BuildingGreen Report

News Brief

June 7, 2006

In April 2006, Maine became the first state to offer a financial incentive for recycling building thermostats that contain mercury and the first state to mandate thermostat recycling for homeowners. Previous laws banned the sale of new mercury thermostats and required recycling by wholesalers. A minimum $5 incentive will be offered for each... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006

The International Interior Design Association (IIDA) has announced the winners of its annual Student Sustainable Design Competition. Bridget Dunn, from Florida State University in Tallahassee, won Best of Competition, and Olena Baranova, from the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, won an Award of Merit. Holly Murdock, from Utah State... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006

Jane Jacobs, an advocate for dense and lively cities best known for her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, died April 25, 2006, at age 89. While Jacobs did not have formal architectural training, she had an inside view of urban renewal projects from an editorial post at Architectural Forum magazine and a keen appreciation of... Read more

News Analysis

June 7, 2006

Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) dominate the plenum-rated electrical and data cable market (see

EBN

Vol. 13, No. 3), but a newcomer from GE Plastics could offer an intriguing alternative. In December 2005, Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. (UL) listed GE’s Flexible Noryl® resin for wire coating... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006
A plague of mountain pine beetles in British Columbia’s lodgepole pine forests has so far claimed 17.3 million acres (7 million ha) of forest. Temperatures in British Columbia haven’t been warmer in 8,000 years, and global warming is unfolding 50 years in advance of forecasts in some areas, Richard Hebda, Ph.D., a curator of botany and earth... Read more

News Analysis

June 7, 2006

A water conservation bill currently moving through the California Legislature would set the maximum water consumption for toilets at 1.3 gallons per flush (gpf; 4.9 lpf). The legislation, Assembly Bill 2496, was authored by John Laird (D–Santa Cruz) and passed the State Assembly on May 15, 2006. If approved by the Senate and signed into law,... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for heavy industries in the state, such as power plants, refineries, and factories, to report emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that are contributing to global warming. Making the announcement at a San Francisco global warming summit in April 2006, the governor pledged to... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006
Established in 2003 by Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, the Green Roof Awards of Excellence recognize leadership in integrated design and implementation of green roof projects. The awards recognize completed projects in extensive and intensive categories—6” (150 mm) or less of growing medium in extensive installations and more than 6” in intensive... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006
Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has announced that four wind turbines will be erected on the roof of the Richard J. Daley Center. The machines, Aeroturbines, were invented by Bil Becker, a professor of industrial design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and manufactured by Aerotecture International, Inc., based in Chicago. The turbines are... Read more

Op-Ed

June 7, 2006

We are thrilled to announce that Tristan Roberts has joined our staff as associate editor of

Environmental Building News. Tristan grew up on a small dairy farm in upstate New York; attended high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts; graduated from Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont, with a degree in philosophy and... Read more

News Analysis

June 7, 2006

When LEED® for New Construction (LEED-NC) version 2.2 was released in November 2005, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) dictated that project teams that had registered projects under previous versions of LEED-NC were free to migrate to the new version, but that such a migration was an all-or-nothing proposition. A project must be submitted... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006
The American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) cut the ribbon on the new green roof over its Washington, D.C., headquarters on April 26, 2006. On hand were representatives from the District of Columbia and Green Roofs for Healthy Cities as well as the ASLA leadership. Designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh, FASLA, the 3,300 ft2 (307 m2) roof... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006

Innovative Design, Inc., of Raleigh, North Carolina, was recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), for “Excellence in Energy Efficiency.” The company was honored in March 2006 as the first architecture firm to receive recognition for energy-efficient design. The recognition was based on Innovative Design’s participation in... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006

Detective James Zadroga’s January 5, 2006, death of respiratory failure is the first to be officially blamed on exposure to dust from the September 11, 2001, collapse of the World Trade Center. “It is felt with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that the cause of death in this case was directly related to the 9/11 incident,” according to... Read more

News Brief

June 7, 2006

Arizona Public Service Company (APS) has announced the opening of the state’s first solar-thermal power plant, and the first built in the nation in 17 years. Built by Solargenix Energy, LLC, of Raleigh, North Carolina, the plant features over 100,000 ft2 (9,000 m2) of parabolic-trough mirrors—looking like several rows of mirrored half-pipe—that... Read more

Feature

Tracking the performance of a building's mechanical and electrical systems is essential for energy savings that persist over time.

June 7, 2006

Andy Shapiro noticed something funny when he examined the energy use of the new manufacturing facility for NRG Systems, Inc., in Hinesburg, Vermont: lights were turning on at night when nobody was using the space. The LEED® Gold building’s sophisticated measurement and verification (M&V) system, which records when and where the building... Read more

News Analysis

The U.S. Green Building Council is promoting a plan to expand LEED's recognition of wood while refining its handling of non-wood biobased materials.

June 7, 2006

A new initiative from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) board of directors hopes to bring resolution to the prickly subject of wood in the LEED® Rating System. The timber industry has used its leverage to slow the adoption of LEED by state governments and federal agencies and has sponsored the introduction of a competing rating... Read more

Product Review

Glazing from Sage Electrochromics, Inc., allows users to change its visible light and total solar transmittance properties with the push of a button

June 7, 2006

Sizing and placing of windows has always required balancing the need to provide daylight and views with the need to manage solar heat gain and limit heat loss. “Fundamentally, a static window with fixed properties is almost always a poor compromise between night and day, summer and winter, sunny and overcast,” says Stephen Selkowitz, who heads... Read more

News Brief

May 3, 2006

Energy and sustainability consultant CTG Energetics, Inc., has announced the opening of its northeast regional office in Providence, Rhode Island. The office is led by Stephen Turner, P.E., a consulting engineer who specializes in mechanical, electrical, and energy systems for buildings and campuses. The northeast office will focus on... Read more

News Analysis

May 3, 2006

Rodman Industries, manufacturer of ResinCore1™—an FSC-certified, recycled-content particleboard made with phenolic resin—has announced that it will shut its doors by the end of May 2006. Rodman has been producing particleboard since 1965. The shutdown comes on the heels of last November’s unexpected folding of Dow BioProducts, which... Read more