BuildingGreen Report

With the adoption of LEDs, the reduced energy impacts of lighting are now taken for granted, but there are still a lot of old fluorescent and first generation LEDs on the market. And LED lighting is still complicated, especially for outdoor applications. How do you balance efficacy (lighting energy performance, measured in... Read more

Where we live, the quality of our homes, and the resources we have determine our vulnerability to climate change. As the United States continues to fight and prepare for the impacts of global heating, one of the biggest challenges is ensuring that everyone—people earning lower incomes and communities of color, in particular—have access to... Read more

There’s nothing like a breath of fresh air.

Nice phrase—but considering the rampant wildfires, diesel fumes, industrial plumes, excess pollen, higher concentrations of CO2, and literal plagues that plague modern life, clean air is increasingly hard to come by, whether outdoors or in.

Meanwhile, we now know more than ever about... Read more

The recent Getting to Zero Forum in Minneapolis included both policy- and technology-related strategies on how to make the transition to a net-zero-energy and net-zero-carbon economy. One highlight was a presentation in the technical session “Building Communities That Survive and Thrive,” in which I was also a presenter, about... Read more

The building sector—one of the country’s main sources of emissions—must transform the way buildings are designed, constructed, operated, and retrofitted if we are to meet the Biden administration’s 2050 net-zero-economy goal. Many of the practitioners who will be responsible for this work over the next two decades are still in—or have yet to... Read more

Practitioners interested in reducing the embodied carbon of buildings are likely now used to considering the impact of different materials, like mass timber or low-carbon concrete. Low-carbon construction, however, may be less familiar. 

Contractors are just beginning to track the emissions from their job sites... Read more

Nadav Malin contributed reporting.

Practitioners interested in reducing the embodied carbon of buildings are likely familiar with weighing the impact of different materials, like mass timber or low-carbon concrete. Low-carbon construction, however, has not been on many people’s radar.

“I don't think people up until now even... Read more

To fulfill our Nation’s promises of justice, liberty, and equality, every person must have clean air to breathe; clean water to drink; safe and healthy foods to eat; and an environment that is healthy, sustainable, climate-resilient, and free from harmful pollution and chemical exposure.

– President Joe Biden, Executive Order 14096 on... Read more

Replete with heart-wrenching photos of tiny children sucking on inhalers, enduring insect welts, and watching flood waters rise, a new report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) details the grueling impacts climate change is having and is likely to have on America’s kids. Socially vulnerable youth will be disproportionately... Read more

The CLF (Carbon Leadership Forum) North American Baseline Report has been updated to provide the most recent embodied carbon data for North American construction materials. Taken from the 2022 Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator (EC3) tool, these baseline data come from third-party environmental product declarations (EPDs) and are used... Read more

People interested in reducing the embodied carbon of buildings are familiar with weighing the impact of different materials, like mass timber or low-carbon concrete. Low-carbon construction has not been on many people’s radar—but it probably should be.

Findings from construction companies that are tracking greenhouse... Read more

Here’s the problem. The economy we’re locked into is linear: to make products, we exploit fellow human beings, deplete natural resources, threaten biodiversity, and choke our atmosphere. Then we toss those products into landfills the moment we consider them to be broken or used up. What a waste.

Here’... Read more

Investors Katie Hall and Tom Steyer founded Galvanize Climate Solutions in 2021 with one goal: “to accelerate the adoption of clean technology and increase the rate of decarbonization.” The company’s new real estate arm aims to do that by acquiring and renovating existing buildings. And to help it find those buildings, Galvanize commissioned a... Read more

Just when you thought you were safe, another big, bold net-zero standard has entered the house. But ASHRAE 228, Standard Method of Evaluating Zero Net Energy and Zero Net Carbon Building Performance, isn’t here to disrupt things. Instead, like any good standard, it just wants to bring us all together in a group bear hug—an embrace with the... Read more

As we move away from our reliance on fossil fuels and toward a low-carbon future, the equipment we use for HVAC systems, kitchens, and other building functions is slowly shifting to all electric. The equipment we use to construct these buildings is another matter.

The carbon impacts from this equipment and other processes on the... Read more

We acknowledge with mournful hearts the death of Robin Guenther, FAIA, a leading expert in evidence-based healthcare design and an early, vocal critic of questionable chemistries that remain all too common in building materials. Robin died of ovarian cancer on May 6, 2023, according to a New York Times obituary.

Robin had long decried... Read more

Electrical and communication cables typically have an insulation layer around the wire and are coated with jacket materials that protect them from damage and improve safety in various applications. There are cables rated for use in standard applications (such as risers) and in plenums, where added flame resistance is necessary. As a result,... Read more

Pozzotive glass pozzolan won a 2023 Innovative Product or Service award at the recent National Ready Mixed Concrete Association (NRMCA) conference in Las Vegas. As part of  NRMCA’s Build With Strength sustainability initiative, the organization gives out awards for products that show a “commitment to improving the resilience,... Read more

There is now more information available than ever about how our climate is likely to change. Why aren’t architects using those projections to design safer, more resilient buildings?

The University of Minnesota Climate Adaptation Partnership (MCAP) and HGA recently conducted a study to answer that... Read more

The construction industry has a diversity and discrimination problem, and in January, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) took formal notice. In its recently proposed Strategic Enforcement Plan (SEP), effective from 2023 through 2027, the EEOC explains that it will prioritize discrimination cases in certain industries,... Read more