News

For the past 17 years, BuildingGreen has selected ten green building products that significantly improve upon standard “business-as-usual” practices. These products reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions, improve product life cycles, and can even have a net-positive impact on society and the environment.
This year’s BuildingGreen... Read more

Editor’s note: Guest blogger Anne Hicks Harney, of Long Green Specs, is our partner in providing product vetting services. Harney offers guidance on writing green specs and on finding products for LEED v4, WELL, and beyond.

All of us in the design professions need to do a better job of prioritizing... Read more

To make renewable energy viable on a large scale, we need a way to store energy for when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. While there are various ways to store electrical energy, batteries offer the greatest applicability. Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries, such as those found in Tesla’s Powerwall system (a BuildingGreen Top 10... Read more

Eleven years after its original publication, we have refreshed this groundbreaking report on the transportation energy of buildings and how that energy consumption can be reduced. We have updated all data and statistics, and have conducted new interviews with leaders in the field. (Quotes from 2018 interviews are marked as such.) We have also... Read more

Getting a solar array on your project might seem like a huge triumph, but there could be a downside. Too much “distributed generation” (grid-connected power generation coming from individual buildings) can disrupt how the electrical grid works, causing problems for utilities. A new initiative called Grid Optimal from the New Buildings Institute... Read more

A vacuum is a near-perfect insulator, making vacuum-insulated glass (VIG) a tantalizing option, and a commercially available R-10 replacement for single-pane windows is finally within reach. In the meantime, Guardian Glass already has a substantial market for this miracle glass—in supermarket display cases.

Anthony’s Vista Elite series... Read more

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has announced a new certification called LEED Zero that rewards net-zero carbon, energy, water, or waste.

To achieve the designation, buildings must first be certified under either LEED for Building Design and Construction (BD+C) or LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance (EBOM).... Read more

It’s a familiar story: a toxic substance gets phased out, only to be replaced with a chemically similar one that has the same toxic properties. An amendment to existing California law aims to stop this pattern of “regrettable substitution” by effectively banning whole classes of flame retardants in upholstered furniture, mattresses,... Read more

For twenty years or so, companies like Pilkington (Spacia) have been cranking out R-5ish (center-of-glass) vacuum-insulated glazing (VIG). The attraction of glazing units with a very thin profile, relatively low weight, and a high level of performance is strong, particularly for retrofit applications.

But it sure seems as though we have... Read more

Three newly revived pilot credits offer project teams the option of using resilient design to gain LEED points. Pilot credits are a way for users to test out new concepts and achieve points under the Innovation category of the LEED rating systems.

The basic structure of the suite of credits has not changed: the first credit involves an... Read more

Shortly after the release of Paula Melton’s Spotlight Report on Embodied Carbon, which has been getting amazing reviews and kudos, I sat in on an update by Ryan Zizzo, Chair of the Embodied Carbon Network’s Buildings Taskforce. I was so inspired by the breadth of activities suddenly going on in this space, that I decided to lay them out in a... Read more

The International Living Future Institute’s (ILFI) Declare label is supposed to be an easy-to-read “nutrition” label for products, showing the product’s ingredients and whether or not it contains any of ILFI’s banned Red List chemicals. This simple document belies the underlying complexity required for manufacturers to track chemicals used to... Read more

It wasn’t perfect, but it was promising. The Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), as amended in 2016, was designed to give the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) new powers and obligations to study and regulate industrial chemicals.

But if current EPA actions are any guide, the limitations and outright bans that environmental... Read more

On September 10, 2018 at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, Governor Jerry Brown signed bill SB 100 into law, committing the state to 100% carbon-free utility electricity by 2045. (California is the second state after Hawaii, in 2015, to commit to 100% renewable energy by 2045.) Two days later at the summit, Brown signed an... Read more

Charging your electric vehicle (EV) at home using renewable energy is the future of transportation. But getting that power to the car typically requires two systems: an inverter and a charger. Photovoltaic (PV) panels use inverters to convert direct current (DC) to alternating current (AC), and a charger typically supplies energy pulled from... Read more

Solar power, cool roofs, and permeable pavement aren’t new ideas—but they’ve also never been deployed at scale. A new study looks at what might happen if they were.

“Cities mismanage their two great natural gifts of sunshine and rain,” states the report, “Delivering Urban Resilience,” which was supported by the Smart Surfaces Coalition... Read more

David Pill, AIA, had an inspiration as we were planning the third annual AIA New England Committee on the Environment (COTE) Summit, which took place in Burlington, Vermont, in June 2017. He had recently noticed that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) has a Code of Ethics and was aghast at how little was being expected of AIA members,... Read more

Sustainability-Related Updates to the AIA Code of Ethics

The basement of our well-insulated and air-sealed 100+-year-old home is dry, but enough moisture (as vapor) makes its way through our concrete walls and slab that dehumidification is a must from about April through October. Dehumidification comes with a pretty big energy penalty, so I am proactive in managing this load: when I see that... Read more

Hydronic systems, which use water to move energy, are one of the most efficient ways to heat and cool buildings. Water carries far more energy than air, and does so in a small pipe rather than in leaky, bulky ductwork. It can also be engineered to deliver personalized heating or cooling to individual rooms. Many of the hydronic systems used in... Read more