Jack and the Greenstalk

LEED and Minnesota GreenStar Systems

LEED (or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) and Minnesota GreenStar are two of the many green building certification programs that have cropped up across the country in the past few years. We will be focusing on LEED for Homes as the national benchmark for green home building and Minnesota GreenStar as its local alternative.

LEED

LEED is a “Green Building Rating System” administered by the United States Green Building Council, a nonprofit organization out of Washington, DC. The LEED brand is recognized across the country as the premier green building certification program. The first LEED program, New Construction, was rolled out in 1998. This rating system focused on new commercial buildings. In 2005, following the successes of LEED’s commercial programs, the USGBC rolled out a pilot version of LEED for Homes, a program for new home building. The pilot phase ended January 2008 with 180 homes – including Live Green, Live Smart’s Platinum remodel – making LEED for Homes already a success.

LEED for Homes is a point-based rating system; the more points, the higher your rating. There are 136 total possible points. 90 points earns a project LEED Platinum. Gold is 75 points, Silver 60 points, and Certified 45 points.

LEED for Homes points are broken up into eight major areas of design:

-Innovation and Design. This section awards points for advanced planning, including using a LEED-Accredited Professional as a contractor, working with an integrated project team, durability planning, passive solar design, and “innovative design” – home features that go above and beyond the LEED for Homes requirements. (For example, an exceptional landscape plan or cutting-edge use of new energy technologies.)

-Location and Linkages. Points for site selection (above floodplains and away from water, away from protected habitats), development status of land prior to building, location of home relative to commercial and public services (grocery store, school, bus stop, post office, etc.).

-Sustainable Sites. Points for construction site stewardship (erosion control, minimal soil compaction), landscaping, water management (rain gardens, rainwater collection, permeable paving), and nontoxic pest control. While many builders consider a home’s landscape to be a separate entity from the building envelope and interior, LEED and most major green building programs (including GreenStar) consider proper site management to be an integral part of building and living green. Nearly 1/5 of the points available in LEED for Homes can be gained in the Sustainable Sites section.

-Water Efficiency. Points for rainwater harvesting, responsible irrigation, greywater recycling, and high-efficiency faucets, fixtures, and toilets.

-Energy and Atmosphere. Point-wise, this is the largest section in the LEED for Homes program, with 38 possible points. This section covers many of the things that we typically think of when we think of good green construction: efficient insulation, good doors and windows, reduced air infiltration, advanced HVAC systems, efficient water heating, EnergyStar appliances and lights, and renewable energy. Maximum points can be obtained in this category in one of two ways. Proving that your home goes above and beyond EnergyStar for Homes requirements can give you 34 points in one fell swoop. LEED for Homes also provides a Prescriptive Approach to Energy and Atmosphere points – a special addendum that lets you gain points individually.

-Materials and Resources. This section covers advanced framing techniques, environmentally preferable products (such as FSC wood, bamboo, products free of added urea-formaldehyde), and waste management.

-Indoor Environmental Quality. This section covers air quality inside the home, addressing problems like combustion venting, VOC off-gasing, ventilation to the outside, local exhaust, moisture and radon control, and air filtering. Adhering to EnergyStar’s Indoor Air Package gives 13 quick points.

-Awareness and Education. This section addresses the education of the homeowner and/or building manager. A prerequisite in this section is writing a manual for the home. Additional points can be awarded for PR about the home.

GreenStar uses similar categories for their points, but also includes numerous categories that cover more traditional building practices. LEED assumes that the home is designed to have solid bones and durable structure from the beginning, and doesn’t award points for features like energy heel trusses, which LEED believes should be in the home in the first place. GreenStar covers durable construction practices that contractors may or may not be familiar with. This adds considerable paperwork to GreenStar but many will find their piece-by-piece approach helpful.

LEED for Homes’ most visible face is a single three-page document, the Project Checklist. This checklist serves as a guide and outline to the available LEED points, which are fleshed out in the well-written and well-indexed Rating System Manual. For some the checklist is welcomingly simple; these builders are already experienced with LEED and green home building. For others it is deceptively simple, the tip of a very large iceberg.

Rather than being an explicit guide to building a singular kind of home, the LEED for Homes Rating System acts mainly as a backbone to your green home plan – a resource for ideas and an outline of what a green home can look like, not what a green home should always look like. It’s this generality that makes LEED so popular around the country – it allows individual LEED builders to work with a guide but not be guided.

The USGBC tries, with varying degrees of success, to address each project personally through a network of LEED professionals. The LEED for Homes program relies on a system of LEED for Homes Providers, organizations that have been accredited by the USGBC to provide guidance to homebuilders. There is also a parallel network of LEED for Homes Raters, organizations that provide vital third-party verification for each LEED for Homes project. There are also the LEED-APs, building professionals who have taken workshops on LEED and passed an exam, and are therefore accredited by the USGBC to build LEED buildings. It is recommended, but not required, to have a LEED-AP on your project team, or to become a LEED-AP yourself.

Independent-minded contractors may find it difficult to work with and within such a wide-ranging and complicated network, and some have found it difficult to get the various sides to talk to each other. However, our experience has shown that having this support structure is very helpful, especially for first-time LEED builders. Many contractors will find that the hardest contact to make is with the USGBC itself, which encourages individual builders to communicate with them through their Providers, rather than directly.

The goal of LEED has always been to provide a benchmark rating system that can be used across the country to build projects that are easily comparable and recognizable. However, this national appeal has also garnered the most criticism for LEED. Some builders have found that LEED for Homes doesn’t work perfectly for their region. For example strict water management, while important everywhere, is a greater necessity in the desert than it is in an area with abundant freshwater. However LEED assigns the same amount of points for water management in New Mexico as it does in Minnesota. Some disagree with the way LEED assigns points in general, giving trivial improvements equal point weight to major green initiatives like renewable power, allowing unscrupulous builders to claim LEED certification without being truly green. At this point LEED becomes nothing more than a brand and a PR tactic.

Others criticize LEED for being too expensive. Anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 can be spent just to join the USGBC and certify a project.

However, despite these criticisms LEED is the default green building program nationwide, and it works well for the vast majority of applicants. But that has not stopped other building programs, like Minnesota GreenStar, from trying to steal some of LEED’s thunder.

GreenStar

GreenStar is Minnesota’s answer to LEED for Homes, the result of a collaboration between the Builder’s Association of the Twin Cities, the Minnesota chapter of NARI and the Green Institute. Their home remodeling program acknowledges the problems with Minnesota’s aging housing stock, and that it may be greener to remodel than to build new. GreenStar has spent most of 2007 in a pilot phase, testing out its remodeling program with 24 homes, including Live Green Live Smart’s home, which is GreenStar Gold (the equivalent of LEED Platinum). The program was made public in February 2008. Both programs plan to enter the other’s area of expertise in 2008, with the USGBC launching a remodeling program and GreenStar launching a new homes program.

Like LEED for Homes, GreenStar is a point-based system. GreenStar’s open system allows for an incredible amount of project variation and innumerable ways to earn certification. Upwards of 700 points are open to you on the checklist, however, depending on the type of remodel, different point totals are needed to earn GreenStar certification. Renovations that do not add conditioned space need 162 points to certify; renovations that add conditioned space but do not change the building shell need 203 points minimum; renovations that add to the shell but do not add a foundation need 269 points; renovations that add a foundation need 315 points. GreenStar also has a weighted point system; whole-house green systems will earn significantly more points than, say, using reclaimed deck material. LEED for Homes, on the other hand, uses a point system where each feature is worth about the same, 1-3 points. However, if you do use reclaimed deck material, you can get that point too.

GreenStar’s approach to remodeling combines the best of both traditional and green homebuilding. This approach recognizes that good homebuilding that sticks to fundamentals can be green; it also recognizes that many of today’s builders do not follow building fundamentals, opting for quickly-built unsustainable homes over well-built and durable homes. Extra attention paid to site and landscape, building envelope, mechanicals, electricals and lighting, plumbing, finishing, and waste management yield a significantly greener home than most being built today.

GreenStar’s approach acknowledges that to be truly sustainable, however, extra steps are needed to improve the home’s energy efficiency, indoor air quality, durability, water conservation, and site management. Prerequisites in these categories ensure that builders are not simply greenwashing their homes by piling on points in “easier” categories, but are taking real steps to improving their home’s sustainability.

GreenStar’s checklist is quite a bit more daunting than LEED’s. Because it addresses the four different building types listed above all at once, GreenStar’s checklist is 34 pages long, addressing each facet of the home and homebuilding separately, even breaking each facet down into new vs. remodeled or “improved” categories. So if you improve the home’s existing windows, you take points in one section; if you put in all new windows, you take points in an entirely different section. Same with walls, doors, the basement, the attic, etc. This way builders adding conditioned space only can focus on different categories than those builders also adding foundation space.

GreenStar’s checklist allows for projects to be done in degrees. For example, if you use low-VOC paints on 50% of the project, you get one point; 90% of the project, you get two points. There are numerous areas across the whole checklist that feature percentage-based points like this. This rewards the extra effort put in by the builder.

This open format strikes both hope and fear in the hearts of applicants. It allows builders to pick and fine-tune the features they feel comfortable with, and tailor each project to its unique site and building type. But that first glance at the checklist often results in bulging eyes and sticker-shock expressions. It takes more time to navigate through than LEED, and it seems that by the time you get comfortable with it, it’s time to turn the thing in. If LEED’s checklist is the tip of a large iceberg, GreenStar’s is an open plain. Each is daunting in its own way; but no one ever said green building was easy!

Lengthy checklist aside, GreenStar directly answers many of the criticisms of LEED noted above.

GreenStar addresses a number of local issues that LEED glosses over. Protection from cold and ice, heightened awareness of lake, river, and wetland protection, building for rural environments, solar design for both summer and winter, radon mitigation – these are a few areas where GreenStar goes more in-depth than LEED into the specific problems Minnesotans face when building green.

GreenStar is much cheaper than LEED, and is free of the bureaucracy that some feel weighs down on LEED; if you want to call someone at GreenStar, even the director himself, you can do so. The people at GreenStar understand that their system appears complicated to many, and are more than willing to sit down with you and answer your questions, face to face. They also mandate a training session for each builder who wishes to use GreenStar, and this session goes a long way to alleviating the sticker-shock mentioned above.

GreenStar’s weighted point system and many prerequisites make sure the greenest homes get the most points. This keeps builders from “chasing points.”

The main criticism of GreenStar is the extensive documentation required to certify a project. LEED requires some signatures, accountability forms, and signoffs by the Rater and Provider. GreenStar requires documentation for nearly every point. Sometimes the documentation is as simple as a signoff from the general contractor or a photograph, sometimes it requires receipts, invoices, lab tests, or extensive third-party verification; each point is different. The more points you go for, the more documentation you must provide. While this ensures complete accountability all the way up and down the building chain, it can overburden a building team and divert precious hours away from the actual planning and building.

In the end, GreenStar and LEED certified homes have more similarities than differences. Both organizations agree on the fundamentals of green home design, but differ on the route taken during planning and construction. The varying degrees of certification - Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum for LEED, and Bronze, Silver, and Gold for GreenStar – match up pretty well with each other. Live Green Live Smart’s project home is both LEED Platinum and GreenStar Gold, showing that the two highest levels, at least, marry up well.

For the moment GreenStar has a natural advantage over LEED when it comes to remodel certification in MInnesota, and LEED has the advantage over GreenStar for new construction. It remains to be seen how these two programs will compete as they begin to overlap later this year.
 

The Nobel Committee announced today the recipients of this year's Peace Prize: Al Gore, former senator and vice president, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This year's winners were chosen "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change," said the committee. "[Gore] is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted” to fix the climate problem, the Nobel committee added. They said the IPCC has “created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming."

The fight against global warming and climate change reached a new level this year; it's hard to open a magazine or turn on a TV without seeing an article or show highlighting the current effects or future predictions of global warming. Gore's impassioned film and lecture series, combined with the IPCC's steadfast, rational, consensus-building reports, have made the issue unavoidable and very real. This award appears to vindicate Gore and the scientists of the IPCC of any lingering doubts as to the seriousness of their cause.

But why should the Peace Prize go to fighters against climate change? Traditionally, the prize is awarded to those who work to bring about peace and democracy, those who write treaties or form organizations, those who work for human rights. Compared to those issues, the problem of climate change may seem elusive and quasi-futuristic, but as Gore, the IPCC, and many others have argued, this is the most serious threat facing humanity today.

One of Nobel's original guidelines was that the award should go to "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations." In their announcement the Nobel Committee was clear: fixing climate change is a global struggle, one that involves every nation, big and small. The IPCC itself is a clear model of the "fraternity between the nations" needed to make serious changes. While past recipients of the Peace Prize worked (or are working) to affect peace and human rights today, those working to reverse climate change work to affect peace and human rights tomorrow. Climate change  will have a huge effect on humanity, hurting and displacing people like no war has before. Climate change, said the Nobel Committee, “may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. ... Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states." Indeed, as resources grow thinner, the wars of the future may not be fought for land or religion, but for water, or oil.

"Fraternity between the nations," that is, people and governments listening and talking to each other, is exactly what we need right now, before it's too late to turn back.

More on the award from the New York Times

Summary of the 2007 IPCC Report

IPCC Address to the C40 Summit 

The hustle and bustle of building the Sustainable House was made a bit more complicated this summer by our move to a new office.

Our first office was rather small and dungeon-like, as so many office suites in the suburbs are. Our new place (just around the block from the old place) is bright and comfortable, and surely one of the greenest in the west Minneapolis suburbs.

We bought an unfurnished office on Wayzata Boulevard, a place that needed a serious amount of fixing up. This gave us plenty of opportunity to go green all over the place. The floors are furnished with recycled carpet. The new desks and cabinetry are FSC-certified. We bought windows from the ReUse Center for use in the lobby. The paint on the walls is Harmony from Sherwin Williams, a low-VOC paint. Our kitchen uses EnergyStar appliances, and the conference room has tables made of Richlite, built for us by Damschen Wood, the company that is also doing the cabinets and millwork for the House. The office has three different climate zones, which saves money on heating and cooling and uses less resources. In the ceiling and in the lamps are fluorescents and CFLs.

Today we're nice and settled in our new digs, and happy that the place where we work reflects our values.

Things are moving along very quickly at the Sustainable House. We're aiming for a September finish date, and it looks like we're going to make it. The exterior is basically done - stucco, paint, stone, doors, gutters, and roof are all in place. With the home's exterior done, our attentions turn to the interior and the landscape.

The last couple of weeks I've had the pleasure of helping Geoff bury the rainwater cisterns and finish the drainage ditches. It's nice to get out of the office every once in awhile and work in the soil. The cisterns, which hold 3,000 gallons total, are now buried under layers of sand, reused insulation (to keep them from freezing and cracking), and dirt. They have also been hooked up to the gutters. A couple rainstorms came along to test whether our hard work had paid off, and indeed, with two quick showers the cisterns had nearly filled up completely. One of our first great successes.

In the coming weeks we'll dig spaces for the rain gardens, and finish the landscaping with plans and direction from Paula Westmoreland from Ecological Gardens.

Inside things are moving at a great clip. Our energy systems are hooked up and ready to run. The gas line is hooked into the ClimateEnergy unit and ready to generate power and heat (which we don't need quite yet, with temps still in the 80s). The geothermal well loops are plugged into the WaterFurnace and ready to generate air conditioning. Within a day of being started up, the solar hot water heater already has an entire tank filled with nice, hot water.

The STEP Warmfloor radiant floor heating pads have been laid out in the bathrooms and the mudroom. No-VOC paint is up on the walls. New floors are ready to go in. Bathroom plumbing is ready and waiting for double-flush toilets and low-flow showerheads. Greywater and Culligan systems are installed and ready for water management.

Soon the beautiful FSC cabinetry will be installed, along with EnergyStar appliances, and green furniture.

It's starting to look like a real house here.

My goals sometimes seem to be a bit confused. At times nothing seems better than living in a little shack somewhere out in the prairie or the mountains, eating off the land, writing and just being lazy. But I’m also a big gadget-hound. I love computers. I wouldn’t be able to live without my iPod or cell phone. And I even like playing a video game every now and then. I’m always fascinated by the latest and greatest, drooling over lightning-fast processor speeds, the next Photoshop update, or the new must-have item.

Of course, since I’m not a wealthy guy, I hardly ever get any of these things. I just like to think about them. Recently, however, I did treat myself to a brand-new Apple laptop, a MacBook Pro. And after reading up on the environmental aspects of my new toy, I found that it is now one of the most Earth-friendly (if not wallet-friendly) laptops on the market.

It’s no secret that high-tech devices, computers especially, are energy-hogs. Bright monitors, quick chips, droning fans; for being such small devices, computers have huge energy footprints. The cost of making computers is even worse. Huge amounts of energy are needed to make necessary micro-components, and many nasty chemicals also find their way onto our desks and laps. However the fact remains that computers have become a necessary part of modern life. So instead of getting rid of computers, we should work on ways to make them better.

Today things are much better than they were even a few years ago. The computer monitor has traditionally been a huge energy waster, and chemicals like lead, mercury, and arsenic are necessary to make them. The rise of flat-screen monitors has all but eliminated the lead content of computers – a traditional “CRT” monitor has nearly 3 pounds of lead in it; and a flat-screen LCD has less than one gram. But mercury and arsenic are essential components of LCD manufacturing; so the next step is an LED (light-emitting diode) screen, which has no lead, no mercury, no arsenic, uses less energy, and is also brighter than a LCD. I’m happy to say my new computer has one of the first commercially-available LED monitors.

Apple has also eliminated chemicals like cadmium and the carcinogen hexavalent chromium, and they have one of the computer industry’s most robust recycling programs.

I realize I’m sounding like your typical Apple junkie, but the truth is that Apple is not alone in making these great changes, nor is Apple even the best. Almost all computer makers have EnergyStar-rated models. EnergyStar, a stringent rating system for energy efficiency, is something every consumer should look for when buying a computer. New computers are also subject to the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool, or EPEAT. EPEAT is a way of rating the eco-friendliness of computers – sort of a “LEED for Computers.” Manufacturers wishing to gain an EPEAT rating (from Bronze to Gold) must comply with a number of requirements. The new MacBook Pro is EPEAT-Silver; Dell and Toshiba, however, have outdone themselves with EPEAT-Gold laptops and desktops. Before you buy a new computer, be sure to check it’s EPEAT rating.

Are computers as green as they can be? Simply, no. But manufacturers like Apple, Toshiba and Dell are making great strides toward keeping their environmental policies in line with their technological achievements. That way we can feel a little better about getting that brand-new toy.

Visit:
EPEAT
EnergyStar for Computers

The other day Jake, a blogger for Live Green, introduced himself over at his blog. Patrick asked the question, "How does a writer become green when we need computers and shelter and publishing requires lots of paper and ink?" Jake responded, and Brent made an especially insightful point: "one writer who uses paper to spread a message about living greener is doing more good than harm."

As a writer I struggle with Patrick's question too. Brent and Jake answered the question quite well, but this strikes at the heart of the problem between sustainability and excess. I love to write, and I love to read. I also love books. The feel and weight of a book, the old paper smell of a dusty volume from years ago. For me the act of reading is synonymous with the act of holding a book, flipping the pages. One thing I love about old books is the way the printing presses used to really press into them to get the ink to stay. You can literally FEEL the words.

There are new electronic readers, flat things from Sony, etc. that hold a number of volumes and skip over the nasty processes of making paper and printing on it. Honestly, though, I'd never, ever buy one. To me, that's not reading. There is really something that bothers me about that. Reading on the internet is one thing; I'm all for internet publishing. Especially if it's me being published. But if I'm reading a book, I want a real book. The hippie side of me says that the act of book creation is wrong. It kills trees, uses energy, and printing is a chemically intensive process. The pragmatic side says books and paper are essential features of our lives, and it would be wrong to deny the world the satisfaction of a good book on fine paper. I know that after working in front of a computer all day, I don't want to spend the evening reading in front of...the computer. The writer side of me says that books, besides being efficient, useful, and friendly, can oftentimes be true works of art.

I need to reconcile these sides of me. The simple fact is that bookmaking doesn't have to be unsustainable; it just is. Trees are a renewable resource, we just use them so quickly that the renewing process is broken and unable to catch up. There are ways around this; print on something else, like hemp paper or certified-wood paper or recycled books. Make fewer books (not the first choice for an aspiring poet looking for a book deal, as I am). Buy used books whenever possible (my favorite solution). And there is print-on-demand: you walk up to a kiosk in a bookstore, select the book you want, then leave. Come back 15 minutes later and your book is printed and bound and ready for you, made right there in the middle of the store. This technology exists; I've seen it work myself (in trade shows; there's no real-world use yet). This way, books are only made when they're needed, so you avoid waste.

This is a great example of the need for and possiblity of a middle ground between the environmentalists and the steady-as-she-goes crowd. People can't reasonably be expected to give up books outright. Even a hippie such as myself wouldn't know what to do in a bookless world. The solution is to work on making better books that are worth the paper they're printed on.

As an example of a simple, easy, and mostly painless way to go green, I submit: the humble morning coffee. I, like many, many folks around the world, love my coffee. I like it the Seattle way: the nearer it is to a sludge-like consistency, the better.

If for whatever reason I don't get around to making my morning coffee at home (the "whatever reason" is usually I woke up late, although sometimes you just want a latte, not a drip coffee), I'm likely to make a quick stop somewhere along the way and pick a cup. I prefer to make my coffee at home, for a few reasons: I get to brew it the way I like (the aforementioned sludge method), I don't waste any of it (who knows how much gets poured down the drain at the cafe?), it's cheaper, I get to use my own mug - at home my mug of choice is a handmade one a friend made for me. Also the coffee I brew at home is always Fair Trade and Organic, and the coffee on the road is rarely so, especially at the big chains. However there are always great local joints that make available Fair Trade/Organic for the average cafe commuter. They're just a little off the beaten path.

By now most coffee drinkers know about the horrors of the coffee trade, both for the workers and the land, and know the necessity of buying FT/O. Yet, as I said, most chains rarely serve Fair Trade or FT/O as a morning blend option. If you want to do right by the farmers who produce that drink you love so much, insist that your favorite coffee joint begin to serve a Fair Trade alternative alongside the usual House Blends and French Roasts. The Fair Trade brand has already proven so popular and marketable that the average pound of Fair Trade costs no more than the average pound of Unfair Trade. There's no reason not to switch.

And then there is the ubiquitous paper cup. Sacred chalice of caffeine one minute, trash the next. In 2005 we used and tossed over 14 billion paper coffee cups. 14 billion! Wow. That's a lot of paper. That's also a lot of plastic: most never think about it, but each paper cup is lined with petroleum-based plastic to keep the cup and your hand from melting. Not to mention the lids. Many coffee companies have introduced partially-recycled cups - Starbucks has led the way with 10% recycled cups, and other major chains are lining up. Green Mountain Coffee has a cup with a corn-based biodegradable plastic inside.

This is great news, and it's good to see global companies like Starbucks lead the way in earth-friendly programs. But truly the only way to avoid that paper waste and to save a few trees is to bring in your own mug. Most major chains, like Starbucks and Caribou, offer a ten-cent discount for using your own mug instead of a paper cup. I say they bump it up to a 25-cent discount. Today, though, I ran into the ultimate mug discount (and the initial prompt for this post) at Great Harvest Bakery. Because I bought a tasty rhubarb muffin from them, and because I had my own mug, I got a FREE coffee. Yeah. I was still a bit groggy so I just stared at the cashier for a moment. "Free?" I said. "Yeah!" he said. I smiled and let out a little squeal (in my mind) and marched out, muffin and coffee in hand. Everything tastes better if it's free. It would be nice if we could get more companies to work like this.

So go get yourself a mug, and fill it up with some Fair Trade sludge.

The nice ceramic one I have doesn't work so well for me - one bump in the road and it's all over - but I always carry along my plastic, lidded, utterly reuseable and utterly awesome mug from Macy's European Coffee House in Flagstaff, AZ. Represent.

I made a trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico this weekend for my sister's graduation. (The greenhouse gas implications of flying 970 miles will have to wait for another post) Because of the boxes we needed to haul to the post office and all the bags we needed to get to the airport - plus a family of four - Dad opted for a Dodge Durango, an SUV, as a rental car. This Durango, almost all the Durangos we saw on the lot, and other SUVs from other automakers, happened to be "flex fuel" vehicles. Indeed, there are nearly five million flex fuel vehicles on the road today. A flex fuel car can run on either gasoline or E85, which is a blend of 85% ethanol, a fuel made from corn, and 15% gasoline. I thought, "Great! My first opportunity to ride in an ethanol-fueled car!" While ethanol doesn't seem to be all that it's hyped up to be (read our article on ethanol), this new fuel does seem to hold its share of promises, and I thought it would be fun to try a fuel touted by farmers and presidents alike.

One of the ethanol market's biggest hurdles is availability. In a farming state like Minnesota ethanol is fairly easy to come by - a number of local chains carry E85 across the state. But nationally ethanol represents only about five percent of all available fuel, and there are only about a 1,200 E85 stations nationwide, about 0.75% of all gas stations. This is no more apparent than in a desert state like New Mexico.

I hoped we would simply stumble across a station offering E85 and fill up like it was no big deal, which is how ethanol supporters would imagine it to be. When that proved to be impossible, we searched on the internet and found that there are five - count 'em - stations serving E85 in the state of New Mexico. Two of them are in the National Labs of Los Alamos, leaving three for the rest of the state. None of them were nearby, and it seemed disingenuous to have to drive out of our way to fill up with ethanol, so the Great New Mexican Ethanol Hunt ended sadly in front of a computer screen in a hotel room.

The question, then, is why all the flex fuel vehicles and no flex fuel? One answer is that American carmakers are diligently preparing for the day when ethanol will be pumped easily and cheaply anywhere in the country. Another answer is that carmakers recieve fuel economy credits for every flex fuel vehicle they build. Carmakers in America are required to meet what are called CAFE standards, company-wide minimum fuel economy standards. When these companies build flex fuel vehicles, they recieve a credit against those standards, allowing them to produce cars, trucks, and monster SUVs that do not meet CAFE standards but avoid the hefty fines. They are allowed these credits regardless of whether the vehicle produced ever sees an E85 pump. And many of them perhaps never will.

   Hello, and welcome to my blog! I'm Jack, a writer and editor for Live Green, Live Smart. I hope you've taken the time to explore our brand-new website and get a sense for all the information we have. In the coming weeks we will begin to roll out more articles, papers, powerpoints, webcasts, blogs and forums to help you find ways to make your own life green and smart.

Because our organization is so focused on coming up with ideas for everyday people to save the planet, I decided that it was important for me to try to put my money where my mouth is, as they say, by making myself green.

I will be moving into a new apartment on the first of May, giving me the tremendous opportunity to "start fresh" and try new ideas for living green right away. I'm moving to the Uptown neighborhood of Minneapolis, a dynamic, young, and fun neighborhood, where I'll live within easy walking distance of grocery stores, restaurants, bars, coffee shops, and many retail stores. The neighborhood itself allows me many opportunities to live green, simply by driving my car less.

But that's just one facet of my life (and your life) that can be changed. Where I eat, what I wear, what I buy, all determine my personal green factor. My blog will allow me, for better or for worse, to open all of these decisions to public scrutiny. I may find that many things are easier said than done, but I hope that, by and large, the green decisions I make will prove to be far easier than imagined. I hope that by following my lead, you will say, "if he did it, I can do it too." So stay tuned.

Coming up I'll post some comments and ideas on my initial challenges moving into my new place, and I've also got long-running projects in the works, including a month-long "100 Mile Diet" where I only eat food grown within 100 miles of my home. Gulp. Wish me luck.