insulating a soffit: Steve Ruark for The New York Times

How many cliches can we throw at this subject? It is truly the low-hanging fruit, the cheapest negawatt. Matthew Wald of the New York Times describes how 140,000 houses will be weatherized this year, with a goal of doing a million,

When energy experts periodically promote combined heat and power (CHP) (sometimes referred to as "cogeneration" or "district heating," generally speaking, it 'don't get no respect.' This oversight needs to change, as CHP's potential to cost-effectively increase energy efficiency is very high, and the technology offers returns for investors and municipal taxpayers.

Family in Passivhaus; Rolf Oeser for The New York Times

Elisabeth Rosenthal visits a Passive House in Germany and describes their construction:

TreeHugger doesn't show as many LEED buildings as it used to; they have become almost common, and many, LEED notwithstanding, have "issues," such as being overly large, strange uses, (a LEED airplane hanger?) or boring LEED categories like Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance oops, that's the Mother Ship.

Photo credit: keone @ Flickr

Image: Mod Green Pod

Photo Via: Discover This

While Christmas morning has come and gone, there’s no doubt that many kids across America are feeling flush with cash as a result of the holiday; and there’s a great, fun toy put out by Bill Nye that’s aimed at helping kids understand the process of recycling paper that the young, eco-conscious consumer in your house may be interested in....

With approximately 3.9 million infants dying within a month of birth each year throughout the developing world, and 25 percent of those deaths due to complications of being born prematurely like heat and water loss, a group of innovative engineers at Design that Matters are finding a way to recycle cars into infant incubators and hoping to ensure that millions of kids live to see their first birthday as a result of their effor