“Since the 1970s, states have rapidly outpaced the federal government in both spending commitments to energy efficiency and adopting landmark efficiency policies, including appliance and equipment efficiency standards, building energy codes, and energy efficiency resource standards.”

- 2008 State Energy Efficiency Scorecard, ACEEE, October 2008

Although America’s states have been independently embracing energy efficiency for the last 30+ years, the last decade in particular has been a healthy incubator period for the growth of vital programs and progressive policies in support of the 3Es of sustainability: Environment, Economy, Equity/Social Benefit.

One of the reasons it’s been healthy is because the “quantity of Executive Orders have declined while municipal and state requirements have increased,” according to the National Sustainable Building Advisor Program. In essence, the lack of Executive Orders is giving states and local municipalities the opportunity to creatively explore and courageously blaze trails for our future.

With over a decade of such activity now under our belt, we are in a better position to kick up these initiatives to the next level, just in time for some helpful Federal budget commitments and oversight. The reason the timing is right is because we now have baselines, standards, discoveries, methodologies and best practices that can feed into, shape, and insure the success of any future core missions and policies mandated by our Federal government.

By creating, learning, shaping, analyzing, documenting, and improving green building initiatives at the local level, we are forming a strong national foundation for the future of sustainability.

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Check out Blackle, a new search engine powered by Google. Blackle is devoid of color with light – so less energy is required for display. Although it seems like the actual energy saved might be miniscule, the numbers add up pretty quickly based on volume. You can see the running tally right on the homepage.

Another bonus, according to the site: “Seeing Blackle every time we load our web browser reminds us that we need to keep taking small steps to save energy.”

Now that’s cool…especially since our biggest long-term energy savings will ultimately come from changing our behavior and habits – which, coincidentally – is also our biggest challenge.

Thanks to tiny gigantic for bringing this “armchair activism” opportunity to light. 

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