Catherine Mohr Builds Green, Spills Yogurt, Explains Embodied Energy

In February 2010, Catherine Mohr gave a short talk at a TED convention wherein she “walks through all the geeky decisions she made when building a green new house — looking at real energy numbers, not hype. What choices matter most? Not the ones you think.” Specifically, she clearly illustrates the concept of ’embodied energy’ – which is the total of all the energy used to initially produce a product; all of the energy costs to acquire the raw materials, to manufacture the item and to transport it to its final destination. Even if you just watch the first two and a half minutes of her hilarious presentation, you will gain an understanding of the dizzying number of variables that can go into accounting for and minimizing embodied energy.

Catherine Mohr is the Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical, Inc. where she supervises “the development of next-generation surgical robots and robotic procedures… she’s the clinical design leader for the DaVinci Surgical Robotic system. She also works at Stanford’s School of Medicine, where she studies simulation-based teaching methods to teach clinical skills to budding doctors. And she’s a senior scientific advisor to the GlobalSolver Foundation, an innovative funding and study group that looks at ways to match up scientists and money to help the world’s oceans.”  Catherine has also been writing about her adventure in green building on her blog 301 Monroe – When Geeks Build Green.

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