Global renewable electrical production surpassed all other sources in 2025

I live in Colorado on a property that has a free-flowing creek supporting beaver dams. According to some experts, habitats such as this may have held up to one dam for every half mile in pre-settlement times.  In our experience, when beavers build dams here, they typically do so in multiples of three or more. As a result, we have watched dozens of beaver dams come and go on our property through the years.

I’ve been driving hybrid vehicles for the last ten years and have owned four of them. They have been remarkably efficient and economical to operate, yet I am starting to evaluate whether it is time to make the switch to a true Electric vehicle (EV). As I write this, I am seeing much debate about the related issue of how to fairly tax owners of EV’s for their impact on roads. All gasoline sales include a large share of federal and local “gasoline tax.”  In the mainland continental U.S. this varies from a low of $0.19 per gallon in New Mexico to a high of $0.71 per gallon in California. My home state of Colorado imposes a combined total tax of $0.29 per gallon.

As an architect, I rarely comment on design trends outside my field. Occasionally, however, something either catches my eye, or in this case simply frustrates me, to the point where I feel the need to comment. Today, I am focusing on something in the automotive design arena. I am not a gearhead and select my vehicles for their utility. I tend to prefer SUV’s, largely because I live in an area with frequent snow and ice. Every SUV I have owned for the last 20 years has come with one standard, built-in design flaw. You can see it in the photo below, and it is in no way unique to this model or brand. In fact, the model shown is one that I recently rented.

Having participated in a Beaver Dam Analog build in the Black Hills two years ago, I was eager to construct one on a stretch of our creek in Colorado. One issue with our creek is that extremely high spring runoff in May 2023 washed out several existing beaver dams. Although we have seen intermittent beaver activity since that time, there has not been a new beaver dam constructed since then, and as far as we know, no beavers are active on our reach of this creek. As a result of losing those historic beaver dams and other issues, the stretch of the creek that runs through our property has experienced several problems in recent years, including:

Bank erosion

              Creek bed incision

              Poor floodplain connectivity

              Loss of sediment deposition

              Invasive plant and animal species

There are many costs associated with the design, construction, and development of a new house project. Many homeowners believe the only cost, after procuring a suitable property on which to build, is what they will pay their General Contractor, through the contract for construction. A homeowner will incur many other costs and their total impact can be substantial. Below is a checklist for homeowners to consider as they plan a new house

Rock Ridge High School, Virginia, MN, Cuningham Group Architecture, image courtesy of Cuningham

Recent winner of A4LE’s McConnell Award

The PBS video about the first large all electric school in Colorado in many years is being shown again this Saturday, Jan. 4th at 5 PM. I was heavily involved in the development and design of this building and was active in promoting the idea of an all-electric building in this challenging location/climate. Please feel free to share the link below with anybody you think may be interested.  If you want to view the video but can't make that date/time work, simply go to the RMPBS link to stream it anytime: Sierra Grande on Heart of a Building:

https://video.rmpbs.org/video/all-electric-near-passive-house-school-hpdfkn/

Busy as a Beaver?

Yes I was, along with a dozen or so other volunteers led by Hans Stehenson of Dakota Angler & Outfitter at the Back Hills Beaver Dam Analog (BDA) project on July 20-21.  Because there are beavers on our property south of Denver and I have watched them build dams here for the last 20 years, as well as watched those dams wash out in spring storm events, I am fascinated by these structures. 

Sustainability and Human Factors clash at the Olympics: What is going wrong in Paris?

When we emphasize building performance over human performance, we inevitably compromise both.

I am frequently asked about the name of my new company, so it seems fitting this blog would answer the question. Entropy derives from the second law of thermodynamics and may be simply stated as the spreading of energy until it is evenly distributed. Even distribution is a high level of Entropy, and concentrated energy is low Entropy.. The Entropy of any system plus the environment in which it operates increases over time, and this is often interpreted as implying that disorder, randomness, and chaos also increase over time.

On May 21, I had the opportunity to present about the recent Buy Clean Colorado legislation (HB21-1303). Having testified at the state capitol on behalf of this legislation a few years ago, I was particularly keen to participate in this event, held at the Association of General Contractors of Colorado (AGC) office. The meeting included professionals from three different organizations - the AGC, The American Council of Consulting Engineers (ACEC), and the American Institute of Architects (AIA). I was there representing a new group called the Colorado Embodied Carbon Collaborative, founded by my good friend and longtime collaborator, Bob Redwine. We were joined by three members of the Office of the State Architect - Tana Lane, Rod Vanderwall, and Bailey Vigil.

In our experience, it’s challenging to proceed from knowing your company’s emissions profile to crafting a climate action plan to reduce it. Successful companies will adopt the right mix of strategies for them — which is where the bigger challenge comes in.