BuildingGreen Report

Made from portland cement, aggregates, and water, concrete is one of the most useful and ubiquitous materials on the planet. The portland cement that holds concrete together is responsible for approximately 8% of anthropogenic carbon. That’s because  production involves a process (calcination) that transforms limestone into portland cement and... Read more

You’ve probably heard that wood products are carbon neutral. You might also have heard that timber harvesting causes immense carbon emissions.

Which is it?

Could it be both?

This on-demand webcast investigates these questions and others, using a scientific lens to examine wood’s carbon... Read more

Editor’s note: Stephanie Carlisle, senior researcher at the University of Washington’s Carbon Leadership Forum, generously provided a technical review.

This is Part One of a two-part series on wood products. It delves into the climate impacts—positive, negative, and otherwise—of managed forests. Part Two considers more climate... Read more

Is wood carbon neutral? Can mass timber buildings be net-negative emitters? 

You have probably heard both of those claims repeated by manufacturers, colleagues, and the media—but the World Resources Institute isn’t so sure. A WRI report released in July 2023 maintains that wood use is not carbon neutral “even if... Read more

Disclosure: This guest op-ed comes from Lisa Richmond, Hon. AIA, who is a senior fellow with Architecture 2030. BuildingGreen, alongside SERA Architects, recently consulted with Architecture 2030 and several other green building organizations to facilitate consensus and develop reporting guidelines for the Embodied Carbon... Read more

It’s 2024. Global emissions—and temperatures—are rising instead of falling, and some scientists believe this will be the year we cross a dangerous climate threshold, the 1.5°C Paris Agreement goal, long before we (hopefully) achieve net-zero emissions in 2050.

Meanwhile, new guidance being piloted through the Science Based Targets... Read more

Join Brent Ehrlich, BuildingGreen’s products & materials specialist, as he unveils ten innovative technologies he believes are solving the building industry’s biggest challenges.

For 2024, we’ve showcased products that nix toxic chemicals, advance efficient electrification, cut embodied carbon, promote... Read more

Want to learn about past winners? See our Top 10 Green Building Products page.

BuildingGreen is starting the new year by celebrating the positive transformations happening in the building industry—with our annual Top 10 Green Building Products. We have been awarding the Top 10 for more than 20 years, leveraging our deep knowledge of... Read more

The seeds of what is now BuildingGreen were planted nearly four decades ago, when Alex Wilson started the company in his home in Dummerston, Vermont. Alex and his wife, Jerelyn Wilson, created this company and have nurtured it ever since.

Both Alex and Jerelyn are retiring from BuildingGreen at the end of... Read more

This article has been prepared for informational purposes only; it is not intended to provide, and should not be relied on for, tax, legal, or accounting advice. You should consult your firm’s tax, legal, and accounting advisors before engaging in any transaction.​​

Just as project teams have started to get a handle on the huge... Read more

Product and material selection is one of the most time-consuming parts of achieving a green and healthy building certification like LEED, WELL, or (perhaps most famously) the Living Building Challenge. Project teams must sort through hundreds of products to find safer cleaning solutions, low-VOC furniture, or air purifiers that meet performance... Read more

This is Part Two in a two-part series. Part One covers IAQ equipment and low-carbon concrete.

In the first part of our Greenbuild 2023 product coverage, we looked at low-carbon concrete and IAQ monitors—showcasing innovative solutions to some of our most pressing building concerns. This second installment covers several cool categories... Read more

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers us a once-in-a-generation chance to equitably decarbonize the built environment and prepare communities to weather future climate threats. 

The organization that created LEED is now advancing a whole new certification concept—one that doesn’t start with an L for leadership.

Also, only existing building portfolios need apply. And the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) Portfolio Accelerator, which is still under development but is due out in 2024, will have no points and no... Read more

“The imperative for health-driven building policy has never been more pressing. Buildings must be fortified for health.”

This statement is part of an open letter addressed to elected officials and policymakers, and signed by six former U.S. Surgeons General, six CEOs, five executive directors of leading public health organizations, and... Read more

This is Part One in a two-part series.  Part Two covers heating and cooling, interiors, structural systems, and a construction jobsite product.

With COVID-19 in the rearview mirror (mostly), Greenbuild seemed like it was on the rebound as well. The sessions I attended were lively and topical, and the... Read more

We know that decarbonizing existing buildings is crucial to meaningfully reduce the carbon footprint of the building sector, but retrofitting older building stock, especially multifamily housing, is a formidable challenge. A new initiative, Community Climate Shift, hopes to demonstrate that it can be done rapidly—and equitably.

Just 2%... Read more

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances), forever chemicals, are one of the biggest environmental challenges facing the world today. There are more than 10,000 PFAS, some of which are persistent, bioaccumulative toxic chemicals. So why don’t we just ban products that use them?

That’s hard when you don’t know which PFAS are being used... Read more

ESG is the hottest acronym in green building right now. But let’s face it: most people are flying by the seat of their pants.

Most—but not all.

Four experts representing design, construction, and consulting firms will come together during this virtual roundtable to share their field notes and... Read more

Update: This article was corrected on November 29 to reflect a deadline extension that EPA alerted us to. The application deadline is January 16, 2024.

An Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) grant program called Reducing Embodied Greenhouse Gas Emissions for Construction Materials and Products is out to help manufacturers fund the creation of... Read more