Air movement keeps occupants comfortable when it's warm, so cooling setpoints can be higher, and natural ventilation is a viable option even at higher temps and humidity.

BuildingGreen-Approved Ceiling Fans

BuildingGreen approves Energy Star-certified ceiling fans with ECMs—motors using electronic commutators.

Energy and... Read more

Section 901.5.1.3 of the 2018 IgCC includes a requirement that "A critical review shall be performed by an external expert independent of those performing the LCA."  I'm curious as to what other's experiences are with having an external expert review an LCA - how does one find such an expert?  Do you have any favorites that you'd recommend? ... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Energy Modeling for Early Design Decisions (recorded webcast)

Learning Objectives
Upon completing this course, participants will be able to:


1. Explain how energy codes and standards are pushing commercial projects beyond what they can do without modeling.
2. Describe the key... Read more

Hi SD Leaders! 

I'm Nadav, president at BuildingGreen and facilitator of the Sustainability peer networks. I'm really excited to finally have this network for champions from smaller firms up and running! 

I do a lot of workshop facilitation, design process support, and consulting and training related to sustainable products. I... Read more

Hello Sustainable MEP Leaders!

BuildingGreen is already hard at work planning next year's MEP Summit. We are looking at venues in Denver, CO and dates in late May or early June.

In order to book a venue, we need to nail down dates soon. Please fill out this Doodle poll to let us know which of these would work for you. All of the... Read more

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At Living Future last week a woman from Google asked about cost comparisons and I shared that the City of Santa Monica conducted a study analyzing the costs of a prototypical mixed-use project for a Living Building vs. LEED v4 Platinum vs. code compliant (Title 24, part 6). I thought this group might be interested as well so here is the link... Read more

A couple Minnesota cities are considering adding electrification to their sustainable building policy (required for new construction receiving City financial assistance). Concerned that the market isn't ready for a full-on mandate, they are considering a more moderate approach of requiring developers/design teams to conduct an electrification... Read more

Hi all,

Thanks again to those who presented at the AIA Show & Tell! Here are the slides for some of the fascinating presentations we saw. Please do not share the slides outside of the networks unless they are marked “PUBLIC.”

There may be more to come; if you presented but did not yet provide permission for your slides to be... Read more

We just had a planning call for the tour, and I’m more convinced than before that: a) we picked a great location for this year’s Winter Summit and b) you won’t want to miss this tour!

Alabama’s Gulf State Park got a big infusion of funds from the BP Oil Spill (that’s an interesting story in itself), and now has some amazing new... Read more

Under a high carbon scenario, most of North America will be 2 degrees C hotter by 2050. Meantime, we're designing buildings that will still be around in 2050, to codes that don't yet factor in chronic risks associated with climate change. I want to explain these risks to my colleagues; I'm hoping some of our green gurus can help answer the... Read more

Jill is a mission-driven leader who loves working with people, solving problems, and strengthening the infrastructure of values-driven organizations that are committed to having a positive impact in the world. 

She brings decades of experience analyzing and understanding the value of operational efficiency across a variety of... Read more

Hi everyone - in doing a carbon footprint for our firm, does anyone know if buildings that we design as Architects considered scope 3 emissions, or are they beyond the boundary of emissions? LMN's buildings, despite best efforts, are cumulatively multiple orders of magnitude above our scope 1 and 2 emissions. We have never included these... Read more

Hello all,

I need future weather files for a project. We are looking at three years, 2050, 2075, and 2095 using two climate change scenarios, low emissions, and high emissions. I have seen ARUP's Weathershift site that uses RCP 8.5 and RCP 4.5. Are we assuming that 2.6 is not achievable? I would have used this as a low emissions scenario... Read more

Does anyone have a draft copy of the ASHRAE 209P standard? It has not been finalized? See an overview of it here from IBPSA 2016 summer meeting.

The 209 committee plans to release it for a 3rd public review and hopes to finalize it in late winter or early spring. I'm just trying to track down one of the earlier verisons of the document... Read more

We have a client who is asking us to design a roughly 10 ksf Wellness Center for PHIUS 2021 certification.  The program includes several high density assembly type spaces - roughly 300 person peak occupant load for the building.  The Criteria Calculator that the architect showed us puts the building peak cooling load at 4 BTUH/sf (3000 sf/ton... Read more

Hello! 

We have several projects that are either pending ILFI Zero Carbon certification or the owner is planning to purchase offsets to cover construction emissions. Thus far, I have not considered this in our corporate footprint reporting. However, we are including A5 emissions whenever feasible and multiplying that performance over the... Read more