BuildingGreen Report

News Brief

August 1, 2005
by Bruce Ferguson. CRC Press, Boca Raton, Florida, 2005. Hardcover, 600 pages, $159.95.

Porous Pavements is the first comprehensive reference on porous pavement theory, design, materials, and applications. Written by one of the nation’s leading experts on stormwater and stormwater infiltration, the book provides a one-stop source for... Read more

News Analysis

August 1, 2005
The American Institute of Architects (AIA) Center for Communities by Design, with support from the AIA Committee on the Environment, has formally launched the Sustainable Design Assessment Team (SDAT) program, a community-assistance program focused on sustainability. “The SDAT program is based on the AIA’s goal of helping communities create a... Read more

News Brief

August 1, 2005

The U.S. Department of Energy, Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Environmental Protection Agency have teamed up to create the Partnerships for Home Energy Efficiency, an initiative aimed at cutting household energy costs by 10% over the next decade. “It seems to me that one of the greatest untapped sources of energy we have in... Read more

News Brief

August 1, 2005

Nevada Governor Kenny Guinn signed a bill in June 2005 requiring all state-funded projects to achieve LEED® Certification, or equivalent, and requiring that every two years at least two public buildings whose construction will be sponsored by the State of Nevada achieve LEED Silver certification, or equivalent. The law also provides some tax... Read more

News Brief

August 1, 2005

Washington Governor Christine Gregoire has signed a bill that calls for paying individuals, businesses, and local governments 15 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity produced by off-grid solar panels, wind turbines, and anaerobic digesters. The incentive rises to up to 54 cents per kWh if certain components are manufactured in Washington. The... Read more

News Brief

August 1, 2005

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has announced a program to support the research and development of heating and cooling technologies for residential and commercial buildings. Eligible projects must yield energy efficiency or environmental performance in New York State. NYSERDA plans to award up to $750,000... Read more

News Brief

August 1, 2005

The American Wind Energy Association has announced the formation of “Wind Energy Works!,” a broad coalition of wind energy advocates designed to “engage in the public conversation over the merits of wind energy, educate the public about the many benefits of wind energy development, and act as a counterbalance to the misinformation being spread... Read more

News Brief

August 1, 2005

Perfluorooctanoic acid (also called PFOA or C8), a chemical DuPont uses to make Teflon® and other products (see

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Vol. 13, No. 3), is “likely to be carcinogenic to humans,” according to a draft report from an advisory board to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). If EPA accepts the designation, it will conduct a... Read more

Product Review

August 1, 2005
With all the focus on reducing the environmental impact of buildings, relatively little attention is paid to environmental burdens of the design process. As any designer knows, however, that process creates a lot of waste and inefficiency, and hence many opportunities for improvement. One such opportunity is with carpet samples, which designers... Read more

News Analysis

August 1, 2005
The Accreditation in Sustainable Building Design program from the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland (RIAS) purports to be the world’s first evidence-based accreditation program for green building practitioners. The goal of the program is “to make clients, policy makers, and the profession recognize the clear distinction between... Read more

News Brief

August 1, 2005

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has published detailed case studies of the energy performance of six buildings as part of its evaluation for the U.S. Department of Energy. Each case study compares measured energy use to the project’s design goals and identifies successes and lessons learned. The six projects are the Zion... Read more

News Brief

August 1, 2005
Gaylord Nelson, former governor and U.S. senator from Wisconsin and founder of Earth Day, died in July 2005 at age 89. “I wanted a demonstration by so many people that politicians would say, ‘Holy cow, people care about this,’” Nelson said. “That’s just what Earth Day did.” President Clinton awarded Nelson the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995... Read more

News Analysis

August 1, 2005

Update, August 2008: The article below was originally published in August 2005. The patented transpired collector, branded as SolarWall®, is no longer legally available under any brand other than SolarWall. According to Conserval Engineering, previous license agreements are no longer in place for the production or sale of the SolarWall air-... Read more

Feature

Windows claim the lives of hundreds of millions of birds each year in the U.S., posing a greater threat to the avian population than cat predation, pesticides, or oil spills. The threat can be avoided, however, and the design community holds the key.

August 1, 2005

“There is unbelievable carnage taking place,” says Daniel Klem Jr., Ph.D., a biology professor at Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College and the world’s foremost expert on the phenomenon of birds colliding with buildings. “If you take the number of birds killed from the Exxon Valdez oil spill and compare it to my lowest estimate of the number of... Read more

News Brief

August 1, 2005

Ten years ago we covered sulfur lighting, then a new light source that offered promise for high efficacy (about 100 lumens per watt), good color rendition (CRI of 80), highly concentrated light (130,000 lumens from a light source the size of a golf ball) lending itself to light-tube distribution, very long lamp life, and avoidance of mercury (... Read more

News Analysis

July 1, 2005
The American Institute of Architects Committee on the Environment (AIA COTE) has an initiative underway to promote the teaching of environmental awareness and ecological design at schools of architecture. This “Ecoliteracy Project,” supported by the Tides Foundation, seeks to identify leaders in the field and disseminate information about... Read more

News Brief

July 1, 2005

During the 2004-2005 winter, the ozone layer reached the thinnest level ever recorded, according to a study by Cambridge University and reported April 27 in the

Guardian newspaper. “We thought things would start to get better because of the phasing out of CFCs and other chemicals because of the Montreal protocol,” says Cambridge... Read more

Feature

July 1, 2005
Throughout North America today, the dominant landscaping aesthetic is a broad, open lawn punctuated by trees and shrubs. While this landscaping system has been engrained into us through our culture and media, it creates an ecologically depleted landscape that requires significant amounts of resources and chemicals to maintain, especially in dry... Read more

News Brief

July 1, 2005

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) is seeking proposals to develop, demonstrate, or commercialize innovative building products and systems. Eligible projects must be new technologies or substantial improvements to existing technologies, according to NYSERDA, and must yield energy and environmental benefits in... Read more

News Analysis

July 1, 2005
Having helped manufacturers large and small redesign their products for the “next industrial revolution,” McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) has now created a product certification program. The new program recognizes products that conform to MBDC’s Cradle to Cradle™ (C2C) protocol (see

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Vol. 11, No. 5). MBDC aims to release... Read more