Green building with an Oregon twist in the Sunday New York Times. The piece profiles a house near Mount Hood that’s the first single-family residence in the West to win LEED certification.
I’m especially envious of this feature:
…the solar panels pump 2,320 watts of surplus energy into the local utility grid. The wattage is recorded as a credit, then “used” to heat the house this winter.
The house is “net zero energy,” which means it uses no more energy from the grid than it produces and puts back in. Pretty cool—and definitely worth a read.
Full disclosure: the house is owned (and I think built) by Tom Kelly, who’s a Sightline donor.
Fuller disclosure: the article was written by Colleen Kaleda, who’s the back-up editor for Tidepool (operated, of course, by Sightline) and who contributed hugely to Sightline’s recent report, Property Wrongs.
Yes, Sightline is everywhere.
UPDATE: Some readers may have noticed that the NY Times published a correction to this article mentioning author Colleen Kaleda’s connection to Sightline. We’d like to clarify two points. First, Kaleda’s freelance writing work is entirely independent from the work she does for Sightline. Her work for Sightline is limited to editing Tidepool, an online news service, one morning a week and writing one set of stories on Oregon and Measure 37.
Second, Colleen had no idea that Tom Kelly was a donor when she was writing about him. (As she has no interaction with our development staff, and Mr. Kelly is not listed in any of our public materials, there is almost no way she could have discovered it.)
Finally, I’d like to apologize if my sloppy blogging gave the appearance of impropriety where there was none. I intended it merely as kudos for a job well done, and to note a coincidence.
