Recently in Education and training Category

California Green Solutions is building a robust catalog of professional training courses and certification programs offered by private companies and colleges.  You will find this robust catalog covers business law, construction, human resources...as well as engineering and green building...and more. 

Visit the Green and Sustainable Job Training Catalog at:  CaliforniaGreenSolutions.com

Real education is about HOW we learn as much as it is WHAT we learn.  And we can now add WHERE we learn to that equation.

The Donald BREN  School of Environmental Science & Management at the U. of California, Santa Barbara is making where students learn and explore a very green environment.

Greening Bren Hall                                                                                         

Bren Hall, which earned recognition as the "greenest" laboratory building in the United States shortly after it was completed, is a physical manifestation of the School's mission and provides a world-class arena for scientific and academic initiative, leadership, invention, and research.  By combining cutting-edge technology with environmentally sound principles, products, and services, Bren Hall has set a new standard for sustainable design. 

Opened in April 2002, Bren Hall is the only laboratory building in the United States to have received the U.S. Green Building Council's Platinum LEEDTM accreditation - the highest level possible - since the USGBC established its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program.  Bren Hall sets the highest standard for sustainable buildings of the future, and is being used as a model for other facilities and operations, particularly throughout the campuses and institutions in the state of California. In July 2003, the UC Regents adopted a Green Building Policy for all ten of its campuses, and in November of that year UCSB committed to constructing all new buildings to the level of LEEDTM silver. This represents an extraordinary benchmark and demonstrates a serious commitment to sustainability. UCSB's new Marine Science Institute (also designed by Bren Hall's architects, Zimmer Gunsul Fransca) has obtained a silver LEEDTM rating. 

The total cost of the building was $26 million. Building in a sustainable manner with sustainable materials added only 2% to the overall costs, which will easily be recovered through energy savings over time. Bren Hall is proof that cost is not a significant deterrent to green construction.

For descriptions and images of individual building spaces in Bren Hall, please visit our Rooms & Halls, Teaching Labs, and Research Labs web pages.

Awards & Honors

Flex Your Power Energy Efficiency Award (February 2004)

International Interior Design Association Environmental Award (May 2003)

Parade of Green Buildings featured site (April 2003)

Goleta Valley Beautiful Award (November 2002)

LEEDTM Platinum Award, USGBC(April 2002) Commendation from former California Governor Gray Davis (2002)

Commendation from the County of Santa Barbara (2002)

Case Study for the California Energy Commission

Case Study for the California State and Consumer Services Agency

LEED Rating

The USGBC's LEEDTM program is a credit system. The pilot program in effect when Bren Hall was being built (version 1.0) specified a total of 44 available credits, 6 bonus credits, and 10 prerequisites, arranged in the following five categories describing major areas of sustainable design: sustainable site planning, improving energy efficiency, conserving materials and resources, enhancing indoor air quality, and safeguarding water. Click here to view or print the Acrobat pdf document that itemizes Bren Hall's sustainable features in these areas.

Bren Hall achieved a score of 37 points to receive a Platinum rating, the highest available. It surpasses the new Title 24 requirements for energy efficiency standards by more than 31%.

Click here to view the document that itemizes each LEEDTM category and credit, and how it was achieved.

 

California counts on hundreds of thousands of volunteers to help preserve its environmental legacy. 
 
Statewide, 54% of the counties and 10% of the cities responded to a survey which revealed an annual cost of $34 million for litter and illegal dumping abatement costs. 

Representatives from the federal government, which owns over 50% of the land in California, estimate their illegal dumping and abatement costs match that of local governments. 

Caltrans’ annual costs are over $62 million, not including enforcement costs, nor does that take into account the volunteer efforts by Adopt-A-Highway Volunteers, which are estimated at a value of approximately $15 million. 

A conservative estimate of the cost of litter and illegal dumping to Californians would be $200 million. 

This legislation would allow the continued involvement of volunteers supporting local efforts, saving both state and local government valuable resources.
   

Why is this important?

Senate Bill 1345 will permanently remove the requirement that volunteers on public works projects, such as river cleanups, be paid prevailing wages!

In 2004, the Governor signed legislation to remove this constraint, but without further legislative action this year, this legislation will expire. The Governor is committed to empowering the state's robust volunteer force and will continue to call on the legislature to take action.

SOURCE: April, 2008, Keep California Beautiful

Based on the field experience of Sustainable South Bronx, the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, CA and 14 case studies across America, this new guidebook for cities can turn convicts into citizens with skills and dignity as they rebuild their communities with green collar jobs that rebuild urban forests, clean the air, restores green belts and upgrade buildings with solar energy, green roofs and energy efficiency savings.

Green-Collar Jobs in America’s Cities -- This practical strategy publication outlines strategies for developing green-collar job initiatives and pathways out of poverty at the local level. Co-authored by Green For All, this report describes a 4-step approach for local initiatives and highlights a dozen great efforts already underway around the country.

Green For All, in partnership with the Apollo Alliance, Center for American Progress, and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, recently released this guide to help cities across America develop strategies to spur the creation of green-collar jobs and opportunity in their communities.

The new guide, Green-Collar Jobs in America’s Cities: Building Pathways out of Poverty and Careers in the Clean Energy Economy, is a first-of-its-kind publication that addresses the demand for this information and outlines a strategic framework in which local policymakers and advocates can develop a green-collar job initiative that responds to the realities of their local economies and communities. 

“Our green future will be invented at the local level,” said Van Jones, founder and president of Green For All.  “This report offers those leaders some of the best thinking and models currently available for building green-collar jobs and the training pipelines necessary for city residents to fill those jobs and claim the promise of living wage careers.”

The guide encourages cities to take a four-step approach.

1. First, set a baseline to start from. Identify your environmental and economic goals, and assess local and regional opportunities for achieving those goals.
2. Second, develop a green economic development plan.  Enact policies and programs to drive investment into targeted green economic activity and increase demand for local green-collar workers.
3. Third, ready your workforce.  Prepare your green-collar workforce by building green-collar job training partnerships to identify and meet workforce training needs, and by creating green pathways out of poverty that focus on recruitment, job readiness, job training, and job placement for low-income residents.
4. And fourth, build on your successes.  Leverage your program’s success to build political support for new and bolder policies and initiatives.

Green-Collar Jobs in America's Cities also includes 14 case studies of successful green-collar job training or policy in 11 communities on both coasts, the Midwest, and the South.

Launched at the Clinton Global Initiative in 2007, Green For All grew out of Van’s work creating a ‘Green Job Corp’ in Oakland, California, as part of a program at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights.  Van founded the Center in 1996, which promotes alternatives to violence and incarceration, including its successful “Books Not Bars” campaign that has helped reduce California’s overall youth prison population by more than 30 percent.

Green For All
414 13th St, Suite 600
Oakland, CA 94612
510-663-6500
http://www.greenforall.org/