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

It’s never good to misquote a source, but it’s especially embarrassing when that source is one’s own research! In our “Buildings and the Environment: The Numbers” feature article (

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Vol. 10, No. 5) we listed the amounts of paved area in the U.S. in millions instead of thousands. The correct values are:

Transparent insulation was developed to increase the thermal performance of glazings without significantly reducing the light transmission. One pioneer in transparent insulation, Dr. K. G. T. Hollands of the University of Waterloo in Ontario, was initially looking for ways of improving performance of solar water heating collectors. By creating... 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

by Norbert Lechner, 2001. John Wiley & Sons, New York. Hardcover, 640 pages, $85

Heating, Cooling, Lighting is one of the most useful and important books on building design in the last ten years. The book is not inexpensive, but it’s worth every penny. Norbert Lechner, an architecture professor at Auburn... Read more

has accepted a position as Vice President of the U.S. Green Building Council, with primary responsibility for technical development and implementation of the LEED™ Green Building Rating System. Until November 2000, Howard was with the Building Research Establishment in the U.K., where he oversaw that organization’s influential... Read more

consolidate Energy Star brand awareness among consumers. In a recent letter to all partners, the manager of the... Read more

Most of us have a general understanding that buildings and the process of development have a pretty big impact on the environment. But what are those impacts and just how significant are they?

I read with great interest your recent article “Getting the ‘Right Stuff’: A Guide to Green Building Retailers” (

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Vol. 10, No. 4). Your newsletter has always been a source of valuable, and credible, information. I would like to tell you a bit about my company and point out a couple of differences of opinion I have with your... Read more

The architecture and engineering firm Hellmuth, Obata + Kassabaum (HOK) was among the recipients of this year’s

Green Cross Award from Global Green USA and Green Cross International, the peace and environmental organization founded by Mikhail Gorbachev. Accepting the award for HOK from Mr. Gorbachev at the April 25, 2001 gala in New... Read more

While efforts by American industry to clean up its act have been well publicized in recent years, toxic releases appear to be on the increase. The quantity of

toxic chemicals emitted by U.S. industry grew by 5% in 1999, according to the annual Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A total of 7.7... Read more

Atlas Roofing Corporation, which in 1998 became the first polyisocyanurate insulation manufacturer to introduce an ozone-safe product (see

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Vol. 7, No. 5), is still the only manufacturer to offer such a product. While most polyiso today is made with HCFC-141b, Atlas’s AC Ultra™ technology uses a mixture of hydrocarbons as the... Read more

in severity in many parts of the United States. In the Southeast and Northwest, drought conditions range from moderate to extreme, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In pockets of West Texas, the Central Appalachians, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Iowa, and eastern Tennessee, drought conditions... Read more

A

novel energy conservation plan in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Utah promises significant electricity savings. The 20-20 Program gives PacifiCorp customers at least 20% off their electricity bills this summer if they use 20% less electricity than they did last summer. While not yet approved by regulators, the program would apply to... Read more

The East Lake Commons community in Dekalb County, Georgia, has received a

National AIA-HUD Housing and Community Design Award for 2001 for excellence in community design that incorporates mixed use and mixed income. East Lake Commons was designed by Village Habitat Design, LLC, with Greg Ramsey, principal-in-charge. Southface Energy... 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

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

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

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

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