A 20-story office building in Vienna recently became the world’s first high-rise building to be certified under the international Passive House standard. With a glass façade 262 feet (80 m) high and office... Read more

Editor’s note: We updated this 2013 blog post on April 15, 2024, to reflect more recent advancements in CO2-based heat-pump water heaters. To learn more about another such product, see the April 2024 article by Brent Ehrlich “On-demand Water Heat Goes All Electric with Heat Pumps, CO₂.”

In researching... Read more

Air... Read more

Are you wasting money on energy models?

Thanks in part to green building programs and codes, whole-building energy simulation has become more common over the last two decades — but all too frequently, modeling is only used late in design, when it has little value beyond keeping score.

If you're not using modeling to make design... Read more

Product selection clarified

Green products are easy to find these days. Maybe a little too easy: how do you separate the green from the greenwash?

Product manufacturers have caught the green wave and found an angle that can make even the most run-of-the-mill product sound right for your high-performance project. But which products... Read more

The Dummerston Energy Committee, on which I serve in my home town, is conducting an energy... Read more

One of the biggest complaints I hear about... Read more

Balancing our need for timber along with the other... Read more

Nowhere in building design has there been more confusion or... Read more

Current Energy Star... Read more

The Health Product Declaration Collaborative (HPDC), an organization that launched in 2012 to help manufacturers report health-related information for building products, has hired urban redevelopment expert John Knott Jr. as its first... Read more

At issue is the U.S. Chamber’s membership in the American High-Performance Building Coalition (AHPBC), an advocacy group formed by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) and other trade organizations to support green building standards developed... Read more

Over the past 25 years, refrigerants used in air conditioners and heat pumps have come under fire—first for their impact on the Earth’s protective ozone layer and then for their global warming potential. Now, some manufacturers are... Read more

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) have co-published a new guide for architects on deep energy retrofits. But this is not just a technical design guide; instead, the report explains why deep... Read more

President Obama Tuesday announced a sweeping plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—and prepare for the effects of climate change—using executive powers rather than legislation.

Expressing disappointment with... Read more

It was a tough year for underfloor air distribution (UFAD) specialists. Touted for nearly a decade—including in EBN—as a radical breakthrough that would use far less energy and make occupants happier than conventional HVAC systems ever could, UFAD (which is closely associated with access or raised flooring systems) was suddenly banned by the U.... Read more