In a move that has surprised many, the U.S. Green Building Council will not issue a call for papers for the November

2004 Greenbuild conference in Portland. Instead, all presentations in the break-out sessions will be invited by the program committee. The Council

will issue a call for posters and has expanded the guidelines, visibility, and size of the poster presentations. Poster presenters will also be offered the opportunity to submit papers for the conference proceedings.

The first modules of the

U.S. Life Cycle Inventory Database (see

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Vol. 12, No. 11) are now fully public and available at www.nrel.gov/lci/. This release represents a major milestone in the effort to produce public data for use in environmental life-cycle assessments, and should eventually help make it possible to compare LCA studies of different products.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and the NAHB Research Center have announced the names of the people who will work to develop the voluntary

Model Green Home Building Guidelines. The 59 stakeholders represent homebuilders, environmentalists, government agencies, and a number of trade organizations. Each stakeholder is assigned to a single area of consideration: lot preparation and design, resource efficiency, water and energy efficiency, or indoor environmental quality and homeowner education. NAHB expects the guidelines to be finished later this year. NAHB is on the Web at www.nahb.org, and the Research Center is at www.nahbrc.org. For more on NAHB’s efforts to green the homebuilding industry, see

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Vol. 12, No. 6.

PBS will begin airing a new television series this June focused on green building. Energy Wise Healthy Home will track the design and construction of a new home over the course of 26 half-hour episodes. The home is expected to earn Energy Star

^® Home certification and American Lung Association Healthy House certification in its final episode. The show will be cohosted by Kris Axhoj, a custom homebuilder, and Rachel Lee, a professional actress. Details, including a brief description of each episode, are at www.ewhh.com.

A new ad campaign is targeting kids between the ages of 8 and 13 in an effort to reduce energy use in homes. The three-year campaign, funded by the Ad Council, Energy Outreach Colorado, and a number of other partners, uses television, radio, and Internet public-service announcements to

teach children to become

“Energy Hog Busters.” The Web site includes games, such as Bulb Hunter, Attic Attack, and Whack a Hog, that target common residential energy wasters. For more information, or to play, visit www.energyhog.org.

A recent design team solicitation from the Architect of the Capitol placed a whopping

25% of its selection criteria on the teams’ green design capabilities. “We believe this level of emphasis is a new high-water mark for the federal government,” said Terrel Emmons, FAIA, director of Planning and Programming. The project, being procured under the General Service Administration’s Design Excellence in Public Architecture program, involves updating the master plan for the U.S. Capitol Complex, including the Capitol, all Senate and House office buildings, all Library of Congress buildings, the Supreme Court facilities, the Botanic Gardens, and more. The announcement, solicitation GS11P04MKC0022, is online at www.fedbizopps.gov. For details, contact Chrischanda Smith at 202-358-3573 or at chrischanda.smith@gsa.gov.

Interface Flooring has sold more than a million square yards (840,000 m

²) of climate-neutral

Cool Carpet™ since its introduction in August 2003 (see

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Vol. 12, No. 10). Through the Cool Carpet initiative, customers are funding greenhouse-gas reduction projects to offset the emissions resulting from the carpet throughout its life cycle. According to the Climate Neutral Network, a third-party certifier, the sales of Cool Carpet have already offset more than 16,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Details are at www.interfaceflooring.com.

Continuing a trend of rapid growth, the

U.S. Green Building Council announced in early February that it had accepted its 4,000th member. USGBC membership—which is open only to companies and organizations, not to individuals—hit 2,000 in September of 2002 and 3,000 in May of 2003.

The

Home Builders Association of Metro Denver, which recently trademarked the name Built Green

^® for its residential green building program (the largest in the nation), has issued a cease and desist request against Vermont’s

Building for Social Responsibility (BSR) over its use of the name Vermont Built Green for its own fledgling program (see

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Vol. 12, No. 7). BSR seems to be retreating quickly and is considering other names, including Vermont Building Greener. The Denver program is online at www.builtgreen.org. The Vermont program is online at www.bsr-vt.org.

In a unique agreement, the leaders of four architectural institutions have committed to sustainable design. The “

Barcelona Declaration on Sustainable Design” was signed at the Construmat Fair in Barcelona, Spain by Jaime Lerner, representing the International Union of Architects (and former mayor of Curitiba, Brazil); Paul Hyett, for the Royal Institute of British Architects; Carlos Hernandez Pezzi, for the Consejo Superior de los Colegios de Arquitectos de España; and Daniel Williams, FAIA, for The American Institute of Architects. In recognition of the role that design plays in both the health of the natural environment and the quality of human life, the declaration calls for cooperation among design and building professionals worldwide, “so that they may contribute with ever greater effect to the delivery of a built and natural landscape which is safe for children and the children’s children of all species and communities.”