Power to the People: How the Coming Energy Revolution Will Transform an Industry, Change Our Lives, and Maybe Even Save the Planet by Vijay Vaitheeswaran; Farrar,... Read more

Ills caused by global climate change range from increased frequency of asthma and heat stroke to more intense storms and species extinction. While environmentalists go far past calling the phenomenon a “nuisance,” they are applauding eight states and one city for doing just that. The attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Iowa, New... Read more

2004 Energy Efficiency Integration Awards: the

Cesar E. Chavez Education Center in Oakland, the

Challengers Tennis Club for Boys and Girls in Los Angeles, and

Lake View Terrace Branch Library in Los Angeles (the latter two of which are profiled in... Read more

ozone levels in the eastern half of the U.S. exceed air quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), predicts a report published by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The study,

Heat Advisory: How Global Warming Causes More... Read more

At the June 2004 American Institute of Architects (AIA) national convention in Chicago, the Portland Cement Association (PCA) rolled out a sustainability initiative, “Concrete Thinking for a Sustainable World.” Part of PCA’s Cement Manufacturing Sustainability Program, the initiative will help the industry develop sustainability guidelines,... Read more

The day-long seminar “Educating the Educators: A Crash Course on Eco Design™” is intended to quickly

bring design educators up-to-speed on green design. David Bergman, architect and teacher at Parsons School of Design, and Erika Doering, interior designer and teacher at Parsons and Pratt Institute, developed the program with the... Read more

Nicola Valley Institute of Technology in Merritt, British Columbia has won a

Governor General’s Medal for Architecture, jointly administered by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts. Shared by the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology and the University College of the Cariboo, this 48,600... Read more

The Aamjiwnaang First Nation near Sarnia, Ontario is experiencing an increasingly

skewed ratio of female to male births, according to a July 31 article in the

Globe and Mail. Until recently, the community tracked normally, but in 1994, the ratio suddenly shifted and has been heavily skewed toward females ever since. In 2003, the... Read more

U.S. Plastic Lumber (USPL) filed voluntary petitions for bankruptcy in late July 2004. The company is seeking debtor-in-possession financing, available only to companies in Chapter 11, to support its current operations and has hired Triax Capital Advisors to direct its reorganization. “Our filing provides U.S. Plastic Lumber with the... Read more

The Slag Cement Association has recognized two projects for replacing energy-intensive portland cement with blast-furnace-slag cement, an industrial waste byproduct from the reduction of iron ore to iron (see EBN

Vol. 8, No. 6).

Clearview Elementary School in Hanover, Pennsylvania (see

EBN

Vol. 11, No. 11 or... Read more

Several regions of the country are experiencing a

shortage of portland cement, the key ingredient in concrete. According to the Portland Cement Association (PCA), among the chief causes for this shortage are increased demand in the residential sector and limited availability of ships to carry imported cement, which in turn is blamed... Read more

There’s a lot of pavement in the United States—nearly 38,000 square miles (9.9 Million ha) or an area about the size of Indiana, according to calculations EBN has done (Vol. 5, No. 1). The vast majority of this is impermeable surface that contributes to stormwater runoff. In certain applications, that pavement can be made porous so that the... Read more

There’s a new option for potable-water, hydronic-heating, and other pressurized piping applications: polypropylene from the German company Aquatherm, GmbH. Aquatherm has been producing high-quality Fusiotherm® polypropylene (PP) piping for 30 years with tremendous success—never having paid a claim for damage due to failure of the piping,... Read more

University of Manitoba interior design students

Tamara Nyysola and

Corina Penner have won the first-ever

GreenInteriors Student Design Competition. Dow BioProducts, Inc. and

Interior Design magazine sponsored the first annual competition, which drew 55 entries from 14 design schools across North America. The... Read more

On June 14, 2004, shortly before his June 21 resignation, Connecticut Governor John Rowland signed “An Act Concerning Climate Change,” PA 04-252, into law. The act, which takes effect October 1, establishes a goal of

reducing Connecticut’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the beginning of 2010 and to 10% below 1990 levels by... Read more

Additional research would have revealed that the European Union disagrees with

EBN’s recommended general ban on certain brominated flame retardants (see

EBN

Vol. 13, No. 6)—which, through its generalization, could be dangerous for your readers, other builders, and their customers by reducing fire-safety protections.... Read more

The

U.S. Green Building Council and

Meeting Strategies Worldwide were awarded the

Environmentally Responsible Meetings Award from the International Hotels Environment Initiative for their work to limit the environmental impact of Greenbuild 2003. This award is the highest honor for environmental responsibility among... Read more

On July 8, 2004 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that it is taking an “administrative action” against DuPont for withholding information the company had as far back as 1981 about risks from its use and disposal of perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA—also referred to as C8) at its Washington Works factory in Washington, West... Read more