Fresh AIRE

25 degrees of separation

"Here comes the sun, doo doo doo doo..." And with the sun comes warm yellow light, vitamin D, and HEAT!

We're fortunate to have big picture windows with views of Arlington, the monuments, the Capitol, and the national cathedral. On a really clear day, we can see Jack Kent Cook stadium. With our eastern exposure, our windows get a lot of lovin' from the sun, too.

We measured the temperature just inside our double-paned windows (our building is new, just 3 years old) at... are you ready?... 118 degrees. Ouch! No wonder we keep the blinds down during the hottest parts of the day. To help reduce the window heat, we took on a project over the weekend -- applying heat-reflecting window film to most of the windows.

Bottom line? The heat now measures 93 degrees, or 25 degrees cooler. In this photo, the right window  has the film (it's slightly darker).

The kit was reasonably priced and relatively easy to use -- though you really, truly need two people to wrangle the film. My husband bought the kits at a home improvement store, and you can easily find it online.

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Diana Sun (no relation to the big ball of heat) is Director of Communications for Arlington County, a walking commuter, bicylist, and happy resident of the urban village of Clarendon.

I am brilliant

My husband and I moved from suburban life 3 years ago to a condo in Clarendon (Arlington) -- and I felt brilliant at the time, with gas at $3/gallon. With gas now at $4+, I feel like a downright genius!

Now the New York Times has confirmed my genius-ness with an article, "Fuel Prices Shift Math for Life in Far Suburbs." As the article states, "The shift to costlier fuel is threatening to slow the decades-old migration away from cities."

Higher fuel prices may at last be providing the big motivation for people to seek a more transit-oriented, walkable, bikeable life. We've already seen that Arlington's urban villages have weathered the housing downturn better than our ex-burban neighbors.

Urban villages = healthier and now, wealthier! Am I brilliant, or what!

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Diana Sun is Director of Communications for Arlington County, a walking commuter, bicylist, and happy resident of the urban village of Clarendon.

Getting Started is Easy

Thanks to the entreprenurial spirit of some local DC area inhabitants, getting started on reducing your personal carbon footprint is easy!  We’ve recently come across two organizations providing their services and products to the DC area and we encourage you to take a look too:

• Earth Aid Enterprises LLC:  Initiated as a campaign to “accelerate the development and deployment of sensible home energy efficiency solutions for all Americans.”  The goal:  reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions equivalent of over 1,000,000 cars each and every year.  To achieve this, they provide a customized Earth Aid Kit^TM, which is a collection of products that anyone can easily install in his/her home at a very low cost. 
• Energy Shift:  Founded on the belief that “the backbone of change is individual action.”  The goal:  move away from dependence on fossil fuels.  To this end, Energy Shift provides information and products to consumers enabling them to make better choices.  Energy Shift provides a Starter Kit of products and information to implement at home and again, at a very low cost. 

Take a look today and see just how easy it can be. 

Revelations from an Energy Audit

By now we’re all feeling the pinch on our wallets from escalating energy prices.  Undoubtedly, these costs will continue to rise and we’ll all need to discover ways to use and get by with less.  So, here’s a question...which pollutes more – your home or your car?  Okay, maybe it’s obvious by the title of this entry, but yes, your home!  That was one of the first questions I was asked when I first entered the field of energy efficiency and I got it wrong.  Most people just don’t think of their homes spewing out pollution.  But the truth is, they do.  And one way to know just how much is through a home energy audit.  Through the Fresh AIRE program, Arlington County has been providing a limited number of home energy audits to residents of Arlington.  If homeowners have a better understanding of how their home is using and/or wasting energy, he/she will be more inclined to do something about it. In all cases, these have been very revealing.  And while there are some home improvements that require some up-front investment, many small low-cost, no-cost things can be done.  Check out this short WUSA-TV video clip and write-up on a recent home energy audit conducted by Troy Tanner of The Home Energy Detective, Inc. on an Arlington home.  You may just feel the urge to act!

Another “Green” Friend?

I can’t take credit for turning another friend “green,” but I would certainly like to boast a bit about her efforts!  A very dear friend came to me recently and shared the details of an interview she saw on TV with Julia Louis-Dreyfus.  In this interview, Julia listed off a host of tips anyone can employ to save energy and live more sustainably.  My friend was astonished by the amount of energy saved in one CFL (80%), and even more so by the impacts of using those pesty plastic bags at the grocery store:  those bags aren’t biodegradable, contribute to litter, harm animals, and require tremendous amounts of energy in camparison to reusable shopping bags. 

This simple interview really pushed my friend into action.  She’s trying CFLs now, considers reusable shopping bags, and, most notably, she’s looking at other ways to reduce her consumption.  She asked me recently, “are those plastic red party cups bad?”  She uses two of these cups a day, only once, and then discards them.  My answer, “YES!”  If you have to use them, reuse them.  But, better yet, get a reusable travel mug – stainless steel are best! 

Having worked in the environmental field for nearly 10 years now, you would think that my environmental habits would extend to all my family, friends and neighbors.  I do have my environmental peeps for sure, but I just don’t like to be pushy to those that aren’t.  My preferred approach is to brag about my “lighter shade of green” friends when they do truly wonderful things for our environment. 

Thanks Friend!

Energy Efficiency & Your Abode

Home energy efficiency is a hot topic and with Dominion's rate hike looming it's likely to garner more attention much the way gas prices have. 

Last night we had a good crowed for the presentation on Practical Steps for Energy Efficiency in Your Condo.  In Arlington, over half of our residents live in condos, townhomes, or multi-unit dwellings which make this topic all the more germane.

For those of you who couldn't join us, the presentation is attached below.  If your condo association or board would like more info on how you can save energy please engage us at climage@arlingtonva.us   

Also, it bears repeating that every action makes a difference!

Click the link here to view the presentation: Download arlington_condo_energy_presentation_20_may_08.pdf

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How It All Ends

If you've never seen this video, I think it is one of the most powerfully convincing efforts to help people understand the need to take action on climate change.  If you like it, you can also watch the more than 6 hours of additional supporting video in the "Expansion Pack." . . . . . but you don't have to.

If you are committed to fighting global climate change and liked the video, feel free to pass it on.
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Steve Offutt, Arlington Resident and climate change battler

Shedding those Spring 'kilowatts'

The days are getting longer and summer is knocking on the door.  It's time to start shaving off those unwanted kilowatts for summer.

I have been doing some spring cleaning and in doing so I have been looking all around my house for ways to save energy.  It has become a game that my roommate and I play to reduce our energy bill.  First we swapped out all of our incandescent bulbs for compact fluorescent, then we turned our refrigerator down one notch, we put our cell phone and laptop chargers on power strips with an on/off switch, and so on. Nothing major or complex, and with minimal effort we have been able to save about $40 dollars a month. 

 

The reason for this blog entry is to tell you that we hit a NEW LOW.  A new low in that we recently hit 52 kWh   for the month of April which got me thinking about that TV show The Biggest Loser. Would you be interested in getting involved with your neighborhood  to create a "Biggest Energy Loser" or do you think there are entirely too many challenges and pledges out there already?

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

Arlington County -=- we are 'Anti-Carbon'

In an interview between Jeffery Swartz, CEO of Timberland and Steven Colbert, Mr. Colbert berated Jeffery Swartz for being "Carbon Neutral".  Colbert Said:

Carbon neutral sounds wishy-washy. You should be pro-carbon or anti-carbon. Carbon neutral sounds like Switzerland. Take a stand!

While it's easy to joke about, this is a serious issue.  If you are reading this blog then you are using some form of power for your computer.  It's a reality we all live in.  From dusk till dawn, morning to night, we use lights, drive, fly, talk on cell phones, use computers, and reside indoors 90% of our lives in air conditioned or heated spaces. 

The question more and more residents and businesses are asking is how do we reduce our carbon footprint?  Personally, I can tell you that despite all of my carbon savings from not owning a car, I do indeed fly with unabashed frequency. I just took a week of leave and flew to Nicaragua.  While I was feeling rather guilty about the lengthy journey, I thought perhaps carbon offsets might be a solution. 

This is the first flight I have offset and it was a very simple process. Carbon offsets and green power are a critical component to reduce your carbon footprint for your home or at work. If you are interested to learn more about carbon offsets and how to buy 'green power' just follow these two easy steps to demystify all this carbon mumbo-jumbo.

1.   Visit the Arlington Green It event on April 3rd to learn more about Carbon Offsets and Green Power.

2.   Take Action, and let us know your experience on the blog

Upgrades, Retrofits Save Energy & Dollars at Home

It’s been a busy few weeks in our house. After two consecutive months of shockingly high energy bills - even after replacing nearly all of our incandescent light bulbs with CFLs - we decided to take the next step in making our home more energy efficient. We installed an insulating blanket around our hot water heater tank and invested in a new ENERGY STAR rated dishwasher and refrigerator.

With the water heater on the first floor of our three-story town home, the water in our upstairs bathrooms is almost always bone-chilling cold on those frosty winter mornings. This led to a big water conservation no-no in our house - running the water to warm up the shower. So we purchased the blanket from our local home improvement store and installed it in roughly 20 minutes. We already had all of the necessary tools and it was an easy fix. I’ve already noticed a difference in how quickly the water warms up.

In the kitchen, our 18-year old dishwasher and refrigerator were starting to show their age. Though it had yet to truly breakdown, the old dishwasher had become known affectionately as the dish dirtier since nearly all of the dishes required a pre- and post-rinse to come out clean. However, it did last well beyond its 10-year life expectancy according to the technician who installed our new Kenmore ENERGY STAR rated dishwasher.

With the promise of energy cost savings and the great deal we got at the Sears’ appliance sale, I don’t feel so bad about the money spent. I’ll keep you posted and let you know how these upgrades translate into energy cost savings on next month’s bill.

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Myllisa Kennedy