SNOW ON THE ROOF IS A GOOD THING. It proves that the new insulation does exactly what it should--it keeps the heat inside the house..

There is no component of a home more important in minimizing energy costs than insulation. Insulation is the material used in walls, ceilings, roofs, and foundations that slows the flow of heat.

A: Mini-splits and variable-refrigerant-flow multi-splits. It's not that mini-splits and their multi-split kin aren't available in the U.S. at all. Daikin, Mitsubishi, and Sanyo all sell products here, along with a few other manufacturers.

Add another item to the list of reasons why suburban sprawl is bad for the environment: recycling rates.

Hybids account for less than 5% of all car sales in the U.S. The Toyota Prius continues to be the best-selling hybrid.

Like a lot of people, I'm often running late. One of our two cars--a five-year-old Honda Civic Hybrid--has a digital readout showing fuel economy. Because I travel so much (ironically hopping on a plane or driving hours to lecture about energy savings or green building), I get lots of opportunity to track my mileage.

If you don't already know about technical briefs from California's Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER), you should (PIER's web presence has been absorbed into a larger site on research and development). The folks at PIER research various topics related to energy efficiency, and come out with some great briefs that are published through ESource. The most recent of these launches a useful plug-in for the U.S.

Aside from cost of gasoline, driving can result in traffic congestion, time loss, stress, wear and tear on vehicles, and added pollution.

Rarely a day goes by that I don't hear people complaining about how much money they're spending on gasoline. Indeed, filling up costs three times what it did just a couple years ago; it's understandable that people are upset.

So how can we reduce our costs of getting around? This week, I'll address the best strategy--driving less. Next week, we'll look at how to get better mileage from our cars.

Some recommendations:

Aside from cost of gasoline, driving can result in traffic congestion, time loss, stress, wear and tear on vehicles, and added pollution.

Rarely a day goes by that I don't hear people complaining about how much money they're spending on gasoline. Indeed, filling up costs three times what it did just a couple years ago; it's understandable that people are upset.

So how can we reduce our costs of getting around? This week, I'll address the best strategy--driving less. Next week, we'll look at how to get better mileage from our cars.

Some recommendations:

The New York Times recently revealed yet another reason to get your building materials regionally -- or to at least know where they're coming from. With every shipment of the prized white marble from the Ziarat quarry in Pakistan, the Taliban takes a cut.

Oops... (corrected graphic below)

Well, all you can do when you screw up is try to make it into a learning opportunity, I guess. The image we featured most prominently with our "Counting Carbon" article in July had a blatant error.

America's buildings are no small contributor to our environmental difficulties and energy use... but they're far from the biggest part of the problem. The enemy is us — the choices we make individually and as a society. America's building envelopes are getting better and tighter, our heating and cooling systems are getting more efficient, but every year we keep using more energy. And our carbon emissions keep going up, not down. Part of the equation, certainly, is that the U.S. builds more buildings and is home to more people all the time.