Building owners or leaseholders can deduct the cost of energy-efficient property installed in commercial buildings, and recent guidance issued by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) describes what taxpayers need to do to qualify. Qualifying for the deduction, enacted in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and currently set to expire at the end of 2007, means receiving certification of energy savings from a qualified source. IRS will work with the Department of Energy to maintain a list of software that can be used to calculate the savings for certification purposes. The amount deductible may be as much as $1.80 per square foot of floor area for buildings that achieve 50% energy savings, down to $0.60 per square foot for achieving 162⁄3% savings. More information is online at www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-06-52.pdf.

 

 

The U.S. Federal Highway Administration has awarded The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the University of Minnesota’s Center for Transportation Studies up to $2 million to measure how transportation projects promote economic development; protect public health, safety, and the environment; and enhance the architectural design and planning of communities. Congress authorized the study in the 2005 transportation bill that requires the U.S. Department of Transportation to report on the effects of federal transportation spending on community design, health, and safety.

In July 2006, the newly founded Emirates Green Building Council (EmiratesGBC) held its first board meeting in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) with most of its six founders and 41 member organizations in attendance. Mohsen Aboulnaga, Ph.D. was named the chairman and CEO of the new organization, which aims to increase the awareness and practice of green building throughout UAE and the region. In a region where construction is booming—the construction industry in Dubai grew at an average annual rate of 27.7% between 2000 and 2004—the new council will have many opportunities to promote green building practices. To date, four projects in UAE are considered green; one of these, the District Cooling Chiller Plant in Dubai, achieved LEED^® Silver earlier this year.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has struck a partnership with the ACE Mentor Program of America, an organization dedicated to attracting high-school students into the architecture, construction, and engineering professions. The partnership provides USGBC members the opportunity to participate as mentors. “Students are the future of the green building movement,” said Chris Smith, USGBC’s chief operating officer. “USGBC’s members—who are some of the industry’s most experienced and dedicated visionaries—are very excited about this opportunity to teach and inspire the next generation of green builders.” To learn more, contact Pamela Mullender at 203-323-8550 or pmullender@acementor.org.

Lead-containing paint, banned in the U.S. in 1978, is still common in several Asian countries, according to a study published in the September 2006 issue of

Environmental Research. Researchers tested new paint in China, India, and Malaysia, and found that two-thirds of it contained 0.5% or more lead by weight, the U.S. threshold in defining lead paint in existing housing, and 78% surpassed the current U.S. limit for new paint of 0.06%. Lead levels as high as 18.7% were sampled, according to Scott Clark, Ph.D., the study’s principal author. Since the study was performed, he said, similar results have been found in paint samples from South America and Africa. For comparison, when lead paint was common in the U.S., it often contained up to 50% lead by weight. Lead exposure can impair mental development and cause behavioral problems. The study is online at dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2005.11.002.

Leonardo Academy, Inc., has announced its intention to develop standards for quantifying and documenting emission inventories, offsets, and reduction credits. A nonprofit, the Leonardo Academy helps companies and organizations quantify their emissions footprints, calculate emission reductions from energy-efficiency projects, determine how to reduce the emissions footprints, offset emissions, and certify those emission reductions and offsets. It intends to have the standards certified by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information is online at www.leonardoacademy.org.

Delta Air Lines’ Terminal A at Boston’s Logan International Airport has become the first airline terminal to earn LEED^® certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. The terminal, which earned 26 points in LEED, or a Certified-level rating, was designed by HOK and C&R/Rizvi, Inc., and guided by Delta and the Massachusetts Port Authority. The 640,000 ft² (60,000 m²) project, including two structures connected by an underground moving walkway, features a roofing membrane and paving designed to reduce the project’s contribution to the urban heat-island effect, a stormwater filtration system, water-efficient plumbing and irrigation, extensive daylighting, high-performance glazing, and recycled and locally produced materials.

Announced in February 2006 (see

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Vol. 15, No. 3) by the Greenguard Environmental Institute™, the Greenguard Mold Protection Program™ recently signed up its first buildings, two luxury condominium towers under construction in Orange Beach, Alabama. Certification requires the developers to follow best-practices guidelines set by Greenguard, including steps during building design, construction, and maintenance to reduce risk of mold hazards. Although awareness of the hazards of mold in buildings is perhaps greatest in the southeastern U.S., Greenguard recently announced state-by-state rankings of mold risk, derived from insurance claims, showing relatively dry states such as Nevada and South Dakota with surprisingly high relative risk, due, Greenguard claims, to poor building practices with respect to ventilation and building envelopes.

U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords (I–VT) recently introduced the High-Performance Green Building Act of 2006, which would authorize spending of $50 million over five years to codify existing federal green building initiatives and enhance federal promotion of green building. The bill would require environmental and efficiency standards for all buildings procured by the federal government, and it would direct funding to the General Services Administration to oversee efforts of government agencies to construct and use green buildings. The Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act, separate legislation recently introduced by Jeffords, would require the U.S. to reduce its carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, among other rules. Jeffords is not running for re-election this year, and prospects for this legislation being enacted during this legislative session were unknown at press time.

Occupants of green buildings are more satisfied with thermal comfort and air quality, on average, than occupants of conventional buildings, while occupant satisfaction with lighting and acoustics is comparable between green and non-green buildings. That is the chief finding of a study released in June 2006 by researchers at the Center for the Built Environment (CBE) at the University of California, Berkeley. The findings reflect results from 33,285 respondents and 181 buildings, 15 of them certified through the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED^® Rating System and another six identified by their designer or owner as “green.” Although acoustics was a trouble spot identified by a recent post-occupancy evaluation (POE) by the Cascadia Green Building Council (see

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Vol. 15, No. 4), and lighting was an additional concern in an earlier release of data from CBE (see

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Vol. 14, No. 6), the newer results seem to indicate fewer problems in both areas for green buildings but plenty of room for improvement.