Hurricane Katrina and a long list of other natural disasters over the years—from the Northeast’s Blizzard of 1978 that killed 17 people and left tens of thousands of people without heat and water, to the Chicago heat wave that killed more than 700 people during a one-week period in 1995, to the January 1998 ice storm in Eastern Canada that... Read more

Sustainable Hotel Siting, Design, and Construction

, published by Conservation International and the International Business Leaders Forum, is intended to help the travel and leisure industry build more environmentally friendly hotels. The book was produced with the support of nine of the world’s leading hotel chains, including Hilton,... Read more

BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of the GreenSpec®Directory and Environmental Building News™, announced the fourth annual Top-10 Green Building Products during the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild Conference and Expo in November. The Top-10 represent the most exciting products added to GreenSpec in the past year. A press release about... Read more

Cellulose insulation manufacturer U.S. GreenFiber, LLC, based in Charlotte, North Carolina, acquired Bonded Insulation, located in Hagman, New York, in July 2005. The acquisition will allow GreenFiber to expand its manufacturing and distribution presence in the Northeast and in eastern Canada. “GreenFiber has the capacity to turn what has... Read more

Green Builder® Media, LLC, plans to publish the first issue of Green Builder Magazine in January 2006. With 90,000 copies mailed to builders, contractors, and remodelers, and an additional 20,000 distributed at the International Builders Show, Green Builder will launch as the third largest magazine in the homebuilding industry, according to the... Read more

The National Association of Industrial and Office Properties (NAIOP), the world’s leading organization representing commercial real estate executives, has awarded its first Green Development Award to Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT) for a 125,000 ft2 (11,600 m2) office building in Annapolis Junction, Maryland. The award was developed in... Read more

The Greenguard™ Environmental Institute, a nonprofit certifier of products with low emissions of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), has created the Greenguard Standard for Children & Schools™, which sets emissions criteria for building materials, furnishings, finishes, and cleaning products to be used in schools and daycare facilities.... Read more

The WatterSaver heat-pump water heater from ECR International (sold under the Dunkirk brand) has been taken out of production due to tepid consumer response despite offering significant energy-savings potential. “We hate to see it go away, but it just didn’t grab enough of the market,” Karl Mayer, OEM sales manager for ECR International, told... Read more

California’s updated Title 24 building efficiency standards, approved by the California Energy Commission in late 2003 (see

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Vol. 13, No. 1), took effect on October 1, 2005. The strengthened standards include a range of changes for both residential and nonresidential buildings. Mandatory changes involve indoor and outdoor... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council has named Tom Hicks vice president of the LEED® Rating System. Hicks has served as director of LEED for Existing Buildings since November 2004 and before that spent nine years as principal architect and program manager of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star® commercial building rating system.... Read more

P. Ole Fanger, D.Sc., director of the International Centre for Indoor Environment and Energy at the Technical University of Denmark and fellow of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Inc. (ASHRAE), has won the Pettenkofer Gold Medal, the International Academy of Indoor Air Sciences’ highest honor for... Read more

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 2 have announced a call for entries in the second annual New York City Green Building Competition. The competition is open to projects built in or designed for specific sites within the boroughs of New York City. Awards will be... Read more

In balloting that closed on October 28, 2005, the membership of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) voted overwhelmingly to approve version 2.2 of USGBC’s flagship LEED® for New Construction (LEED-NC) rating system. While other versions of LEED have been released in the interim, this vote endorses the first substantive update of the NC... Read more

The Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability (MTS) is preparing to release its Sustainable/EPP Flooring Standard© for all hard-surface flooring, following a public meeting in Dallas, Texas, on November 1. MTS is also holding organizational meetings for two new standards it is seeking to develop: the Integrated Design Process... Read more

The Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary in Alberta, Canada, has announced the establishment of the Haworth Chair in Integrated Design, funded by Haworth, Inc., under the “Project

evolve” partnership with Direct Energy Business Services. The announcement did not specify whether the Haworth Chair holder will be... Read more

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Vol. 13, No. 8 for winners of the first competition). All prototypes had to meet... Read more

The International Code Council (ICC), an organization focused on building safety and fire prevention, disappointed the green building community when it voted in late September 2005 not to adopt member-ratified changes to the 2004 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) that would have strengthened standards for wall insulation. The... Read more