Green Built Home™, a voluntary green building program of the Wisconsin Environmental Initiative, in partnership with the Madison Area Builders Association, has been partnering with Habitat for Humanity of Dane County to certify all new Habitat homes as Green Built Homes. For 2005, all new Habitat homes will earn at least 112 points in the Green... Read more

Lights Out NY, a voluntary program designed to reduce the number of migrating birds killed by flying into city windows at night.

Lights Out NY encourages... Read more

BuildingGreen, Inc., will be participating actively in the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild Expo and Conference in Atlanta this November. Both Nadav Malin and Alex Wilson will be presenting conference sessions, and Nadav will be part of a special preconference workshop on environmentally preferable products. Also, BuildingGreen will... Read more

from Architectural Computer Services, Inc. (Arcom, producers of The American Institute of Architects’ Masterspec®), www.arcomnet.com, 800-424-5080. Softcover book and CD-ROM, 2004, 250 pages, $240.

As anyone who has tried knows all too well, incorporating all the requirements for a LEED® project into the construction documents is no... Read more

Zero-energy has become a buzzword of the green building movement, used in advertising slogans, conference presentations, and technical papers. Despite the excitement over the phrase, however, we lack a common understanding of just what zero-energy means. And despite proclaimed achievability, few if any buildings can demonstrate that they in... Read more

Office furniture manufacturer Steelcase, Inc., has committed to halting its use of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) in time for its 100th anniversary in 2012. The company credits its collaboration with McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry (MBDC) for the decision. Eliminating PVC from edge banding is the first step along that path, according to a... Read more

Through the new Massachusetts Green Communities™ initiative, MassHousing and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative (MTC) are working with the nonprofit Enterprise Foundation to build 1,000 green affordable homes throughout the state. The Enterprise Foundation will provide up to $75 million in private equity to developers, from the sale of... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has announced a call for projects to pilot-test the LEED® for New Construction Application Guide for Retail, developed to tailor LEED credit language to retail projects and to define alternative compliance paths in some areas. The LEED for Retail Committee is seeking 25 to 50 retail projects—preferably... Read more

The U.S. joined Australia, China, India, Japan, and South Korea in signing the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate in July 2005, with the goal of “taking action on climate change in a broad, pro-growth context,” according to a White House fact sheet. Together, the signatory countries represent about half of the world’s... Read more

August 22, 2005, marks the first day of classes for the new American College of the Building Arts. In 1998 the School of Building Arts opened in Charleston, South Carolina, hoping to reverse a steady decline in the availability of craftsmanship training. Since the South Carolina commission on higher education licensed the school as a college in... Read more

green buildings, significantly more money may be spent... Read more

The City of Bellingham, Washington, is requiring all publicly funded new and renovated buildings larger than 5,000 ft2 (470 m2) to meet LEED® Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. Bellingham joins the state of Washington, which became the first state to have a legislated requirement for LEED certification, also Silver, in... Read more

After leading the building industry in the pursuit of sustainable design in the early 1990s, The American Institute of Architects (AIA) turned its attention elsewhere and stood by as the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), with its LEED� Rating System, became the movement's dominant voice. But interest in green building keeps growing, and AIA... Read more

The average urban household in the U.S. uses 320 million Btus (338,000 MJ) of energy each year, compared to 440 million Btus (464,000 MJ) for the average suburban household, according to John Holtzclaw of the Sierra Club and Jennifer Henry of the U.S. Green Building Council. The pair’s findings, presented during the Congress for the New... Read more

On August 9, 2005, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) announced that it has amended its bylaws to accept trade associations as full members. This decision reverses an action taken in the spring of 2004 (see EBN Vol. 13, No. 6), when the board of directors voted to retain the exclusion of trade associations. It opens the door for the... Read more

In July 2005 New York became the latest state to develop energy efficiency standards for products not covered by federal regulations. (The Energy Policy Act of 2005, signed in August, established several federal standards; see Bush Signs Energy Policy Act of 2005.) New York’s Appliance and Equipment Energy Efficiency Standards Act of 2005... Read more

The protocol for testing the amount of lead that leaches into water from fixtures, valves, and other plumbing components is inadequate, according to a research team from Virginia Tech and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act, amended in 1996, bans new devices containing pure lead pipe, leaded solders, and... Read more

Responding to feedback from users about their experiences with LEED®, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has initiated a high-level “LEED refinement process.” In the spring of 2005 the Council commissioned a study from USGBC founder David Gottfried about how to improve LEED. More recently, Council board members, LEED committee members,... Read more