BuildingGreen Report

Product Review

December 1, 2004
The Speedi-Boot™ boot hanger for air-supply ducts, introduced at Greenbuild 2004 in Portland, is one of those products that you may not know you need until you see it. Introduced in September 2004, it’s a mounting system that allows air supply boots to be tightly sealed to a ceiling, wall, or subfloor. (A boot is the termination that connects a... Read more

News Analysis

December 1, 2004
The U.S. Green Building Council’s third LEED® rating system, LEED for Commercial Interiors (LEED-CI) was launched at Greenbuild, following its approval by USGBC members. As with the other LEED products, LEED-CI begins its life as version 2, retroactively making the pilot version 1. LEED-CI is intended to serve tenants who have control only over... Read more

News Brief

December 1, 2004

The Emerging Green Builders (EGB) chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council announced during Greenbuild the winners of the third annual USGBC Design Competition, intended to recognize students and young professionals in the building industry. More than 130 teams, including more than 270 individuals from 16 countries, competed to design a... Read more

Product Review

This high-design, lightweight, formaldehyde-free panel is made of waste fiber left over after processing sorghum.

December 1, 2004

Kirei™ is a lightweight, formaldehyde-free panel made from waste fiber left over after processing sorghum, a grain crop grown widely in many parts of the world. The product was developed in Japan in the mid-1990s and introduced to the U.S. market in 2003. Kirei is a Japanese character meaning both clean and beautiful, according to Kirei USA... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004

A multifaceted approach to controlling asthma can significantly reduce its symptoms, according to a study published on September 9, 2004 in the

New England Journal of Medicine. More than 900 inner-city children with allergenic asthma participated in the study, which compared the symptoms of a control group to those of a group in which... Read more

News Analysis

November 1, 2004
Bill Browning, a well-known leader in the green building world and member of

EBN’s editorial advisory board, left the full-time employment of the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) on July 1, 2004 to work with the John A. Clark Company on the development of Haymount. Haymount is a new town being developed outside of Washington, D.C. with an... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004

The International Energy Agency (IEA) Solar Heating and Cooling Programme has presented its

Solar Award to

William Beckman, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin at Madison (UWM). Beckman was recognized for his contributions to the solar energy field, including co-developing the TRNSYS building-energy analysis and... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004

The U.S. Green Building Council is seeking applicants for the Mark Ginsberg Sustainability Fellowship. Established in honor of Ginsberg’s work in the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the three-month fellowship will focus on market developments and emerging trends in green building. Details are online at... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004
by Amory Lovins et al., with forewords by George P. Shultz and Sir Mark Moody-Stuart. The Rocky Mountain Institute, Snowmass, Colorado, 2004; 328 pages, softcover, $40. Available for sale or free download from RMI ( www.rmi.org or www.oilendgame.org).

Winning the Oil Endgame is classic Amory Lovins and Rocky Mountain Institute. This highly... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004

DuPont has reached a tentative settlement in a three-year-old class-action lawsuit that could cost the company $343 million for exposing Ohio and West Virginia communities to perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C8 (see

EBN

Vol. 13, No. 3). In the agreement, DuPont will pay $108 million, including $23 million to cover... Read more

News Analysis

November 1, 2004
People who live in sprawling cities are far less healthy than their counterparts in more compact areas, according to a study performed by the nonprofit

Rand® Corporation, based on information from Healthcare for Communities, a survey funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The survey analyzed health data for more than 8,600 adults living... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004

Efficiency Vermont is now accepting applications for their

2005 Energy Efficient Design Awards, to be announced at the Better Buildings by Design conference in February 2005. To be eligible, projects must be located in Vermont and have been completed after January 1, 2001. Posters and registration forms are due December 22, 2004.... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004

The wind energy Production Tax Credit (PTC) has been extended through the end of 2005 as part of a tax package signed by President Bush in October 2004. The PTC makes available a tax credit of 1.8 cents for each kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by wind turbines. Although the PTC had expired at the end of 2003, the recent extension is... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004
The Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum has announced the winners of the fifth annual

National Design Awards. Recognized for the creation of “buildings, spaces, and places with completely positive intentions,” the architecture firm

William McDonough + Partners was given the

Environment Design Award.... Read more

Product Review

November 1, 2004
There is great appeal to the idea of combining solar power generation with such building-component functions as glazing and roofing. Building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) glazing systems, available from several manufacturers, provide the combined functions of daylight transmission and power generation. (For more on BIPV applications, see

EBN... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004

Energetech America, LLC has announced plans for “GreenWave Rhode Island,” America’s first wave-energy project. The 500 kilowatt project will tap the power of an “oscillating water column” to force compressed air through a turbine. An existing undersea cable will then transmit the power to the New England electrical grid. The structure will be... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004

Haliburton School of the Arts at Fleming College in Ontario has announced a new program in Sustainable Building Design and Construction. Joining other programs in sustainable design at the Boston Architectural Center (see

EBN

Vol. 11, No. 2) and Carnegie Mellon University (see

EBN

Vol. 11, No. 6), Haliburton’s... Read more

Op-Ed

November 1, 2004
BuildingGreen has a new directory of residential green building products coming out this fall. Created for homebuilders and homeowners, the 320-page

Green Building Products is a residential edition of the widely acclaimed

GreenSpec

® Directory—with a few important distinctions:

Green Building Products includes... Read more

News Brief

November 1, 2004

The Sustainable Buildings Industry Council has announced the winners of its 2004 awards program. The jury included BuildingGreen’s Alex Wilson. More information is online at www.sbicouncil.org.

Best Sustainable Practice Awards were given to:

•The

Massachusetts Technology Collaborative for

Sustainable Policy and... Read more

Feature

November 1, 2004
The Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s (CBF) Philip Merrill Environmental Center—the first LEED

® Platinum project—is widely featured as an icon of green building. Although the project isn’t perfect, on the whole it is a remarkable achievement, especially since most of the designers involved were new to green building. The success of the Merrill Center... Read more