While most of the attention on combating climate change focuses on transportation and industry, the efficiency of heating and cooling buildings is often overlooked. Senator Frank Lautenburg (D-NJ) hasn't forgotten, and is sponsoring a bill to require all federal building to improve their efficiency by maintaining LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver certification.

Buildings emit nearly 40 percent of all CO2 in the U.S., yet cars and coal plants get most of the media attention. While upgrading all federal buildings would take extensive capital commitment, these improvements could pay for themselves in as little as a year and would also contribute to the goal of reducing oil dependency. As the money is paid back, other buildings could be fixed, and in a few years taxpayers would get a break from the lower costs.

Green building retrofits should be a "slam dunk" with politicians as every state has federal buildings, and the work would be done by local providers, which would stimulate the economy through labor and materials.

Unlike legislation for increased of renewable fuels or more efficient cars, this bill requires only the federal government to act, and it would not disrupt any industries.

Source: Hospitality Design.

Oregon is trying keep pace with its neighbor to the south in combating climate change with new laws aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Oregon senate passed a bill that will require 25 percent of all power from the largest utilities be derived from wind, solar or geothermal sources by 2025.

Since Oregon already gets a lot of its power from hydroelectric power plants, the state will produce among the lowest amounts of greenhouse gases in the nation. The law will have an out clause that will enable power produces to use more conventional power if costs rise too high, a smart provision that pacifies business leaders.

California already will start producing 20 percent of its energy from renewable resources by 2010, and the senate is considering increasing its renewable use to 33 percent by 2020.

The Oregon legislature also passed a bill to put a 5 cent deposit on water bottles starting in 2009. Since most water bottles aren't recycled, this is a smart move.

Mother Earth and some underground piping can go a long way in reducing the cost and carbon footprint of heating and cooling a building. New ground source-heat pump (GSHP) systems that provide both heat and cooling are more efficient and less expensive, and with oil prices rising, they are becoming more affordable to install.

An ice skating rink in British Columbia is using excess heat from the chillers used to make ice to provide both building heat and hot water, according to an in-depth article from the always illuminating Distributed Energy magazine. Businesses are picking up on the financial advantages of GSHP systems, with the industry growing by 12 percent per year.

While new construction is also tapping into geothermal heat, homeowners have been reticent to retrofit there homes because of having to dig up most of their yard and the high installation cost. But new systems that allow holed to be drilled vertically require much less space and are less costly to install.

Along with solar and wind energy as fossil fuel alternatives, we can expect geothermal energy to go down in cost as technology better exploits this renewable resource.

BP wants to clean up coal burning power plants and create hydrogen in the process. The company and partner mining company Rio Tinto are planning a $1.5 billion coal-fired power generation project in Western Australia that would store the carbon underground.

The project would create enough clean energy to power 500,000 homes and would sequester four million tons of C02. Hydrogen that could be used to power fuel cells would be created by the coal gasification. The company says this would be a "permanent" solution, but the carbon would be stored in saline formations that could eventually release the gas into water or the environment.

The EPA and DOE here are studying how injecting CO2 could effect underground water supplies.

Carbon sequestration is likely to be a very hot (pun intended) topic as we look for ways to reduce the human contribution to global warming. This will be one of many technologies to keep the CO2 underground for decades.