The Sears Tower

It has been known that commercial buildings take a lot of energy to keep them going.

The Sears Tower (Chicago) is going to be renamed to the Willis Tower later this summer and is now going to undergo a $350 million “green” retrofit for the 110-story office tower.

The plan calls for a reduction in its electricity consumption by 80 percent and water usage by 40 percent.

To achieve the savings, owner American Landmark Properties and its partners plan to: (more…)

Already a water utility, Snohomish County PUD began operating as an electric utility on September 1, 1949, providing public power to Snohomish County and Camano Island in Washington state. Snohomish County PUD is the second largest publicly owned utility in the Pacific Northwest and the twelfth largest in the nation in terms of customers served. Along with power generation from the Henry M. Jackson Hydroelectric Project, a 112-megawatt facility, the PUD also owns a cogeneration facility on the Everett waterfront that burns wood for fuel.

The Henry M. Jackson Hydroelectric Project, which began operating in 1984. Water from Spada Lake flows through a tunnel/ pipeline before reaching the powerhouse on the Sultan River, downstream from the dam.After traveling through the turbine-generators at the powerhouse, most of the water goes back into the river. Some of it flows to Lake Chaplain where it becomes part of the water supply. Water from Lake Chaplain is distributed to nearly two-thirds of Snohomish County’s population or is used to maintain proper water flows for fish populations in the Sultan River. (more…)

Texas consumes almost 12 percent of all energy used in the United States. In 2005, Texas’ energy consumption of over 11,500 trillion BTUs exceeded that of California (8,400 trillion BTUs), the US’s second largest energy consumer, by 38 percent. A number of factors contribute to Texas’ leadership in energy use with a big one, the hot and humid climate that dominates much of the state, being responsible for a high demand for summer air conditioning.

Historically, Texas has been a national leader in the production of petroleum products, crude oil and natural gas, and in the generation of electricity. But in the early 1990s, consumption overtook production, forcing the state to increasingly rely on outside sources of energy to meet that demand. (more…)

Chicago has one of the most extensive infrastructures of any city in the world, with approximately 1,900 miles of public alleys, that’s about 3,500 acres of paved impermeable surface. The city is committed to creating a greener, more sustainable environment by using best management practices in alley improvement and construction. Called ‘Green Alleys’, under the management of Chicago’s Department of Transportation (CDOT), it aims to stop polluted rainwater in the city’s alleyways from ending up in adjacent Lake Michigan. (more…)

FoodServiceWarehouse.com is a Greenwood Village, Colorado company that
was started by a group of avid environmentalists. Their commitment to the
environment can be seen from the environmentally conscious way that they run
their own company and the programs they have developed to help the restaurant
industry become more environmentally responsible.

As part of their services, they have created an industry leading certification
program aimed at helping commercial kitchens cope with the costs and complexities
of going green. The program features educational resources, rewards and the industry’s
only free certification process, modeled after, and fulfilling credits for LEED (more…)