Championing the
Changemakers

Dear Colleagues,

The EPA has released a very impressive proposal for ENERGY STAR specs for residential water heaters that will strongly encourage electrification and decarbonization of these appliances. 

ENERGY STAR is a voluntary program for high performance appliances and this is a huge opportunity to begin the decarb transition... Read more

If you work on projects in Massachusetts, you are probably working under the updated MA Stretch Energy Code. While this code is doing great things pushing for electrification and very efficient buildings, it can still be tricky to implement or adjust your processes to the calculations even for seasoned pros. AIA MA in conjunction with BE+ has... Read more

Hi SDL: today is the last day to cast your vote in the voting for Greenbuild by 5PM ET.  

please vote for the terrific program put together on PV23 "The Tools You Need to Design for Climate Emergency Action" with me, Betsy and Beth Heider that will bring together a collection of tools, including brand new ones from Saskia, using the Top... Read more

Hello SCL- as we move closer towards the release of the Contractors Commitment we have realized that we need a donation of graphics/marketing help from one of our member firms.

We are looking for help with a BG SCL Contractors Commitment logo, landing page, document organization, and any graphics we might need to highlight the... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Green Design: What's Love Got to Do with It?

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


1. Summarize how designers are better able to fulfill the full promise of sustainability by embracing sensory experience.
2. Broaden the sustainable design... Read more

Learning Objectives:

Explore the relationship between smart buildings and cybersecurity through their shared history.

Clarify the difference between OT and information technology (“IT”) cybersecurity including the protocols that drive OT cybersecurity programs.

Provide recent examples of critical attacks on building... Read more

Hi Everyone!

I'm Emily, GCI General Contractor's Sustainability Manager in San Francisco. Nice to meet you all.

I started with the company in 2013 and since then we've doubled in employees. I have been handling sustainability solo, until about 8 months ago, when we hired Alejandra Arce Gomez full-time to help manage the... Read more

Hi All,

Jacob Knowles from BR+A reached out with a request and I’m passing it on to you all.  Jacob’s contact info is at the bottom of this so you can respond to him directly or respond here and I’ll forward it on:

We are working on assembling examples of large wet lab buildings that employ strategies to greatly reduce fossil... Read more

Welcome to the quiz portion of Sustainable Sites: Primers from Environmental Building News.

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


1) Describe how invasive plants can harm an ecosystem, and why native plants are generally less work and less expensive.
2) Explain the... Read more

Hello SCL,

Quick reminder to sign up for our SCL Summit in May! True to usual form, we ask what’s important to YOU before we finalize an agenda. In the next couple of weeks, we will be sending out a draft agenda and asking for your feedback. Sign up now so your voice will be heard. Initial ideas so far have included:

Hi all, has anyone come across a comprehensive (and recent) study looking at how long buildings actually last (beyond Stewart Brand)? I know of plenty that look at the benefits of reuse, but none that look at existing building stock and how much has been reused vs. demolished. 

As we start looking at embodied carbon metrics, I can't help... Read more

We are growing our Design Performance Group at NBBJ! We're looking for two special people right now: a senior sustainable material consultant and a senior energy analyst. Help us design the next generation of healthy, low impact buildings - this is a chance to impact across the scale of our global company and build a better future! Know anyone... Read more

Hi folks,

Any of you who have completed WBLCA for projects - we are working on a new initiative with the City of Cambridge (building on our prior work NZ Climate Action Plan) but this time focused exclusively on embodied carbon.

We have not yet begun the work - but they have an opportunity to make a move on this on Tuesday and... Read more

I’m writing to see who would be interested in collaborating during the month of December on a position paper that would be given to the incoming Biden administration, outlining things that firms in our industries (i.e. architecture, engineering and construction) would be excited to see advanced as part of Biden’s Build-Back-Better (BBB) program... Read more

Hi SDLers: ESG Investing is mushrooming which is a very good thing. AIA National, for example, just switched over to 100% ESG investments. With it, there seems to be a growing number of "ESG-lite" options. I'm wondering if anyone among this informed group has recommendations on how to determine a quality investment approach. I'd appreciate any... Read more