Author Archives: Matthew Woo
Making Changes for Charging Electric Vehicles
by Matt Woo, P.E., RCDD, LEED AP BD+C This article is part of Wood Harbinger’s newsletter series. Electric vehicles can be a great means of transportation which help reduce emissions on the environment, save fuel, and reduce maintenance costs.
Resilient Utility Infrastructure – Part 2: Construction and Operations
by Matt Woo, P.E., RCDD, LEED AP BD+C and Steve Grayson, P.E., LEED AP This article is part of Wood Harbinger’s newsletter series. Resilient infrastructure is a primary component of a sustainable built environment; that is, one that can withstand and bounce back from a compromise of or interruption of services and continue operating close […]
Resilient Utility Infrastructure – Part 1: Planning and Design
by Matt Woo, P.E., RCDD, LEED AP BD+C and Steve Grayson, P.E., LEED AP This article is part of Wood Harbinger’s newsletter series. Resiliency in the built environment, simply put, is the ability to recover from difficult conditions that have compromised essential utility/infrastructure services. That could mean recovering from a power outage, an earthquake, a […]
Tidal Energy: The New Sustainable Resource
by Matthew J. Woo, P.E., RCDD, LEED AP BD+C This article is part of Wood Harbinger’s newsletter series. Identifying and implementing wide–scale, alternative-energy sources may be the greatest global imperative of our time. Why? We are in danger of damaging our earth’s atmosphere and water from global air pollution caused by carbon dioxide emissions and […]
The Goldilocks Effect: Getting Sustainable Systems “Just Right”
by Matt Woo, P.E., RCDD, LEED AP BD+C This article is part of Wood Harbinger’s newsletter series. A sustainable or green building designation means that the structure and the systems within it are designed to be environmentally responsible and resource-efficient throughout the building’s entire life-cycle: from siting to design, construction, operation, maintenance, renovation, and demolition. […]
Lighting for Wellness, Health, and Productivity
by Matt Woo, P.E., RCDD, LEED AP BD+C This article is part of Wood Harbinger’s newsletter series. Good lighting requires more than just providing the recommended lighting levels and uniformity for specific tasks. It’s about finding the appropriate balance between natural daylighting and artificial electric lighting to enable productive work throughout a day, evoke certain […]
Can Energy Dashboards Really Motivate Change?
by Matt Woo, P.E., RCDD, LEED AP BD+C This article is part of Wood Harbinger’s newsletter series. In this world of high tech, we are constantly bombarded with information wherever we go. This can make it difficult to decide what information is relevant and worthy of our attention, and what we should just ignore. Improving […]
A Tour of Solar (Energy) Systems
by Matt Woo, P.E., RCDD, LEED AP BD+C This article is part of Wood Harbinger’s newsletter series. In the August 2015 Sustainability Edition of this newsletter, we looked into the cost, feasibility, and benefits of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems for residential and commercial use. The solar PV market saw strong growth in 2015 in […]
AIA Seattle Getting to Zero – Thoughts about Session 1 “Preparing for Net Zero”
by Matt Woo, P.E., RCDD, LEED AP BD+C My colleague Shaun May and I recently attended the first session of the AIA Seattle Getting to Zero educational series on October 2, 2015. We were excited to participate in an event on the Net Zero topic. Shaun had even just written a newsletter article about Net […]