BuildingGreen.com LIVE - Greenbuild '07

Hot Topics for Green Gurus

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 18:21:00 GMT

Notes from BuildingGreen's breakfast gathering at Greenbuild for partners and Sustainable Design Directors from forward-thinking firms around the U.S.

Overarching Issues

Expanding the Reach of Green Design: Many attendees discussed how to get green design skills into the hands of more people in their firm, or how to bring these ideas to their interior designers, or even how to how to make relevant green product information available to their Asian-based design teams.
Understanding Building Performance: This topic came up in several forms throughout breakfast. The contexts ranged from defining what metrics to track to how to share project performance information within each firm and among firms. Everyone was interested in learning how to tell when they'd gotten it right.
Meeting the Architecture 2030 Challenge: This was the topic that we at BuildingGreen had brought to the breakfast, following pre-breakfast conversations with Charles Brown of sfL+a Architects and Kathy Wardle of Perkins + Will. The topic seemed to resonate on many levels with all of the breakfast attendees.

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Part 2: Non-chemical water treatment systems

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:00:00 GMT

It's not all about magnets. Two other nonchemical water treatment systems that have exhibited at Greenbuild for at least the last couple years are worth noting... for one reason or another. During the '06 show in Denver, I spent some time learning about the VRTX—say it "vortex"—sidestream "hydrodynamic cavitation" and filtration system. The company was there again this year. As I understand it (and please do understand that I don't claim to really understand it), it works by blasting two spinning, high-velocity cones of water into each other, which releases high localized heat, creates a strong vacuum, and generally bangs things into each other. A paper assessing an installation at the Ford Motor Company describes it like this: [More]

Non-chemical water treatment systems

Thu, 15 Nov 2007 20:02:00 GMT

Sometimes it's hard to suspend disbelief enough to make an unbiased judgement about a product, particularly when it's from an industry with a history of charlatanry, if not outright chicanery. For instance, chemical-free water treatment—which most people associate with sticking a speaker magnet on a pipe under the kitchen sink. The systems I'm talking about, though, are industrial-sized... used for cooling towers, boilers in big buildings, even large fountains. There were a small handful of companies offering such non-chemical systems exhibiting at this year's Greenbuild. At least three of them use advanced magnetics for at least part of the system, and that's a giant hurdle for a lot (probably most) specifying engineers and prospective clients to get past. [More]

Some of the other as-it-happened Greenbuild 2007 coverage around the web

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:18:00 GMT

One of the posts at the gb.07 Journal (written by USGBC staffers Lauren Kuritz and Doug Smeath) is about the ASID / USGBC collaboration, ReGreen, "a collection of tools to help you focus your renovation projects toward sustainability, durability, comfort and style." Peter Yost, Jennifer Atlee (best researcher I know), Alex Wilson, Amie Walter, and Julia Jandrisits of BuildingGreen all spent long hours finishing up the initial draft of the Residential Remodeling Guidelines for this initiative in time for Greenbuild so it could be included on the ReGreen program website for its launch. (The Residential Remodeling Guidelines are in a public comment period through Monday, December 10. After you look them over, please fill out the comment form linked from the ReGreen site. Feel free to praise the photo on page 42, which I took during a remodel in our turn-of-the-century offices in the old Estey Organ Factory.)
Freelance reporter Brian Libby kept a running Greenbuild journal at betterbricks.com—some of the best real-time "actual news" from the event that I've come across. The posts are in reverse chronological order, and I think it reads better that way.
"The Ups and Downs of GreenBuild Chicago" by John F. Wasik is an article that appeared mid-event on the Eco Investment Club website. Some might consider it harsh, others realistic. I hope it's seen as constructive criticism in quarters where it might make a difference down the road in overcoming some of the difficulties this year's event faced.
Another longer, newsy one-off at gbNYC—"The Green Scene: Special Report from USGBC's Greenbuild Chicago 2007," by Paul McGinniss, covers a few doings of interest and bits worth knowing.
The GreenSource team put together a couple handfuls of entries on a range of subjects. Theo Bowen's contributions are comprehensive and thoughtful. Jenna McKnight's post, "Greenbuild: The Final Score," and Joann Gonchar's "Surprise! The U.S. Spends Next to Nothing on Green Building Research" are also particularly readworthy, but scroll through them all.
Be sure to check out the video archive of the plenary sessions at greenbuild365.org.

Community Leader Gail Lindsey

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 18:45:00 GMT

Mark posted earlier about David Eisenberg and his organization, DCAT, getting USGBC's Organization Excellence Leadership Award at Greenbuild 2007. David has certainly been a great friend and mentor to many of us here at BuildingGreen. Personally, I have to say that no one has had more impact on my career in green building than Gail Lindsey (except, of course, BuildingGreen's fearless leader Alex). You can see a summary of her achievements in this online bio (PDF format). Gail was recognized by USGBC for her role in creating Community, which is certainly apt. She has an amazing ability to make connections—between people, ideas, projects, you name it—everywhere she goes. In conversations about specific projects, whenever there is the suggestion that a choice has to be made between two competing possibilities, Gail speaks up as the "And Police"—not "this OR that" she says, but "this AND that". Nothing can be excluded in her holistic view of the world. Another favorite inside joke is that when Gail is involved in structuring a document or event you always end up with five categories, no more and no less. Ever wonder why LEED has five topic areas? Because Gail was involved when LEED transitioned from an alphabetical list of credits to its current category structure. Gail's influence on BuildingGreen, and on me in particular, has been nothing short of profound. [More]

Running with the Big Dogs — at Greenbuild and Beyond

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:47:00 GMT

In a brilliantly cruel stroke of scheduling irony, the morning after our party with the GreenSource folks at the Funky Buddha, we held a breakfast for our BuildingGreen Suite firm-wide subscribers: organizations that have an account for every person in their operation. It was some heady company to be in, with movers and shakers from the likes of Gensler, HOK, Perkins + Will, William McDonough + Partners, Sasaki, Rocky Mountain Institute, Mithun, and SmithGroup, among several others.

We don't buy these folks breakfast once a year at Greenbuild just to honor them. These are the best and brightest: Knowing what's on their minds, and what their professional information needs are, helps us help them. Plus, it's so much fun to talk with people who are at the top of their game. For more information about firm-wide subscriptions, email our Network Accounts Manager, .

Oh—did I mention the view?

Thoughts From Chicago

Sat, 10 Nov 2007 00:37:00 GMT

I haven't yet posted from Greenbuild, mostly because this was my first time at the conference, and it took most of my mental energy just to sort through the experience of 22,000 people and all of the information I was taking in. Not posting, however, has given me some space to start thinking about some of the big-picture themes of the conference. The most striking is the influence of social justice and social movements on green building, and vice versa. [More]

Alex Wilson on Water Conservation at Greenbuild

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 19:06:00 GMT

While there were lots of highlights at Greenbuild, the only way I can really be productive at such a big conference is to narrow my focus. I'm researching water conservation and water efficiency for an upcoming EBN feature article, and I made great progress on that in Chicago. [More]

Does Wind Power Increase Carbon Emissions?

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:55:00 GMT

I wrote earlier today about grumbling at a Greenbuild session on life-cycle assessment, and I assigned the blame to bad news delivered by Stanley Rhodes of Scientific Certification Systems. The biggest shocker might have been Stanley's analysis that a given unit of electricity produced by wind resulted in increased greenhouse gas emissions compared with a unit of electricity produced by traditional fossil fuels (unfortunately he did not name the specific wind project analyzed). Because wind begins and ends abruptly and unpredictably, it delivers a fluctuating amount of electricity. Power companies therefore need to be prepared to spike the power grid with electricity from conventional power plants like those using natural gas. These plants need to be on "hot standby" to be ready for this spike, which is an inefficient way for them to operate, hence resulting in increased emissions, according to the analysis. If this is true, why would any power company use wind power? One answer would be renewable portfolio standards, which require a certain percentage of power from renewable sources. Another is customers who buy wind credits to "green their electricity" (discussed in the EBN feature article "Greening Your Electricity"). But I bet there's a lot more to this story.

Not Grumbling About Life-Cycle Assessment

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:25:00 GMT

Based on some of the audience Q&A I think that much of the audience left grumbling after Thursday's session, "Demystifying Sustainability: A Life-Cycle Perspective," convened by the energetic Meredith Elbaum of Sasaki, with Stanley Rhodes of Scientific Certification Systems speaking along with Nancy Harrod of Sasaki and Melissa Vernon of InterfaceFlor. I put Stanley's name first because I think he was the source of the grumbling. At a conference where "Was the session inspiring?" is one of the questions asked by the educational session evaluation form, Stanley made pointed criticisms of LEED and registered alarm about consequences of carbon emissions, like oceanic acidification (he polled the audience on its awareness of this issue—which was lacking, so here's a great LA Times article on the issue). But I found Stanley's presentation exciting. [More]

Greenbuild '07: almost done, though I'm not

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 16:40:00 GMT

Though Greenbuild '07 wraps up soon (and checkout time at my hotel is at noon), I've still got a number of things to report. There will be additional Greenbuild-related posts in the coming days about products, happenings, and a probably a slight meander about social and professional hierarchies. It will be nice to have a little more time to think—a little less immediacy, a little more research, a little more sleep, a little less frenzy—but I've had a blast this week. I'm surprised that people started finding BuildingGreen.com Live as quickly as they did—we gave it about the softest launch imaginable. A few people apparently stopped at our booth and said they'd stumbled across it via the BuildingGreen home page (which is the only link in) and started following it. And Timothy Latz over at the Best Green Blogs aggregator rolled us into his service on Monday or Tuesday. During the more sane times coming, I imagine there will be less frequent, and more content-rich, posts. Along with a certain amount of irreverence and goofiness.

The shoes of Greenbuild

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 15:53:00 GMT

To follow up on another reader comment, apparent fetishist Matthew suggested that "a fun report might be documenting the types of shoes people are wearing"—so I spent a little time shoe-gazing last night at the Leadership Awards celebration in the Merchandise Mart. Shiny black shoes were The Thing for both sexes. Some of the women had pointy-toed affairs, a couple of them almost elfin in structure; mostly spike heels, not wide heels or flats. For guys, mostly tapered with a flattened nose; laced, not loafers. Leather, pleather, vinyl, imported, domestic... what do I know about shoes? I figured I'd come off as more than a little creepy if I started asking, and since I do have some measure of decorum (believe it or not), I didn't. I hope this has helped somehow. It actually was kind of fun. I'm open to additional suggestions.

Building Energy Analysis plugin for SketchUp

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:37:00 GMT

In the comments on another post, Neil Finlayson of Greenspace Research over in the UK asked if I'd greet James Morrison "(all the way from Scotland)" at the Green Building Studio booth. I don't know either of these guys, and being just another dopey 'Murrican suspicious of all foreign hooligans, knew that something nefarious was afoot and that I would be taking a great risk with my health and safety to agree to this foolhardiness... but I tracked down that randy Scotsman anyway. He had infiltrated the booth of California-based (my fellow Americans) Green Building Studio, which offers time-saving web-based, 3D-CAD/BIM-integrated whole building energy analysis for any type of structure, as well as more conventional engineering consultation and service. But, darn it all, what most intrigued me was a SketchUp plugin by those scary foreigners, Greenspace Research, that Green Building Studio offers as part of their services. Called "Demeter," it can import gbXML models from Revit and Archicad, then spit out an editable SketchUp model with energy lifecycle cost and carbon footprint information. (I don't have any knowledge about the level of complexity and detail entailed in their process; something to inquire about.) Check out the demo. This also seems like it could also be a good way to generate user-friendly visual models incorporating energy and environmental information that those certain clients—you know the ones—can look at and maybe monkey around with some on their own computer. (Though that might be opening a can of worms you'll curse me for...)

GreenSource Blogs GreenBuild 2007

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 03:56:00 GMT

I hadn't had the opportunity to look in on it since Monday, but I see now that the good folks from GreenSource started posting to their Greenbuild blog a couple days ago. Content-rich!, and a decidedly more journalistic voice than the mumbles and barks I've been spouting here. (Most of what I've posted on BuildingGreen.com Live is a totally different voice than our other resources, too; I almost can't believe they're letting me get away with it. What a great company. It must be pretty obvious when somebody else on our staff makes a post here—clarity, substance, readability, and a fancier kind of humor...)

Green Building Products, the book

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 21:37:00 GMT

Here's how self-absorbed I can get: I keep going back to the Greenbuild bookstore to see how many copies of Green Building Products are displayed. (I'm a co-editor with Alex Wilson.) It's not like I get royalties or anything; any of that funnels back into the company. It's just pure vanity, I guess. The stack goes up and down—three books, then five, then two, then four. A few minutes ago, there were eleven. It didn't take much effort to convince myself that they're tired of restocking, so put out a mess of them. Ah, fame. Or maybe people just find it a useful resource. From the sales pitch:

Here's a comprehensive directory of green building products for home building and remodeling featuring nearly 1,600 descriptive listings for products from agrifiber panels to zero-VOC paints. All phases of residential construction are covered, from sitework to flooring to renewable energy. Products are grouped by function, and each chapter begins with a discussion of key environmental considerations and what to look for in a green product. "This book makes it easy to find the information and product advice you need, and it's a must for anyone—builder, designer, architect or homeowner—who wants to know the unbiased, and unembellished truth about what's really 'green'," says Sarah Susanka, author of The Not So Big House.