I have been following the struggle that the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) continues to have with the timber industry concerning the rigidity of the LEED® Rating System, and I am writing today to express my sincere concerns about Alex Wilson’s recommendations for adjusting MRc6 and MRc7 of LEED [see

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Vol. 15, No. 6].... Read more

The Royal Institute of British Architects – U.S.A. (RIBA-USA) recently announced “Building a Sustainable World: Life in the Balance,” an international competition to develop concepts for sustainable communities, from small towns to large urban subdivisions, that respond effectively to predicted shifts in global climate. Although there are no... Read more

Lead-containing paint, banned in the U.S. in 1978, is still common in several Asian countries, according to a study published in the September 2006 issue of

Environmental Research. Researchers tested new paint in China, India, and Malaysia, and found that two-thirds of it contained 0.5% or more lead by weight, the U.S. threshold in... Read more

Occupants of green buildings are more satisfied with thermal comfort and air quality, on average, than occupants of conventional buildings, while occupant satisfaction with lighting and acoustics is comparable between green and non-green buildings. That is the chief finding of a study released in June 2006 by researchers at the Center for the... Read more

Environmental Building News published a case study on the Patagonia distribution center in Reno, Nevada, ten years ago (see

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Vol. 5, No. 5), the outdoor clothing and gear company was just moving into its new building, which was designed to facilitate future expansions. Recently, that planning paid off when Patagonia... Read more

Announced in February 2006 (see

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Vol. 15, No. 3) by the Greenguard Environmental Institute™, the Greenguard Mold Protection Program™ recently signed up its first buildings, two luxury condominium towers under construction in Orange Beach, Alabama. Certification requires the developers to follow best-practices guidelines set... Read more

Thank you for your excellent article on measurement and verification [M&V; see

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Vol. 15, No. 6]. My experience is that getting this data and actually using it is really difficult to accomplish. The NRG Systems building the article mentions is

such an unusual case. The building owners are leaders in their sector of... Read more

The National Center for Healthy Housing (NCHH) has given top honors to the American Lung Association’s Healthy House Builder Guidelines (see

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Vol. 11, No. 11) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star® with Indoor Air Package (see

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Vol. 12, No. 5) for protecting the health and safety of... Read more

Leonardo Academy, Inc., has announced its intention to develop standards for quantifying and documenting emission inventories, offsets, and reduction credits. A nonprofit, the Leonardo Academy helps companies and organizations quantify their emissions footprints, calculate emission reductions from energy-efficiency projects, determine how to... Read more

At some point in the development of a standard like one for green building, a trusted organization needs to provide independent and unbiased oversight. At American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), for example, there is proven balance to the memberships of standards developing committees, so no one... Read more