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all images and videos by Lloyd Alter We know that almost half of our energy is consumed by buildings, and there are a lot of concerns about what to do with our older housing stock. In Kitchener Ontario, a non-profit called REEP (Residential Energy Efficiency Project) is doing an interesting experiment: They are taking two almost identical century homes and renovating them. One with a light touch, investing C$ 25K and cutting energy consumption in half; the other, a no-holds-barred lets-try-everything and go for net zero energy. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via WAC Lighting The 2010 LightFair International is rich with innovative lighting, but one item of particular interest is this OLED Chandelier for luxury homes, a Responsible Lighting product from W.A.C. Lighting. Called SOL, the company says it is "inherently sustainable" though what makes a luxury OLED chandelier inherently sustainable is up for debate. However, the company does have one policy that certainly helps the lamp work towards that title. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photos by Jaymi Heimbuch It's Bike to Work Day here in San Francisco - and the city must be enthusiastic about it because it's over a week until National Bike to Work Day. But for a city that is heavily bike-centric, it doesn't look all that different from any other day. Activists have been working like mad to get more numerous and safer bike lanes across the city, and just last week Market Street was spiffed up with wide lanes painted green to try and give cyclists a little m...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Raj Patel is one of the few people who has both worked at the World Bank, and been tear gassed protesting against it. An activist scholar, and author of Stuffed and Starved, Patel argues that markets are a beautiful thing, but that modern capitalism has gotten it all wrong. Patel's new book, The Value of Nothing, aims to explain why Wall Street salaries rocket ever-skyward while 60 million Americans went hungry over Christmas. P...Read the full story on TreeHugger

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Well, the Kerry-Lieberman "American Power Act" climate bill has been announced--read the full version or, if you've got less time on your hands, the short summary--and it feels like deja vu. The bill's authors proclaim it will do everything for the United States short of ensuring an ample supply of apple pie for every citizen. Work-within-the-system commenters from Read the full story on TreeHugger

Hugo Chavez's Twitter account can be found @chavezcandanga RT @chavezcandanga Mi dios, it sunk! Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela and a recent convert to Twitter, has used the 140-character medium to announce the sinking of a natural gas platform off the coast of Venezuela. Above are his two tweets about it (you can see a rough translation below). Will we have another diaster like the BP oil spill on our hands? Th...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Kolelinia Just yesterday, Jaymi showed a guy zipping 'round town on a wire and I thought, why build all of this wire infrastructure for a zipline when you can just give the guy a bike? But Martin Angelov of Kolelinia Lab beat me to it, and instead he gives the bike a wire. Angelov's Kolelinia project creates bike lanes in the sky out of a network of wires and suspende...Read the full story on TreeHugger

Image credit: isafmedia/Flickr The poppy fields of Afghanistan are responsible for 92 percent of the world's opium supply and, thanks to a fungal infection that is raging through the region's crop, this supply might be smaller this year than usual. The fungus—which attacks the root of the plant, travels up the stem, and makes the opium capsule wither—is thought to have affected half the country's crop and could reduce the harvest by a quarter....Read the full story on TreeHugger

Photo via Johan Larsson Last year we noted that Google is launching their Google Editions, providing books online to readers. When the service launches later this summer, it will boast some 4 million titles of books and magazines right from the get go. While it seems like a big bonus for trees, will having access to all these books online actually equate to a smaller environmental footprint for readers? ...Read the full story on TreeHugger

As awful as it sounds, BP's Tony Hayward's statements in The Guardian that they "will fix it. I guarantee it. The only question is we do ...Read the full story on TreeHugger