Pittsburgh achieved Milestone Five for monitoring and verifying the results of its efforts to reduce GHG emissions. (Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce)

ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability  USA honored 20 cities and counties that have achieved significant milestones in reducing their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions during a Milestone Awards ceremony at its Local Action Summit, held in September in Washington, D.C. (See list of winners below.)

Through ICLEI USA’s proven Five Milestone process, hundreds of local governments and communities large and small take concrete steps to measure their GHG emissions, set realistic emissions reduction goals, develop hands-on climate action plans, and implement those plans in a measurable way that will yield results.

“The Milestone Awards recognize the great work of cities, towns and counties that are actively engaged in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and want a better quality of life for their residents,” said Mayor Patrick Hays, City of North Little Rock, AR, and President of the Board of Directors, ICLEI USA.  “Each step of our Five Milestone process is critically important to ensuring local success and achieving measurable reductions.”

Since 1993, ICLEI USA has held 130 Five Milestone recognition events for local governments.  Since then, more than 300 local governments have received recognition for their various Milestone accomplishments. Over the past year, the pace of Milestone attainment has accelerated, with 52 local governments completing one or more.

“It’s incredibly rewarding to see so many cities, towns and counties actively engaged in our Five Milestone process and being recognized for their accomplishments,” said Martin Chávez, Executive Director, ICLEI USA and three-term Mayor of Albuquerque, NM. “Through the success of the Five Milestone process, local governments are on track to reduce GHG emissions by 1.36 billion metric tons by 2020—the equivalent of taking 25 million passenger vehicles offs the road for 10 years—an incredible achievement being led by our local governments.”

The following ICLEI USA local government members were recognized with a Milestone Award:

• MilestoneOne: Conduct a baseline greenhouse gas emissions inventory and forecast. Iowa City, IA

• Fairbanks, AK
• North Miami, FL
• Richmond, VA

Milestone Two: Adopt emissions reduction goals

• Alexandria, VA
• Charlottesville, VA

Milestone Three: Develop a local climate action plan for how to reach the goals.

• Chevy Chase, MD
• Eugene, OR
• Loudoun County, VA
• Las Vegas, NV
• New Haven, CT
• Park City, UT
• Queen Anne’s County, MD
• Tacoma, WA

Milestone Four: Implement policies and measures from the climate action plan.

• Bellingham, WA
• Township of Hamilton, NJ
• Stamford, CT

Milestone Five: Monitor and verify results in reducing GHG emissions.

• Austin, TX
• Pittsburgh, PA
• Seattle, WA

For more information on ICLEI USA’s Five Milestone process, visit  http://www.icleiusa.org/action-center/getting-started/iclei2019s-five-milestones-for-climate-protection

For more information on these awards and ICLEI USA’s Local Action Summit, visit http://www.icleiusa.org/main-page/news-events/iclei-local-action-summit-2010

About ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA

With more than 600 members nationwide, ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability USA is the leading local government association addressing climate change and sustainability.  As a nonprofit membership organization, ICLEI USA provides the expertise, technical support, training and innovative tools to help local governments advance their climate, energy and sustainability goals.

Michael L. Knotek

The University of Colorado at Boulder and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado, named Michael L. Knotek as director of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute.

Knotek brings more than 35 years of experience to RASEI, a joint institute between CU-Boulder and NREL. Since 2001 he has served as a consultant specializing in transitions and creating new research directions in agency and institutional programs, projects and major research facilities. He also has been involved in strategic planning and project management for multidisciplinary and multi-institutional programs and facilities, including DOE biological programs, high performance computing, national facilities such as synchrotrons, environmental research and many aspects of energy science and technology.

Knotek, one of the nation’s most experienced leaders in multidisciplinary energy research, will focus on renewable energy research within RASEI, one of the world’s leading university and federal laboratory partnerships.

“The appointment of Dr. Knotek continues our tradition of attracting the highest quality leadership, and will foster new opportunities for Colorado’s scientific and private sector communities to collaborate on new energy solutions,” said CU-Boulder Chancellor Philip P. DiStefano.

Knotek will have overall responsibility for management of RASEI’s CU-Boulder and NREL research fellows and private-sector Leadership Council.

“The breadth and depth of experience and knowledge that Dr. Knotek brings to RASEI is exactly the kind of leadership we need to help shape the nation’s energy future,” NREL Director Dan Arvizu said.

Knotek previously served as senior science and technology adviser to the Secretary of Energy at the U.S. Department of Energy; the distinguished science executive at Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill.; the chief technology officer with the Battelle Memorial Institute in Columbus, Ohio; chairman of the National Synchrotron Light Source research facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.; and associate laboratory director for Environmental and Energy Sciences at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society, Knotek also served as special assistant to the director at Lockheed Martin Energy Research Corp. in Oak Ridge, Tenn.

RASEI is advancing solutions for producing energy economically from low-carbon sources to meet the global energy challenge. For more information about RASEI visit
http://rasei.colorado.edu.

NREL is the DOE’s primary national laboratory for renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. NREL is operated for DOE by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, comprised of the Midwest Research Institute, Battelle Memorial Institute, CU-Boulder, Colorado State University, Colorado School of Mines, MIT and Stanford. For more information visit http://www.nrel.gov.

The RAMPed UP design.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has announced the four finalists for its 2010 Natural Talent Design Competition, which gives students and emerging professionals the opportunity to apply sustainable design principles to the ongoing the rebuilding efforts in New Orleans. The jury deliberation at the Andrew H. Wilson Charter School in the Broadmoor neighborhood in New Orleans and the announcement of finalists occurred in conjunction with the release of a five-year retrospective update released by USGBC earlier this week.

After a day of deliberation, the jury selected two student and two emerging professional teams whose designs for small, affordable, ADA-compliant (American Disabilities Act), LEED Platinum homes demonstrated innovative green building principles and will save the future homeowners money over the life-cycle of the home. These designs maintained respect for the Broadmoor aesthetic and respected the opinion of the neighborhood as captured by the community vote, held earlier in the summer. The four finalists are:

Emerging Professional Team: “The Little Easy”, USGBC Connecticut Chapter: This team first came together when they led Cornell University’s 2005 DOE Solar Decathlon Team. After graduation, the group founded ZeroEnergy Design, an architecture and energy consulting firm as well as FreeGreen.com, a site for free green house plans. Their design included an “outdoor living room” – a porch that functioned as an extended room, a wheel chair lift, providing greater ease to elderly or disabled homeowners and a storm water collection system.

View their designs here.

Emerging Professional Team: “RAMPed Up”, Urban Green USGBC New York City Chapter: The team from Buro Happold Consulting Engineers and Rogers Marvel Architects placed high importance on a structural system that resists both gravity, wind and flood, strategically placed windows and ceiling fans to promote passive ventilation during fall and spring and a rainwater harvesting system to mitigate storm water runoff, reducing the impact of heavy rains on the city’s overburdened storm drainage system and covering 100% of the home’s irrigation demand.

View their designs here.

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U.S. Green Building Council
The USGBC community is transforming the way we build, design and operate our buildings for healthier places that save precious resources for people to live, work, learn and play in.  UGSBC is helping create buildings and communities that regenerate and sustain the health and vitality of all life within a generation.  Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the Council is the driving force of the green building industry, which is projected to contribute $554 billion to the U.S. gross domestic product by 2013. USGBC leads a diverse constituency of builders and environmentalists, corporations and nonprofit organizations, elected officials, concerned citizens, teachers and students.  The USGBC community comprises 80 local chapters, 17,000 member companies and organizations, and more than 150,000 individuals who have earned LEED Professional Credentials. Visit www.usgbc.org for more information.

355 Eleventh, San Francisco, is an historic and previously derelict turn-of-the-century industrial building now refurbished to be as beautiful as it is energy efficient. The building won the overall prize for Aidlin Darling Architects - San Francisco.

“Today we honor the forward-thinking designers, engineers, developers, and building owners who are reducing our cities’ carbon footprint, one building at a time,” said Zerofootprint’s CEO, Dr. Ron Dembo. “Projects like these make our cities more sustainable and our buildings better places to live and work. They are making market-disrupting improvements in the way we retrofit existing buildings to improve their energy performance.”

The overall competition winner is the “355 Eleventh” project located in San Francisco, CA. The project was led by Aidlin Darling Architects. This historic, early 20th century industrial building is now refurbished to be as beautiful as it is energy efficient. Part of the refurbishment includes a corrugated skin to replace the building’s original, historically significant steel cladding. The double-skin façade becomes a screen for sunlight and air while maintaining the stoic, industrial character of the original building. Behind that screen, new, operable windows allow user control of airflow. The final building received Gold-level LEED certification and represents the benefits that strong design combined with energy-efficiency brings to our cities.

The winning entries in each of the five Re-Skinning Awards categories are:

• Small/Medium Commercial – 355 Eleventh – Aidlin Darling Architects – San Francisco, California
• Large Commercial - Sparkasse Vorderpfalz – Egon Weiß (1974), Thiemo Ebbert (2009) – Ludwigshafen, Germany
• Large Residential - GESOBAU AG – Osawld Mathias Ungers (1964), DAHM Architekten + Ingenieure (2008) – Berlin, Germany
• Small Residential – Now House – Work Worth Doing Studio and Lorraine Gauthier – Toronto, Canada
• The Future of Re-Skinning – Sydney Tower – Laboratory for Visionary Architecture – Sydney, Australia

For more information and images of each of the winners, visit www.thezeroprize.org.

An expert panel of global leaders in architecture, engineering, sustainability and design judged the entries. The panel selected the winning entries based on a number of criteria, including: energy efficiency; design aesthetics; return on investment; scalability; use of information technology to make the buildings “smart”; and social benefits accruing from the retrofit. A number of world-renowned green leaders and innovators also served as advisors for the competition.

A traveling exhibition is planned to showcase the designs and innovative technologies behind the winning projects. The exhibition will include materials, designs, images and other processes pertaining to re-skinning.

About Zerofootprint
Zerofootprint is a socially responsible enterprise whose mission is to apply technology, design, and risk management to the massive reduction of our environmental footprint. Zerofootprint operates both in the for-profit and charitable domains through two entities, Zerofootprint Software and Zerofootprint Foundation.

Brian Malarkey

Brian Malarkey, executive Vice President and Director of Kirksey Architecture EcoServices, received the 2010 AIA National Young Architect Award, one of only nine recipients nationwide. Malarkey is president of AIA Houston 2008, co-founder of the Houston Chapter of the USGBC, founding chair of Gulf Coast Green Conference and Expo, AIA Houston Young Architect Award recipient 2004, regional green building pioneer, award-winning designer, appointed to Houston Mayor’s Green Building Advisory Committee, and a champion for LEED legislation in Houston and the state of Texas. He also is the founder of Kirksey EcoServices.

Awarded by the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Young Architects Award is given to individuals who have shown exceptional leadership and made significant contributions to the profession in an early state of their architectural career. Recipients must have been licensed to practice architecture fewer than 10 years.