While technological breakthroughs have helped create the green and clean market, financial programs have paved the way for their adoption. Solar exploded after solar leasing. Car networks, a la ZipCar, seem destined to become the way most Americans will initially experience electric cars.

And economic solutions are having a big impact in energy efficiency and green building. Programs such as Serious Solutions that deliver an end-to-end comprehensive building upgrade service at no upfront cost to building owners, are "genius" said David Pogue, the National Director of Sustainability at CBRE during a panel discussion on green building and efficiency finance sponsored by Wells Fargo in Palo Alto this week. "The technology has been there but no one has had the guts to do it," he continued.

Interpretting the acoustical testing results for Serious Energy's iWindow.

Some of our first iWindow™ retrofit projects have been city buildings in noisy, high-traffic settings. So, the immediate feedback from a number of occupants is a thankful “It’s so much quieter in here.” We wanted to quantify that, so we sent iWindow samples out for sound transmission testing. This returned some impressive reports. But, what do the numbers really mean to my – or anyone else’s – ears? It wasn’t coming through loud and clear. So I turned to our Quiet® brand team for an explanation.

Kevin Surace is the CEO of Serious Energy, and he's also the one of the best speakers in the country when it comes to detailing the opportunities created through energy efficiency. Energy efficient buildings consume less energy, which means lower power bills, which means cleaner air and less demand for burning coal or natural gas.

Green buildings also achieve higher rental and resale values, creating money in a relatively frictionless way, and put assembly line employees, contractors, electricians, and architects to work. It's a virtuous cycle if there ever was one.

But it's tough to do the performance justice in words. So here you can find some of his most recent speeches and press interviews.

Freezing right now? Broiling? Can't see because of glare? Blame your windows. Serious Energy is holding the I Want Better Windows contest. You could be one of the winners of 250 square feet of iWindows. (click here to enter) or vote for one of the entrants.

Today's entry comes from Michael in New Jersey. He's at a hospital:

"We are a non-profit hospital. Our windows are 30 or more years older... It would be great to have warmer patient rooms and offices for the staff. My office is in the basement... No windows for me but it would be realy good for the building."

If you're sitting in your office freezing because of chilly weather outside or baking because of accumulated solar heat, you have a problem. And Serious Energy has the solution: the iWindow. It's an easy-to-install window we've created to help better insulate your building. The iWindow snaps into existing frames over the top of existing windows: no disruption to people indoors, no high installation costs. Fast. Easy.

And to let the world know about them, we're holding the "I Want New Windows" contest. Write in why your building needs new windows and you could be one of the winners of 250 square feet of iWindows. (click here to enter) or vote for one of the entrants. (See list here.) We will later tally the votes and select the winners.

Today's entry comes from Tanya W in Northern California. Unlike Nash in Montana, who is freezing, Tanya is being pounded by the heat:

Today's entry comes from Judy from Pennsylvania who works in a building that she says is stuck in the past:

"We in central PA tend to be 10 - 15 years behind the market for these sorts of technologies. It would be great for you to select this building -- a typical mixed use; older building commonly found in many older cities in the US -- so you can demonstrate how effective your product is for retrofitting older buildings."

Vote for Judy if you want her to jump into the modern age, or send us your own tale worthy of an extreme makeover.

In order to show the world a better commercial window retrofit solution and a much better window, for a limited time only Serious Energy is giving away a FREE pilot installation of iWindow (up to 250 square feet of glass – enough to upgrade an entire corner office or most conference rooms) to a lucky winner. To win with iWindow, just nominate a building and tell us why it really needs better windows on our new customer microsite -- www.iwantbetterwindows.com.

Over at Green Building Pro there’s an excellent article about the importance of green retrofits for historic buildings (“Greening a Historic School” by Jim Lindberg). In it, Lindberg raises some insightful questions about the penchant for valuing new, environmentally friendly design over re-valuing and retrofitting older buildings.

iWindow offers high energy-saving and comfort performance without replacing existing glass, virtually eliminating occupant disruption, and enabling rapid retrofit

iWindow – our revolutionary new solution for commercial building window retrofits powered by SeriousGlass –is already a big success.  A pilot installation of iWindow in a Bellvue, WA office building produced immediate improvements in indoor comfort.  iWindow AL was installed over a typical single pane aluminum framing system.  Beyond improving thermal performance and indoor comfort, one of iWindow’s key benefits is the ease of installation – an iWindow panel can be installed in as little as 20 minutes and with minimal disruption to building occupants.  As you can see in the photo below, employees and go right on working while iWindow is being installed!

It’s one thing to tell you about how quickly and easily you can now retrofit commercial windows for energy savings and comfort, but we’d also like to show you! We recently installed the iWindow retrofit system in a few offices of a San Francisco Bay Area office building. The install happened during evening hours (so in the pictures below, you're seeing the reflection of the offices in the windows).

Last week Serious Energy's CTO, Brandon Tinianov, spoke with Connie Kwan from Triple Pundit about the importance of improving energy efficiency of our existing building stock and our innovative window retrofit solution for the Empire State Building.  Without wasting a single pane of glass, Serious Energy upgraded all 6,514 windows in the Empire State Building with SeriousGlass technology, improving the thermal performance of the windows by up to four times and contributing to whole building energy savings of 38%.