Championing the
Changemakers

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has joined the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in looking closely at the health and environmental effects of bisphenol A (BPA), a known endocrine disruptor.

Although the greatest risk for human exposure to BPA is through canned food products, the chemical is also used in the... Read more

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) has elevated 134 members to its College of Fellows. Several of those honored with FAIA status in 2010 have also made significant contributions to the field of green building and design.

Bruce Coldham, principal at Coldham & Hartman in Amherst, Massachusetts

Michael Davis... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has released new minimum energy-efficiency standards for residential water heaters, direct heating equipment, and pool heaters.

Compared to earlier proposals from late 2009, the newly released document will mandate slightly lower standards for smaller gas-fired water heaters, but significantly higher... Read more

One year after the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 awarded $5 billion to the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Weatherization Assistance Program, just $368 million of it has been spent by states on weatherization projects. A report recently released by the DOE Office of the Inspector General characterized these findings as “... Read more

Zerofootprint has announced the five winners of its international Re-Skinning Awards, which recognize retrofits in five building categories that result in extraordinary environmental performance (see BuildingGreen.com July 2009). Entries were judged on the quality of re-skinning (changing the building envelope), overall energy efficiency,... Read more

By Ulf Meyer

Shrouded in shades of many colors, it is a building that claims to be green. And so it is. It is not often that a midsize bank building has good reason to make that claim, but the new 400,000-square-foot, $85 million expansion of the headquarters for the KfW Bank in Frankfurt, designed by Sauerbruch Hutton... Read more

By way of context, most glazing is... Read more

A partnership among three federal agencies, announced in 2009, is already helping local and regional governments develop sustainability plans, transportation options, and affordable housing; the program may get a large financial boost in the 2011 federal budget. The Partnership for Sustainable Communities brings together the U.S. Department of... Read more

SAGE Electrochromics, maker of SageGlass, a dynamic glazing technology (reviewed in

EBN June 2006), has been awarded a $72 million loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

With the words “water crisis” working their way into the common vocabulary, innovative strategies for conserving, reusing, and treating water are developing more quickly than ever—and some have hit a regulatory ceiling. The Green Plumbing and Mechanical Code Supplement, released in February 2010 by the International Association of Plumbing and... Read more

In response to your article “Chemistry for Designers: Understanding Hazards in Building Products,” (see EBN Mar. 2010) the American Chemistry Council (ACC) would like to emphasize that architects, designers, builders, and consumers deserve to have confidence that the products they choose, when used for their intended purposes, are safe. Because... Read more

Passive chilled beams operate through... Read more

In December 2009, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) declared greenhouse gases a threat to humans, thus bringing them under the regulatory authority of the agency under the Clean Air Act (see

EBN Jan. 2010). EPA had planned to begin regulating greenhouse gases from large stationary sources (those that emit more than 25,000... Read more

The Master Painters Institute (MPI) recently added to its Green Performance paint standards, GPS-1 and GPS-2, with the addition of the Extreme Green (X-Green) standard.