In December 2006, Congress passed a last-minute extension of several tax credits related to renewable energy resources. The one-year extension covers tax credits, set up in the Energy Policy Act of 2005, for the installation of residential and commercial photovoltaic equipment, the construction of energy-efficient buildings, and the production... Read more

The Environmental Stewardship Council of Kaiser Permanente, a leading health-maintenance organization, has announced that it will require all new roofing on its facilities to be PVC-free starting in January 2007. According to Tom Cooper, chair of the High Performance Buildings Committee at Kaiser, the new policy includes the option to continue... Read more

We are pleased to announce a number of

EBN staffing changes.

Tristan Roberts has been promoted to senior editor and will continue to play a lead role with

EBN feature and news writing.

Jessica Boehland, with us for five years, most recently as managing editor, is now a full-time graduate student at Yale’s School... Read more

A chemical used to make fluoropolymers, found in building products like solar panels and metal roofing (see

EBN

Vol. 15, No. 8), PFOA has been scrutinized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and classified as a “likely carcinogen.” EPA’s effort to determine whether fluoropolymers release PFOA when they degrade,... Read more

With thousands of safe and economical photoluminescent (PL) exit sign installations in buildings throughout North America, we at Active Safety initially wanted to tar and feather Alex Wilson for the inaccuracies and misconceptions in his feature article “The Evolution of Exit Signs (and Why the Latest is a Bad Idea),”

Vol. 15, No. 11.... Read more

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) has announced the winner of its Designing and Building with FSC Award, which recognizes projects that promote sustainable forestry through their use of FSC-certified wood. The Henry Klein Partnership, Architects, based in Mount Vernon, Washington, won this year’s award for its work on the North Cascades... Read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced in November 2006 that it would regulate a form of nanotechnology for the first time. Engineered at the scale of one-billionth of a meter, nanotechnology is now used in over 200 consumer products, according to the nonprofit Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. EPA has decided that one... Read more

Originally founded in Seattle in 1999, the Sustainable Building Advisor Program has grown into a national endeavor. Now available in several communities in Washington and Oregon, as well as in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, the program is geared toward building professionals who are looking to extend their knowledge of green building practices.... Read more

After a court-issued remand, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has announced new emissions limits for mercury and total hydrocarbons for cement kilns built after December 2005. The new regulations will not apply to kilns built before that date, which are only required to meet standard industry practices for reducing emissions. EPA... Read more

After coming tantalizingly close to entering national distribution, TimberSIL, the silica-based nontoxic alternative to preservative-treated wood, and the company behind it, Timber Treatment Technologies, Inc. (TTT) of Springfield, Virginia, suffered serious setbacks in 2006. Those problems included the loss of the company’s principal... Read more

A solar photovoltaic cell has achieved the highest efficiency level yet recorded, converting 40.7% of the sun’s energy into electricity, according to the Boeing Company, owner of Spectrolab, Inc., which made the cell. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory verified the milestone, which has been called the solar... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has settled a lawsuit brought in September 2005 by a group of organizations and states led by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The suit charged that DOE was late in meeting congressionally mandated deadlines to update energy-efficiency standards for a range of consumer products. Settling the suit... Read more

A few years ago, Alex Wilson challenged Sarnafil US, Inc., to recycle its old roofs [see

EBN Vol. 10, No. 9].

I am pleased to inform

Environmental Building News that Sarnafil has invested over $1 million to install state of the art recycling equipment at our Canton, Massachusetts facility.

We now recycle all of our... Read more

USG Corporation, based in Chicago, has announced the reformulation of more than 25 of its ceiling panel lines. Of these, eight product lines are now classified as formaldehyde-free and exceed standards set by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, which limits formaldehyde-free products to emissions of less than three... Read more

Architects/Designers/Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) has announced the winners of its 2006

Lewis Mumford Awards.

September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows won the Peace award for its work promoting nonviolent responses to war and terrorism and calling attention to threats to human and civil rights. The award... Read more