PLAYING: I love spring — especially this spring, which has finally arrived, seemingly overnight, after a long, wet, cold winter. I was lucky enough to celebrate it this past weekend with my favorite 6-year-old, teaching him to dye eggs.

WORKING: My favorite climate work is developing education and teaching about energy, emissions, and electrification. I have two of those projects coming to fruition this spring.

1. The Tri-County Regional Energy Network (3C-REN — a collaboration of California’s San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara, and Ventura Counties) is offering a certificate series comprising six classes on “High-performance Fundamentals.” My fellow class developers and instructors are high-performance rock stars Peter Yost, Judy Rachel, Dan Perunko, and Gary Klein. The series launched last week with “High Performance Buildings and Careers.” Peter is up next, on April 20, from 1 to 3pm Pacific Time, teaching “Using Building Science to Design and Build High Performance Homes.”The rest of the classes are on May 4, May 18, June 1, and June 15. All are virtual and FREE to residents of the Tri-County region. Please spread the word to folks you know in the area.

   For series info and registration, visit 3C-REN.org/events.
   

2. Also on April 20, from 8am to 3pm Pacific Time, I’ve assembled another all-star cast — Ted Tiffany, Jack Rusk, and Vaclav Hasik — to teach an AIA-approved virtual workshop, “The Architect’s Roadmap to Net Zero,” offered by America Training Solutions. This event will satisfy the State of California’s new requirement for architects to complete five units of continuing education on NZE design to qualify for license renewal.Registration is a reasonable $150-200, and here’s a code for a $50 discount: NetZero-50. Sign up HERE.

Here’s a sampling of some of the great happenings out there in the big wide (and ever-expanding) world of energy efficiency, zero carbon, and green.

Meritage’s CR Herro My Latest Hero

1. We need to fix how valuations are done to capture the benefits of above-code energy features
2. Getting to zero is about figuring out how to spend your budget wisely
3. Roofs need to get simpler to reduce cost and better accommodate solar arrays
4. Educating the value chain is key to success
5. “It’s much better to be your own disruptor than to have disruption done to you.” Well said!!

Your Gas Stove Is Bad for You and the Planet

Thanks to RMI’s Bruce Nilles and NYT writer Justin Gillis for this excellent article on why electrification makes sense — including giving up your gas stove! Kudos!

I have a kind of strange admission to make, for an eco-freak. I am eagerly awaiting the death of an appliance. Admittedly, this has happened before, but then it was an aesthetic issue. This time it’s about climate change.

I want to ‘decarbonize’ my home — eliminate all sources of fossil fuel combustion so that I can get the gas line capped off at the street. That means we will need to swap out all the gas appliances for electric: space and water heating equipment, the clothes dryer, and the kitchen range.

I expect our situation is pretty similar to a lot of other people’s. It’s hard to justify the expense (and embodied carbon footprint) of scrapping appliances that haven’t yet reached the end of their useful lifespans, and there are some logistical challenges, too, such as getting adequate electrical supply to the range location. 

Unlike many, though, I don’t have an attachment to cooking with so-called “natural” gas (which is methane, a greenhouse gas that is 80x more potent than CO2). I’m already persuaded of the many benefits of induction cooking over gas. It’s faster, more efficient, reduces burn risks, and results in cleaner indoor air by eliminating natural gas combustion byproducts. And perhaps best of all, the CLEANUP will be much easier!! The gas cooktop has far too many nooks, crannies, and crevices that get coated with muck from my husband’s liberal interpretation of “tablespoon” when it comes to the application of olive oil. 

Many people react poorly, though, to the idea of giving up their gas cookery; their only point of comparison is old-style electric ranges — which bear little resemblance to today’s induction appliances. Induction is a magnetic technology, and the fact that the ranges plug into the wall is irrelevant (gas ranges plug in, too). 

I’d like to recruit YOU to join the induction campaign! Learn about induction, test it out (single burners can be had for ~$50), and take your recalcitrant friends, family members, and clients to a showroom – a live demo of this technology can be very persuasive. Consumer Reports also has some great resources:

• ‘Which is better’ – the highest performing stoves tested by CR are induction models, and one is cheaper than 9 other models in the top 10!
• ‘Pros and cons’ – induction cooktops are faster & respond better to dialing back the temperature

Now get cookin’ with your campaign!