastic carpet, low-toxic paints and finishes, energy efficient lighting, and water efficient fixtures. His four-year-old company is growing despite higher prices for some environmentally sensitive products. Matt says sustainably harvested lumber costs 10 to 15 percent more than the lowest-priced lumber from conventional sources. Fluorescent lights cost more initially but energy savings pay for them in the long run. But low-toxic paints and finishes arethe same price as conventional products. [Environmental Home Center, 1724 Fourth Avenue South, Seattle WA 98134, 206.682.7332.] - In Business, January/February 1996, p. 16. FINANCING CHANGE Are financial markets intrinsically opposed to sustainable development? The World Business Council, a global group of over 120 like-minded corporations, recently created a task force to study this question. MIT Press has published their findings in the book "Financing Change: the Financial Community, Eco-efficiency and Sustainable Development". The bad news, the task force says, is that overusing or over harvesting a natural resource and banking the money usually makes more financial sense than using the resource sustainably- interest earned will usually exceed annual profits from sustainable yields of slow-growing creatures like rain forest trees. The good news is that the task force found many positive changes in the financial community. More and more banks are establishing environmental officers to make sure they don't lend to polluting companies that might incur large fines and become bad debtors. Larger pay outs each year for devastating storms and floods are convincing many insurance companies that pollution is changing the climate. And accountants are coming up with new ways to help companies account for their cost of using environmental resources. - The Christian Science Monitor, March 14, 1996, p. 19, by Stephan Schmidheiny. EARTHWAYS HOME The EarthWays Home in the heart of St. Louis, Missouri teaches visitors how to walk softly on the Earth using educational displays. Visitors include school groups who use hands-on exhibits to learn about energy and recycling in the home. Students pedal a stationary bike to light a power board of fluorescent and incandescent lamps. - harder pedalling turns on more lights. The EarthWays staff also helps architects and do-it-yourselfers with building and home renovation projects. The renovated 1885 Victorian house features aground-source heat pump, solar panels in the garden that power energy saving kitchen appliances, and a yard of native wildflowers. For more information contact EarthWays Home, 3617 Grandel Square, St. Louis, MO 63108, 314.531.1996. - E Magazine, March/April 1996, p. 21, by Kristin Baird. PRACTICE GREEN, LIVE GREEN Dr. Brian Edwards, an architecture professor at the UK's University of Huddersfield encourages architects to adopt green ethics to go with their new green specifications. We shouldn't specify green products but drive around in a Porsche, he suggests. Ethics and professionalism go together, Edwards continues, but to date there has been little debate about ethics. Edwards offers five ethical principles to influence not only how architects design buildings, but how they run their offices, conduct their meetings - and live. Smallness - architects should recognize growth limits in a finite world and offer small-scale, or low- or alternative-technology solutions. Wholeness -understanding that survival depends on successful interaction between species and systems encourages designers to value elements of the environment that their decisions threaten. Futurity - valuing posterity encourages a long-term view that fosters investment in long-term assets such as buildings. Community- designers who value the diversity of communities are better able to make decisions that support sustainability. Quality - valuing quality over quantity leads to well regarded, robust buildings that maintain their economic and social value because they last longer. - The Architects' Journal, 29 February 1996, p. 48, by Brian Edwards.