BuildingGreen Report

News Brief

March 11, 2013
By Erin WeaverThe Royal Institute of British Architects has recognized the “father of Passive House,” Wolfgang Feist, Ph.D., with one of twelve annual Honorary Fellowships awarded to non-architects for their contributions to the field.

Feist, who founded the Passivhaus Institut in Germany in 1996 and is its current director, says the award “... Read more

Blog Post

March 11, 2013
A definitive guide to how the federal government builds green—and why its leadership matters.

This post is the second in a series on the federal government’s use of green building certifications. Coming soon: The Hidden Beltway Lobbyists Who Shape Green Building Policy.

 The U.S. Treasury Building, completed in 1869, is the oldest building... Read more

Blog Post

March 8, 2013
Bruce Brownell's impressive track record with foam-insulated low-energy homes Bruce Brownell has been building low-energy passive solar homes for four decades.Photo Credit: Adirondack Alternate Energy

Bruce Brownell, of Adirondack Alternate Energy, has been creating low-energy, largely passive-solar-heated, resilient... Read more

News Analysis

March 7, 2013
A Toronto court tells owners of glass buildings that reflected light is a form of pollution, and they must mitigate bird deaths. A verdict handed down in Toronto establishes that building owners and managers must take action to prevent their buildings’ windows from causing excessive death or injury to migratory birds.

Canadian nonprofit... Read more

News Brief

March 6, 2013
By Erin WeaverInformation on 7,674 chemicals manufactured or imported by more than 1,500 U.S. companies has been published in the first reporting cycle since the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reformed its Chemical Data Reporting (CDR) program in 2011.

The database does not provide information on toxicity, but it may be a powerful... Read more

Blog Post

March 5, 2013
As DoD rethinks its green building needs, a recommendation to keep using LEED is just the tip of the iceberg.

This post is the first in a series on the federal government’s use of green building certifications. Part 2: Sustainable Federal Buildings: What's the Law?

This shows the first few megabytes of the Unified Facilities Criteria... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2013

In the report, published in Nature Communications, scientists estimate that cats, especially strays and feral cats, kill 1.4–3.7 billion birds and 6.9–20.7 billion mammals in the U.S. every year, numbers that are two to four times previous estimates and higher than for any other human threat, including poisoning or collisions with automobiles... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2013

Attorney Shari Shapiro points out on the Green Building Law blog that every state provided a governor’s letter stating its intent to comply with ARRA Section 410, linking State Energy Program (SEP) funding to adoption and enforcement of the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) for residential buildings and ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2013
By Paula MeltonWant to have a say in whether the U.S. government continues to use LEED? The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is seeking public comments on a long-awaited recommendation regarding green building rating systems. GSA may abandon its prior endorsement of a single rating system, the findings of a special ad hoc committee... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2013
By Erin WeaverA bill introduced in the California Legislature would express the State’s intent to reduce chemical flame retardants in building insulation, arguing that they pose a health hazard and are unnecessary in modern construction.

State Assembly Member Nancy Skinner introduced Bill AB 127 in January, saying that California recognizes the... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2013
By Erin WeaverThe urban heat-island effect may not be limited to “islands” and may instead be altering weather far from the cities that cause it, suggests a new report in the journal

Nature Climate Change.

The authors of “Energy consumption and the unexplained winter warming over northern Asia and North America” demonstrate by computer... Read more

Product Review

March 1, 2013
By Brent EhrlichPorcelain has been manufactured in one form or another for more than 2,000 years and has been used for everything from urinals to Ming Dynasty vases. In buildings, porcelain is usually found in small tiles and bathroom fixtures, but porcelain panels (sometimes called large-format porcelain panels, or LFPP) are now finding their way... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2013
By Paula MeltonThe City of Minneapolis is the latest municipality to require commercial building energy rating and disclosure, meaning building owners must benchmark energy performance against that of similar buildings and report the results to the public (see “Energy Reporting: It’s the Law,”

EBN Aug. 2012).

The ordinance will apply to... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2013
By Erin WeaverToxic chemicals released into the air decreased from 2010 to 2011, but overall toxic chemicals released into the environment increased 8% over the same period, to 4.09 billion pounds.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released its annual Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), concluding that toxic airborne emissions... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2013
By Erin WeaverU.S. water policy could be destroying a future source of drinking water if a project under way in Mexico City to draw drinking water from a mile-deep aquifer proves feasible.

In the face of worsening water shortages, Mexico City’s 20 million residents currently depend on water pumped in from elsewhere and on the region’s shallow... Read more

News Analysis

March 1, 2013

News Brief

March 1, 2013

Researchers from Chalmers University of Technology and Gothenburg University, who presented their findings at the ARCH12 conference on medical architecture in November 2012, proposed that aggression results from stressors such as crowding and noise. These stressors can be mitigated by key design elements, including private rooms, moveable... Read more

Product Review

March 1, 2013

Industry guidelines like ASHRAE Standard 55-2010 say offices should be comfortable for 80% of their occupants. What about the other 20%? or those who work late or on weekends?

Heating or cooling an entire office is wasteful, and space heaters use a lot of energy. Some offices create “personal microclimates” by giving individual occupants... Read more

News Brief

March 1, 2013
By Erin WeaverReducing emissions of black carbon, or soot, could have an immediate cooling effect on the climate, according to a new study published in the

Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Led by the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project, the authors of “Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system:... Read more

News Analysis

LEED Interpretation #10250 allows for the use of urea in combination with melamine formaldehyde (MF) as long as products meet California's ultra-low-emitting formaldehyde (ULEF) resin standards.

March 1, 2013

By Brent Ehrlich

Composite wood products made with added urea formaldehyde (UF) are one of the few products that LEED has consistently banned under its longstanding IEQc4.4: Low-Emitting Materials credit. However, LEED Interpretation #10250, issued January 1, 2013 (revised April 1, 2013), and applicable to all LEED projects, now allows... Read more