Championing the
Changemakers

A study from Pike Research found that global sales of hybrid electric vehicles to commercial and government fleets will grow 17.5% annually through 2015, passing 740,000 sales per year.

Yahoo!’s new 50,0000-server data center near Buffalo, New York—playfully called the “chicken coop” for the design’s resemblance to a farm—has a remarkably high efficiency target.

The company expects its new center to have a power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.08—outperforming rival Google’s average of 1.16, and much better than the... Read more

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Retail giant Wal-Mart plans to boost the number of Wal-Mart stores with solar photovoltaic (PV) installations from 31 (in California and Hawaii)... Read more

A life-cycle inventory released by Franklin Associates, a consulting firm based in Prairie Village, Kansas, shows that recycling HDPE and PET plastics saves enough energy to power 750,000 U.S. homes. Both plastics are used widely in food packaging; HDPE is used for piping, water storage, and other uses in buildings, while PET is used for mats,... Read more

The U.S. throws away a lot of carpet. According to the Product Stewardship Institute, approximately 2.7 million tons (5.4 billion pounds) of carpet enter the waste stream each year in the U.S., roughly 1.2% of all... Read more

Number 7 on my list of the top-10 green building priorities is to protect and restore the site.

Of all the environmental problems we're causing as a species--including air pollution,... Read more

The latest in a trio of Energy Innovation Hubs organized by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) was announced in July 2010. The Energy-Efficient Building Systems Design Hub (Building Hub) will house the latest in building technology research led by Henry C. Foley, Penn State’s vice president for research and dean of the graduate school. The... Read more

I've been at the West Coast Green conference in San Francisco the past three days and have spend a good portion of that time checking out the trade show. One of the highlights is a loose-fill wool insulation from Oregon... Read more

Number-eight in my list of the top-10 green building priorities is to use "green" or low-environmental-impact products and materials.

Those who are new to green building may be surprised that material selection isn't right at the top of my priority list. Many people assume that what makes a home green are... Read more

The farther... Read more

An organization that has certified home energy raters for 15 years is moving into the commercial building market. RESNET has created COMNET, which currently offers guidelines for energy modeling and is working on certification for commercial energy auditors and raters. The energy modeling guidelines, “COMNET Technical Guidelines &... Read more

Infrared (IR) cameras make the invisible visible: they detect heat in the form of infrared radiation, which we normally can’t see, and convert it to a colorful image that we can view and analyze. Hotter surfaces emit more infrared radiation than cooler surfaces, allowing cameras to convert them to warm colors on screen, in contrast with cooler... Read more

The flame retardant hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD) is being addressed by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Canadian agencies Environment Canada and Health Canada. HBCD is a brominated flame retardant that is used in all polystyrene building insulation—both extruded (XPS) and expanded (EPS)—as well as in certain consumer... Read more

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) has launched a third-party verification service to confirm volume and energy-use claims about refrigerators and freezers. Energy claims for appliances have been called into question recently thanks to a study that showed that the Energy Star label, once considered a good measure of energy... Read more

The ASTM roofing and waterproofing committee is developing a new standard for green roofs:

Guide for Selection of Roofing/Waterproofing Membranes for Vegetative Roof Systems (ASTM WK29304). Task group leader Michael Sexton, a senior systems engineer at Firestone Building Products, told EBN, “[The standard] will combine requirements for... Read more

For below-grade applications where moisture resistance and high compressive strength are needed, extruded polystyrene (XPS) and, to a lesser extent, expanded polystyrene (EPS) have long dominated the insulation market. But there are growing concerns both with the brominated flame retardant HBCD used in XPS and EPS and with the global warming... Read more

There are over five million commercial buildings in the U.S., and every one of them is wasting energy. Where energy is wasted, safety problems, health hazards, and comfort issues often exist. Where we find energy efficiency, we also tend to find lower operating costs and greater real estate value.

Despite these fundamentals,... Read more

Back in 2008 when I wrote a series of articles for Environmental Building News on water, one of those articles, Alternative Water Sources: Supply-Side Solutions for Green Buildings, examined various ways of harvesting water and included an in-depth look at collecting air... Read more