Glazing connects occupants to the outdoors, but with so many opportunities for air leakage, poor insulation, and thermal bridging, glazing is the primary weak link in building energy performance.

BuildingGreen approves glazing that offers strong energy performance properties for a variety of... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Are Cool Roofs Green? The Answer's Not Black and White

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


1. Explain why roofing choices are complicated by heating tradeoffs, climate effects, and condensation and how cool roofs are intended to reduce... Read more

Hello Green Gurus,

Here are all the details about our Peer Network event in NYC on Wednesday, September 28th. If you'll be in town, we hope to see you!

From 1-5pm we'll have the NYC Regional Mini-Summit, open to members of any of the five Peer Networks (Sustainability Consultants, Community Design Leaders, Contractors, Architects... Read more

Products & Materials Specialist Brent Ehrlich excels at deep, unbiased, and nuanced technical research on the health and environmental impacts of green building products and materials. Some areas of focus include:

product and material constituents, including their risks

product certifications

third-party product... Read more

Hey All,

Those of us in the electrification working group have been talking about the impending release of this new NREL tool, which provides hourly (TOU) GHG emissions forecasts for grid regions around the country. This will be a useful tool in evaluating the impacts of HVAC electrifcation, EV integration, load shifting, storage, etc. I... Read more

The site license permits the purchaser to share the PDF Study-Guide file within their company/organization and... Read more

Hi all,

We are taking a deep look at green accreditations within our firm. Gone are the days when we could say: "our staff is XX% LEED APs!" as a metric of firm progress. Here are a few questions we are asking ourselves, and I'm wondering how you approach this in your firms:

Friends, I'm helping with the 2023 COTE Top Ten Award and would love some input from this group on 2 things: 

1) Now that the AIA Design Excellence awards use the Framework for Design Excellence as their entry criteria, what do you see as the next gen for the Top Ten? If you could change 1-3 things, what would they be? If you submitted... Read more

This just in from Berkeley Earth. The definitive report on 2023 global temperatures. Lots of incredible graphs to peruse but the news is pretty incredible. Actual temperatures far surpassed predictions. "At the start of 2023, we foresaw only a 14% chance that 2023 would become a record warm year, and only a ~1% chance that 2023 would reach 1.5... Read more

Hi folks,

On today's call James Peterson will be introducing a conversation about how COVID might have changed our ways of working.

If there's time afterwards, we can take a look at this draft article from the USGBC research team. They're interested in our input on how we might want to analyze the info on electrification rates in... Read more

Faucets with high flow rates waste water—not to mention the energy used to treat and deliver it to our buildings—and the additional water stresses our wastewater treatment systems.

Building materials emit massive amounts of carbon long before the lights go on.

In this course, BuildingGreen takes an analytical look at the greenhouse gases that are emitted in the process of constructing our buildings in the first place—the embodied carbon. The report focuses on how architects and designers, working with other key... Read more

Hi All,

Jacob Knowles from BR+A reached out with a request and I’m passing it on to you all.  Jacob’s contact info is at the bottom of this so you can respond to him directly or respond here and I’ll forward it on:

We are working on assembling examples of large wet lab buildings that employ strategies to greatly reduce fossil... Read more

Seeking a dashboard system that will take energy use data from individual (college student) apartments to display in the lobby. Something where the display is both educational, easy to understand, and that could inspire a little friendly competition. Welcome any recommendations you have installed on projects or have seen that would be cool to... Read more

Hi: Please check out the fantastic editorial from Ned Cramer at Architect on "The Future of Architecture Education is the Future of Civilization". The deadline to comment on the latest draft of the NAAB accreditation criteria is November 22 and, as in the past draft, it falls far short of prioritizing climate action and sustainability. VERY... Read more

Have any of you relied on Green Badger for LEED documentation on projects?

I am familiar with the tool and know Tommy from my time in Atlanta, but have not used it on a construction project.

Have you found value? Thoughts?

Either way, they publish a pretty nifty "LEED v4 Construction Tool Kit" that may be useful for your... Read more

Does anyone up here do or have familiarity with anyone who regularly does NEPA EIS? If you need a definition for the acronym, please see here: https://www.epa.gov/nepa/national-environmental-policy-act-review-process#EIS. I've been asked if I know anything about it, to which the answer is no, but I'd like to get smarter about it and I'm hoping... Read more

What’s the net present value of that extra insulation? Join us on Tuesday, June 25th at 2:00 pm Eastern for a Peer Networks webinar on “Balancing Embodied and Operating Carbon.” Bill Smarzewski and Jason Fierko of Ewing Cole have developed a method for combining energy modeling with embodied carbon data to determine the carbon “payback” of... Read more