The Environmental Protection Agency announced its 2008 Green Power Leadership Awards and the community of Bellingham is officially one of five national winners in the Green Power Partner of the Year Category. And the only winner (in that category) that is a city, or community as the case may be. And oh, by the way, it’s the second year it has won this award.

For those of you who don’t know, Bellingham basically rocks when it comes to

The beautiful city of Bellingham

The beautiful city of Bellingham

renewable energy. In early 2007, the Bellingham local government chose to buy 100 percent green power for all city-owned facilities. Later the same year, the city helped launch the Bellingham Green Power Community Challenge, the goal of which was to increase green power purchasing among city residents and businesses to more than 2 percent of the city-wide electricity use. The community has surpassed the goal and buys more than 81 million kilowatt hours of renewable energy certificates; about 11 percent of the community’s total electrical use. More than 2,400 households and businesses buy power through the challenge.

Portland General Electric won an award in another category - the Green Power Beacon Award. In part, the utility won the award for its GreenPowerOregon.com Web site, which features coupons, a power calculator and information.

Other winners in the award category included Intel Corp, University of Pennsylvania and Cisco Systems. Winners in other categories included The Estee Lauder Companies, PepsiCo., the Philadelphia Phillies.

Almost inspires you to pay that extra $3, $6 or $12 a month towards renewable energy, eh?

For more information, visit the city of Bellingham’s Climate Protection Program.

I have a story in today’s DJC on the year’s 10 best new green products, according to (our kind of competitor) the Sustainable Industries Journal… but were they really the best?

The products range from odd to ordinary, at least in what their function is. Here are three of them:

I’d never heard of the Solar Tracking Skylight by Solar Tracking Skylights of Chicago but it sure sounds interesting. It’s a self-contained, self-managed skylight with mirrors that move to adapt to the sun’s position. It’s designed to provide light all day, not just when the sun is shining directly above. They’re half the size of typical skylights and customers include Whole Foods, Wal-Mart and the U.S. Military. … and they also look like they came out of a space movie! Yea for space movie products! (If you want to see a video of how it works, visit the Web site at the above link).

Lamberts Channel Glass by Glasfrabriks Lamberts of Bavaria, Germany is a self-supporting column that can be used as interior or exterior walls. They’re made from 40 percent recycled glass and are decidedly pretty, judges said. At left is the product in use at the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo. One judge, Clark Brockman of Sera Architects in Portland, said, “Let’s just face it, it’s sexy.”

Sexy. Usually a word NOT associated with green building products (or projects for that matter). But judge for yourself from the picture at left….

Then there’s local winner Salvaged Hardwood Tables by Urban Hardwoods of Seattle. Urban Hardwoods has salvaged 3,000 trees, that would have otherwise ended up being wasted,  and turned the wood into tables. This one was salvaged from Kirkland and costs $4,200 for the tabletop.

But like it or not, these are all the opinions of a handful of (granted knowledgeable) judges. Perhaps you too are a judge in disguise. If so, tell me about the best green product not on the list. Post your comments below.

SI assures us all the products are real green products rather than examples of great greenwashing. But how well green products work is also controversial. For more on that topic, click the tag green materials below and read the entry ‘Green products not so great, says Gehry specifier,’ and comments.

Other blog posts on this at Jetson Green and Portland Architecture.

These are three of the 10. To learn about the other seven, read my story here. 

Being a reporter, you learn a lot about your beat. But what you write on a day to day basis is often influenced by the press releases you get. It’s unfortunate, but I simply have not found a way to be in five different places at once. Hence, a good PR person, whether private or government, can be a reporter’s best friend (or worst nightmare).

Today I got a press release from the city of Kirkland on its sustainability efforts. So, just for being proactive, I’m going to tell you, dear reader, about all the things Kirkland is telling me.

First off, I don’t live in Kirkland so I can’t really understand the green things that they’re doing… because I don’t see it with my own eyes. But I do know that they’re making a concentrated effort to become a green city. I also know other cities have complained that they don’t have the time or money to think about green issues because they’re thinking about things like affordable housing. Does the balance matter? You decide.

Recently, Kirkland comissioned a survey to study the “sustainability of its economy.” Though I’m not positive what that means, it’s certainly something. According to that press release the survey wanted to figure out where residents shop, what eco-sound products, services or practices should be available or practiced in Kirkland, etc. (P.S., Kirkland people, I’d love to learn more about these results.)

So here’s what Kirkland wants you to know about it’s green-ness: it has won three awards recently for everything from smart planning to counting its greenhouse gas emissions.

It won a 2008 Smart Communities Award from Gov. Chris Gregoire for city-wide zoning regulations that allow for cottage, carriage and two/three unit homes. It won a ICLEI milestone award for conducting a greenhouse gas emission inventory, after which Kirkland adopted reduction goals of 10 percent below 2005 emission levels by 2012, 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 and 80 percent below 2007 levels by 2050. And it won a Cascade Land Conservancy Stewardship Legal Award for the Green Kirkland Partnership. The partnership commits resources to remove invasive plants and replant parks with native trees and shrubs.

So is Kirkland really as green as it sounds, or does it just have a great pr machine? If you live there I’d appreciate your input, as I don’t and therefore, do not know.

Want to know more about Kirkland’s amazing green-ness? Check out the official site here. More for life in Kirkland? Check out The Eastside Life blog here. Want Kirkland news? Check out Kirkland Views here. And the Kirkland Highlands Real Estate Buzz has some green news here.

Live in another non-Seattle city that can never seem to get out of the Seattle sustainability shadow? Tell me about what your city’s doing below, or e-mail me at katiez@djc.com. I’d love to know what I don’t.

To learn more about the Smart Communities Awards, read the DJC’s story here.

Seattle projects represent a third of nine prestigious awards given out in London yesterday by the Urban Land Institute and the Financial Times.  Winners are The Cascade Land Conservancy, Kennedy Associates and Vulcan.

The Seattle winners are in good company: a fellow winner is the city of Greensburg, Kansas (at right), the current poster child for just how far a city can go to rebuild itself green. If you don’t already know this story, it’s truly a fascinating one that is on its way to becoming a Leonardo DiCaprio-voiced documentary TV show.

Greensburg was a small farming town with a population of 1,389 when 90 percent of its building stock was destroyed by a tornado in 2007. The citizens of Greensburg used the traumatic incident as an opportunity and are rebuilding it as sustainably as they can.

But there’s no place like home and the Seattle winners are also an interesting mix.  We’ve got Vulcan, and if you haven’t heard about Vulcan’s green accomplishments (and you’re from this area) you might be living under a rock. The team is redeveloping South Lake Union as a pilot program for LEED for neighborhood development and uses a lot of green features, etc.

There’s the Cascade land Conservancy who is well known in these parts and won for its 100-year visioning exercise to preserve 1.3 million acres of forest and farmland through incentivizing smart growth.

And there’s Kennedy Associates who operates under the idea that buildings should be developed and managed sustainably because they have a competitive advantage over traditional structures.

The point of the awards was to honor global examples of “ongoing programs that exhibit new ideas and perspectives for best practices in sustainable land use.” Each winner highlights the concept of sustainability in real estate.

It’s some pretty interesting stuff. If you’re interested, check out the winners here. And if you want to read more on what Vulcan’s doing in this area, check out the DJC’s stories. Go here for info on the Westlake/Terry building, go here for Vulcan’s sustainable philosophy, go here for Alley24 (pictures above left) or click here for their award-winning pull-apart sales center.

What’s the point of green awards? I asked that question in a post last week and during an AIA panel discussion the following day,  a number of Seattle architects tried to answer the question (see the post for a list of architects on the panel).

But answers ranged across the board. So I asked, ”If you could boil what you want out of the green awards down to one thing, what would it be?” (One of this year’s award winners is at left - the planned Center for Urban Waters in Tacoma by Perkins + Will).

The response was that you really couldn’t boil it down to one thing. Green awards are supposed to: inspire, train people, get people interested in green buildings, share project information, elevate Seattle’s green building reputation, honor people equally that are pushing the envelope and just beginning to do green work, and change the way design is done.

Whew. Those are a lot of goals for one award program. But OK, assuming one program can achieve it all… how do you do it?

Here are some of the panel’s ideas for making AIA Seattle’s What Makes it Green Awards better, and for extending it’s breadth so that next year, you, Seattle-area-architect-who-is-only-kind-of-interested-in-green-building, will want to go to the event, and begin designing green: (more…)

Green awards, green awards. There’s lots of them out there but what’s the point? And what’s the responsibility of people doling them out?

That is the topic, to some extent, of an AIA Seattle forum I’m presenting at tomorrow. I am a guest panelist - the token architectural outsider - along with Lucia Athens of Seattle’s Green Building Team and a host of locally known architects including Marc Jenefsky, Anne Schopf, Peter Steinbrueck, Dan Williams and Rick Zieve. Jerome Diepenbrock, chair of the AIA ethics and practice committee will moderate. (more…)

If you are a business, government agency, school or organization in Washington that does sustainable work, you are eligible for the 2008 Governor’s Award for Sustainable Practices. Nominations will be accepted through June 6.

Winners are honored at a ceremony in the fall and get publicity around their achievements. Last year, winners included a worm farm and a high tech manufacturer. There have been 100 winners since the award began in 1991.

For more info, go here.

Yesterday, the American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment announced its high profile list of the top ten greenest projects in the country. One of them is from Seattle.

For any of you that don’t know this competition, this is a very….. big….. deal. For those of you that do know it, do you think it should be as big a deal as it is? And are these really the greenest projects in the country? What do you think?

The winning Seattle entry was the South Lake Union Discovery Center by Miller/Hull (at left). I’d tell you more about it, but there’s been lots written on this unique modular building that is designed to break about in four pieces, move to another location and be reconfigured. If you want to learn more about it, read a story I wrote on it last summer here.

It’s also worth noting that this project did not win the regional version of this award…. judges at the AIA Seattle COTE mentioned it and praised its ability to move, but said its lack of “living environment” led the panel to pick another project as a regional winner.  To see the projects they chose, click here. Which judging team do you think made the right decision?

Like I said, this award is a big deal. The only other project to win the award this year on the West Coast was the Nueva School, Hillside Learning complex outside San Francisco (at left). Other winners this year were in New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Wisconsin, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.

The Queens Botanical Visitor & Administration Building in Flushing, New York is pictured above right. Below left is the Cesar Chavez Library in Laveen, Ariz. Below right is the Pocono Environmental Education Center in Dingman’s Ferry, Penn.

I could talk about these projects for hours, but really, I just want to show you the pictures. The AIA’s Web site is a comprehensive source of information. For an overview, go here. To learn more about a specific project, go to the link at left and click on any underlined project’s name. For an overview, see my story here . For more pictures, check out the slideshow that goes with my story, currently on the Web site at www.djc.com.

By the way, it’s clear from these pictures that the accessory of the year was the slanted roof, eh? What do you think the accessory of next year is going to be? And check below for my first posting on green buildings galore!