This tour has been cancelled.

Tour F - How Green IS My Valley

The tour begins with a short walk to the new San José City Hall   http://www.sanjoseca.gov/newcityhall/  

The new city hall was completed in 2005 and it has LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Silver Certification.  Here we will meet with representatives of the City Environmental Services Department who will described some of the many environmental initiatives that the city sponsors such as single stream recycling, concrete recycling, restrictions on urban sprawl, and gray water distribution for landscape gardening.

We plan to use a biodiesel powered bus for the tour!

Leaving City Hall, we’ll drive by Adobe’s Headquarters, a building with LEED Platinum status.  This was done through building renovation and other projects that cost $1.1 million and that save $1 million per year.  In 2006, it was called the greenest corporate building in America, which is some feat considering that others started with new construction. http://money.cnn.com/popups/2006/biz2/adobe_green/frameset.exclude.html  Since the group is too big to tour Adobe, we’ll review information learned during the smaller Thursday tour.

Then we’ll travel to visit a Pinn Brothers green housing development that features solar power, energy efficient windows, and extra insulation.  The main question is which project we will visit – these properties have been selling quickly in an otherwise very slow housing market, and we’ll need to visit one that is still open.  http://www.pinnbros.com/index.php

 We plan to visit the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Agency – VTA – to learn about their demonstration hydrogen bus program.  There are three Zero Emission Buses (ZEBs) in the program.  ZEBs are powered using fuel-cell engines from Ballard Power Systems of Burnaby, Canada. http://www.vta.org/projects/ZEBs.html

 We’ll be stopping at Integrated Design Associates, “IDeAS”, at their Z-squared building, which was a conversion of a 1960’s era concrete windowless bank.  A Z-squared building goes well beyond LEED, in that it not only produces all of its own energy, it produces zero carbon emissions. They will be presenting on their past and current projects in sustainable lighting and electrical design for businesses, schools and private residences.  http://www.ideasi.com/home.html

 We leave San José to drive down to Los Gatos, passing the percolation ponds that renew the Valley ground water.  In Los Gatos, we’ll visit Akeena Solar, a solar power installer. http://www.akeena.net/cm/Home.html  They will be presenting on the history and future of solar power and the evolving technologies behind solar panels.  If there is enough time, we’ll drive over to one of their “second generation” solar installations.