Championing the
Changemakers

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

This issue marks the beginning of our 20th year of publishing Environmental Building News. For two decades we’ve been reporting on happenings, trends, technologies, and products in green building. With this issue, we’re doing something different: reporting on what we’d like to see—not what’s here, but what should be here.

Some of these... Read more

Electric lighting converts highly versatile electricity into usable light. Very different technologies can be employed to do this.

In incandescent lighting—the standard light bulb invented 130 years ago by Thomas Edison—electric current passes through a thin wire (filament) with high electric resistance. The heated filament glows,... Read more

While most of us think of... Read more

This week I'll take a detour from practical energy-conserving solutions to take a look at oil (petroleum)--the fluid that has powered our automobile-based society. Be prepared for some new... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has launched a new program aimed at larger LEED customers—building owners and property managers certifying 25 or more LEED projects within a three-year window.

The LEED Volume Program, launched at Greenbuild 2010, is designed for government, education, real estate organizations, retailers... Read more

Ok, it's been a few weeks since Greenbuild, yet we are still finding interesting products from the show. If you've ever been on the expo hall floor, you know how chaotic it can be. It's easy to miss products tucked among the various booths, lose coworkers among the throngs of people, or in my case, entirely forget that you visited a... Read more

With a new initiative called “LEED Automation,” the U.S. Green Building Council has announced the beginning of a new model for LEED documentation and reporting. Currently, teams submit LEED project data for review by entering it into the LEED Online website. LEED Automation makes it possible to collect that data in third-party applications and... Read more

Insulation is really important when it comes to saving energy in our homes. With more insulation in our walls, roofs, and foundation, less heat escapes via conduction to the outdoors. Insulate well!

All right. That's... Read more

Two recently published studies show that bisphenol-A (BPA), an endocrine-disrupting chemical, can be absorbed through the skin. This means that cashiers and others who regularly handle receipts made with the chemical are at risk for higher exposures than the general public. BPA is used as a color developer in thermal-imaging paper—the type used... Read more

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has identified 16 areas that have ambient lead levels above those set by the Clean Air Act. These areas, designated “nonattainment areas,” cover parts of counties in 11 states, including areas near Montgomery, Alabama; Dallas, Texas; and Cleveland, Ohio.

Among the key changes coming down the road for LEED, as I recently wrote about (Your Guide to the New Draft of LEED), is a change to the LEED AP credit, formerly IDc2, now dubbed IPc2 (that's "Integrated Process" credit 2).

Up until now, projects have been able to earn a point for having one LEED Accredited Professional (LEED AP... Read more

A proposed rewrite of the certified wood policy in the LEED rating systems failed to get enough “Yes” votes from U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) members to become policy. USGBC announced that of the 965 people who had opted in to a voting body, 54% voted, with 55% of votes counted “Yes,” and 42% counted “No.” Three percent were tallied as... Read more

The International Code Council (ICC) released the International Green Construction Code (IGCC) Public Version 2.0 during the U.S. Green Building Council’s November 2010 Greenbuild conference. This revision is a “resource tool for jurisdictions considering adoption or amendment of regulations regarding green construction,” according to ICC’s... Read more

Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has set limits on window-to-wall ratios, potentially halting the proliferation of all-glass buildings in the region. Dubai has set a limit of 60% glazing for buildings, which will go into effect in 2014. Another city, Abu Dhabi, is considering a more stringent limit—30%—but has included a... Read more

UPDATE: This blog post and the GreenSpec product entry have been updated to reflect that BrightShelf is now manufactured by Hunter Douglas Contract.

Another of the... Read more

With Black Friday behind us, it's time for my annual Christmas shopping list--ideas for energy-saving and green living gifts this holiday season. Most of these products can be purchased locally--benefiting the local economy.... Read more

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh ranked various plastics based on their environmental impacts and found that bioplastics (made from corn, soy, and other agricultural materials) do not always outperform petroleum-based plastics. The study, published in

Environmental Science and Technology, looked at 12 plastics using life-... Read more