EBN advisory board member, was the founding chairman of The American... Read more

EBN to take a deeper look at alternative insulation materials, particularly relating to their toxicity and life-cycle impacts.

Research by the Green Science Policy... Read more

Mike Italiano, U.S. Green Building Council cofounder and current CEO of the Institute for Market Transformation to Sustainability, recently announced a new set of underwriting standards for investors interested in backing commercial green building projects.

Thanks so much for your efforts in addressing the issue of flame-retardants in foam insulation (see EBN Aug. 2009). Over the past 10 years we have tested hundreds of products and homes for semi-volatile organic compounds (SVOCs) in order to trouble shoot contaminants in homes as well as specify healthier materials for new construction and... Read more

In an expanded effort to ensure continual performance of LEED projects, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) recently launched its Building Performance Initiative, which will work in conjunction with the Council’s decision to revoke certification under the 2009 rating system—and beyond—if a building’s performance is inconsistent (see

Mineral wool forms naturally when strong winds blow through molten lava to create the thin, gold-colored strands that volcanologists call Pele’s hair. Today’s mineral wool insulation is made in a less dramatic process using basalt and iron-ore slag that is melted, spun into fibers, and held together with a phenolic resin. Adjusting the density... Read more

A second public comment period for the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) treatment of forest certification in the LEED Rating System is open until October 14, 2009. At issue is a collection of criteria that USGBC will use to evaluate forest certification programs to gain recognition in LEED. The first public comment period (see EBN Sept.... Read more

A suburb of the nation’s capital, Alexandria, Virginia, started to outgrow its high school several years ago, leading the school board to decide that a replacement for T.C. Williams High School was needed. The new LEED Gold high school, designed by Moseley Architects, was built on the same property as the old one, which was demolished after the... Read more

Sustainability is the ability to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” – Brundtland Commission

“In every deliberation, we must consider the impact on the seventh generation, even if it requires having skin as thick as the bark of a pine.” – Iroquois law

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Architectural testing concern HTL will be at GlassBuild America shooting missiles at windows again. The demonstration/demolition follows the Miami-Dade large missile protocol by shooting 2x4s at impact-resistant and non-impact-resistant windows. A press release from HTL quotes NGA Industry Events Director Susan Jacob: "There is nothing quite... Read more

Let me get right to the point: unvented gas (and kerosene) space heaters and fireplaces are a bad idea. Don't install one.

Euphemistically called "... Read more

Energy-efficiency advocates fighting profligate energy use to overcool workplaces in summer and overheat them in winter now have a compelling new argument: people are healthier in spaces that are less severely conditioned. That is the finding of a peer-reviewed study by Mark Mendell, of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, entitled “Indoor... Read more

Last week I described some observations about transportation from a trip I took to Sweden two years ago. While there, I toured two state-of-the-art, wood-chip-fired, combined heat and power (CHP) plants, one in... Read more

With its rustic stone facades and vaulted roof supported by glue-laminated beams, Kroon Hall, the new home for Yale University’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, looks a bit like an elegant rendition of a New England barn. But the reference wasn’t intentional, insist its architects, London-based Hopkins with the Connecticut firm... Read more

A lot of people have been working for a long time to try to head off global warming — and some progress... Read more