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Changemakers
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News Brief
Arlington County in Virginia has become (to the best of our knowledge) the first local government to reference the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED rating system in official policy. The county, which is itself a member of the USGBC, voted on October 2 to allow developers favorable treatment in their requests for bonus density if their... Read more
News Brief
by Ross Spiegel and Dru Meadows. James Wiley & Sons, New York, 1999. Hardcover, 300 pages, $64.95.
Choosing and using environmentally preferable building materials is a very broad topic, in that the environmental considerations are different for each product type.Green Building Materials covers a... Read more
News Brief
Is this good news or bad? The Energy Information Administration of the U.S. Department of Energy (EIA), the agency that tracks energy consumption statistics and comes up with official projections, is revising its energy demand estimates downward to account for global warming. For the 12-month period from the fourth quarter of 1999... Read more
Op-Ed
Our brand-new
GreenSpec™ should be shipping by about the time you receive this issue!
GreenSpec replaces the widely acclaimed
EBN Product Catalog, which was published in conjunction with What’s Working of Boulder, Colorado and is now sold out. The
GreenSpec title is provided courtesy of... Read more
News Brief
From landmines to saplings. According to the electronic environmental news service from the Earth Day Network, Inc. (The Daily Gist, 9/3/99), Lockheed Martin has plans of converting military jets designed to drop landmines to the purpose of replanting forests. Saplings would be dropped in biodegradable metal cones, which explode on landing and... Read more
Op-Ed
I read with great interest your excellent article on daylighting in buildings (
EBN
Vol. 8, No. 9, September 1999). I would offer two clarifications. First, you state that south orientation is the best for daylighting, and north second best. It is true that the south offers the most daylighting... Read more
News Brief
A Call for Papers has been issued for the 8th National Conference on Building Commissioning, to be held May 3-5, 2000 in Kansas City, Missouri. Ideas and abstracts are due by November 12 to Carolyn Dasher, 503/248-4636 x204; cdasher@peci.org. For details, visit
www.peci.org/ncbc.
News Analysis
Developed with assistance from the Southface Energy Institute and the NAHB Research Center, this program is... Read more
News Brief
The design calls for over 90% of the 390-acre (160 ha) site to be protected by permanent... Read more
News Analysis
News Brief
by John Perlin. Aatec Publications, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1999. Hardcover, 240 pages, $32.
From a co-author of
A Golden Thread: 2500 Years of Solar Architecture and Technology, this book follows in the same vein with a fascinating, fun-to-read, historical account of the unfolding of the photovoltaics (PV)... Read more
Product Review
No Excavation Required
Excavation for conventional foundations—even pier foundations—results in significant impact to the immediate environment: severed roots, compaction of surrounding soils, and siltation of area waters. The latter concern has become a major issue in the Pacific Northwest with the recent listing... Read moreNews Brief
On October 12, the world population is projected to top 6 billion, according to the United Nations. This reflects a doubling of the population since 1960, with current growth of 77 million per year. UN projections show the population growing to between 7 billion and 10.5 billion by 2050. The vast majority of population growth is now occurring... Read more
Op-Ed
the wrong photo accompanied our Newsbrief on page 5 of
Vol. 8, No. 9 (September 1999 issue) about the Letterman Digital Arts project at San Francisco’s Presidio National Park. The picture we intended to publish, a model of the proposed campus, appears below.
Also, the Wal-Mart... Read more
News Brief
The first major update since 1989 to Standard 90.1, “Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings,” from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) and the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America (IESNA) was approved at ASHRAE’s Annual Meeting in Seattle in June. The... Read more
News Analysis
As the three major U.S. building code organizations move towards a single unified code, many changes are being considered. A couple of decisions from September’s Joint Annual Conference of Building Officials in St. Louis are very welcome, according to David Eisenberg, co-director of the Development Center for... Read more
Feature
Sound like science fiction? It’s not. One such product, the Himawari®, has been... Read more
News Analysis
The incentives from San Diego Gas &... Read more
News Analysis
The U.S. Green Building Council’s green building rating system, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™—see
EBN
Vol. 7, No. 10), has been so widely cited and referenced that it’s easy to forget that the program is still in a pilot stage. As an initial set of buildings are making their way through the pilot... Read more
Product Review
The new “Ergolight” fixture from Ledalite, of Langley, British Columbia, may be the beginning of a new trend in office lighting.
Ergolight is a three-lamp... Read more
