Recently, Zerofootprint held a global competition to reward market-disruptive improvements in the design and development of retrofitting and re-skinning technologies.  To be eligible for the ZEROprize, projects had to be built with reinforced concrete construction between 1945 and 1990.  Also, energy required to power all amenities, cooling, heating, and lighting must be on used on a net zero energy basis.  After the jury deliberation, 355 Eleventh in San Francisco was able to take top honors. 

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Today the EPA released its second annual ranking of U.S. metropolitan areas with the largest number of buildings receiving the Energy Star label in 2009.  California cities took two of the top three slots, but that's no surprise as these cities are at the forefront of green building. 

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Most of the energy monitoring tools on the market right now gather aggregate information about the overall electricity use of a home.  But the new eMonitor from PowerHouse Dynamics could change all this with circuit level monitoring.  The eMonitor solution combines hardware, software, and service elements to provide home electricity use, electricity cost, and carbon footprint information by the minute.  Past and present information is then available online and on the iPhone (starting in about Q2 2010). 

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You've probably seen one of the latest Apple commercials.  The husband turns to his wife and asks, "Did we turn off the lights."  The savvy wife, with her iPhone and Schlage LiNK app, responds with something like, "WE turned off the lights," while she does the same on her phone without her husband's help.

The commercial caught my attention, and I wanted to see what kind of capabilities this Schlage LiNK app had.  Turns out the system is powered by Z-Wave technology to smarten typically unintelligent aspects of living.  Some of the things you can do include:

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The other day, Martin Holladay, a blogger for Green Building Advisor, mentioned this energy-efficiency pyramid, which I found to be quite interesting.  He said The Pyramid of Conservation originated from Bob McLean, CEO at Hunt Utilities Group, and was created for Minnesota Power.  Minnesota Power uses the interactive graphic to help customers determine where to start when taking on energy efficiency projects.

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