AutomatedBuildings.com Editorial

My journey's goal is to achieve improved Sustainability for all. While gathering information and writing it has been a re-awaking of my personal carbon-free goals and reminds me of how I find myself living over 30 years almost carbon-free in a highly automated passive solar home with a recycled brick mass storage wall, in a close walkable community now with an electric vehicle. Much of my industry presents as AutomatedBuildings.com has been projected remotely to the industry from that corner office location. Almost no changes were needed for Covid, just no traveling to events. " more Carbon savings ". My main recreational activities are also carbon-free; biking, hiking, sailing, & kayaking. All supporting my life goal "Live where you want to play while bringing manageable parts of your work with you". I am embracing the teachings of my mentors old and young to improve my personal Sustainability as a life goal. There are severe limits to what individuals can do to achieve true substantially, this only happens collectively. Hence the following thoughts.

My friend and sustainability mentor Alex Zimmerman the Founding President of Canada Green Building Council - CaGBC provides these thoughts in his blog

Personal vs Societal Responsibility for GHG Emissions

“The discussion around the climate crisis and solutions to it is often dominated by a focus on choices made by individuals. There is an insidious aspect to this. It implies that if causes, and therefore solutions, to the climate crisis arise largely as a result as a consequence of aggregate individual choice, then climate change is your fault because you are not making the correct choices, and further, it is somehow a moral or ethical failing on your part. Not only that, it lets societal institutions avoid acknowledging their responsibility and acting on it.” "But really, how much of climate impact is in fact due to personal choice and how much is effectively beyond our individual control because of societal choices? I decided to explore this question by looking at our household carbon footprint and the effect of some changes that we have made recently" “What lessons can be drawn from this exercise?” “The first is that personal choice can indeed make some difference.” “Also, and I think this is the biggest take-away, is that we, as individuals, have very little control over the carbon footprint of the remaining categories” “My point is this: while there are things we can and should do as individuals, the majority of the carbon footprint we have is determined by societal choices, choices and decisions made by government. In this struggle, government really matters and therefore who you vote for matters – politics matters.”

Alex Zimmerman is a writer, adventurer, and amateur boatbuilder, sideline occupations which paralleled his mainstream career as technologist, executive, environmentalist and consultant in the green buildings industry before his retirement. He can now afford to pursue his former sideline occupations full time.

What is Smarter Sustainability? This Forbes article "A Smarter World Will Be More Sustainable" starts to explain. A world that anticipates and automates, which promises to envelop users in an integrated array of services that don’t just wait to be asked to help (on demand) but rather serve as trusted participants in the choices and actions we take. This automation can deliver a range of tangible sustainability benefits, from energy savings to reduced emissions.

The province in Canada where I live has created 100 page pdf A Building Electrification Road Map for British Columbia - The abundant supply of clean, renewable
electricity in BC and the mature state of high efficiency, electric technologies for most building space and water heating applications, means electrification is recognized by all levels of government as a critical component of strategies for decarbonizing the province's building sector.

This is fueled and supported by Canada Green Building Council - Who Mission is, A transformed built environment leading to a sustainable future. CaGBC’s Zero Carbon Building Standard is the new measure of green building innovation.

Carbon emissions represent the true climatic impact of buildings. Only by focusing on emissions during design, and assessing emissions once in operation, can we ensure the low-carbon outcomes Canada needs.

Massive infrastructure investment is needed in the electricity grid worldwide. Renewable power generation and energy storage is a smarter, faster and less expensive infrastructure improvement choice. Storage will change how electric systems are engineered – building to average demand rather than peak.

Very pleased to have Brad's article A Practical Guide to Deep Carbon Reduction Retrofits - Eliminating the bulk of emissions from existing buildings poses unique challenges, but bringing an in-depth understanding of building operations into the design process offers a path forward. We have several excellent examples of this outcome Vancity Credit Union Headquarters and Park Place and Coquitlam Centre Mall.

This global article describes Decarbonization in the USA https://memoori.com/california-continues-to-set-the-standard-for-building-decarbonization/

This global shift is to a smarter stronger more diverse greatly enhanced electrical supply with reduced Carbon emissions. My last article Smarter Buildings Decarbonize states, The new measured variable is carbon. Are you ready to measure, record, analyze, and react?

I see that all of the above speaking to our industry, presenting amazing opportunities to add sustainability to all we do. We need to talk about carbon reduction collectively and how A smarter world will be more sustainable and use this to evolve, grow and market our products.

Our present crusade is gathering followers for the coalition led by the Monday Live Group

Main topics in C4SB Proposal to White House CEQ

Workforce Development and Job Creation
Drive Analytics Adoption
Information Interoperability
Deployment Plan
Measure and Verify
Financial and Accounting (Procurement)

WE ARE THE COALITION FOR SMARTER BUILDINGS We envision a world where people live, learn, work, and play in healthy, comfortable, and productive built-spaces, enabled by smart digital technologies that ensure sustainable and economically responsible development and operation.

Using the Monday Live - Open Source Stack Tool

My LinkedIn Shares My Twitter Tweets Interact with our magazine in real time with over 4400 others

Contractormag has embellished my article archive, starts in 2017. Presents a pictorial overview of the topics we need to talk about. Ideas, links, and resources for these articles are evolved here.

Welcome the return of our sponsor/advertiser https://www.switchautomation.com/ ‘Intelligent building software for ‘switched on’ buildings’, Enterprise software for the digital transformation of real estate.

Now over 21,000 connections to my personal LinkedIn account where I posted all related industry information almost daily. I am amazed at the global reach of these following folks and their diverse perspective of our industry. I am humbled that they choose to follow me as I depict our industry's evolution. Thank you all for your support.

Our LinkedIn online group was created for discussion of our magazine created in 2010 AutomatedBuildings.com Online Magazine Forum now has over 4470 members and has taken on a life of its own. I read the group with the same interest as everyone else to see what folks want to share what new and trending.

Our online magazine was started 22 years ago before social media identities like, LinkedIn launched on May 5, 2003, and Twitter Twttr launched to the public in July 2006, were vehicles of how special interest folks could find each other. We are working to build bridges from our long online history of controlled blogging of ongoing industry information with these and other social media of the day. You can help as we see AutomatedBuildings.com as a landing pad for information that needs to be shared with our industry. We never throw anything away and it always resides at the same URL.

The news just keeps flowing on our website and of course, the only way to find what you are looking for in the vast quantity of over 22 years of information on our site is with our site search engine

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