Posted live from Greenbuild.

Press release:

BuildingGreen, LLC, announces a new online information resource on residential green building and remodeling. GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, which will be officially launched at the International Builders Show in Las Vegas January 20, 2009, is an online suite of expert advice, proven construction details, and real-world tools for residential architects, builders, remodelers, and highly engaged homeowners.

"GBA builds on the decades of experience and depth of the two partner companies that came together to create this resource: BuildingGreen, publisher of Environmental Building News and The Taunton Press, publisher of Fine Homebuilding," says BuildingGreen director of residential services Peter Yost. "In the works since the two companies joined forces in early 2008, GreenBuildingAdvisor.com will be the most comprehensive, useful, and easy-to-use online resource serving the residential green building community," noted Yost.

GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, which was previewed at the Greenbuild Conference in Boston, will include seven primary components:

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Posted live from Greenbuild.

I ran into Michelle Moore, senior vp of policy & public affairs for the USGBC, yesterday. I asked her if she had any new thoughts on the "year of greenwash" prediction that she made during her visit to our offices last May — if the market and movement will survive the growing onslaught of confusion, misinformation, and misdirection.

She was characteristically optimistic, expressing her opinion that the waters will be choppy for a while, but that the state of the world is well enough understood by enough people that truth and goodness will prevail. Yay for voices of hope.

Posted live from Greenbuild.

I mentioned Armstrong Ceiling Systems' booth earlier, and the fact that they don't use any wood that's not FSC, and that they don't have any added formaldehyde in any of their products. I didn't mention that all their ceiling tiles are Class A fire rated, because it started to feel I was cheerleading.

There's one other thing that I didn't mention.

In February, they're slated to roll out a ceiling tile made with 46% jute. The stuff goes from seed to harvest in 90 days; talk about rapidly renewable. Like all their tiles, no added formaldehyde. There was a sample there... it looked and acted just like fiberglass. These tiles will have the standard scrim facing that most of their lines use.

No word on what the line will be called.

Posted from Greenbuild '08.

A month ago, EBN was the first to report the news that the ASHRAE Standard 189-P committee, which has been developing the nation's first code-level national green building standard for commercial buildings, had been unexpectedly disbanded by ASHRAE.

At a special Greenbuild update today, Mark MacCracken, a USGBC representative to the committee, referred to reports of the committee's disbanding as "rumors." Come again? He later acknowledged that the committee had been, in official terminology, "cleared," and that "this probably wasn't handled as well as it could have been, in terms of communication." MacCracken also publicly confirmed what we had suspected: that due to stakeholders feeling left out of the committee, the standard was in danger of being appealed to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) on procedural grounds, which would have bogged it down considerably.

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Posted live from Greenbuild.

This has been long in coming, and judging by the response of the audience this afternoon, I'm not the only one who thinks so. Yes, I work for the guy, but I'm no sycophant. He's one of the most focused, dedicated, knowledgeable people I've ever known. A press release sent out from the USGBC today said this:

Executive Editor of Environmental Building News, Alex Wilson, received the award in the Education category. For more than 25 years, Wilson has been bringing unbiased, reliable information, tools and resources to the building industry. He is the author of numerous books and textbooks on sustainable building, and has written hundreds of articles for publications outside of EBN, including Popular Science and Architectural Record. He served as the executive director of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association and on the board of directors for the USGBC, and is currently a trustee of The Nature Conservancy — Vermont Chapter.

Take a couple minutes to listen to this... it's audio of the announcement and a very short film (kinda like the Oscars). The recording is poor but understandable, and lasts less than three minutes. Check out the enthusiastic crowd response.

Unlike the tale of woe I told last year, this time I got to see the award given. It was great to be on hand to witness the well-deserved moment.

(The following are photos of the movie... which, argh, were the best shots I got.)

Link to BuildingGreen press release

Posted from Greenbuild '08.

If you thought the proliferation of various different types of LEED rating systems was confusing, wait till you find out what the Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) has in store for LEED Accredited Professionals (LEED APs), the folks who can pass an exam to be recognized as an expert in LEED. (GBCI, by the way, took over the LEED AP program about a year ago from USGBC.)

First, I'll explain what GBCI has planned for the 65,000 people (like me) who are already LEED APs. These people will be known informally as Legacy LEED APs:

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Posted live from Greenbuild.

Here's another little scoop for you. The press conference announcing this doesn't start for another 15 minutes... but since I'm the co-editor of GreenSpec, I'm going to take this liberty.

BOSTON, MA, November 20, 2008 — BuildingGreen, LLC, publisher of the GreenSpec® Directory and Environmental Building News™, today announced the 2008 Top-10 Green Building Products. This seventh annual award, announced at the U.S. Green Building Council's Greenbuild Conference in Boston, recognizes the most exciting products drawn from additions to the GreenSpec Directory and coverage in Environmental Building News.

"Our selections of the Top-10 Green Building Products represent a wide range of product types in many different application areas," noted BuildingGreen president Alex Wilson. There are a particularly large number of interior products in this year's group of winners: the first FSC-certified and formaldehyde-free bamboo flooring; doors made with wheat-straw particleboard; a line of zero-VOC paint; a transparent finish produced from a byproduct of cheese making; and a line of organic fabrics.

Three of the products this year save energy, including a low-cost, solar water-heating system; a combination heating, water heating, and heat-recovery ventilation system; and a system for monitoring real-time energy (and water) use in buildings. Water saving products are represented by a line of rainwater storage tanks — the first rainwater storage equipment ever recognized in our Top-10 lists.

Fully half of the products this year are green in part because they are made from natural, rapidly renewable, or agricultural waste materials; natural materials often require significantly less energy to manufacture. A new compressed-earth masonry block is particularly noteworthy in this regard. "Most of the Top-10 products this year have multiple environmental attributes,"said Wilson.

BuildingGreen's Top-10 product selections, as in previous years, are drawn from new additions to the company's GreenSpec product directory. More than 200 product listings have been added to the GreenSpec database during the past year. "New products seem to be appearing all the time, making it a challenge for our staff to keep up,"said Wilson. The GreenSpec database the company maintains now includes more than 2,000 product listings.

A big driver in the development of green products continues to be the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED® Rating System (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which awards points for the use of certain product types, such as certified wood, or for the energy or water savings that green products can achieve. "Designers of LEED buildings are looking for green products, and manufacturers are responding," said Wilson. In the online version of GreenSpec, users can find products organized by LEED credits.

The 2008 Top-10 Green Building Products are listed below. More complete descriptions and contact information is provided on the linked pages:

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Posted from Greenbuild '08.

As my colleague Nadav Malin has written, attempts to achieve LEED credits, particularly in the materials and resources category, sometimes involve "magical," that is, wishful, thinking.

At a session this morning on green blogging, a guy popped out of the audience who wields a much more interesting and perhaps even more audacious type of magic toward achieving LEED credits... sculpture.

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Posted live from Greenbuild.

This morning we had our annual breakfast at Greenbuild with invited participants from the top green firms in the industry — taking their pulse, getting their take. Architects were in force, but engineers and builders were also represented.

Much of the discussion revolved around the 2030 Challenge — who has signed up and who hasn't (the room was split roughly equally); why and why not; what the vague Challenge actually means (does it include occupant transportation, etc.?) and how to specifically measure it (Btu/sf? Energy use? Carbon?). Meanwhile, the first threshold, 2010, is looming.

The state of the economy and the uncertain future didn't seem to shake the confidence of the room much... project type and focus tends to shift in downturns, but things go on. One participant said, "We're going to have to admit that we can't ignore existing buildings. This is a sea change. We have to think like Europe and parts and Asia." On the other hand, in a recent Turner survey of all building industry markets, 3/4 of respondents said that an economic downturn wouldn't affect the decision to build green.

Education, as always, was a big topic. Institutions are churning out unprepared, undereducated students. The public doesn't really get the concept of energy conservation — they just want to save money. So do building owners. But, it was pointed out, "the right kind of knowledge can change behavior" (and also, cheekily, "the right person can defeat any system we design in"). The notion that we'll see some good changes when people learn how to compete against each other to save energy was floated, and it was good.

For the industry at large, dispassionate, deep data is needed — data that's normalized and consistent. And anonymous if necessary. There needs to be more POE, more measurement and analysis. There needs to be a wealth of numbers and details available, a track record.

I'm going to make an abrupt turn here and go gooey...

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Posted live from Greenbuild.

There are a couple booths that warrant special mention.

This year, the Armstrong Ceiling Systems booth is a metal greenhouse frame (below banners reading "Come see what's growing") that, after the show, will be donated to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society. Nice. Most of the companies at these trade shows, especially the big players, spend scads on high-concept booths — shiny, gleaming, lots of lights, computer screens, motorized gizmos — that may only see a few shows, if that.

I'm not cynical about Armstrong's motives. Sure, it doubles as a sweet marketing device — so what? I think it qualifies as permaculture. (And guess what else? Where wood is used in Armstrong's Ceiling Systems, that wood is FSC. You can't not get FSC from them. And none of their products have added formaldehyde. I think they've made a commitment, and I don't believe it's entirely market driven.)

But there's another big-player booth that's taken this sort of concept to an awesome extreme.

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