The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) and the Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada (BOMA Canada) have discontinued negotiations towards a cooperative relationship. According to Nancy Grenier, manager of communications for CaGBC, the two organizations had been pursuing a relationship in which they would promote each others’... Read more

Until recently, builders using structural insulated panels (SIPs) had to work with an architect or engineer to prove the technique was equivalent structurally to those spelled out in the International Residential Code. In May 2007, the International Code Council (ICC) adopted prescriptive specifications and installation details for SIPs into... Read more

Six organizations have joined forces to create a design guide focused on indoor air quality (IAQ) in nonresidential buildings. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initially decided to fund a design guide and reached a cooperative agreement with the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers. A memorandum of... Read more

A spokesperson for San Francisco’s Department of Environment confirmed that chances were very good that legislation would be enacted to formalize recommendations put forth in a June 2007 report by the Mayor’s Task Force on Green Building. Following the proposed recommendations, large commercial and high-rise residential buildings, both new and... Read more

In Alex Wilson’s editorial in the June 2007 issue [

EBN Vol. 16, No. 6], he was careful to point out that “the

heat source in nuclear power plants does not emit greenhouse gases” (my emphasis). This simplification distorts the true emissions picture, as shown in an analysis performed by Jan Willem Storm van Leeuwen and Philip... Read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is currently drafting a new specification for home plans called Designed to Earn Energy Star. EPA expects to complete the specification by the end of 2007, after two rounds of comments from stakeholders. The current version of the specification requires home plans to be accompanied by information... Read more

Fear of infection is hardly a new phenomenon, but it seems to have risen to a fever pitch in recent years. Modern medicine appeared to have all but conquered infectious disease decades ago—but in the last three decades our society’s confidence in that victory has unraveled. Diseases like AIDS, anthrax, “mad cow disease,” severe acute... Read more

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Those who remember the 1970s houses with two parallel exterior walls and an airspace between them circulating solar heat around the house may be doing... Read more

In passing the 1996 Food Quality Protection Act, Congress required the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to test pesticides for disruption of the human endocrine system, which produces and regulates hormones. After years of delays, EPA announced in June 2007 that it would test 73 pesticides that people commonly encounter in homes and... Read more

On May 4, 2007, the U.S. Green Building Council expanded a previous ruling regarding Cradle to Cradle (C2C) certification (see

EBN

Vol. 16, No. 5) by endorsing a LEED innovation point proposal from two related certification programs: the SMART Building Product Standard and the California Gold Carpet Standard. As with C2C, these... Read more

Just as President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal led America out of the Great Depression in our grandparent’s day, a dramatic set of initiatives will be required if we are to prevent the Great Warming. Many have argued for something akin to the Apollo Project to carry out the research and development needed to advance low-cost renewable energy... Read more

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The Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH), a program administered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has... Read more

For the second time, the Holcim Awards, sponsored by the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction, are open to entries (see

EBN

Vol. 15, No. 8). The awards recognize projects that meet housing and infrastructure needs without harming future generations. Projects are eligible for the competition if construction had not... Read more

At its annual convention in Baltimore, Maryland, in June 2007, the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) announced its forthcoming GreenFormat product data-reporting tool. GreenFormat is a Web-based questionnaire and product listing service that manufacturers can use to report on environmental aspects of their products. BuildingGreen, Inc... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced in June 2007 its intention to commit $1 million to green building research, including areas such as human health and productivity, climate change mitigation, the business case for green building, and passive survivability. The structure and schedule for funding by USGBC have not been determined... Read more

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Buildings with large expanses of glazing can suffer dramatic cooling energy requirements and create glare problems for occupants. Façade shading systems... Read more

The Western Regional Climate Action Initiative, started in February 2007, continues to grow. Created by five states—Arizona, California, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington—the alliance grew to include Utah and, recently, the Canadian provinces of British Columbia and Manitoba. The initiative requires the signatory states to work together to... Read more

The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) will undertake a global project to encourage retrofitting buildings with energy-efficient technologies, former President Bill Clinton announced in May 2007. The program brings together several energy service companies and banks to help initiate and finance retrofit programs in 15 cities around the world,... Read more