The Healthy Building Network (HBN) presented its 2004 Healthy Building Leadership Award to the nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry Habitat for Humanity. HBN and Greenpeace met with Neville Eastwood, director of construction and environmental research for Habitat for Humanity International in 2000 to discuss the possibility of... Read more

For the first time in U.S. history, a state renewable energy standard initiative was put before voters in a referendum, as opposed to being passed through state legislature. In the November 2004 elections, Colorado voters supported the renewable portfolio standard, Amendment 37, by a narrow margin, requiring Colorado’s largest utility companies... Read more

® Technical and Scientific Advisory Committee (TSAC) HCFC Task Group. This report,

The Treatment by LEED of the Environmental Impact of HVAC Refrigerants, was written to inform future revisions to... Read more

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

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

The

National Association of Home Builders is now accepting entries for the

2005 National Green Building Awards, which recognize individuals, companies, and organizations demonstrating a commitment to environmentally responsible residential construction. The submission deadline is December 15, 2004, and winners will be announced... Read more

U.S. buildings are blamed for the deaths of nearly one billion birds each year, a statistic that bird experts will address during the first conference anywhere focused on designing buildings to be more bird-friendly. Chicago’s Department of the Environment, Department of Planning and Development, and Ornithological Society are planning the... Read more

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

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

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

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

® 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

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

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

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

EBN... Read more

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

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