Between the Poles

Green Buildings Are Doing Better Financially

A study by Piet Eichholtz and Nils Kok of the University of Maastricht and John Quigley of the University of California, Berkeley has found that buildings with a high Energy Star rating are getting rentals three percent higher per square foot compared with non-green buildings of the same size, location and function.  The study was commissioned by RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors).    Also the researchers looked at the impact on selling prices and found that green buildings are getting a 16% premium.  The results are being interepreted as meaning that renters and buyers are willing to pay more for a green building.  Thanks to Terry Bennett for bringing this to my attention.

Find Out What the Economic Stimulus Means for Utilities at GITA in Tampa

If you want to find out more about the Obama Administration's economic stimulus plan and what it means for utilites, the GITA Infrastructure Solutions Conference in Tampa April 19-22 will hold an ITAG Meeting Monday, April 20 to discuss the stimulus plan.

Geospatial Strategy for the Infrastructure Stimulus Plan Starts at GITA's ITAG Meeting

Monday, April 20 • 8:00 a.m.-Noon • Room 9, Tampa Convention Center

You're invited to participate in the 2009 Industry Trends Analysis Group (ITAG) Meeting, which plays a crucial role in GITA's strategic planning process. The essential meeting is now more important than ever. With billions of dollars funneling into infrastructure, it's absolutely imperative that GITA's constituents have a focused discussion on how to get a piece of the stimulus action. This meeting will take place during GITA's Geospatial Infrastructure Solutions Conference (April 19-22) on Monday, April 20, 2009, from 8:00-Noon at the Tampa Convention Center, Room 9. A continental breakfast and post-meeting luncheon will be provided. The luncheon will conclude in time to enable you to attend the Opening Session of the conference at 1:30 p.m.

Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial Conference (FOSS4G) 2009 Sydney Australia

FOSS4G is in Sydney, Australia Tuesday 20 - Friday 23 October, this year.  FOSS4G is made possible by volunteers so there are many ways that you can contribute to FOSS4G.  Some of the initiatives you might find interesting to get involved with are

Live DVD

A Live DVD will be given to all FOSS4G delegates. It can be booted into Linux with pre-installed Geospatial Open Source software. In also contains Windows installers, sample datasets, and probably a few other things that you may want to throw in for free.

This Live DVD will be significantly more valuable than a conference handout. It will live on to be used at future conference, and be used as a teaching tool.

We need a number of technical people to bring this Live DVD up to the latest version of Software, provide latest documentation, and generally polish the Live DVD.

Climate Challenge Integration Plugfest

The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) are leading an initiative to install a suite of standards-based geospatial software (both open source and proprietary) and demonstrate integration through a climate change scenario. Many of the conference workshops, tutorials and presentations will use this CCIP as their basis.

Again, this initiative will be rolled out by the OGC at future conferences and events, ensuring the CCIP is more valuable than just the FOSS4G conference.

If you are technically minded, please help install and tweak packages in the CCIP, or create presentations that use it.

If you are organising a future conference, please commit to incorporating the CCIP in your conference. Knowing that the CCIP will live on will attract more sponsors and developers to the CCIP. (We already have commitment from FOSS4G 2010, and strong interest from some others).

Workshops, Tutorials, Presentations, etc

FOSS4G needs to attract good presenters and topics and promote them to delegates and sponsors. Maybe you have a worthy presentation to give, can help attract good presenters, or can coordinate one of the presentation, tutorial or workshop streams.

House Keeping

There are hundreds of small tasks which give FOSS4G a professional touch. We volunteer for them on the foss4g email list.

The conference chair is

Cameron Shorter
Geospatial Systems Architect
[email protected]
Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050
Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254

Earth Hour Saves 920 MW in Ontario

According to the IESO, Earth Hour , which occurred at 8:30-9:30 pm ET last night, saved 920 MW in Ontario, about 6% and a percentage point more than last year.  Toronto reduced its energy use this year by 16 per cent, almost twice last year's number.

Earth Hour was started two years ago in Australia by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).  This year the United Nations observed Earth Hour for the fist time including its headquarters in New York and at other UN facilities around the world.

Ontario Green Energy and Green Economy Act to Require Real Estate Sellers to Provide Energy Efficiency Assessment

In February of this year Bill 150 the Green Energy and Green Economy Act was introduced in the Ontario Legislature. 

The objective of the bill is to foster the development of renewable energy, a decentralized energy grid energy, creating jobs, and supporting Ontario's climate change goals.  The Bill is intended to provide lower cost, cleaner, renewable power to Ontarians.  The cost savings are estimated to be between 11% and 32%, compared to conventional power sources.   The executive summary for Bill 150 cites a Moody’s Investment Services report from May 2008 which says that while the costs of traditional generating technologies are rising rapidly,  green generating technologies are showing increasingly better efficiency in energy conversion to electricity and decreasing costs.  By 2015, the objective is to deliver among other things 10,000 MW of new installed renewable energy, 1,500 MW of new installed Combined Heat and Power (CHP), and 6,300 MW of conservation (compared to 2007 levels).

But also in the Green Energy Act is a real sleeper, a provision that will require sellers of real estate to provide energy efficiency information  about the building being sold and which may require an energy audit. The nearest equivalent of which I am aware is the Code for Sustainable Homes (CSH) that is mandatory for new homes in the UK since May, 2008. CSH requires a report on nine areas of sustainability including energy use and water consumption with six possible levels.  The highest level is carbon neutral.  The interesting thing is that CSH is working its way into the building code in the UK.  I would expect that the Ontario equivalent is going to have similar far reaching implications.  What both of these measures mean is that when you are looking to buy a home you will be able to compare the energy efficiency of different houses on a standard scale.

Time-of-use Pricing for Electricity in Ontario

The Province of Ontario plans to implement smart meters for all homes and small businesses in the province by 2010.  The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) began a pilot project, called the Ontario Smart Price Pilot project in 2006 in Ottawa. The OEB pilot project outfitted three separate groups of volunteers with smart meters, with three different time-of-use (TOU) pricing options.

Since then four other TOU pricing pilots have been submitted to the OEB, Newmarket Hydro, Oakville Hydro, Veridian Connections and Hydro One Networks.

In Ontario consumers pay for electricity either using Regulated Price Plan or Time-of-use.  There is an interesting web site that allows Ontario TOU consumers to estimate the cost savings they could gain by shifting their electricity use from on-peak (8.8 cents/kWh), to mid-peak (7.2 cents/kWh) or off-peak (4 cents/kWh).

Measuring the Impact of Earth Hour in Ontario

The Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO) tracks electricity demand in the Province of Ontario on an hourly basis. Tomorrow, for Earth Hour (Saturday Mar 28 at 8:30 pm ET) IESO will be tracking and reporting the drop in electricity demand beginning at 8:35 pm as Ontarians turn off the lights for an hour.

For some tips on Earth Hour and conserving energy in general see the powerWISE web site.

Chat about Vancouver Digital Cities Initative with Greg Hebert of CFRA's Business@Night

I chatted with Greg Hebert of CFRA's Business@Night about the pilots that Autodesk has initiated in Vancouver, British Columbia; Incheon, Korea and Salzburg, Austria last night.  You can find the MP3 of the conversation here. 

Microsoft Product Manager on Open Source: Make Web Not War

At MIX09, Microsoft announced several components of the Microsoft Web Platform, which is a set of tools that interoperate with open-source  applications and products. The Microsoft Web Platform includes the Web Platform Installer 2.0 beta, an installation tool that allows users to choose either open source PHP or Microsoft's ASP.NET server web development tool. 

A product manager at Microsoft responsible for the web technologies group which includes the Microsoft Web Platform said one of her group's slogans is "Make Web not war."  The world continues to change.

Obama Proposes 10-year Extension to R&D Tax Credit and Commits $1.2B to Energy Research

President Obama has announced $1.2 billion  for energy research at the Department of Energy's national labs and proposed to extend a tax credit program for investments in research and development.  The $1.2 billion is to upgrade facilities at national labs, grants for energy research including solar power, biofuels and nuclear energy, underground storage of carbon dioxide, and hydrogen.

Obama said that the stimulus package has allocated $59 billion in direct spending and in tax incentives to promote clean energy and energy efficiency.