BuildingGreen Report

As people struggle to return to the office due to concerns over COVID-19, design teams and building owners are looking for solutions to keep occupants safe and healthy. You can never be too careful, so while cleaning protocols, vaccines, and herd immunity may help provide partial protection against our current pandemic, how do you sanitize... Read more

MEP systems contribute to both the initial construction and lifetime embodied carbon footprint of an example office building. This MEP footprint begins at construction and grows over time is due to operations, refrigerant leakage, and replacement.

The Sustainable MEP Leaders group, organized by BuildingGreen, is a group of motivated... Read more

The Cradle to Cradle (C2C) product standard just got much more stringent. So stringent, in fact, that the lowest level of the new version 4 (Bronze) “in many categories is better than v3 Silver,” said Matteo Kausch, Ph.D., director of technical development at the Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (C2CPII). Here’s a look at what’s... Read more

Denton, Texas; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Reading, Pennsylvania—nearly 210 cities have pledged or have already achieved 100% clean electricity or net-zero emissions, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. And then there’s Des Moines, Iowa, which recently pledged to achieve 24/7 carbon-free electricity by 2035—a... Read more

The largest design firm in the world made a bit of a splash in 2020 with its Gensler Cities Climate Challenge (GC3 for short). “Within a decade, we will eliminate all net emissions associated with our work,” the GC3 boldly states. The commitment explicitly includes both operating carbon (greenhouse gas emissions associated... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is partnering with seven state and local governments to create “proving grounds” designed to test advanced building technologies. Many of the technologies enhance “grid harmonization,” using strategies that are responsive to the grid’s supply in order to reduce energy costs while also keeping the grid cleaner... Read more

With COVID-19 protocols shutting down many offices, our homes have now become our workplaces. This shift in energy consumption to the home is an opportunity to upgrade these spaces to make them as efficient as possible and to incorporate technologies that will reduce our carbon output, such as renewable energy, battery storage, “smart”... Read more

Building electrification is a great idea to promote decarbonization, but is the industry ready for it? The Building Electrification Technology Roadmap from the New Buildings Institute (NBI) suggests the answer is yes.

The report examines the status of 38 different technologies for residential,... Read more

Net-zero energy. Not so long ago, full-scale adoption of energy efficiency and onsite renewables was the dream of the green building community. But as climate change worsens, the focus has gradually turned to carbon rather than energy.

A shift has also occurred in what kinds of emissions we need to... Read more

It has been quite a wild ride! As The BuildingGreen Report (formerly Environmental Building News) celebrates its 30th year of publication, we decided to track the growth—and explosion—of the green building movement. We start in 1990 with the founding of AIA’s Committee on the Environment.

To celebrate Volume... Read more

February 22, 2021 – President Biden has made a commitment to “Build Back Better” in the wake of COVID-19, the economic crisis, social upheaval, and regulatory rollbacks by the former administration. A growing group of architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) firms is calling on Biden to also build back greener. He can... Read more

When disaster strikes, affordable housing organizations have unique resilience problems to address—like ensuring their often-vulnerable residents remain continuously housed. “Ready to Respond” (R2R) is a staffing toolkit designed to help affordable housing organizations anticipate and smoothly respond to climate risks and... Read more

For decades, designers have fought for sustainability to be incorporated into building codes and standards. Is it time to do the same for resilience?

Building energy codes have been adopted by the great majority of states in the U.S. As a result, consumers save around $5 billion annually, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. But... Read more

For decades, designers have fought for sustainability to be incorporated into building codes and standards. Is it time to do the same for resilience?

This report takes a look at how some cities are changing their planning, zoning, and building codes to ensure that their life safety measures still hold up in the face of climate change and... Read more

Concrete is a popular building material for good reason. It’s strong and durable, and it can be used as a finish as well as a structural material, reducing the need for other products.

But there’s a big drawback to concrete: its carbon footprint. Or, to be more precise, the carbon footprint of the binder used to make it—... Read more

Reducing the amount of carbon that enters our atmosphere is one of the world’s greatest challenges, and two of the building industry’s primary materials—steel and cement—are responsible for a significant portion of those emissions. These industries burn fossil fuels for manufacturing, which can in some cases be replaced by renewable energy, but... Read more

The last four years have been a disaster for the U.S. environment, with the Trump administration rolling back vital environmental protections and promoting fossil fuel industries that have no viable business future. 

Yet tucked into the sprawling COVID-19 relief bill that was signed by President Trump on December 27, 2020, is... Read more

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) gives out the Gold Medal each year, typically to acknowledge a body of influential architectural work. This year was a little different, stretching the boundaries of what the Gold Medal is all about. Ed Mazria, FAIA, received the award for 2021—not mainly for his work in practice, but... Read more

It has been quite a wild ride! As The BuildingGreen Report (formerly Environmental Building News, or “EBN”) celebrates its 30th year of publication, we decided to track the growth—and explosion—of the green building movement. We start in 1990 with the founding of AIA’s Committee on the Environment.

There is so much more that we could... Read more

Asthma-inducing smog, heat-related deaths, persistent flooding that causes mold, high energy costs. We hear a lot about all these problems. Often missing from the conversation? The people who bear the biggest burdens typically live in low-income neighborhoods and other marginalized communities. Greg Kats, co-founder of the... Read more