Is the world ready for electric backhoes? Mayors of four cities say they soon will be—and that they will go even further by halving the embodied carbon emissions of building and infrastructure projects not long after.

C40, a coalition of 97 megacities around the world, has rolled out a Clean... Read more

Every year for the past 19 years, BuildingGreen has selected ten green building products that significantly improve upon standard “business-as-usual” practices. This year’s products address our most pressing challenge: reducing the environmental impacts of greenhouse gases. The winning products do so by sequestering carbon, conserving energy... Read more

In its 2020 revision of its Code of Ethics, released on December 11, 2020, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) adopted two new rules: Rule 1.403 against the design of spaces intended for execution, and Rule 1.404 against the design of “spaces intended for torture, including indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement... Read more

How does a general contractor track and measure its firm-wide sustainability? The Sustainable Construction Leaders group (a BuildingGreen-supported peer network) is trying to work that out. Its new initiative, the Contractor’s Commitment, provides a framework, and building contractors can soon sign on for the 2021 pilot.... Read more

With a new president and the first-ever woman vice president starting next month, we thought it would be an opportune time to weigh in on priorities for the next four years.

It has been a rough four years for the environment with the Trump administration. How can our nation get back on track in addressing some of the most pressing... Read more

Improving “health and wellbeing” through the built environment has often been code for improving outcomes for just one type of person—the office worker. The emphasis on bettering health in order to boost productivity has left other areas “underdeveloped,” according to the World Green Building Council (WorldGBC). For a more... Read more

Tons and tons of carpet can go into a single building project—only to be ripped out and replaced a few years down the road. Carpet is almost always a fossil-fuel-based product and rarely gets reused or recycled. Its carbon footprint accumulates over the lifetime of a building as the carpeting is replaced multiple times.

With the introduction of LEED v4.1, it’s now possible to do an unlimited number of one-off credit substitutions. In this webcast, Tommy Linstroth of Green Badger gives you an essential playbook for deciding which construction-related credits to upgrade.

Moving through the system credit by credit, Tommy shows you step by step what’s... Read more

BuildingGreen’s 2010 article Avoiding the Global Warming Impact of Insulation caused quite a stir in the industry by positing that it can take decades to “pay back” the greenhouse gases contained in extruded polystyrene insulation. That’s because despite XPS’s excellent thermal performance, its primary blowing agent, HFC-134a... Read more

You know about LEED, but what about SEED?

Although Design Corps’ Social, Economic, and Environmental Design (SEED) program has been around for more than a decade, it’s less well known than other rating systems. But with the green building world gradually waking up to its equity challenges, SEED is starting to gain more traction and... Read more

“A sustainable future is meaningless if it is not also an equitable future.”

That’s the bold statement made on the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) website to introduce a new 12-point strategy called “All In.” The idea is to close equity gaps in the LEED rating systems, which have traditionally... Read more

Josh Radoff contributed to this article.

The green building community is abuzz with the concept of decarbonization through electrification—the use of electric technologies instead of combustion-fueled technologies to supply the comforts of a modern building. But is it a good idea for your project? It... Read more

The Global Cement and Concrete Association (GCCA) recently released a “carbon ambition statement” announcing that its 40 members aspire to deliver carbon-neutral concrete by 2050. A laudable goal, but given concrete’s chemistry, is it even possible?

One problem is the cement. The majority of cement’s... Read more

The U.S. has made strides toward attaining gender equality, but it may be a fragile achievement. Even in the green building community, cracks are starting to show.

The U.S. Green Building Council surveyed more than 500 people in the green building industry to gauge the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in the workplace. The... Read more

Filled with large appliances, sinks, fans, ductwork, and hard surfaces, a commercial kitchen is not exactly the type of space that inspires high design. Kitchens are defined by function and food. It’s no wonder they have long been afterthoughts to design teams. But for those looking to reduce their buildings’ carbon footprints, kitchens have... Read more

A comprehensive resilience assessment takes a lot of time and resources, requiring use of different tools and platforms to put together a full picture of the risks and their severity. Imagine if you could just type in an address and instantly receive a full resilience risk report for any property in the U.S.

Redlining may be coming back.

"The CRA is one of the most important tools we have in the community development field."

The practice of denying loans to people and businesses based on their neighborhood effectively became illegal in the U.S. in 1977 with passage of the... Read more

As technology advances, more and more building systems are becoming automated. They self-monitor and send alarms and advice. They allow facility managers to control lighting, HVAC, and more, remotely through apps. Some can even learn from patterns. With all these new technologies, it’s easy to feel out of control and to... Read more

Commercial kitchens are one of the most energy-intensive building spaces, consuming approximately five times the energy per square foot of a standard office.

A kitchen’s carbon problem is not just from the CO2 emitted during combustion. Kitchen appliances are often powered by natural gas (methane), whose global warming potential is 28... Read more

What is a sustainable material? A big, complicated question, admits Lona Rerick, associate principal at ZGF architects. But the Architecture & Design Materials Pledge recently adopted by the American Institute of Architects (AIA) starts to get at the answer, she said.

It’s time to stop playing... Read more