Solar electric buildings researcher, designer, and advocate Steven Strong was the recipient of this year’s prestigious Charles Greeley Abbot Award from the American Solar Energy Society (ASES). The award is given for significant contributions to the Society or to the field of solar energy. Strong is principal of Solar Design Associates in... Read more

When a regional astronomy club based in Springfield, Vermont raised opposition to a new state prison slated for the town, the state hired lighting engineer (and new

EBN Advisory Board member) Nancy Clanton to come up with a plan for reducing light pollution in the prison design. While her firm came up with an outdoor lighting plan for... Read more

Our Newsbrief on page 5 of

EBN

Vol. 10, No. 4 about the Maine Hospital Association incorrectly identified the Natural Resources Council of Maine as the Natural Resources

Defense Council of Maine. Our apologies.

... Read more

Greenpeace has a new building products directory called the PVC Alternatives Database – Building the Future. The fully searchable international database lists over 236 (and counting) PVC-free products for the following building components: roofing, insulation, exterior cladding, windows and doors, flooring, wallcoverings, piping, and—often the... Read more

Collins Products LLC has received Green Cross certification from Scientific Certification Systems, Inc. that its particleboard is manufactured entirely from post-industrial waste fibers. While most particleboard manufactured today contains a high percentage of wood waste from other manufacturing processes, Collins has made an unusual commitment... Read more

A report requested by the Bush administration on global climate change was released by a committee of the National Academies’ National Research Council on June 6, 2001. The report summed up science’s current understanding of climate change by confirming that greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth’s atmosphere and causing surface... Read more

W. R. Grace & Company is the latest casualty in asbestos-related lawsuits. The company, which has received over 325,000 personal injury claims related to asbestos and paid out $1.9 billion to resolve suits to date, has filed for Chapter 11 protection. W. R. Grace joins Owens Corning, Armstrong Industries, and more than 20 other companies in... Read more

Entering the U.S. market with autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) has not been easy. North American Cellular Concrete made a go of it in 1992 (see

EBN

Vol. 1, No. 2) but got no further than a pilot plant. In 1996, the German Hebel Group built a manufacturing plant in Adel, Georgia through its subsidiary Hebel USA (see

EBN... Read more

The future looks bright for brownfield sites. On April 25, the U.S. Senate passed the

Brownfields Revitalization and Environmental Restoration Act of 2001 (S.350) in a unanimous 99-0 vote. The bill, if approved by the House and signed into law by President Bush, would provide liability protection for innocent landowners and significant... Read more

EBN, and things not to change. It was particularly interesting to compare the current results with those from our first subscriber survey conducted... Read more

On Monday, April 23, The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and its Committee on the Environment (COTE) announced the winners of the Top Ten Green Projects initiative at the Forum 2001 Conference in Washington, D.C. Winners were selected for their success in the integration of architecture, technology, and natural systems. Contact... Read more

At the 2001 Convention of The American Institute of Architects in Denver, AIA members reacted remarkably quickly to the Bush Administrations Energy Policy, which was released as the convention got under way. On May 19, 2001 delegates passed a resolution titled “

Design and Energy Efficiency Initiative-Committee on the Environment,”... Read more

(who is married to Alex) helped to launch

EBN and build our readership in the early ’90s. Now she has returned as Outreach Director and will be working on new ways to familiarize the building community with

EBN and our other products.

Among other tasks, she is contacting workshop presenters and conference... Read more

Advances in wireless communication and Global Positioning System

(GPS) tracking are improving mass transit. A system created by NextBus sends users automated phone alerts when a designated bus is nearing their bus stop. The system has been extensively tested in San Francisco and was recently installed in Vail, Colorado. For information... Read more

by James Wines, edited by Philip Jodidio, 2000. Taschen; Köln, Germany. Paperback, 240 pages, $24.99

Green Architecture argues that technological approaches to reducing the environmental impacts of buildings are, in themselves, not enough to head off... Read more

Scientists at NREL have achieved a

new efficiency record for cadmium telluride photovoltaic cells. The new record of 16.4% beat the previous mark of 15.8%, which had stood since 1992. Cadmium telluride is an increasingly attractive PV technology. First Solar’s new 100 MW CdTe plant in Toledo, Ohio began operation this spring (see

energy simulation software. For many years, DOE-2 has been the standard energy modeling tool for large buildings and the benchmark against which other simulation tools are tested. It has some weaknesses, however, including being notoriously... Read more

California gave a big boost to small power producers in the state by

increasing the cap on power-production systems that can feed power into the grid through

net metering provisions. The cap has been increased from 10 kilowatts to 1 megawatt. Net metering laws or regulations in more than 30 states allow power producers to “run... Read more