BuildingGreen Report

Blog Post

July 29, 2008
Add another item to the list of reasons why suburban sprawl is bad for the environment: recycling rates. Other environmental problems with sprawl are well-documented, such as the fact that the transportation energy intensity of driving to buildings can dwarf the operating energy of those buildings. I'm sure this is nothing new to sprawl watchers... Read more

Blog Post

July 28, 2008
If you don't already know about technical briefs from California's Public Interest Energy Research Program (PIER), you should (PIER's web presence has been absorbed into a larger site on research and development). The folks at PIER research various topics related to energy efficiency, and come out with some great briefs that are published... Read more

Blog Post

July 28, 2008
Hybids account for less than 5% of all car sales in the U.S. The Toyota Prius continues to be the best-selling hybrid.

Like a lot of people, I'm often running late. One of our two cars--a five-year-old Honda Civic Hybrid--has a digital readout showing fuel economy. Because I travel so much (ironically hopping on a plane or driving hours to... Read more

Blog Post

July 27, 2008
Aside from cost of gasoline, driving can result in traffic congestion, time loss, stress, wear and tear on vehicles, and added pollution.

Rarely a day goes by that I don't hear people complaining about how much money they're spending on gasoline. Indeed, filling up costs three times what it did just a couple years ago; it's understandable... Read more

Blog Post

July 27, 2008
Aside from cost of gasoline, driving can result in traffic congestion, time loss, stress, wear and tear on vehicles, and added pollution.

Rarely a day goes by that I don't hear people complaining about how much money they're spending on gasoline. Indeed, filling up costs three times what it did just a couple years ago; it's understandable... Read more

Blog Post

July 24, 2008
The New York Times recently revealed yet another reason to get your building materials regionally -- or to at least know where they're coming from. With every shipment of the prized white marble from the Ziarat quarry in Pakistan, the Taliban takes a cut. The outlaw group, the major enemy of the U.S. and coalition forces in Afganistan, has... Read more

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July 23, 2008
Oops... (corrected graphic below) Well, all you can do when you screw up is try to make it into a learning opportunity, I guess. The image we featured most prominently with our "Counting Carbon" article in July had a blatant error. In our defense, the image we asked for was OK — we just failed to make sure that the one we got was the same as the... Read more

Blog Post

July 22, 2008
America's buildings are no small contributor to our environmental difficulties and energy use... but they're far from the biggest part of the problem. The enemy is us — the choices we make individually and as a society. America's building envelopes are getting better and tighter, our heating and cooling systems are getting more efficient, but... Read more

Blog Post

July 21, 2008
In a few days I'll be leaving for the fifth annual Natural Building Colloquium East in Bath, NY. I go every year. So does David Eisenberg and a bunch of other people that I really like.

Is it anything like them green conferences?

No. It is nothing like them.

(Most of the quotes in this article were gathered at the first colloquium... Read more

Blog Post

July 19, 2008
"In spite of persistent claims to the contrary from green advocates, 86% of respondents believe that it costs more to build a green building — and not just by a little." — High Perceived Cost of Green Persists, Says Survey (January 1, 2008) "The report, the most exhaustive cost-benefit analysis of green building ever undertaken, found that... Read more

Blog Post

July 18, 2008

I have a little treat for Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 users: the BuildingGreen.com Search Plugin. With the plugin installed, you can search BuildingGreen.com directly from the search bar in the top right corner of your browser. In the course of a day, I often have to reference a few case studies. The search plugin allows me to get to the... Read more

Blog Post

July 18, 2008
Sunil Somalwar, a physics professor at Rutgers University, presents the following argument at the Better World Club site: Let us conservatively say that a Prius goes 40 miles on a gallon of gasoline. After taking into account the 20 lbs CO2 released by burning a gallon of gasoline, 40mpg amounts to two miles per pound of CO2 emission. On the... Read more

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July 17, 2008
Oh, we've written about lawns over the years. And so have other people. The current New Yorker has a great article about lawns — looking backward, forward, and around. A couple juicy excerpts: The greener, purer lawns that the chemical treatments made possible were, as monocultures, more vulnerable to pests, and when grubs attacked the... Read more

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July 17, 2008
How can LEED hope to transform the building industry in an environmental mold if, to highlight the achievements of buildings, it relies on outmoded stores of value whose extraction and use does vast environmental and social harm: Silver, Gold and Platinum? Those, of course, are the three top tiers of achievement for green buildings in the LEED... Read more

Blog Post

July 17, 2008

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Blog Post

July 13, 2008
Common-sense steps can cool your home and reduce the need for air conditioning.

I'll admit it. I dread this hot, sticky weather. Give me a cool autumn-like breeze any day, even if it means wearing a sweater in July. But I also hate using a lot of energy, including electricity for air conditioning. So, what are our options for staying... Read more

Blog Post

July 7, 2008
The price of crude oil is reaching historic high levels.

As I write this, crude oil has hit another all-time record price, above $145 per barrel. Heating oil is over $4.50 per gallon today, with some local pre-buy contracts above $4.70 per gallon--almost double my pre-buy price last winter ($2.60/gallon). It doesn't take a math degree to... Read more

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July 6, 2008

Over at the New American Village blog:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the Emotional and Economic bonds which have connected them with a destructive Energy Policy, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should chart a New Course. We hold these truths to be self-... Read more

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July 1, 2008

Excerpted from a post titled "The Unclear Origins of Oil" on Kevin Kelly's CT2 (Conceptual Trends and Current Topics) blog:

Crude oil is almost $140 per barrel. By now you'd think we would know where it comes from. The conventional wisdom is that oil descends from algae from eons ago. Lots and lots of algae. Unimaginable mounds of dead... Read more

Blog Post

July 1, 2008
Excerpts from a BuildingGreen press release that's being distributed today: Some heating fuels that used to be quite affordable, such as heating oil, have risen in price dramatically, making competing energy sources such as electricity relatively less expensive. In parts of the Northeast and Upper Midwest, even the most expensive form of... Read more