Special Report

What if housing doesn't have the 30% bounce that most forecasters have predicted for this year? What if, instead, the dreaded "double dip" scenario goes from nightmare to reality? If you liked 2009, our blogger claims, you're going to be absolutely crazy about 2010.

It's ugly. It's staring all of us in the face. It's the nonresidential construction outlook for 2010. Here's how to make it go away: Get yourself abducted by aliens (those from Tralfamadore probably would be your best bet), and ask them to return you to this planet late in January 2011.

Doesn't it bother you when the daily newspaper's "fix it" lady tells citizens to keep the receipts when they buy CFLs, just in case . . .

Doesn't it bother you when the Romans wiped out the pirates 2,000+ years ago, but we in the West can't stop this plague of scum? And see what happens when an electrical contractor tries to do the right thing, but finds that the local electric utility has misled it (and thousands of other customers).

Part Two of a 2-part column on green jobs training programs funded by your tax dollars (and perhaps those of your children and grandchildren) details 12 of the 25 efforts getting federal stimulus money.

Where are your tax dollars going? Let's not get upset! But a blow-by-blow analysis (this is part 1 of 2) of where Energy Training Partnership grants -- for green jobs training -- are to be spent might be enlightening.  You can claim to know something about green, and you DO know about training, so unlike Goldman Sachs, CDOs, and all of that jazz . . . you actually are qualified to assess what's going on here.

 Is the coming of Green tied to the "going" of Prosperity? If boom times return, will the green movement disappear? And: How likely is it that what we had in 2003-2007 is going to come back? A look at the future of green from an economic perspective.  

The 2nd of a two-part piece on the future of China -- and copper -- looks at some serious people with serious worries about the future of China's economy. What happens, in the midst of global economic weakness, if the Middle Kingdom . . . blows up?

China may not be dictating the price of copper, but that country's actions -- and growth or lack of same -- seem to be intimately involved with the price gyrations of the red metal. Whither China's economy? Part One of a two-part piece pits Jimmy Rogers vs. James Chanos.

Electrical contracting employment of production workers (field employees) is down 160,000 or so from the November 2000 peak. The number of people employed in electrical distribution just hit the lowest figure of the past 11 years (really). And some (our blogger, at least) say it could get worse from here?

It's a Depression, all right -- at least, in the construction industry. So says our blogger . . . and most of the end-of-2009 construction industry employment numbers seem to agree (vehemently!).

Bit & pieces from EcoBuild round out 5 blogs covering the environmental/green and construction-oriented/BIM conference held last month. This time: The GSA; Convia; a bit on solar; and more.

A subcontractor's EcoBuild presentation on BIM is a departure point for a look at how building information modeling might work in electrical construction.

Green construction codes, LEED, Standard 189.1, and such. SAVE and other "green attribute verification" programs. The Zero Energy Commercial Building Consortium. That's just some of the sustainable stuff you'll learn in this 3rd write-up from last month's EcoBuild conference.

EcoBuild 2009 brought all kinds of groups and speakers -- including those concerned with "green" and others focused on BIM -- to the D.C. Convention Center. Here's a quick overview and a look at "GreenSpeak," with more to come, soon.