It is hot in the Northeast this week, but there are some fairly easy steps you can take to keep cool indoors. See GreenBuildingAdvisor.com for some great tips. 

We’re into those hot days of summer–really hot–with temperatures predicted in the mid- to upper-90s, even in [New England]. In this column [GreenBuildingAdvisor.com provides] some simple tips for keeping (reasonably) cool in hot weather or, if you use air conditioning, operating that air conditioning equipment most efficiently.

Portland, MAINE. Crescent Heights, a building that provides housing for medical students, was constructed by Portland-based Developers Collaborative and is targeted to achieve a LEED Platinum certification under the LEED for Homes Midrise Pilot Program. It uses 37% less energy and 30% less water than a typical housing building.

“The location itself is a wonderful green feature of the building,” said Jay Waterman, a LEED consultant and senior project manager at Fore Solutions. Residents can walk the nearby hospital and area businesses. “You can have the most ‘green’ building in the world, but if you have to drive 45 miles to get there, you are putting a lot of pollution into the environment.”

(MaineBusiness.com)

The Emerging Green Builders of the Maine Chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council present Green Careers Series, Part 4, Energy.

When: June 10, 5:30- 7:00 PM
Where: Slainte Wine Bar, 20 Preble Street, Portland, ME 04010, 207.828.0900

Speaker Panel
– Dana Fischer, Purist Energy
– Vamshi Gooje, Fore Solutions
– J.D. Lloyd, Investment Engineering

For more information visit the USGBC website.

Meet Gunnar Hubbard, principal of Fore Solutions, one of Portland’s Creative Entrepreneurs.

Portland—with its vibrant arts and cultural scene, top-notch restaurants, easy access to pristine natural landscapes, and overall high quality of life—is well-poised to become a live-work destination for creative entrepreneurs.

Portland’s [Maine] creative economy is an incredibly diverse collection of people doing a dizzying array of things at a very high level. They can do all of these things (and often more than one) because Portland is such a compact and hospitable place. The growing, interconnected communities that populate our cafés, music halls, art galleries, restaurants, farmers markets and technology parks are filled with unique individuals developing original ideas and unusual talents. Live here for a while and you will meet a bunch of them, but at LiveWorkPortland, we want you to meet them all. To start out we have have picked a half dozen couples and individuals who we think represent some of the range and reach of Portland’s creative community.
LiveWork Portland website.

Gunnar Hubbard, Fore Solutions’ CEO and Founder, was featured in Maine Ahead Magazine:

Fore Solutions assists people with the construction of green projects, and much of its business surrounds meeting LEED standards. Ideally, Hubbard says, Fore Solutions gets involved early on, refining the goals for a project. Other times, the company is hired by the architect or design firm, or the contractor later in the process. The goal, Hubbard says, is to “help clients build buildings that make sense environmentally, make for a better work environment, and make sense financially.”

More and more, companies want to do just that, and are willing to spend extra time and money during the design process—with Hubbard’s assurance that they’ll get a return on that investment in energy savings, maintenance, and even worker productivity.

Read the entire article.

The Peter Buck Center for Health and Fitness at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine has earned LEED Silver certification. The Buck Center becomes the fourth Bowdoin College campus building to be granted LEED certification. The Sidney J. Watson Arena was granted LEED status in July 2009; two residence halls, Osher and West, earned LEED Silver certification in 2006.

A Belfast, Maine home by G.O. Logic was featured in the Portland Press Herald on September 21st. The house is a model of energy-efficient design, contemporary architecture, high-performance building techniques and exacting standards (LEED and Passivhaus, to name two). Once built, it will be living proof that a self-sustaining home that cuts energy costs by 90% can be beautiful and affordable, too.

The three-bedroom, 1,500-square-foot house is expected to cost roughly $225,000, minus land. That’s on par with typical custom-built homes in Maine. And costs could drop, the builders say, if the techniques being used here are adopted in mass production. (Portland Press Herald, Sept. 21, 2009)

Visit the G.O. Logic Website.

ABC News broadcast an interview on Ahead of the Curve last Friday evening with Rick Fedrizzi, President of the U.S. Green Building Council. He spoke about the LEED rating system and Hannaford’s new LEED Platinum grocery store.

Click here to watch the ABC video. (Interview will air after the advertisement…..)

Efficiency Maine is raising Business Program incentives by 25% for all applications received between September 1 and December 31, 2009. This covers all prescriptive and approved custom incentives for energy-efficient equipment. In addition to the increased incentive levels, the cap on incentives a business can receive in one year has been raised from $100,000 to $300,000 for the foreseeable future.

From the newest Hannaford store to projects in China, a Portland consulting firm puts its all into green.

Gunnar Hubbard’s passion for sustainable building came at the age of 12, when his parents moved him from New York to Vermont. There, he helped his family peel logs for their own log house, which had no electricity but did have a composting toilet and a gravity-fed water system. (Mindy Favreau, Mainebiz Staff Reporter)

Read the entire Mainebiz article here.