This is a guest blog entry from Craig Merrigan, CEO of Spotlight Solar and longtime friend of Southern Energy Management. As a sustainable entrepreneur he agreed to discuss his latest efforts to make solar power a little more prominent in The Queen City. Enjoy!
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We’re thrilled to report the arrival of two Spotlight Solar structures in downtown Charlotte. We’ve always said that solar should be more visible. This ought to do it. (more…)
This is a guest blog entry from Chad Ray, Vice President of Olde Heritage Builders, co-owner of Ray Family Farms and longtime friend of Southern Energy Management. As a sustainable entrepreneur he agreed to discuss his efforts using solar power and green building practices to help get his farm closer to being a net-zero property. Enjoy! (more…)
Before co-founding Southern Energy Management in 2001, Bob and Maria Kingery worked at Burt’s Bees (a local natural personal care company). Over the years, there has been some cross-pollination of team members and ideas between the two companies, which has led to some wonderful things. Like Bob and Maria, I’ve also spent time at Burt’s Bees, and I’d like to share this story about folks from both companies and the community coming together for a common cause to help a group of underprivileged children in Africa.
Several Burt’s Bees employees, a diverse group of community members and I are involved in a group called the Friends of Ingrid School. This team of passionate folks is on a mission to create a permanent learning center for the children living in the slums outside of Nairobi, Kenya. Friends of Ingrid are committed to (more…)
Builders taking advantage of the Energy Star label have had this week circled on their calendars for a long time. The program is going through a series of changes designed to make Energy Star labeled homes more efficient. April 1st is one of the most significant dates, signaling the start of “Energy Star 2.5” for all new homes permitted through the end of the year. This is essentially an 8-month long transition period designed to ease builders into “Energy Star 3.0;” all of the new rules take full effect on January 1, 2012.
We’ve held several workshops for builders over the last few months, and in November we put together a video blog about the process for verifying a house with the new Energy Star 2.5 standards. Now we’re ready to (more…)
Since Southern Energy Management started working with builders back in 2001, we have encouraged them to educate homebuyers about the advantages of homes with enhanced energy efficient design and construction practices. The benefits to homeowners are many. Homes earning the Energy Star label tend to beWe became a certified B Corp in November 2009 and are quite proud of that accomplishment. Being a B Corp is one way we’ve solidified our triple bottom line mission, and it also gives us a tool for tracking how we are doing. (If you’re not familiar with B Corp, check out our previous blog posts about what it is and why we became one.)
While there are many steps to becoming a B Corp, the first one is to (more…)
This is a new move for The Smart Energy Exchange: our first ever guest blog entry! Michael Chandler, founder of Chandler Design Build, is a green builder and longtime friend of Southern Energy Management. He agreed to spend some time talking about energy monitoring, an emerging technology that is really starting to gain some traction with builders and other people who want to know exactly how their power bill is divided up. Enjoy! (more…)
Over the last two weeks, temperatures in North Carolina have regularly been dipping into the teens and barely creeping past the upper 30′s. That means most of us are probably throwing on a heavy coat before we head outside, even for the shortest of trips. But for many people, bundling up isn’t an option, which is why we decided (more…)
Last week we announced our commitment as a company to being carbon neutral. This was a big step for us! One of the reasons we are in business is so we can reduce carbon emissions – it’s part of our mission statement. We help our customers do that on a daily basis by helping them find ways to be more energy efficient and installing solar power. This year we decided the next step would be to look inward to understand our own carbon emissions and how we might go about decreasing them.
The idea of going carbon neutral has been a goal of the company since January of 2009 — and when I joined the team earlier this year, one of my specific tasks was to understand exactly what it would take to make that happen. (more…)
By far, the most common energy efficiency program for new home builders in the U.S. is Energy Star. In the next year and a half, that program is undergoing some changes that will make Energy Star certified homes even more efficient, comfortable and less costly to own and operate for the eventual homeowners. These improvements are going into effect in the next few months, and we thought it would be helpful to show builders a first-hand look at some of the key differences between the old and new Energy Star for new homes requirements.
Feel free to take a few minutes and watch this clip as we go through an insulation inspection on one of the first homes in the Carolinas being built to the new “Energy Star 2.5″ requirements: (more…)
