Back to the Future

You may have noticed less frequent postings to this blog lately. Allow me to explain. My spare time has been focused over the past few months on a quest to become the first Director of Sustainability at Indiana University and making the transition from one career to another. I start that new career on Monday.

For me this is a return to the beautiful Bloomington campus where I first learned about the foundational ecological concepts that guided my career as an architect and led me to focus on the sustainable design of buildings and communities. The Indiana University Task Force on Sustainability has been busy the past two years formulating a road map for a more sustainable campus and I am anxious to catalyze the implementation of that exciting strategic plan in collaboration with a cast of thousands. This is also an opportunity for me to teach, learn, lead, research and write in a career where my personal mission and what I get paid to do are in complete alignment. That is a my definition of a dream job.

Stay tuned as I head back to the future and attempt to have as much positive impact on my alma mater as it has had on me.

Ball State University Going Geothermal to Slash Their Carbon Footprint in Half

Ball State University's Board of Trustees voted Friday to cut their campus carbon footprint in half by investing in the largest university geothermal heating and cooling system in the country in lieu of a proposed upgrade of their coal-fired boiler plant.

Four coal-fired boilers will be taken off line in two phases saving $2 million and 85,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. In addition, the switch will place BSU on the positive side of the proposed carbon cap and trade economy where they will be able to sell carbon credits and they will have greater immunity to volatile fossil fuel prices and new EPA regulations for coal-fired plant emissions, according to their news release.

To finance this bold plan, BSU plans to use $41.8 million already in hand that was previously approved for boiler replacement and apply it to the new geothermal proposal. The proposed system will be phased in and will be partially paid for with savings. It may also be poised for some of the federal stimulus package money as a "shovel ready" project. Speaking of shovels, to provide enough heat transfer capacity to heat and cool 40 buildings on campus, they will need 3,750 boreholes 400 feet deep. This is not a well system, but a closed-loop system that uses the earth as a heat sink and does not tap into water supplies like an open-well system. Borrowing heat from the earth and using it for cooling requires a fraction of the energy needed to generate heat and cooling using conventional methods.

Ball State University President Jo Ann M. Gora was a Charter Signatory to the American College & University President's Climate Commitment, which now includes 609 institutions representing over 30% of our nation's college student population. Under her visionary leadership, BSU has been a national leader in convening events for collaboration among colleges and universities to promote more sustainable campuses and curricula to deal with climate change. Robert Koester, AIA, LEED AP, Director of the BSU Center for Energy Research, Education, & Service and Chair of the BSU Committee on the Environment has been a pioneer in the campus sustainability movement and the driving force behind their important Greening of the Campus Conferences.

As an alumnus of Ball State University, I could not be happier with this strategic direction. It seems every time I pick up a publication that is describing the tsunami that is the campus sustainability movement, Ball State is named as an exemplary example. See the National Wildlife Federation's outstanding Campus Ecology publication, for example. One of the many benefits of this strategy is to attract the best and brightest students and faculty. A recent survey by the Princeton Review, which now issues Green Scores for campuses, noted that 63% of college candidates consider campus sustainability as an important part of their college decision process. In addition, this strategy represents a smart investment with a guaranteed return due to avoidance of rising utility and regulatory costs for fossil fuels. Finally, it transforms the University into a learning lab where theory becomes reality and the economic, social and environmental bottom line is all positive. I can easily imagine business classes where undergrads are learning about the advantages of clean renewable energy by looking at their university's own high-performance energy systems and comparing the costs and benefits verses conventional systems. Everybody wins, including Indiana taxpayers, and creative brain power triumphs over bureaucratic inertia.

Allow me to suggest a next step: create a for-profit consortium to build a large wind farm with the capacity to offset the campus electrical load, with reserves to provide for future growth and to provide a carbon neutral campus. Indiana has significant wind capacity, as already demonstrated in six counties and it is poised to be the 15th state in terms of total wind power capacity when all the wind projects in development are completed. The Cardinal Power consortium would be able to leverage the new tax incentives and carbon cap and trade credits for the next twenty years while it sells electricity to the University for an attractive 20-year fixed rate. After that period, the University owns the wind farm and essentially has no need to buy fuel, assuming they have converted their entire campus fleet to electric vehicles by then. Outrageous? Twenty colleges and universities have already invested in wind power and several others are utlizing large-scale solar electric systems. If BSU combines renewable energy with building energy efficiency upgrades, they could have excess power to sell to help pay for more interesting things, like reduced tuition and increased pay for employees.

What is outrageous in these rapidly changing times is business as usual. As longshoreman, philosopher, author and self-educated Presidential Medal of Freedom winner Eric Hoffer said, "In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists." Congratulations to Ball State University for leading America's colleges and universities to a more sustainable future.

Building Dashboard for the Whole Elon University Campus Helps Save Energy

Elon University, located in Elon, North Carolina in the Piedmont region east of Greensboro, has just over 5000 students who know to the watt how much energy they are using at any given moment. EU realized that if you want to change something, you typically will have more success if you have a method to measure your progress (like my bathroom scale and my diet). Trying to teach students and faculty how their activities and habits affect electricity and water usage is greatly enhanced when everyone has a public scoreboard to help them keep score. It also helps to keep score when you are involved in a residence hall energy conservation competition, which is another use for the Elon University Building Dashboard.

You can see other campus dashboards at Lucid Design Group's web site.

Fasten Your Seatbelt and Prepare For a Soft Green Miracle Landing in 2009

One prediction for 2009 that I'm sure will be true is it will be a very interesting year. We have a new president taking office amid a perfect storm of foreign and domestic problems of epic magnitude on our hot, flat and crowded world. Add several hundred billion in new federal funding and tax breaks to attempt to stem the most pressing of those problems and you have a recipe for even more historic excitement than we had in 2008.

We will need some more miracles like the Miracle on the Hudson, where outliers with 19,000 hours of experience use all their training and skills to calmly produce excellent outcomes while facing grave consequences. Perhaps we will find a way to a soft landing on smooth water. Fasten your seat belts! It may be a wild ride.

Locally, it is also shaping up as an interesting year as the Indiana legislature considers how to build a balanced budget around dwindling tax revenue as the farm ponds aren't the only things freezing up and the temperature gauges aren't the only things going down.

In the realm of moving from brown to green, this would seem to be an unlikely time for progress for sustainability, but there may be an opening in the form of all that cash that Congress may be about to print to fund the economic stimulus bill. Among the programs that would be funded, if Congress acts in accord with the new administration, are incentives to encourage renewable energy, green buildings, green job training, building energy retrofits, electrical transmission grid upgrades, mass transit infrastructure, and basic research, to name a few. Add to that mix proposed legislation for a national renewable energy portfolio, minimum national energy code standards, more stringent enforcement of air pollution rules, and a carbon cap and trade system and you have stimulus for unprecedented change in a state that is 96% dependent on coal for electric power and where our energy code is the most outdated in the nation.

Three events coming to Indianapolis in the next few months will attempt to make some sense of these dynamic challenges and opportunities and they all have a decidedly green tint. First up is the Indianapolis Business Journal's Power Breakfast Series: Going Green event on February 13 at the Weston Downtown, Indianapolis. This popular series is always well attended but this year should sell out early due to the mix of environmental and business expertise focused on questions like, "What are the main elements of Barack Obama's environmental agenda and what are the chances they will become law? What have we learned about Green buildings and LEED-certified projects? What are the implications for business of CO2 restrictions?"

Next up is the popular IU Kelly School of Business Annual Business Conference on March 11 at the Indiana Convention Center featuring energy guru Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and climate change activist, author, professor Bill McKibben, and editor-in-chief of Health Affairs, Susan Dentzer, moderated by New York Times columnist and author David Brooks. The theme is the storm of change facing health care, energy and the environment in 2009. After the three subject matter experts speak, chief executive officers of three major corporations that are known for their responsible approaches to energy use, the environment and employee health care will talk about how their companies are addressing these issues.

Later that week, on March 12 and 13th the third annual Indiana Building Green Symposium will take place at the Indianapolis Museum of Art with the theme: Think Green. Headlining this event is architect Ed Mazria who wrote "the bible of passive solar design" but is best known today as the creator of the 2030 Challenge, which calls for signatories to design only carbon neutral buildings by 2030. Those signatories include the American Institute of Architects, the U. S. Green Building Council, the U. S. Conference of Mayors, and the State of Illinois among many others. Leith Sharp, the sustainability director at Harvard University from 2000 to 2008 will tell how she built the nation's premier campus sustainability program from scratch and how Indiana's colleges and universities can follow her lead, saving millions of pounds of carbon and millions of dollars along the way.

Not a bad lineup for the first quarter. Fasten your seat belts! We may be in for a wild ride.

Seven Surefire Steps to Passing the LEED AP Exam

A LEED Accredited Professional is someone who has passed an 80-question multiple choice exam which tests their ability to apply the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Green Building Rating System™. Currently three versions of the exam exist, for New Construction, Existing Buildings and Commercial Interiors. New exams are under development and major changes to the rating system and the accreditation process will come on line later in 2009. LEED for New Construction (LEED NC) is the original system and the mother of all the others.

Since I became the second Hoosier to pass the LEED AP exam, it has gotten harder, but there are many more people taking the exam now as LEED has become the standard metric of achievement for green buildings. There are more LEED APs in Indiana now (675) than there were in all of America then (500). Currently more than 65,000 LEED APs exist in the world and the pace of accreditation is accelerating. I have had numerous requests to teach people how to pass the exam since 2001, including a request from an engineering firm in Dubai (signs of Peak Oil?). Since USGBC is coming out with a new series of exams this year, I have gotten a lot more requests than usual lately for tips on how to pass the old exam before the new ones (presumably harder) come on line. If you pass the current exam, you will not have to take the new exam. You will be a Legacy AP. You will, however, have to eventually sign an ethics agreement and maintain your credentials through continuing education once the new system is up an running. You have until March to register and until May to take the old exam. If you wait, you will have the opportunity to take exams for the LEED for Homes or LEED for Neighborhood Development rating systems later this year as well as newer versions of the three exams currently available.

I have happily offered my services as a teacher on an almost voluntary basis (I typically teach this course one-on-one over a decent long lunch) for dozens of would be LEED APs over the years, including an energy guru of a multi-billion dollar real estate investment company and a facility official for a large higher education institution.

Some people drop up to $1400 attending all-day workshops, webinars, fancy flash cards and computer software, but I recommend some old-fashioned methods that are relatively inexpensive but involve some good old-fashioned hard work. So far, nobody that I coached one-on-one has failed to pass when they followed my:

SEVEN SUREFIRE STEPS TO PASSING THE LEED AP EXAM

1. COMMIT: Chisel an exam date in stone. Register. Put money on the line. Tell your family and co-workers. Post the date over your desk and your refrigerator and your bathroom mirror. Get a t-shirt printed with LEED AP OR BUST! on it. Whatever works for you. The point is, COMMIT! Don't stretch this out forever. Set the date for no more than six to eight weeks out (I have coached some successful candidates who only had two weeks to prepare, but I wouldn't recommend it). More than eight weeks invites procrastination. Start your journey by going to the Green Building Certification Institute and read the LEED AP Candidate Handbook. Do this before the next moonrise.

2. READ: Buy a copy of the LEED NC Reference Guide (unless you are an operations and maintenance professional or an interior designer, this is probably the version of the test you will take). This is the only big dollar investment other than your testing fee you may have to make. See if your employer will pay for your Reference Guide and your Testing Fee and let them know when you will be taking the exam and that you want the test morning off. Many employers will pay for the exam ONCE, which provides additional incentive to succeed. I recommend you have your own copy, if possible, so you can mark it up. When you have the fat guide in your hands, read through it thoroughly and underline or highlight those passages you feel are important, add numbered tabs and make separate summary outline notes on a separate notebook. By reading and taking notes, your brain is forced to utilize multiple neural pathways repeatedly and this helps build your ability to understand and later recall the information. Finish in two weeks or less.

3. FLASH YOURSELF: Make your own flash cards (uh, question on one side, answer on the other). Yes, this seems primitive and almost like hard work, but we want your hands and your left and right hemispheres fully engaged to begin to hard-wire all those neural pathways to success on the exam. Making your own cards causes you to summarize long passages again and rewrite with primitive tools and it causes you to plow back through the reference guide again (repetition is one key to success here). I recommend to my students that they prepare one flash card (standard 3.5 index cards) for each of the six typical sections (Intent, Requirements, Technologies and Strategies, Reference Standards, Submittal Documentation, Definitions) of each credit or prerequisite (62) or 372 cards. Add to this any general flash cards required to cover more general questions (see the Outline of Exam Content). Plan on buying 400 index cards. Block out time over a weekend or make this your lunchtime routine until you get all your cards done. Finish in week two or three, then add to and edit as you find out more below.

4. EXPERIENCE: If you are associated with the building industry (and don't we all spend 90% of our time in one?), apply your new-found knowledge to an actual project. Score it. Teach the system to others you are working with. Ask them what it would take to achieve a particular point (hmm, do I have an actual "view" from my workstation per EQ Credit 8.2?). Make it real. Practice it in real life. Apply your knowledge. You will find if you have to open your mouth to explain this to somebody else, your brain will be on full alert and your neurons will be firing like nano-machine guns. Peruse case studies of LEED Certified projects and, if possible, take guided tours of certified buildings (contact your local USGBC Chapter for upcoming tours). Do this after completion of steps 1-3 and continue after you pass the exam.

5. IMMERSE: Surf the web for other resources where you will find a wealth of information on LEED and also on the specific objectives of the test along with sample test questions and vivid descriptions of the test-taking process. A growing number of other web sites cater to future LEED APs with tutorials, webinars and sample tests. Visit the indespensible Real Life LEED blog to follow vicariously a real LEED AP, Joel McKellar, in action and browse his outstanding list of resources for exam success. He also has links on his blog to examples of actual LEED submittals posted by Harvard University and the University of California, along with many other valuable links.

Visit the unofficial LEED exam prep site: intheLEED. Here you will find a treasure trove of useful free stuff like the blank study guide, which I highly recommend. The Colorado Chapter of USGBC has a number of exam prep resources including their excellent LEED-NC Study Guides, which include sample exams. You can also get advice and a free sample exam from BuildingGreen.com.

Don't take the tests yet, just get familiar with the nature of the test by looking at some of the free exam questions available through USGBC and others and the resources that are out there. Surf and immerse yourself in the culture of thousands of successful exam takers. Adjust your flash cards accordingly. If you have unlimited resources, by all means invest in some of the LEED workshops, webinars and online LEED AP exam prep courses (see U.S. Green Building Council, Green Building Educator Services, Professional Publications, Inc.). The more ways you process the information, the more likely your brain will retain it. Do this only after step 3 is complete, lest you get distracted by bright, shiny objects.

6. MEMORIZE: Memorize 100% of your flash cards one card at a time. Brute force. Use mnemonics. Doodle. Make up acronyms, silly songs, whatever works for you. Toss the easy cards aside and concentrate on the dwindling pile of those you couldn't answer. Repeat until your child (or your boss) can quiz you on the entire deck and you appear to be a genius. Finish at least one week prior to the exam date. Repeat often, but not while driving.

7. PRACTICE: Now, take sample exams until you consistently pass 90% of 80 questions in less than two hours. You want to be able to do this with 24 hours to spare before taking the exam so plan backwards and gauge your progress. If you can accomplish this, you can rest easy the night before and be well rested for the exam. If you can't accomplish it 24 hours in advance, cram through the night until you get it. You only have to stay awake for 2 hours during the exam. You can sleep in your car afterwards. You will know your result instantly.

You will pass. You will be a LEED AP.

Welcome aboard!

Where are we going for lunch?

Addicted to Blokus

One of the rules of blogging is to post frequently. I violated that rule to spend some quality time off with family and friends over the holidays. I hope you enjoyed some relaxing family times as well.

Before I get back to my mission to turn the world from brown to green, I wanted to mention a board game that my family got hooked on. It is a strategy game called Blokus (pronounced "block us"). It was a last minute Christmas purchase based on reading the list of international game awards on the box. Like all really great games, it has a very simple premise that just takes a few minutes to understand. Use up all your color of Tetris-like tiles first, allowing them to only touch corner to corner. They can touch other players colors in any manner. The raised gridded board keeps everything in place.

After the first game, you realize that this is a game that could have endless strategies for mastery as you learn to use all 21 of your shapes to their best advantage offensively and defensively. It is a game you hate to put away.

According to the official Blokus web site, the French inventor of the game, Bernard Tavitian holds a Master's degree in Mathematics from the University of Paris VI, an Engineering Degree from the prestigious Ecole Centrale in Paris, a Doctorate in Biophysics from the University of Paris VI and has held a post-doctoral position in the Department of Biochemistry at Yale University in the United States. Apparently, he is now a 46-year-old retiree living off the royalties.

Have fun in 2009 and may all your puzzle pieces drop into place!

Nine Books of 2008 to Prepare You to Change the World in 2009

November was a month of travel and discovery for me. My bags remained packed from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education conference in Raleigh, to Greenbuild 2008 in Boston, to an interview for a net-zero-energy library gig in Phoenix. All that conferencing and traveling and networking revealed some more great books as well as providing time away from my computer to catch up on my reading.

As I reflect on the important books of 2008 and begin to prepare myself for the tsunami of change coming in 2009, I wanted to share my book recommendations with you and I hope to hear from you about the great ones I may have missed.

Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
by Seth Godin

Seth Godin wants to you to change the world by leading a tribe and he gives you examples of people who have and how they did it. Especially useful is his illumination of Web 2.0 social networking tools that can help us create and stay in touch with our tribes. This is Godin's best best-seller yet. Welcome to my tribe.

The Necessary Revolution: How individuals and organizations are working together to create a sustainable world.
by Peter M. Senge, Bryan Smith, Sara Schley, Joe Laur, Nina Kruschwitz

This is the most important book of 2008. Senge taught us how to create "learning organizations" in his systems theory classic, The Fifth Discipline. This is the how-to book to read after Godin has inspired you to lead your tribe. Like Godin, Senge is trying to catalyze grass roots leadership by providing examples of how others managed to turn their organizations around, even from their positions deep down the org chart. Senge's strategies and tools for transforming organizations are well-tested and proven. He walks us through the transformations of GE, Alcoa, Coca-Cola, Nike, Costco and BP and shows us how ordinary people accomplished revolutionary change that will be required by all organizations if we are to achieve a sustainable world.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution--and How It Can Renew America
by Thomas L. Friedman

Climate change, globalization and growing populations that are trying to catch up with our levels of consumption are problems of historic proportions, but, as Friedman points out in a way only he can, this is also a time of historic opportunity, IF we take action now. A multiple Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist and author of The World is Flat, Friedman provides a very readable account of the fix we are in, but more importantly he argues for a way out that may also provide the jump start we need to revive our economic woes.

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, Third Edition
by Lester R. Brown

This is the deeper, broader, more detailed version of the books above. This is the one to read when you are snowed in at the airport and no planes are leaving until tomorrow. This is the textbook version of how to reboot our civilization by a man who has devoted his life work to the topic for the past four decades. I was inspired by his work as a college student at Indiana University in the seventies and he continues to teach me essential principles we all need to master now. I would love to teach a semester course using this text to return the favor. If you can only read one book on this list, for the sake of your future and mine, this should be it.


Strategies for the Green Economy: Opportunities and Challenges in the New World of Business
by Joel Makower, Cara Pike

Joel Makower, executive editor of GreenBiz.com has been advising companies on green strategies for twenty years and he has written more than a dozen books on the topic. As President-elect Obama prepares to unleash a "green economic recovery plan" this might be a good time to get familiar with Mr. Makower if you don't already follow his blog - Two Steps Forward. For Fortune 500 business captains, Makower is a seasoned consultant with a balanced, hype-free view. For environmentalists, he is a leading crusader in the war against greenwashing. If you are in business, subscribe to his blog and read this book.

Influencer: The Power to Change Anything
by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, David Maxfield, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler

For people who understand how dramatically the world must change in the next few years, it can be extremely frustrating to be in an organization that is highly resistant to change. But it is in these change-resistant organizations where change agents are most valuable. If you study plane crashes or medical malpractice cases, you often find that somebody lower in the chain of command failed to elevate their concerns about something they saw going wrong to the level necessary to prevent disaster. They were conditioned not to question authority or authority was conditioned to ignore them. Patterson's team, also the authors of the previous best-seller Crucial Conversations found in a hospital study that "fewer than one in ten respondents said it was politically acceptable to speak openly about what was going wrong." In a study of project managers, they learned that 88 percent of those surveyed were currently working on projects that they predicted would eventually fail - or what some called a "slow-motion train wreck." If you find yourself rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, this is the book that will help you turn the rudder. The authors describe danger of the serenity trap. "Every day you ask for the serenity to accept the things you cannot change, the courage to change the things you can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Somehow that gets you through. There are actual people out there who - instead of continually seeking the wisdom to know the difference - have sought to make a difference. And they have found it. They've discovered that when is comes to changing the world, what most of us lack is not the courage to change things, but the skill to do so." They proceed to explain Six Sources of Influence based on a firm foundation of behavioral science, but in simple terms that anyone can master, but not in a single reading. This is a book you will keep coming back to as you begin to discover how it can change your life.

The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems
by Van Jones

Few people embody influence more so than does Van Jones. He was a hit as a speaker at AASHE and Greenbuild and he has the ear of President-elect Obama. But this Yale Law grad cannot be accused of all talk and no action. He has shown how to "repower America" by combining retrofitting and weatherization of dilapidated housing in inner city neighborhoods with training programs for the unemployed. He has linked the solution to climate change with the solution to poverty and unemployment and social injustice. This is an eloquent and powerful voice offering practical solutions you need to hear.

A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future
by Daniel H. Pink

I had the pleasure of hearing Daniel Pink speak at Butler University shortly after I read his delightful book. He describes learning to draw by taking a week-long class that used the approach described by Betty Edwards in her excellent book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. Designed to suppress the verbal left brain, this technique allows the more intuitive right brain to truly see, freeing the student to draw what is seen instead of a generalized left-brain concept. If you have never tried this drawing technique, get the book or take a class based on the book. Pink extends this phenomenon to a much wider discussion of what kinds of skills a hot, flat and crowded world will value and he comes to the conclusion that creativity will rule. He notes that easily repeatable left-brain skills (tax preparation, writing wills, drafting, engineering) are increasingly turned into computer programs or outsourced to firms overseas where the salaries are lower. He suggests, for example, that an MFA will be more valuable than an MBA in the near future because creative minds will be in high demand and that skill is very difficult to computerize or ship overseas. This lacks the scientific heft of some of the other books on this list, but it is certainly an entertaining and thought-provoking read. If you are among those considering a return to the classroom during these turbulent times, this would be a good read over the holidays as you peruse the course catalogs.

Outliers: The Story of Success
by Malcolm Gladwell

This is yet another hit by the author of The Tipping Point and Blink that continues the theme of those two to look for the hidden patterns in everyday phenomena. Like Pink's book, this one is more entertaining than scientifically rigorous, but it will likely become a part of our language used to describe those holistic phenomena most people miss. Outliers are people like pro athletes and concert pianists that seem to be from another realm when it comes to talent and skill. What made them so different? What do Mozart and Bill Gates have in common? The answer surprised me, but it also made me look at the world in a different way, as did his previous best-sellers.

Perhaps these books will encourage you to become an outlier at this tipping point in the history of our hot, flat crowded world when we need to lead our tribes of right-brain influencers in a necessary revolution toward a Plan B for a new green economy.