BuildingGreen Report

Commercial kitchens are one of the most energy-intensive building spaces, consuming approximately five times the energy per square foot of a standard office.

A kitchen’s carbon problem is not just from the CO2 emitted during combustion. Kitchen appliances are often powered by natural gas (methane), whose global warming potential is 28... Read more

The U.S. has made strides toward attaining gender equality, but it may be a fragile achievement. Even in the green building community, cracks are starting to show.

The U.S. Green Building Council surveyed more than 500 people in the green building industry to gauge the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in the workplace. The... Read more

What is a sustainable material? A big, complicated question, admits Lona Rerick, associate principal at ZGF architects. But the Architecture & Design Materials Pledge recently adopted by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) starts to get at the answer, she said.

It’s time to stop playing... Read more

If you don’t spend your “day-to-day” in the healthy materials space, it’s hard to create strategy and align your company to meet your customers' (what seems to be) ever-changing asks and project goals. This webinar is geared toward the building product... Read more

Are you getting questions, advice, and dubious sales pitches from all comers about how to design and run an HVAC system to combat infectious disease? You’re not alone. Engineers, facility managers, architects, and other building professionals are all feeling immense pressure about COVID-19 right now—especially since the Centers for Disease... Read more

Fuel cells and hydrogen are necessary, inevitable power sources of the future. But technological challenges, high cost, required fuel infrastructure, and other issues have allowed photovoltaics, wind, and batteries to become the short-term interventions for our fossil fuel addiction.

Bloom Energy has been making fuel cells since 2009,... Read more

When you ask people what they’re doing for the environment, many will point to recycling as one of their primary actions. Yet recycling isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, as NPR recently reported. What’s more, it’s not actually happening as consistently as we are led to believe. And that’s just as true for construction and... Read more

Did you notice your AIA design award submissions looked different this year? You were likely asked for information that you only used to provide when submitting for a COTE (Committee on the Environment) Top Ten Award—such as the project’s predicted net energy use intensity (EUI) or embodied carbon estimate. These questions are currently being... Read more

Implicit biases—the unconscious assumptions we make about people based on their gender, race, physical ability, and many other factors—don’t stay buried. They lead to adverse decisions and behavior that we don’t even recognize as sexist, racist, or ableist. Implicit bias is particularly dangerous in situations ripe for... Read more

We at BuildingGreen have generally avoided taking political stands. I believe that regardless of our positions on fiscal policy or a range of social issues, we can—and must—come together to protect the ecological functions that support life as we know it on planet Earth.... Read more

Editor’s Note, February 4, 2024: New data have revealed the need for a more precautionary approach to vetting and procuring wood products. See Wood: Is It Still Good? Part One: Embodied Carbon.

When Michigan State University started planning its new STEM building, the design team was considering a typical concrete or steel... Read more

Mass timber is lauded for being “climate smart”—meaning it helps mitigate climate change—because it stores carbon from the atmosphere instead of emitting carbon.
But is this true?

Some researchers are starting to suggest that we look deeper. They say that the traditional way of tracking the greenhouse gas emissions of wood products... Read more

At least 11% of total carbon emissions worldwide come from building construction, most of which is embodied in the materials used to complete projects. A new initiative, All For Reuse, calls upon building professionals to embrace material reuse options to help mitigate our global climate crisis.

“We’ll unlock a whole economy that can... Read more

In July 2020, 239 scientists urged the medical community and public-health authorities to acknowledge the potential for airborne transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and promote additional precautionary measures like increasing ventilation in indoor, enclosed environments. By implication, they suggested that HVAC systems... Read more

Washing hands properly is one of the primary ways of controlling the spread SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19. Drying hands properly is also important, as wet hands are more likely to provide an avenue for spreading pathogens. Yet even this seemingly simple act has reignited a contentious issue: what is the best way to dry your... Read more

How can we safeguard the health of occupants while preventing future health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic? The IMMUNE Building Standard, developed by Bucharest-based Genesis Property in collaboration with The National Institute for Infectious Disease in Romania, is a new approach to assessing and certifying human health and safety measures... Read more

Mohammad Abbasi and Matt Dempsey contributed to this analysis.

For a while, the space was dominated by the WELL Building rating system, but the experience of many architects and consultants has been that WELL was either too... Read more

Building tours: they’ve been a vital educational component of green building from day one. But now COVID-19 has made them unsafe. Thanks to the Sustainability Leader Peer Networks we help convene, we’ve compiled a list of online tours and other videos that you can view from the safety of home.

This is... Read more

Returning to work: for many, it’s unthinkable without some kind of reassurance that leadership and the facilities team have taken all possible precautions. Lots of organizations are weighing in on what we should pay attention to, but how do we know if it’s working?

The free Re-entry program from Arc is a tracking and measurement program... Read more

Words may inspire, but it’s action that creates change.

             –Simon Sinek

Building owners, architects, and others on the value chain have many opportunities to make headway into sustainable building, but there are also unique steps that manufacturers can take to help improve and promote products while also working... Read more