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

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

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

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

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

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

EBN

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

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

The European Parliament voted in July 2005 to make permanent a temporary ban on the use of phthalates in toys. Phthalates have been linked to reproductive abnormalities in the development of boys. Three types of phthalates were banned from all toys and three others were banned from only those toys that children can put in their mouths. The... Read more

Maine Governor John Baldacci signed a bill in June 2005 establishing rebates for homeowners and business owners who install photovoltaic (PV) systems and solar thermal systems used to heat water or air. PV systems installed before 2007 qualify for a rebate of $3 per watt for the first 2,000 watts and $1 per watt for the next 1,000 watts, capped... Read more

Busby Perkins+Will Architects Co. was awarded an

Architectural Firm Award. Every principal and... Read more

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

“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

Each five-decibel increase in aircraft noise can delay a child’s reading ability by two months, according to a study of children living near airports in Europe, published in the June 4, 2005, issue of

The Lancet. “In practical terms, aircraft noise might have only a small effect on the development of reading, but the effect of long-term... Read more

Although it may look the same, the

EBN you hold in your hands—unless you are reading this online or printed it out yourself—is printed on a new (well, sort-of new) paper. New Leaf Opaque, the paper we’ve used since February 2002, is now made from 100% post-consumer recycled material. The prior formulation was 60% post-consumer content,... Read more

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed an executive order in June 2005 committing the state to reduce its greenhouse gases to 2000 levels by 2010. While this short-term goal is only about half as aggressive as compliance with the Kyoto Protocol would be, the governor’s longer-term goals are ambitious. California will reduce its... Read more

Body & Soul Magazine, the awards honor books “that contribute significantly to conscious living... Read more

The nonprofit SustainLane has released the results of a study ranking 25 U.S. cities based on performance in 12 sustainability categories: transportation, air quality, tap-water quality, LEED® buildings, food and agriculture, zoning, land use, solid-waste diversion rate, land-use planning, city innovation, energy and climate, and knowledge base... Read more