AIA Houston cordially invites you to attend a full day of Continuing Education (CE) Seminars. Individual classes are not available for the event. Pre-registered attendees will be given a reduced rate (payment due at time of registration).  Pre-registered pricing includes breakfast and lunch. Parking is free.

Online registration will close Monday, June 10th.

We cordially invite you to attend a full day of Continuing Education (CE) Seminars. Individual classes are not available for the event. Pre-registered attendees will be given a reduced rate (payment due at time of registration). Pre-registered pricing includes breakfast and lunch. Parking is free.

Online registration will close Monday, June 10th.

If the class has not met capacity, attendees can also register on-site the date of the event beginning at 8:30 am; higher registration fees will apply.

A minimum of 3 days’ notice is required to receive a full refund if you need to cancel your reservation.

Houstonians don’t want to flood their buildings again. Do we talk about the
buildings or the surroundings? How about both? Dr. Bedient will discuss flooding from a historical perspective and what might happen based on the latest news. Ryan will talk about maintaining balance between the built and natural environment from the perspective of a resilient LEED Platinum campus in the Woodlands designed to sustainably manage stormwater. Andrew has a group making flood resistant kitchen cabinets in reaction to the amazing amount of flooded cabinets now landfilled after Hurricane Harvey. For additional information visit codegreenhouston.org.

What’s new with solar?  Time for an update.  A solar farm is in development for Houston, and Tesla will tell us what their solar offering is these days. In addition, we’ll have a bit of permit data about solar installations in Houston.

Dori Wolfe, founder of Wolfe Energy, will discuss her C-40 proposal to the City of Houston to convert a brownfield landfill to a solar farm including systems thinking and recent progress in the community solar movement.  Mark Mason, market manager of Houston Metro/Mexico of TESLA, will fill you in on the various solar products offered by Tesla, such as those solar roof tiles you’ve heard about, and how those are different from the other products on the market.

The City of Houston—Public Works & Engineering Code Enforcement Green Building Resource Center presents this Education Seminar in partnership with the Texas Chapter of the US Green Building Council.  This 2019 series is generously underwritten by Rockwool.

CEUs available.  Please RSVP to steve.stelzer@houstontx.gov. Free parking.  Bus stop: Preston@Elder.

The 2019 annual symposium will focus on conserving native plants in the upper Texas coastal prairies, also known as the Northern Humid Gulf Coastal Prairies in the EPA Level IV ecoregion map.

Quaternary-age deltaic sands, silts, and clays underlie much of this gently sloping coastal plain. The original vegetation was mostly grasslands with a few clusters of oaks, known as oak mottes or maritime woodlands. Little bluestem, yellow Indiangrass, brownseed paspalum, gulf muhly, and switchgrass were the dominant grassland species, with some similarities to the grasslands of the Blackland Prairies. Almost all of the coastal prairies have been converted to cropland, rangeland, pasture, or urban land uses. The exotic Chinese tallow tree and Chinese privet have invaded large areas in this region. Some loblolly pine occurs in the northern part of the region in the transition to the South Central Plains. Soils are mostly fine-textured: clay, clay loam, or sandy clay loam. Within the region, there are some differences from the higher Lissie Formation to the lower Beaumont Formation, both of Pleistocene age. The Lissie Formation has lighter colored soils, mostly Alfisols with sandy clay loam surface texture, while darker, clayey soils associated with Vertisols are more typical of the Beaumont Formation. Annual precipitation varies from 37 inches in the southwest portion to 58 inches in the northeast, with a summer maximum.

The symposium headquarters will be in League City, between Houston and Galveston. at the South Shore Harbour Resort and Conference Center, which is on the south side of Clear Lake across the lake from the Johnson Space Center. The event begins with a reception on Thursday evening for those arriving early, speakers on Friday morning with a choice of field trips in the afternoon, more speakers and breakout sessions on Saturday, and an awards banquet on Saturday night. A social event is planned for Friday night on the Kemah Boardwalk. In addition they have prepared a list of suggested side stops and field trips for those traveling on Thursday and Sunday.

Registration prices vary depending on your level of participation.

UH Energy invites you to attend the second event in the 2019-2020 Energy Symposium Series | Critical Issues in Energy, “Future of Plastics: Designed Sustainability or Recycling.”

The production and use of plastics has defined the modern era and since the early 1950s they have substantially grown to be the material of choice in diverse applications. The production of plastics was projected to grow by a factor of five over the next twenty five years and the chemicals industry has been preparing for this by expanding production facilities worldwide. However, most plastics have their origins are in fossil based oil and gas and they have increasingly come under public scrutiny because of the preponderance of single use plastics in consumer products, their poor recycling rates (less than 10% globally) and their high-profile observation in unexpected parts of the ecosystem due to their improper disposal. The future of plastics is being formulated and issues of designed-in sustainability, bio-based replacements, and improved recycling are at the core and will be discussed in this symposium.

Speakers

Nichole Fitzgerald, Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO) Technology Manager, U.S. Department of Energy

Jill Martin, Global Sustainability Fellow, Dow Chemical Company

Ganesh Nagarajan, Associate Director for Polymers Business Development and Projects, LyondellBasell Industries

Susannah Scott, Distinguished Professor, University of California – Santa Barbara

Moderator

Dr. Megan Robertson, Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of Houston

For more information about our speakers and moderator, please click here.

Interested in Urban Forestry? Come join Texas A&M AgriLife Extension, HAUFC and ISA-TX for a great day of education. Topics include: Emerald Ash Borer – Coming to a City Near You, Using Tree Growth Regulators to Reduce Pruning Costs, and Greening the Houston Region – Partnerships and Projects that Support the Urban Forest.

Scientia Lecture Series featuring Caroline Masiello

Dr. Karoline Mueller will speak.

“Restoring natural vegetation, such as forest, is currently the best option at scale for removing CO2 from the atmosphere, and must begin immediately to be effective within the required timescale of reaching net zero emissions by 2050. The livestock sector, having largely displaced natural carbon sinks, continues to occupy much of the land that must be restored.” (1)

“The scientific world is very aware of the intersection between food choices and their effects on both climate and human health. Michael Clark at the University of Oxford said: “Continuing to eat the way we do threatens societies, through chronic ill health and degradation of Earth’s climate, ecosystems and water resources.”

In this presentation, we will look at the way different food choices impact our planet negatively and why the same food choices also contribute to chronic illnesses that threaten societies through the high burden of personal suffering and staggering health care costs.

Although different groups give vastly different estimates of the effect of food choices on climate crisis, the very conservative number in the FAO report, Tackling Climate Change Through Livestock(2), comes to 14.5% of total greenhouse gas emissions. This roughly equals the number for all transportation contributions. Other estimates include future land usage changes that will provide additional carbon sinks and increase the positive effect drastically.

The 2015-2020 USDA Dietary Guidelines stated: “About half of all American adults—117 million individuals—have one or more preventable chronic diseases, many of which are related to poor quality eating patterns and physical inactivity.” While official publications(3) use the ‘reduce saturated fat’ as code for reducing animal products, many medical doctors and scientists send a clear message that choosing health-promoting vegetables, fruit, legumes, and whole grains, while omitting animal products, leads to good health outcomes.(4, 5)

Our choices can open the door to a win-win outcome.

For more information contact, Nan Hildreth at 713-504-9901 or NanHildreth@riseup.net