The following photos are all projects by Natural Lighting Co. in Phoenix. The designs, manufactures and installs daylighting systems in schools, commercial, industrial, military and retail environments. There are no electrical lights in use in any of these photos.

Photo: Natural Lighting Co.

Arizona Department of Transportation

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By Tom Kessler
Green Right Now

In another sign that it intends to become a green business leader, Panasonic Corp. has announced a $9 billion offer to acquire a majority stake in Sanyo Electric Co., a top manufacturer of green technology products.

A combination of the two Japanese companies would result in product efficiencies and potential cost-savings as they merged their huge electronics and appliance businesses.

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By John DeFore

Anyone skeptical about talk of “green jobs” this campaign season might take note of a new report in which economists, not politicians, find that three decades of green policies in California have created about 1.5 million jobs. Some energy jobs were lost along the way as well. But the authors found that: “For every new job foregone in these sectors, however, more than 50 new jobs have been created across the state’s diverse economy.”

Written by David Roland-Holst of Berkeley’s Center for Energy, Resources, and Economic Sustainability (CERES), the report is intended to help decision makers gauge the economic impact of enforcing the emission-reduction goals of a 2006 California law called the Global Warming Solutions Act.

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By Harriet Blake

Rick Hunter, a St. Louis homebuilder, says he’s always been interested in green construction, but in the past decade has become a true believer that green is the future of building. For him and his three-year-old company, Sage Homebuilders, a green collar job is the whole package.

“We’re small and growing quickly,” says Hunter, a co-founder of the 12-employee company. “It’s fun to see how many people want to be part of this movement. People are getting excited about green collar jobs. They’re meaningful. They make people happier in their jobs and make people feel better about what they’re doing. And you can earn a living.”

In St. Louis, Hunter says, green collar jobs are “absolutely the trend, particularly in green construction.” Sage Homebuilders uses green products in new construction and renovation projects, focusing on upgraded energy systems (like the solar panels pictured on this “Near Zero” energy-saving home).

As the country struggles with an economic downturn and job uncertainty, talk of green collar jobs is becoming a larger part of the national dialogue. Late last month, a national rally Green Jobs Now: A Day to Build the New Economy prompted events in 48 states. The rally, sponsored by Green for All, 1Sky and Al Gore’s WE campaign, focused on the dual cause of social justice and a green economy with events ranging from block parties to solution fairs.

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By Barbara Kessler

Time to dust off that tax-free commuter benefit. It’s been getting musty under the pile of better-known HR benefits — those health care and childcare programs — for the last two decades.

Only about half of employers — and likely a lower percentage of employees — even know that the benefit exists, according to a survey released Tuesday by the TransitCenter, Inc., a nonprofit that promotes mass transit. And yet, the commuter benefit could be provide a big boost to workers struggling with high gas prices and employers who report that commuting costs are beginning to affect worker retention.

The benefit works just like those other payroll set-asides, allowing employees to pull money out of their pre-tax pay for commuting expenses. Under the IRS rules, employees offered the benefit can set aside up to $115 per month to pay for transit and vanpool commuting costs, and up to $220 for commuter parking.

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By Barbara Kessler

Worried about the stacks of duplicated reports and reprinted Power Points that get passed around at meetings? Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. But as companies assess the carbon impact of their activities, the paper-choked meeting is becoming an issue, and a UK company is in the wings with the solution: an electronic device called MeetingPod.

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By John DeFore

More and more corporate emails these days end with text blurbs urging the recipient not to print messages out unless absolutely necessary. Hard copies of documents are a must in some instances, of course, but they’re becoming less and less necessary thanks to some efforts to finally make good on the computer [...]

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By Catherine Girardeau

Let’s face it: Solo car commuters increase both traffic congestion and a city’s carbon footprint.

In San Francisco, those gas-hogging lone drivers soon will be get a clear message to switch to greener forms of transportation, such as buses, train transit and van pools. Earlier this month, the city preliminarily approved a commuter measure requiring medium- and large-size city employers to promote — or even pay for — public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees.

It’s likely that many more American cities will follow San Francisco’s lead, particularly those cities that have signed on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (USCPA), and pledged to reduce global warming pollution in their cities by 7 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2012. They will likely be scrambling to usher commuters from their cars and SUV’s and onto mass transit lines, an immediate and proven way of reducing urban smog.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was an early adopter of the USCPA and the city has an ambitious climate action plan, so it’s no surprise that on August 5, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a commuter measure that would require many city employers to promote public transit or vanpools for their commuting employees. The Commuter Benefits ordinance, introduced by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi, would give San Francisco employers with more than 20 workers three options: pay for employees’ transit passes or vanpools; provide door-to-door shuttle or vanpools, or tap into the federal Commuter Checks program, which allows employees to create pretax commuter accounts.

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By Shermakaye Bass
Not terribly long ago, the idea of “telecommuting” conjured a Jetsonian image of people traveling at warp-speed to and from the office. It was the future; the exception, not the norm.
But now, according to statistics from private industry, federal agencies and states like Connecticut, telecommuting is an idea whose time has finally, and [...]

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By John DeFore

All right-thinking computer users want their gear to be put to the best use — handed down to others, resold, recycled — when they’re done with it. But many are dissuaded by nagging concerns like, If I donate my computer to Goodwill, is some miscreant going to unearth the personal data [...]

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By John DeFore
You don’t have to take the tree huggers’ word for it — now a leading source of information on commercial real estate has demonstrated that greener building practices not only make sense, but earn dollars as well: The CoStar Group, an info-broker that tracks data on more than 2.3 million properties, has released [...]

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By John DeFore
Today business-supply giant Office Depot joined the ranks of big-box retailers using their weight to steer customers, however incrementally, in a greener direction. The retailer announced “Office Depot Green,” which judging from the company’s press release would put a useful twist on eco-friendly retailing by applying a uniform brand (as seen [...]

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