BuildingGreen Report

The green building movement has often been criticized for benefiting the most privileged people in society while leaving others behind. The WELL Equity Rating is trying to turn that around by leveraging building decisions and business practices to address systemic inequities.

Pitched as a roadmap to... Read more

Of the huge sums of money being made available under the Inflation Reduction Act, $1.5 billion is earmarked for urban and community forestry. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to plant and grow the 522 million trees that we need in urban communities, according to the nonprofit American Forests.

But neighborhoods that need trees the... Read more

Whole careers have been built around the idea that mass timber buildings are inherently “climate smart” because wood products store carbon rather than emitting it.

But members of the Climate Smart Wood Group, a coalition formed in 2019 that includes representatives of the Carbon Leadership Forum and the Forest Stewardship Council, say... Read more

BuildingGreen’s editorial team has been awarding our annual Top 10 green building products for more than 20 years. Our Top 10 is not a “pay-to-play” award. BuildingGreen is an independent company that doesn’t carry ads in its publications, nor does it accept money from product manufacturers for consulting or other services. Our editorial team... Read more

When I saw the push notification from the New York Times pop up on my phone, I gasped. Then I cried. The U.S., the last hold-out, would support creation of a “loss and damage” fund. That’s a pot of money for rebuilding vulnerable countries that are being destroyed by climate-change disasters they did not cause.

Whether it’s the flooding in Pakistan, the devastation caused by Hurricane Ian in Florida, or the record-breaking wildfire season in Europe, climate change is in the news daily. Just as there’s an urgent need to reduce carbon emissions and other greenhouse gasses, we also need to adapt and invest in resilience.

Increasingly, owners are... Read more

We typically design buildings for a single, limited purpose. We build them partly out of plastics that can’t be readily recycled. We choose diverse materials with varying lifespans and glue them all together. We sometimes jeopardize the longevity of those materials by paying too little attention to moisture dynamics... Read more

At this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), an industry guide on resilience made its debut. Developed by the World Green Building Council, the UN High-level Climate Champions, and C40 Cities, the guide highlights steps that can be taken on a building, community, and city scale to adapt to climate change.... Read more

California architects will have to prove they know a thing or five about net-zero-carbon design in order to renew their licenses starting in January 2023. The requirement to report five “ZNCD” continuing education hours every two years, signed into law in 2021, adds to a similar requirement to complete hours on disability... Read more

Is the greenest building the one that’s already built?

Yes! Usually? Sometimes …

Taking carbon into account, it may seem like a no-brainer to retrofit existing buildings rather than build new ones, but to make a good climate case for reuse, you need good data. That’s where... Read more

For many of us, the 20th annual Greenbuild conference held in San Francisco was our first large, post-pandemic public event. It was great to see familiar faces, even if some of them were still covered by masks, and it gave us the opportunity to connect with colleagues and learn about important green building trends.

The second I read the headline, I knew exactly what the article was going to be about. And indeed, “One of the Hottest Trends in the World of Investing Is a Sham,” a New York Times op-ed by New York University associate professor Hans Taparia, slams ESG ratings (short for environmental, social, and governance) as a big, fat... Read more

When and why did the word “sustainability” in corporate marketing turn into the acronym “ESG”—short for environmental, social, and governance?

I’ve asked a lot of people this question and gotten a lot of different answers. But it seems to come down to this: although some people have been using the term ESG for more than a decade, a much... Read more

Even when cooking appliances are not in use, they can emit benzene and other carcinogens into indoor air. In certain circumstances, these “fugitive emissions” can create conditions comparable to living with a smoker, according to a study published in Environmental Science & Technology.

The... Read more

Many of us think of slavery as a thing of the past, but that’s simply not the case—and the building industry has been implicated in perpetuating the problem. A report from COOKFOX Architects, “Survey of Labor Certifications for the Built Environment,” helps building professionals navigate the many programs available for... Read more

Short for “environmental, social, and governance,” ESG reporting and ratings started as a Wall Street thing. But ESG is quickly becoming a Main Street thing. It’s gone way beyond big, publicly traded corporations, and a lot of companies, for better or worse... Read more

The score we need: 17.1.

The score we have: 8.1.

In other words, the building industry isn’t anywhere close to hitting necessary climate targets, according to the Global Building Climate Tracker. This index, begun in 2015 by the Global Alliance for Buildings and Construction (GlobalABC, which is part of the United Nations... Read more

GO Lab, manufacturer of TimberHP wood insulation, is providing a new insulation to the U.S. market—while bolstering rural Maine’s economy at the same time. The closing of Madison, Maine’s paper mill resulted in the loss of more than 200 good-paying jobs and seemingly doomed the facility and the rural community to a bleak future. The paper mill... Read more

If I were being dramatic, I’d say that the green building movement is dead. 

That, of course, would not be technically true, as there are so many amazing projects and wonderful people working hard to make a positive difference in the world through changes in the built environment. But taken in the context of the rate of climate change... Read more

It’s a simple plan. The U.S. Department of Agriculture will pay landowners to let their trees grow bigger before cutting them down.

The hoped-for outcomes are more complex: boosting the carbon sequestration, and the ecological and cultural value, of working forests; producing higher-quality wood products; increasing financial returns... Read more