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Trib Talk: Cleaning Salt Lake City’s air starts in the home

(Trent Nelson  |   Tribune file photo)  Construction of new energy-efficient homes in the Granite Legacy community in South Salt Lake on Tuesday July 16, 2019. Garbett Homes is behind the project.

(Trent Nelson | Tribune file photo) Construction of new energy-efficient homes in the Granite Legacy community in South Salt Lake on Tuesday July 16, 2019. Garbett Homes is behind the project.

Salt Lake City’s air quality is among the worst in the nation and by 2024, homes and businesses will be the primary source of air pollution in the state, surpassing cars, factories and power plants, according to projections by the Utah Division of Air Quality.

Those trends are prompting homebuilders and business owners to consider energy-efficient upgrades, like airtight construction, electric appliances and solar panels. But most of those features come with added upfront costs, and the current pace of new zero-emission construction will take years to offset the pollution seeping out of older buildings in the Salt Lake Valley.

On today’s episode of “Trib Talk,” freelance journalist Heather May joins host Benjamin Wood to discuss her three-part series for The Tribune examining the role that homes and businesses play in both contributing to Utah’s dirty air, and potentially cleaning it.

(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)

Click here to listen now. Listeners can also subscribe to “Trib Talk” on SoundCloud, iTunes and Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify and other major podcast platforms.

“Trib Talk” is produced by Sara Weber with additional editing by Dan Harrie. Comments and feedback can be sent to tribtalk@sltrib.com, or to @bjaminwood or @tribtalk on Twitter.

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