The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has finalized new Energy Star specifications for commercial dishwashers and ice machines. Starting on October 11, 2007, manufacturers will be able to qualify their dishwashers for the Energy Star label; the specification for ice machines will not take effect until January 1, 2008. According to Gwen... Read more

In the first official federal statement about the chemical’s risks, a panel of scientists for the Center for Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction, part of the National Institutes of Health, concluded in August 2007 that bisphenol-A poses “some concern” for human health. After looking at more than 500 animal studies of the chemical, used to... Read more

Back in August 1999, I participated in a U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) charrette to craft the LEED 2.0 Rating System from the original LEED 1.0 pilot. The small workgroup focused on site and ecosystem issues, in which I participated, sought to remove any bias that encouraged building on previously undeveloped sites. We ended up with five... Read more

Ground-source heat pumps (GSHPs), often called “geothermal heat pumps,” exploit the relatively stable temperatures found just 5 feet (1.5 m) or more below the surface, either depositing or extracting low-intensity heat. Heat pumps—whether ground-source or air-source—are basically air conditioners that can be run in reverse to provide heating as... Read more

Six organizations have joined forces to create a design guide focused on indoor air quality (IAQ) in nonresidential buildings. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initially decided to fund a design guide and reached a cooperative agreement with the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers. A memorandum of... Read more

SierraPine, which manufactures the Medex, Medite II, and Arreis lines of architectural fiberboards and moldings made of recycled and recovered wood free of added urea-formaldehyde, has begun producing particleboard using a phenol-formaldehyde (phenolic) binder rather than the conventional urea-formaldehyde (UF) binder. The new particleboard,... Read more

A spokesperson for San Francisco’s Department of Environment confirmed that chances were very good that legislation would be enacted to formalize recommendations put forth in a June 2007 report by the Mayor’s Task Force on Green Building. Following the proposed recommendations, large commercial and high-rise residential buildings, both new and... Read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently drafting a new specification for home plans called Designed to Earn Energy Star. EPA expects to complete the specification by the end of 2007, after two rounds of comments from stakeholders. The current version of the specification requires home plans to be accompanied by information... Read more

In a July 16, 2007 ruling for the LEED for Commercial Interiors Rating System, the U.S. Green Building Council endorsed the use of carbon-neutral products to achieve an innovation point. Both the original query, which was submitted in June of 2006, and the eventual ruling contain extensive qualifications and restrictions on this path to an... Read more

EBN

Vol. 13, No. 8] with new data, Lisa Fay Matthiessen and Peter Morris of Davis Langdon still come to the same conclusion. There are so many huge cost factors in construction that it is not possible to detect any statistically significant difference between... Read more

McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MDBC) has released a draft of the version two criteria for its Cradle to Cradle (C2C) product certification program. The most significant changes to C2C, which certifies an array of consumer and building products based on MBDC’s environmental philosophy, are a new “Basic” level of certification and... Read more

A report released in June 2007 details plans to move the U.S. House of Representatives to carbon-neutral operation by the end of 2008, to reduce energy consumption in House facilities by 50% from 2006 levels by 2017, and to “make House operations a model of sustainability.” The initiative, headed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) and Majority... Read more

In Alex Wilson’s editorial in the June 2007 issue [

EBN Vol. 16, No. 6], he was careful to point out that “the

heat source in nuclear power plants does not emit greenhouse gases” (my emphasis). This simplification distorts the true emissions picture, as shown in an analysis performed by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip... Read more

The Royal Institute of British Architects USA (RIBA–USA) has announced the winners of its international design competition “Building a Sustainable World: Life in the Balance.” The competition asked entrants to conceive self-sustaining communities that respond to the challenges of global climate change (see

EBN

Vol. 15, No. 9).... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced in July 2007 that it had reached a total of 10,000 member companies, signaling large growth in the previous year. The 2007 figure represents a growth of 2,800 members over 2006 numbers; USGBC gained a total of 4,800 members between 2002 and 2006. Member companies include architects,... Read more