BEES 2.0--Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability

It’s really exciting to be able to simply jump on the Web and download for free the second version of BEES—a software tool that uses detailed environmental and economic data to compare the relative performance of competing options for 15 common building components (See EBN Vol. 7, No. 5 for a detailed review of BEES 1.0). Improvements to the software tool include a doubling of the number of materials covered, four new environmental impacts, more detailed physical flow reporting, updated environmental and economic data, and lots of user-friendly changes to the workings of the software tool. The Welcome screen now makes important limitations of the program very explicit, and the new Technical Manual and User Guide is worth reading for its introduction to the science of environmental life-cycle analysis alone. There is no question that the software and manual will move any serious user into a better understanding of the issues and methods of this rapidly evolving field.

Unfortunately, there are still a number of serious weaknesses that make BEES more like an interesting work-in-progress than a published tool from a government agency known worldwide for setting standards. These weaknesses involve transparency, methodology, and data quality.

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