Dear SD Leaders: The comment period closes January 31st on  NCA Volume II Climate Change Impacts, Risks, and Adaptation in the United States.

It's important to have the design communities perspective on these critical issues. I hope you can take a look and submit your comments before the deadline.

Details here: https://www.... Read more

Hi - some of you may have received an invite to the White House for a 3-hr session to continue the discussion on the Net Zero Emissions building that they released earlier this year. This discussion will be on embodied carbon. I have no idea who the invite went to. If I beg I may be able to go, but if there are plenty of other Architects that... Read more

We have an MEP engineer that is calculating peak loads at about 6 times passive house levels on a large commercial building that is at or near passive house levels of insulation and air infiltration. We suspect one reason is that he is figuring a 50% efficiency level for the ERV. We are showing him ERV systems with 80-90% efficiency, but they... Read more

All,

I've probably spoken to a few of you over the phone, but I wanted to make sure all of you know that we are hosting a 4 part webinar series on our Tally LCA software, kicking off tomorrow 10/10. We just released the new of Tally version and ended up doing far more development work than initially anticipated, in no small part due to... Read more

Hello all,

This month's SCDL call was full of great discussion! We decided this month that we are feeling good about where we are for the Task Force Agreement on defining social sustainabiltiy in our work. The aim is to work with this agreement for a while and see if it holds up as a process framework. There was also interest to invite... Read more

Hello,

We’re looking for Design Energy Code Equivalents for Chinese commercial energy codes. Do any of you have  any good sources? I’ve only found data comparing ASHRAE 90.1 2013 to the Chinese Code at that time. We understand the Chinese code require a 65-75% energy savings over the baseline but don’t have good information for defining... Read more

Hey all - sorry I won't be able to join our call today. I had a client request an emergency meeting today (boo) because corporate mandated that they eliminate fossil fuel use from all their buildings (yay!) by 2025 and they've got a project underway that needs to pivot quickly. 

Had I been able to join, I wanted to share this in case... Read more

Are you a design or building professional who wants to learn more about sustainability—such as how to do energy modeling, improve the building envelope, or use renewables on a project? Now more than ever, it's time to join the sustainable... Read more

Here's the Core Purpose for this group that came out of the Inaugural Summit.

We're off and running!

Friends,

As some of you know, I joined Perkins Eastman last year and it has been amazing. After years of being the Sustainable Design Leader at my last firm, this move has meant I can concentrate on project work because we have such an AMAZING team, led by Heather Jaurequi and Tanya Eagle. Unfortunately, that also means I'm not in the... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Five Reasons to Be Optimistic About Solar Energy!

Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:


Describe three ways how PV decreases environmental impact while increasing sustainability and health measures for communities.

Discuss PV life-cycle... Read more

Hello Everyone,

I'm looking for projects in Chicago that are exemplary in at least one of the following topics: Biophilia, Sustainability, Resilience, or Well-being. I know there is overlap in these topics but we're doing an internal design exercise and are looking at how these different ideas relate and are articulated in buildings. We'... Read more

Hey SDL,

I'm curious if anybody out there has developed specification language requiring a certain level of airtightness (as assessed via one or a series of blower door tests) for a commercial project when it is not going for a Passive House certification and a blower door test is not required by code--basically, something in the... Read more

Asking for a colleague:

"Have you ever had a large number of fire retardant tarps used to temporarily enclose a building during construction? Do you know of any solutions for recycling/reusing them or another product that doesn't use toxic fire-retardants that meets the performance criteria?"

I think we've all seen poly or fabric... Read more

Here are the links I mentioned at today's meeting:

Timeline:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1RlN4t23uvBtxEzp4QuyqL-w5bqmE4P90...

BG Contacts and Responsibilities:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MWYuAEitjk7Zpc8KUNf1LwG3-5wK6sIlgwro...

BITuser Contacts and Responsibilities:
https://docs.google.... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Video: Eight Steps to Success with LEED-EBOM.

Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:


1. Describe the first steps project teams should take when considering LEED-Existing Buildings: O+M.
2. Understand the steps and timeline ofthe LEED-... Read more

Hi, folks! 

I was recently asked if BuildingGreen could connect prospective speakers to an event organizer in Chicago. Beyond the leaders in the BuildingGreen networks relayed, I wanted to share that the exercise led me to the Women and Climate speaker database: https://www.womenandclimate.co/speaker-database 

When filtering by... Read more