Championing the
Changemakers

For the past few weeks, I've been writing about petroleum... Read more

I had been reading about the innovative mushroom-based insulation material, Greensulate, which was developed by two industrious college students, for several years. The YouTube videos I watched about it were a lot of... Read more

It's fitting that this first blog of 2011 takes a look into the crystal ball--at the energy source that... Read more

New, improved guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about how to deal with a broken compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) are intended to take some of the mystery out of the purchase and use of CFLs. But by suggesting a response that borders on Hazmat lockdown, the guidelines may potentially add to consumers' uncertainties.

By Beth Broome

Once an active transit hub at the western terminus of Canada’s Toronto Civic Railways (TCR), the five parallel streetcar storage and maintenance barns comprising the St. Clair Carhouse fell into disrepair after being decommissioned and abandoned in 1985. The story of the facility’s revival as Artscape Wychwood Barns, a... Read more

By Alanna Malone

Students at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD) are fortunate to have access to Bagley Nature Area, a 55-acre parcel of land on the northwest portion of the campus that includes a pond, forest, ski and hiking trails, and open space. But while conducting research, observing wildlife, or absorbing the scenery, the... Read more

Happy New Year! I am going to keep the following blog fairly simple, mainly because Knight Wall Systems is interesting enough to deserve a closer... Read more

The impacts of a rare greenhouse gas—nitrogen trifluoride, or NF3—used to make thin-film photovoltaic panels are offset in under four months by the emissions-free power generation of the panels. This is the finding of a study published in

Environmental Science & Technology. The use of NF3 has come under scrutiny since scientists... Read more

Beazer Homes USA, Inc., one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, will pay $925,000 in civil penalties to settle alleged Clean Water Act violations in 21 states, totaling 362 sites—20 of which are located in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The Justice Department and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the decision on December 2,... Read more

Seven years in the making and the result of a partnership between the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Green Guide for Healthcare (GGHC), LEED for Healthcare passed member ballot with an 87% approval rating in November 2010. The final version of the rating system is quite different from the first public-comment version, which was... Read more

Developed by Geopier... Read more

Designers at HOK and daylighting and energy consultants at the Weidt Group recently came together to see if they could design a market rate, net-zero-carbon-emissions office building. Their design exercise resulted in “Net Zero Co2urt,” a four-story, 170,000 ft2 (16,000 m2) office building for a downtown St. Louis site, and with an estimated... Read more

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has announced new incentives as part of a Green Residential Building Program. NYSERDA will offer $5,125 for a single-family home and up to $13,375 for a larger building—to owners of new or substantially renovated residential and residential mixed-use buildings, with up to 11... Read more

According to an article in

Fast Company, researchers from the University of Bristol in the U.K. have calculated that everyone on Earth will download an average of 3 gigabytes of data per day, on average, by 2030. The power needed to sustain that data flow, the researchers found, would be 1,175 gigawatts, or the equivalent of 1,175... Read more

A new peer-reviewed study from Michigan State University researchers lends rare quantitative support to the idea that green building can lead to greater worker health and productivity. The study has several limitations, however, and the researchers characterized its results as “preliminary.”

Researchers focused on the approximately 250... Read more

Pennsylvania State University researchers recently designed a desalination device powered by exoelectrogenic bacteria, called a microbial electrodialysis cell (MEDC), according to research published in

Environmental Science & Technology. The device uses three chambers separated by two membranes, which allow bacteria to grow on an... Read more

The first four WaterSense labeled homes in the country were recently built in Roseville, California by KB Home. WaterSense, a partnership program sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, helps consumers reduce their water use and utility bills through water-conscious design. WaterSense-labeled homes aim to use 20% less water than... Read more