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Template for Affordable Energy-Efficient Construction
The Living Building Challenge takes aim at production builders. Is “the world’s most rigorous building standard” ready for its close-up on the residential construction stage? That’s how the...
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Green Jobs: Top 10 Green Jobs Predictions for 2013
The green jobs road is looking pretty saturated for 2013—for a variety of reasons. Whether you like to spend time in the sun or prefer crunching numbers behind a cubicle, you’d benefit from knowing...
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EPA Upgrades Portfolio Manager
Can upgrades to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Portfolio Manager tool help make commercial buildings at least 20 percent more efficient by 2020? That’s the goal, according to the...
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Balancing People, Planet, and Profit: The Challenges of Green Manufacturing
The emergence of green building as a wide-ranging, multibillion dollar industry over the past two decades has dramatically reshaped the day-to-day operations of many building product manufacturers....
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Coalition Builder
An outstanding advocate for high-performance housing, Southface founder Dennis Creech is the 2013 winner of the Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Housing and its $50,000 prize....
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‘Tenant Star’ Label Would Engage Tenants On Energy Savings, Rewards
Proposed Program Would Bridge Engagement Gap Between Building Owners and Occupiers In Sustainability Efforts While it stands to reason that tenants account for most of the energy use in office...
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Will Lighter Codes Spur Innovative Development?
Building a house in a modern city entails a host of regulations and codes, making the process laborious and costly. Andrés Duany, a founding principal at Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ) and...
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Older Home Certification Program Gives Remodelers an Advantage
Earth Advantage is bringing its green-building know-how to the remodeling set. Earth Advantage, a nonprofit that educates and accredits building professionals on pro-environment practices, has...
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Retailing Reuse
Environmentally conscious designers and clients are eager to reclaim resources for their embodied energies and histories. Not too long ago, structures slated for demolition inevitably found their...
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Shrinking Carbon and Growing Opportunities
From his work in architecture and solar design to his work founding Architecture 2030 and the 2030 Challenge, Edward Mazria, FAIA, has long been recognized as a leading voice in mobilizing the...
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A Market in Transition
At the end of the first year of ECOHOME’s Vision 2020 program, Cliff Majersik, executive director for the Institute for Market Transformation and chair of the Vision 2020 Market Transformation focus...
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California’s Unusual Plan to Cut Greenhouse Gases
When California’s S.B. 375 was passed in 2008, there were many skeptics. The law aimed to get metropolitan regions around the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions through changes to development form...
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In Dow Test Homes, $5,000 Boosts HERS Rating by 30%
First-year data from a five-year energy-efficiency study helps fill gap in understanding how to build high-performance homes. Data is coming back from an ongoing test neighborhood built in Midland,...
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More Than 3,000 Buildings Compete To Reduce Energy Use
More than 3,000 buildings will compete over the remainder of the year to see which structure can most reduce its energy use in the fourth annual Energy Start National Building Competition: Battle of...
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Do You Know What’s Really In Your Products?
If we are to become carbon neutral, we need consider not only the energy performance of a home or structure, but also the embodied energy of the materials that go into construction of the dwelling—the...
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When Will Solar Get Cheap Enough for Everyone to Use?
It’s taken 60 years, but solar energy is tantalizingly close to beating fossil fuels on price. This story and video first appeared on The Atlantic website and is reproduced here as part of the Climate...
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Why Are Some States Trying to Ban LEED Green Building Standards?
The amendments and executive orders never actually mention LEED by name. They ban new construction built with public money from seeking (or requiring) any green building certification that’s not...
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Spotting Greenwashing: Video
Specifying high-performance products is tricky business, with a wide range of variables to consider such as embodied energy, toxic and non-toxic content, recycled materials, durability, price, and...
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Three Major Energy Trends to Watch
Popular media and political chatter are abuzz with a cacophony of energy news and opinion. Amid the chaos, some orderly strands can be discerned. Here are three themes that merit attention: EFFICIENCY...
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Critical Conversations You Should be Having About Sustainability
It’s common belief that we need to make significant changes to the building industry by the year 2030 to address critical issues of climate change. And we don’t have time to waste. So what needs to...
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