Photo courtesy Sheltering ArmsPeople are sometimes suspicious when one of Scott Pool's inspectors calls. The offer -- to weatherize one's house for free -- sounds too good to be true. "We have to convince them that, really and truly, nobody's going to charge them," says Pool, the weatherization director at Sheltering Arms Senior Services, a multi-faceted non-profit in Houston. "People have to be assured that there's no scam involved." Weatherization means caulking, insulating or otherw
Oh, crap. The Environmental Protection Agency has put out another list.This can't be good for Houston.But.....it is?Yes, apparently so: Houston is the top city in Texas -- and the third in the entire country, behind two frou-frou California cities -- when it comes to the number of "green" buildings.Houston has 145 buildings that earn the EPA's "Energy Star" award, behind LA's 262 and San Francisco's 194. Dallas comes in at Number Five on the list, and Madison, Wisconsin -- the liberal bastion of
Photo by alan5of5As we suspected, Houston's stellar ranking in the EPA's list of green buildings isn't necessarily all it seems.We spoke today with Patrick Kelly, the agency's coordinator of the Energy Star program here in Texas, and while the list is absolutely accurate -- there are 145 green buildings in Houston -- there might be other factors at work that led to us being in third place nationwide.Building owners and managers voluntarily report their green status, he says. And while there are
Photo courtesy GHCVBEveryone knows that Houston is the smog-riddled energy capital of the world, so it was with a touch of irony that the annual Clean Air Through Energy Efficiency Conference awards were announced this afternoon in Houston.Attendees from across Texas and other states, munching on a typical banquet meal of chicken cordon bleu and asparagus, were supposed to hear self-proclaimed clean-air advocate Mayor Bill White, but alas, he was too busy to show. Instead, Issa Dadoush, direc
