by Norbert Lechner, 2001. John Wiley & Sons, New York. Hardcover, 640 pages, $85

Heating, Cooling, Lighting is one of the most useful and important books on building design in the last ten years. The book is not inexpensive, but it’s worth every penny. Norbert Lechner, an architecture professor at Auburn... Read more

has accepted a position as Vice President of the U.S. Green Building Council, with primary responsibility for technical development and implementation of the LEED™ Green Building Rating System. Until November 2000, Howard was with the Building Research Establishment in the U.K., where he oversaw that organization’s influential... Read more

I read with great interest your recent article “Getting the ‘Right Stuff’: A Guide to Green Building Retailers” (

EBN

Vol. 10, No. 4). Your newsletter has always been a source of valuable, and credible, information. I would like to tell you a bit about my company and point out a couple of differences of opinion I have with your... Read more

consolidate Energy Star brand awareness among consumers. In a recent letter to all partners, the manager of the... Read more

Most of us have a general understanding that buildings and the process of development have a pretty big impact on the environment. But what are those impacts and just how significant are they?

The architecture and engineering firm Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (HOK) was among the recipients of this year’s

Green Cross Award from Global Green USA and Green Cross International, the peace and environmental organization founded by Mikhail Gorbachev. Accepting the award for HOK from Mr. Gorbachev at the April 25, 2001 gala in New... Read more

While efforts by American industry to clean up its act have been well publicized in recent years, toxic releases appear to be on the increase. The quantity of

toxic chemicals emitted by U.S. industry grew by 5% in 1999, according to the annual Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A total of 7.7... Read more

There are quite a few insulated concrete form (ICF) systems on the market whose manufacturers make a variety of resource efficiency claims.

EBN came across an interesting newcomer, Tech Block, at this year’s Greenprints conference in Atlanta. Tech Block uses 100% recycled EPS in a cementitious matrix similar to the popular Rastra system... Read more

by Richard Pinkham. Rocky Mountain Institute, 2000. Spiral-bound, 64 pages. Available printed for $12 plus shipping from RMI, 1739 Snowmass Creek Rd., Snowmass, CO 81654; 970/927-3851; or available for free in PDF format from the RMI Web site:

www.rmi.org

We are saddened to note the passing of two mavericks in the world of sustainability. On February 20, Donella (Dana) Meadows died suddenly of bacterial meningitis at age 59. In her late 20s, Dana was principal author of

Limits to Growth (1972), one of the first books to address the limits of population growth and resource extraction.... Read more

FPL Energy of Florida is building a

300-megawatt wind farm—the world’s largest—on the border of Oregon and Washington. The 450-turbine wind farm, which will produce enough power for approximately 70,000 homes, should be completed by the end of this year. Power from the Stateline Wind Generating Project will be sold throughout the West... Read more

during 2000 reached an all-time high at 57.0% total imports (up from 56.6% in 1998 and 55.6% in 1999), according to the February 2001 edition of

Monthly Energy Review, published by the Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy (

www.eia.doe.gov). Net petroleum imports (... Read more

EBN

Vol. 4, No. 3). That product was based on the British product Stramit, which was invented in the 1940s and has been in... Read more

, according to a story on MSNBC (January 20). More than a quarter of China is already desert, and sand dunes are now within 60 miles (96 km) of Beijing —and moving closer as quickly as 15 miles (24 km) per year! Last year many Beijing residents were hospitalized with... Read more

We have the Environmental Home Center—almost an ‘Eco-Home Depot’—where our clients can see and actually... Read more

The

Northeast Green Building Awards, sponsored by the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, were announced at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s (NESEA) Building Energy 2001 conference in Medford, Massachusetts on March 23, 2001. Listed below are the First Prize winners in each of the professional categories. Other winning... Read more

Oregon’s controversial

Measure 7, which requires payments to landowners when state or local government regulations reduce property value, has been declared unconstitutional. An Oregon Circuit Court judge ruled in February that Ballot Measure 7 violates Oregon’s Constitution. This ruling is expected to be appealed, and the Oregon... Read more

The Energy Star® program, a joint effort of the U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, has named

Johnson Controls among its 2001 Award Winners. Recognized for its commitment to pollution prevention by improving the energy performance of buildings throughout the U.S., the company provides building control... Read more

They have become a part of too many American landscapes: abandoned or irreversibly declining retail malls. The Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) has dubbed them “greyfields malls.” According to a recent analysis PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) conducted as a part of the CNU “Greyfields Mall Study,” there are more than 140 regional malls—sites... Read more