The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) will undertake a global project to encourage retrofitting buildings with energy-efficient technologies, former President Bill Clinton announced in May 2007. The program brings together several energy service companies and banks to help initiate and finance retrofit programs in 15 cities around the world,... Read more

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Buildings with large expanses of glazing can suffer dramatic cooling energy requirements and create glare problems for occupants. Façade shading systems... Read more

ASTM International has published a new standard for investigations of indoor air quality problems in residential buildings. Standard D-7297 contains guidelines for an initial assessment of possible indoor air quality problems and a subsequent three-phase process for finding the sources of any problems. A first-phase walk through the house is... Read more

Members of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) approved a measure that effectively increases the minimum energy performance of LEED-certified projects by 14% for new buildings and 7% for major renovations. Introduced in November 2006, the measure requires all projects to obtain a minimum two out of ten points in the energy optimization... Read more

Both houses of the Connecticut legislature and Governor M. Jodi Rell have approved a bill expanding the state’s ban on pesticide use on school grounds and playing fields. A similar bill, passed in 2005, prohibited the use of pesticides on public and private elementary school grounds starting in 2006, but gave schools until July 2008 to... Read more

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The International Code Council (ICC) and the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) have agreed to create a green building educational manual for code... Read more

Just as President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal led America out of the Great Depression in our grandparent’s day, a dramatic set of initiatives will be required if we are to prevent the Great Warming. Many have argued for something akin to the Apollo Project to carry out the research and development needed to advance low-cost renewable energy... Read more

One can hardly pick up a magazine or turn on the television today without hearing something about climate change. The issue finally appears to be gaining traction in our nation’s collective consciousness. Much of the focus of reducing greenhouse gas emissions rightly centers on how we design and construct buildings. Indeed, the 2030... Read more

The term "volatile organic compound" (VOC) means different things to different people. In high school or college chemistry class we learned that VOCs are a class of carbon-based compounds that readily become volatile (gaseous) under ordinary (atmospheric) conditions. Thus, we learned that VOCs are any of those carbon-based compounds that smell... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released version 2.0 of its EnergyPlus modeling software. Compatible with Windows and Linux operating systems, the new version of the software features additional weather and materials data, a new green roof simulation tool, and enhancements to its ventilation and mechanical systems modeling tools. More... Read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released the Watershed Plan Builder, an interactive, Web-based tool designed to help planners, stakeholders, and communities develop watershed management plans. The tool creates an outline of a watershed plan tailored to a specific project based on data entered by the user. This outline walks... Read more

Building for Environmental and Economic Sustainability, software from the Building and Fire Research Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Free download from www.bfrl.nist.gov/oae/software/bees.html or order from the U.S. EPA’s Pollution Prevention Information Clearinghouse, 202-566-0799, ppic@epa.gov. For further... Read more

Launched in March 2007 by Architecture for Humanity (AFH), the Open Architecture Network is an online, interactive database and workspace for designers and architects to share projects and ideas. Uploaded projects are protected by Creative Commons licenses, which allow authors and designers to grant some or all of their copyrights to the public... Read more

The California Energy Commission (CEC) filed suit against the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in April 2007 to require DOE to uphold California’s washing machine efficiency standards. In December 2006, DOE denied the State’s 2005 request for a waiver from federal washing machine standards; the waiver would have allowed California to enact... Read more

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Nuclear power is increasingly being touted as a leading solution to global climate change. Nuclear energy proponents—and a growing number of environmentalists—correctly point out that nuclear fission, the heat source in nuclear power plants, does not emit greenhouse gases. Given the clear need to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions, nuclear... Read more

The American Institute of Architects, American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers, Architecture 2030, Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, and U.S. Green Building Council have reached an agreement setting a baseline for the goals of the 2030 Challenge, which calls for an immediate 50% reduction in... Read more

Despite the increasing popularity of green building, research on high-performance building practices and technologies represents a tiny percentage of federally funded research. According to a report released in March 2007 by the Research Committee of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), only 0.2% of federally funded research, an average of... Read more