“Green Energy Parks,”

a joint initiative of the National Park Service and DOE announced on November 1, will reduce fossil fuel use in dozens of National Parks. The agencies will spend $1.6 million on 70 projects to install energy-efficient lighting, ground-source heat pumps, solar water heating, photovoltaics, and other measures. DOE is... Read more

Product Briefs

The

Advance Transformer Company, which has been a leader in “advancing” the use of energy-conserving electronic ballasts, is advancing something very different through its annual sweepstakes for electrical contractors. The company is giving away two Ford Expedition 4x4 sport utility vehicles this year. Contractors earn... Read more

Lessons Learned:

High-Performance Buildings

edited by Pamela Lippe. Produced by Earth Day New York, 201 East 42nd Street, New York, NY 10017, 212/922-0048, www.earthdayny.

com. Paperback, 144 pages, $25.

Lessons Learned: High-Performance Buildingsis a deceptively modest package for the wealth of information it contains.... Read more

Green Homes for Chicago

The City of Chicago is now preparing to build five houses based on the five winning entries in its Green Homes for Chicago competition. The competition, a joint project of the Chicago Departments of Housing and Environment, sought designs for affordable and green single-family houses. The project was funded by... Read more

Thermostatic By-Pass Valve for Hydronic Baseboard Heat

Separately regulating temperatures in different rooms within a single heating zone has long been difficult. Louvers on the radiators generally prove ineffective. Along with causing overheating, the inability to provide precise zone control can also waste a lot of energy—for example,... Read more

EBN

’s Alex Wilson is among the

U.S. Green Building Council’s new board members, elected in December 2000. Other incoming board members include Jim Hartzfeld of Interface Americas, Jerry Yudelson of Portland General Electric, Ted Caulkins of Cushman Wakefield, David Eisenberg of the Development Center for Appropriate Technology, Lucia... Read more

Steve Nadel

has been appointed the new Executive Director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). Nadel follows Howard Geller, who led ACEEE for 20 highly productive years. Since 1993, Nadel has been deputy director of the organization; before that he had worked as an energy analyst for New England Electric and director... Read more

The Energy and Water Development Appropriations Act

, signed into law by President Clinton in late October, includes a $65 million (20%) increase in DOE funding for research in renewable energy technologies. Funding for these activities in Fiscal Year 2001 will be $375 million. EPA also received a $123 million (19%) increase in funding for its... Read more

Awards & Competitions

Entries are due by March 15 for this year’s

Northeast Green Building Awards, a competition sponsored by the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust and organized by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA). Prizes will be awarded in four categories for built projects in the Northeast, and for built or... Read more

Total greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.

increased 0.8% in 1999, according to a new report by the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of DOE. Total emissions in 1999 were 1,833 million metric tons of carbon equivalent (MMTCe), up from 1,818 MMTCe in 1998. Emissions of greenhouse gases other than carbon dioxide (CO

2) decreased or... Read more

The

Society of Plastics Engineers honored three building product manufacturers at its annual conference, held November 7–10 in Dearborn, Michigan. Evergreen Nylon Recycling, a joint venture of Honeywell International, Inc. and DSM Chemicals North America (see

EBN

Vol. 8, No. 9) was declared “Recycler of the Year” in the... Read more

The call for entries for the

Sustainable Design Award Program sponsored by the Boston Society of Architects/AIA and AIA New York is available on the BSA Web site (www.architects.

org), by e-mail at bsa@architects.org, or by phone at 617/951-1433 x221. The Sustainable Design Award is open to any project of any type anywhere in the... Read more

In 1984, renowned “sound tracker” Gordon Hempton ferreted out 21 locations in Washington State that were free of all human-generated sound for 15 consecutive minutes. Last year, he found that just three remained. In Minneapolis, $164 million has been spent since 1992 soundproofing homes in the vicinity of the airport, with retrofitting costs this... Read more

Trex Company, Inc., manufacturer of the wood and recycled-plastic composite

Trex™ Easy Care Decking

®, was ranked number one in the

Forbes annual list of the 200 Best Small Companies in America., as reported in the magazine’s October 2000 issue. Trex was also recognized as one of the “Top 100 Hot Growth Companies” by... Read more

Fastfoot Footing Forms – Made of Fabric

Concrete forms made of fabric? Is this for real? Yes, it is. And this innovation provides a great example of a product that not only has environmental advantages but also may perform better and cost less than the conventional product it replaces.

Here’s how it works. Fastfoot™ is a concrete... Read more

The 32,000 ft

2 (3,000 m

2)

Philip Merrill Environmental Center that serves as Headquarters for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation in Annapolis, Maryland, is the first building to achieve the highest Platinum rating under the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System. As noted in

EBN

Vol. 9, No. 4, this... Read more

Newsbriefs

The Energy Efficient Building Association (EEBA) is now the

Energy and Environmental Building Association. Serving the residential building and building science community since 1982, EEBA has extended its focus beyond energy efficiency to resource efficiency for a number of years. EEBA’s new and forward-thinking Executive... Read more

Newsbriefs

In October,

Gaiam, Inc., based in Broomfield, Colorado, announced a merger with

Real Goods Trading Company of Santa Rosa, California. Both companies have been marketing healthy living products to environmentally aware, health-conscious consumers—the so-called “Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability” (LOHAS) market.... Read more

International News from Sustainable Buildings 2000

Held from October 22 to 25, 2000 in Maastricht, The Netherlands, the Sustainable Buildings 2000 conference had a capacity crowd of 750 attendees, including many from Western Europe, North America, Japan, and Australia. Conference venues included concurrent presentations on various technical and... Read more

Energy Star

registered trademark is going international.

An agreement between the U.S. and the European Union is being finalized under which the familiar Energy Star program covering energy-efficient appliances, office equipment, and lighting products will be extended to Europe. Under the agreement, reference to the U.S. Department of... Read more