E Source, a subscription-based information provider focusing on energy efficiency and utility demand-side management, has been purchased from the McGraw-Hill Companies by a group of E Source managers, including Michael Shepard, one of the original founders. E Source Companies, LLC, with about 45 employees, remains located in Boulder, Colorado. E Source was founded as Competitek in 1986 as a for-profit spin-off from the Rocky Mountain Institute. The company was subsequently sold to

The Financial Times of London for $18 million, then acquired by McGraw-Hill to be folded into Platts, its energy information division. Terms of the March 2006 management buyback were not disclosed. Shepard, who is president of the new company, is upbeat about the change. “We’re excited about a renewed focus on our roots in energy efficiency, renewables, and sustainable design,” he told

EBN. For details, visit www.esource.com.

New York Institute of Technology’s (NYIT) entry in the 2005 Solar Decathlon found a permanent home in June 2006 at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) in Kings Point, New York. The NYIT team, which was the only team in the 2005 competition to use a hydrogen fuel cell for power, has dubbed the 800 ft² (74 m²) house America’s first solar-hydrogen home. Now open for tours, the house will serve as a renewable energy research and educational center for USMMA’s Alternative Power Program. For details, visit app.usmma.edu/h2home.htm. For more on the Solar Decathlon, see

EBN

Vol. 14, No. 11.

Building materials giant USG Corporation has joined the Alliance for Sustainable Built Environments, a group launched in 2003 to educate the marketplace and top management on the benefits of reducing the impact of facilities on the environment and building occupants. “By joining the Alliance, USG can work with like-minded companies to help other organizations understand and embrace the triple-bottom-line benefits of ‘going green,’” says William Foote, USG chairman and CEO. USG is online at www.usg.com. For more on the Alliance, see EBN Vol. 13, No. 4.

 

 

Jason McLennan, principal at BNIM Architects, founder and director of Elements, BNIM’s sustainable design consulting division, and founder of Ecotone Publishing, has been named CEO of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council, a chapter of both the U.S. and Canada Green Building Councils. McLennan will maintain a limited role at Elements and Ecotone. The Cascadia chapter is online at chapters.usgbc.org/cascadiagbc/.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has added the following members to its Core Research Committee: Gail Brager, Ph.D., professor and associate director of the Center for the Built Environment at the University of California, Berkeley; Drury Crawley, AIA, technology development manager at the U.S. Department of Energy; John Fernandez, AIA, associate professor of building technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Judith Heerwagen, Ph.D., of J. H. Heerwagen and Associates; Michael Holtz, FAIA, president of Architectural Energy Corporation; and Peter Morris, principal of Davis Langdon. For more on the Research Committee, see

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Vol. 15, No. 2.

The Chicago City Council established the Green Roof Improvement Fund in June 2006, which will encourage owners of existing downtown buildings to retrofit them with green roofs. The $500,000 fund will match the investments made by building owners, up to $100,000 per project. “With more green roofs than any other city in the United States, Chicago has been a leader in incorporating green roofs into new development projects,” said Mayor Richard M. Daley. “This pilot program will expand our efforts to existing downtown buildings by helping owners defray installation costs.”

Virginia Avenue Park in Santa Monica, California, recently earned a Silver rating in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED^® for New Construction rating system, becoming the first park in North America to achieve LEED certification. The park, which opened in November 2005, was designed by Koning Eizenberg Architecture in Santa Monica and Spurlock Poirier Landscape Architects in San Diego. Designed for sustainability, the park features energy- and water-efficient systems, stations for recharging alternative-fuel vehicles, and a parking area, paved with durable turf, that doubles as a play area.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded a grant to the American Horticultural Society (AHS) to update the map of plant hardiness zones, reflecting the average annual low temperatures across the country. More than three years after AHS completed the revised map, however, USDA has yet to publish it. The map is based on 16 years of data (compared to 13 years used in the previous version, published in 1990), but USDA now claims that a 30-year interval would yield a more reliable map. The AHS map shows how warming climates have pushed the zones slightly northward, causing critics to believe that the Bush administration has refused to publish the map for political, not scientific, reasons. Meanwhile, the National Arbor Day Foundation has published a new hardiness map, which is available online at www.arborday.org/media/zonechanges.cfm.

Exposure to air pollution before birth can cause developmental delay in children, according to a study performed by Columbia University’s Center for Children’s Environmental Health and published by

Environmental Health Perspectives in April 2006. The study measured the exposure of pregnant women living in the Washington Heights, Central Harlem, and South Bronx neighborhoods of New York City to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), which are released by combustion, with automobile exhaust being the main source. The study, which tested 183 three-year-old children, found that those who were exposed to the highest PAH levels scored, on average, 6% lower on cognitive tests than the less-exposed children and were three times as likely to be developmentally disabled. Previous studies have linked

in utero PAH exposure to reduced weight and head circumference at birth.

In June 2006, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors enacted the nation’s first ban on some products containing bisphenol-A (BPA), used to make the hard plastic polycarbonate as well as most epoxies. BPA, an endocrine disrupter, has been linked to a range of health effects—most recently prostate cancer (see

EBN

Vol. 15, No. 7). The San Francisco ordinance, which takes effect on December 1, bans the manufacture, distribution in commerce, and sale of products that contain any amount of BPA and are intended for use by children under three years of age; this includes baby bottles, pacifiers, and toys. The ordinance also bans some applications of six forms of phthalates, used to soften some plastics.