BuildingGreen Report

Op-Ed

December 4, 2007

The editors of

Environmental Building News, GreenSpec, and the online BuildingGreen Suite are pleased to announce a new resource: BuildingGreen.com LIVE. Structured like a blog but linked to the full range of articles and product listings available at BuildingGreen.com, and to outside resources, LIVE features up-to-the-minute news,... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has recognized several green building pioneers with its annual Leadership Awards, presented at the Greenbuild Conference and Expo in Chicago in November 2007.

• In the Community category,

EBN advisory board member

Gail Lindsey, FAIA, founder of Design Harmony in Raleigh, North Carolina, was... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007

A bill signed by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would provide rebates to residents and businesses to support the installation of 200,000 solar water heating systems in the state by 2017. The bill, which takes effect on January 1, 2008, requires the State’s energy commission to evaluate data from a pilot project run by the California... Read more

News Analysis

December 4, 2007
When the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) first rolled out the LEED for Homes rating system pilot in 2005, it faced a number of challenges, including creating a provider network, training raters, keeping registration and certification fees low, and convincing homebuilders and homeowners that certification was worth the expense (see

EBN... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007
The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) has released a draft of its Sustainability Tracking, Assessment, and Rating System (STARS) and is hoping to start a pilot phase of the system in January 2008. A self-certifying system, STARS allows colleges and universities to track and report on various aspects of... Read more

News Analysis

December 4, 2007

On November 17, 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its fourth “Synthesis Report” along with a “Summary for Policymakers.” The latest report integrates the findings of reports released earlier in 2007 by each of the three IPCC working groups, which dealt, respectively, with the underlying science of climate change... Read more

Product Review

December 4, 2007

BuildingGreen, Inc., publisher of the

GreenSpec Directory and

Environmental Building News (

EBN), announced its annual Top-10 Green Building Products during the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild Conference and Expo, held in November 2007 in Chicago. The Top-10 consists of the ten most exciting products added to... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007
The Forest Stewardship Council–US (FSC–US) has appointed Corey Brinkema, the former executive director of the Green Institute in Minneapolis, as president of the organization. He has experience running a business unit with FSC chain-of-custody certification and was instrumental in the creation of Minnesota GreenStar, a residential green building... Read more

News Analysis

December 4, 2007

With its dominant position defining green building in the North American market, the LEED Rating System is a popular target for critics with a wide range of axes to grind, some justified, others less so. One of the more valid concerns is that LEED’s promises of energy savings (and therefore carbon reductions) are just that—promises. With the... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon takes place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., with collegiate teams constructing solar-powered houses, demonstrating the homes’ functionality to judges, and giving tours to the public. In 2007, for the first time, first prize has gone to a team from outside the U.S.; the team from... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007
In March 2007, the Research Committee of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) released a report finding that only 0.2% of federally funded research, about $193 million per year, is aimed at green building topics; USGBC then committed $1 million to green building research in June 2007 (see

EBN

Vol. 16, No. 6). In November 2007, the... Read more

News Analysis

December 4, 2007
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) currently has over nine LEED rating systems covering commercial and residential buildings, interiors, and exteriors, all the way up to entire neighborhoods, and several more systems are on the way. Even as LEED continues to proliferate, however, a movement continues among USGBC leadership to make it more... Read more

News Brief

December 4, 2007

Douglas Farr, AIA; John Wiley & Sons, 2007; 304 pages, $75

www.greenplaybook.orginfo@greenplaybook.orgCombine walkable, transit-served urbanism with high-performance building and infrastructure and, according to author Douglas Farr, AIA, you’ve got

Sustainable Urbanism. Beyond just developing a concept, however, the book acts as a... Read more

Blog Post

December 3, 2007
"Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost." —James Thurber

We talk a lot about energy efficiency here at Environmental Building News. If we follow Thurber's lead and add environmental humor to our concerns, what do we get? The green building light bulb... Read more

Blog Post

November 30, 2007
Frank and I are going to tag-team on this post. We attended a presentation at Keene State College in New Hampshire yesterday about solar-hydronic radiant space heating, given by Jack Mann of Nobis. It was arranged by BuildingGreen's pal Joseph Cincotta of LineSync Architecture as part of the "Sustainable Design and Building Science" course he... Read more

Blog Post

November 30, 2007
I'd like to call your attention to the "Editorial Radar" box on the right-hand navigation column—that brown stripe next to these posts. You may have to scroll down (or up) a little. The editors of Environmental Building News use del.icio.us social bookmarking to share links to interesting articles and other information on the internet with each... Read more

Blog Post

November 27, 2007
Over lunch today I was reading the current issue of one of my favorite publications: The Owner Builder—"The Australasian Home Builders Magazine." You can get a taste of the magazine (which is much better looking than its website) from their Sample Articles page. In publication since 1982, the first 25 issues have just been released on CD. I'll be... Read more

Blog Post

November 21, 2007
As the editor who collects all of the press releases, rumors, news tidbits, and blog posts for the editorial team to consider for the EBN news section, I tend to have a broad picture of what's going on in the green building world. In the last several months, green schools have been everywhere. I'm not entirely sure why schools are the latest... Read more

Blog Post

November 20, 2007
It's not all about magnets. Two other nonchemical water treatment systems that have exhibited at Greenbuild for at least the last couple years are worth noting... for one reason or another. During the '06 show in Denver, I spent some time learning about the VRTX—say it "vortex"—sidestream "hydrodynamic cavitation" and filtration system. The... Read more

Blog Post

November 20, 2007
So, this is it. The shoe has dropped. The Fourth (and final) Assessment Report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is out, and people seem to be paying attention. It got prominant coverage in The New York Times, the Washington Post, and a zillion other places—would have had even more impact if it were not on a Saturday, but... Read more