BuildingGreen Report

Blog Post

March 13, 2008
7/1/09 Update: The LEED AP exam has significantly changed, and the following sample exam has not been updated to reflect this. Please use the information if it's helpful--but no guarantees of anything. And by the way, if you are looking to learn about the LEED 2009 rating systems, there's no better tool out there than our own LEEDuser.com. 4/4/09... Read more

Blog Post

March 12, 2008
Martin Luther King, Jr. said "I have a dream," not "I have a nightmare." Tell me why my life is going to be better in a world where we are dealing with climate change. Solitaire Townsend offered that thought as one of four people presenting at the opening public forum for the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association BuildingEnergy08 conference... Read more

Blog Post

March 11, 2008

Twice each month, BuildingGreen publishes an email news bulletin with current news and product information briefs. Sign up here — it's free. We will never share or sell your email address, and you may unsubscribe at any time.

Read the current bulletin

Blog Post

March 10, 2008

The current issue of Environmental Building News reports that PV prices have been going up, reversing the declining cost trend of previous years. Seems to be due to a combination of demand exceeding supply coupled with polysilicon shortages. But PV is still part of the good answer. A few days ago, a report titled Emissions from Photovoltaic... Read more

Blog Post

March 6, 2008

There are a growing number of green-product retailers, both online and in storefronts. We list some of those with a specialty focus in GreenSpec, but there are so many more popping up all the time. I visited one last weekend that's quite something — Home Green Home, in Ithaca, NY. While most green retailers are either boutique shops with small... Read more

Blog Post

March 1, 2008

I'm in Ithaca, NY, this weekend at the third annual meeting of Natural Builders Northeast (NBNe), an association of professional natural building practitioners. Like the early days of the NESEA conference — another annual gathering of regional experts working to help the built environment move toward something more environmentally sane (and... Read more

News Analysis

March 1, 2008
At the 2008 International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Florida, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) officially launched its National Green Building Program, allowing builders to have homes certified according to the point system set out in the Model Green Home Building Guidelines. The program also includes an educational component and a... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2008

Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) are persistent, bioaccumulative chemicals that can cause both acute and chronic health problems in humans and may cause cancer; their production was banned in the U.S. in the 1970s. Most studies have focused on how these chemicals enter the human body through the food chain, but a new study published in the... Read more

Product Review

March 1, 2008
A new ceiling panel system offers the decorative look of molded plaster with a smaller environmental footprint. Chicago Metallic, a ceiling products manufacturer, recently introduced the Monarch GE system, which includes 70% recycled content and is 100% recyclable. Made from gypsum and tiny, lightweight glass beads, it comes in several classic... Read more

News Analysis

March 1, 2008
A recent report by PV News indicates that the average cost of photovoltaic (PV) installations has risen slightly in the last three years, from $6.93 per watt in 2005 to $7.25 in 2006 and $7.62 in 2007. The escalation in price is a departure from an eight-year trend in which increased demand for PV systems resulted in consistent price reductions (... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2008

A group of national design associations has proposed the creation of a National Academy of Environmental Design to add to the four existing national academies (National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council). The group includes the Association of Collegiate Schools of... Read more

Product Review

March 1, 2008
To say that there is a lot of hype about insulating paints and radiant barrier coatings is an understatement. The Internet is rife with claims of paints that dramatically reduce heat transfer—usually based on some technological magic spun off from NASA. While these products may have some relevance in the extreme conditions of outer space,... Read more

News Analysis

March 1, 2008
Viance, a wood-treatment company jointly owned by Chemical Specialties and Rohm and Haas (see

EBN Vol. 15, No. 12), and based in Charlotte, North Carolina, now offers Ecolife pressure-treated wood products. Ecolife contains a waterborne wood preservative made from tebuconazole and imidacloprid (low-toxicity biocides commonly used in agriculture... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2008

After his 2007 term as president of The American Institute of Architects (AIA), RK Stewart, FAIA, has joined the San Francisco office of Perkins+Will as an associate partner. Before his post at AIA, Stewart was a principal at San Francisco-based Gensler, where he worked for 20 years. While at AIA, Stewart emphasized green building, leading the... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2008

by Front Seat Management

www.walkscore.com

With the first three rules of real estate (location, location, location) in mind, Mike Mathieu, CEO and founder of Front Seat Management and former general manager of MSN.com, created Walkscore.com, which uses Google Maps and business listings to calculate the “walkability” of a given... Read more

News Analysis

March 1, 2008
Predicting how a building will perform before it is built is the tantalizing promise of building information modeling (BIM) design software. There are some fundamental differences, however, between an energy model and a model used to generate construction documents and three-dimensional views of a design, so the vision of real-time feedback on... Read more

Op-Ed

March 1, 2008
After 22 years as a small, independent company, BuildingGreen now has Taunton Press as a partner in our service to the green building industry. In February 2008, Taunton Press, the publisher of

Fine Homebuilding, became an equity partner in BuildingGreen, LLC, joining myself, Nadav Malin, and Jerelyn Wilson as owners. The financial resources... Read more

News Analysis

March 1, 2008
In 2005, Wal-Mart president and CEO Lee Scott announced a companywide emphasis on environmentally responsible practices, a program called “Sustainability 360.” This program covers many aspects of Wal-Mart’s business, including packaging, transportation, energy efficiency, greenhouse gas emissions, and product sourcing (see

EBN

Vol. 15,... Read more

Feature

March 1, 2008
By Tristan RobertsIt’s revolutionary, it’s the next big thing, and it’s going to change everything. The media and industry representatives have described nanotechnology with so much excitement in the last decade, and at such a growing pace, that to illustrate the trend one investment firm has measured the explosion of this coverage with what it... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2008
The Applied Research and Development building at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, has achieved a Platinum rating in the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED Rating System. The 60,000-ft2 (5,600-m2) building, designed by architecture firm Burns Wald-Hopkins in Tucson, earned 60 out of 69 possible points and is expected to achieve... Read more