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On the Path to Passive Survivability
Author name: Alex Wilson Creating a superinsulated building envelope is one of the key requirements with passive survivability. I saw this superinsulated home feature when I was in Sweden last...
View ArticleGreen building code standard committee disbanded
Author name: Mark Piepkorn A story's been posted on BuildingGreen.com that ASHRAE has unexpectedly pulled the plug on the Standard 189 development committee. This standard is supposed to be "a new...
View ArticleWe are living in exponential times
Author name: Mark Piepkorn No wonder you're having trouble keeping up. From the video Shift Happens:"It is estimated that a week's worth of the New York Times contains more information than a person...
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Foot Spa: Rhymes with "Chutzpah"
Author name: Mark Piepkorn The editors and researchers for GreenSpec get more submissions from manufacturers wanting to get their products listed than we can keep up with. As GreenSpec is a "best of...
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Getting ready for Greenbuild
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Here comes Greenbuild again. It keeps getting bigger. For instance, last year there were 480 exhibitors in the expo hall... this year, over 800.I've got the expo hall on the...
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USGBC, 15 Years Old, Looks Back
Author name: Mark Piepkorn In honor of itself (hmm... was really the best way for me to kick off this post?), the USGBC has done a kind of a cool thing. A letter released to its membership says,......
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Affordable Housing Summit at Greenbuild - Report
Author name: Peter Yost By Peter Yost and Allyson Wendt, posted live from Greenbuild.It's common knowledge that green building is anything but affordable. Or is it? You would have had a pretty hard...
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Failure and Success - Which Do We Learn More From?
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Posted live from Greenbuild.This morning we had our annual breakfast at Greenbuild with invited participants from the top green firms in the industry — taking their pulse,...
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A "Year of Greenwash" Update
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Posted live from Greenbuild.I ran into Michelle Moore, senior vp of policy & public affairs for the USGBC, yesterday. I asked her if she had any new thoughts on the...
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New Residential Green Building Website
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Posted live from Greenbuild.Press release:BuildingGreen, LLC, announces a new online information resource on residential green building and remodeling....
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Being 22.1% (give or take) of the Top Ten Feels Darned Good!
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Preston Koerner, over at Jetson Green, posted his "Top 10 Tidbits from Greenbuild 2008." Check out numbers 2, 4, 6, and 7:2. The LEED AP Program undergoes major overhaul and...
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Touring the Greenbuild Expo with CNN
Author name: Nadav Malin I'm not usually all that comfortable in front of a camera, but I had fun walking the Greenbuild 2008 Expo floor with a video crew from CNNMoney.com and Fortune magazine. We...
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GreenBuildingAdvisor.com Launches
Author name: Mark Piepkorn As promised, here it is.GreenBuildingAdvisor.com is dedicated to providing the most useful, accurate, and complete information about designing, building, and remodeling...
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Building materials industry lobbying in 2008
Author name: Tristan Roberts Isn't lobbying in Washington something that less-reputable industries do -- tobacco, casinos, and other "heavy hitters"? Doing some research on OpenSecrets.org, I was...
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Remembering Gail Lindsey
Author name: Alex Wilson Images: gaillindsey1_0.jpggaillindsey2_0.jpgread more
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Stupid Green Buildings
Author name: Allyson Wendt We've all had this conversation: is a huge single family green home really green? A new building in the desert? A man-made island in Dubai?The blog Green Building Elements...
View ArticleWere We Too Critical of EnergySmart Hospitals?
Author name: Allyson Wendt In an online article on the U.S. Department of Energy's EnergySmart Hospitals, we compared that program to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star for...
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What makes it green?
Author name: Mark Piepkorn What color is green?The fundamental, unanswered — perhaps unanswerable — question. And it's not just people new to the concept of "green" who are asking it as technology,...
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The Aftermath: Congressional Briefing about Strawbale Construction
Author name: Mark Piepkorn This is the second post about strawbale building today. The other is Building Science for Strawbale Buildings.Regular readers may recall that post back in June about the...
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GreenBuildingAdvisor.com Residential Green Building Resource
Author name: Mark Piepkorn <Images:...
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100 Abandoned Houses
Author name: Mark Piepkorn From photographer Kevin Bauman's website. See them all.Images:...
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Greg Franta's Body Found
Author name: Nadav Malin They found Greg, and his car, yesterday — a month after he mysteriously disappeared. According to the Denver Post, he had slipped off the road and rolled into a ravine. Daily...
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Interview with a Green Building Movement Pioneer
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Sea Change Radio recently had a great discussion with Alex Wilson. From their website:Alex Wilson founded BuildingGreen in 1985, when the green building movement was in its...
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Scenes From the Recession
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Boston.com's regular feature, The Big Picture, presents "news stories in photographs." The March 18th edition is prefaced:The state of our global economy: foreclosures,...
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Reductio ad absurdum
Author name: Michael Wilmeth I recently went through the scoring tool on the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) green building website www.nahbgreen.org. The tool lets you get a good idea...
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The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009
Author name: Mark Piepkorn EBN reported last October on a California law requiring annual energy-use reporting for all nonresidential buildings. (Commercial owners will have to disclose energy use...
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BSR/ASHRAE/USGBC/IESNA green building draft standard open for public review
Author name: Mark Piepkorn The long-time-coming "BSR/ASHRAE/USGBC/IESNA Standard 189.1P, Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings" is open for...
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The Carbon Neutral Design Project
Author name: Mark Piepkorn From the website of The Carbon Neutral Curriculum Materials Project:The Carbon Neutral Curriculum Materials Project is a joint research effort between members of the Society...
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4 Years + 15 Million Dollars = Old News, No Actual Solutions
Author name: Mark Piepkorn The World Business Council for Sustainable Development website says that its new study, Energy Efficiency in Buildings: Transforming the Market, is "the most rigorous study...
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The Lifecycle Building Challenge
Author name: Mark Piepkorn A design competition for professionals and students, the Lifecycle Building Challenge is sponsored by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, the American Institute of...
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In Response: "4 Years + 15 Million Dollars = Old News, No Actual Solutions"
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Christian Kornevall, the director of the Energy Efficiency in Buildings project of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), sent the following in...
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"You are brilliant, and the Earth is hiring"
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Paul Hawken gave the commencement address for the University of Portland earlier this month, and it's making the rounds. Deservedly. Its message is as good for the building...
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New to Green Building? Try GBA.
Author name: Brian Fending Recently, I broke one of my long-standing rules and blogged about something BuildingGreen-related at my own blog. My Costanzian fears were indeed warranted, and I've been...
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Trade Contractor Management for High Performance Homes
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Here's a free webinar (this Wednesday, July 8, at 4 p.m. ET) for you green contractor types about getting the subs on board — or at least in line with the goals of green....
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13-Story Apartment Building Tips Over. Sideways.
Author name: Mark Piepkorn "Apparently an error in construction," the story says. Indeed.Improper construction methods are believed to be the reason [for the] building collapse in Shanghai, according...
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Ceiling Fans Not Made in the U.S.? A New Website Helps
Author name: Allyson Wendt One of the biggest hurtles in designing to Living Building Challenge standards is finding local materials, as we discuss here.The folks at Cascadia Green Building Council...
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Smart Strategies to Market Your High Performance Homes
Author name: Mark Piepkorn Another in an ongoing series of webinars offered for free from our sister site, GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, is coming up on Tuesday, July 14, at 4 p.m. Eastern.The market for...
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TURI Loses Funding... maybe.
Author name: Jennifer Atlee We recently learned that the Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI) is losing its Massachusetts state funding. This strikes particularly close to home for me as I worked...
View ArticleMcKinsey Report: Energy Efficiency is a Big Deal
Author name: Allyson Wendt The U.S. Green Building Council just sent out information from a report written by McKinsey and Company about energy efficiency and its role in U.S. mitigation of climate...
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Living With Climate Change: How to Design Buildings and Communities for...
Author name: Alex Wilson The living space in this new home built by Global Green in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans is elevated four feet (1.2 m) to keep it above expected flood level. Numerous...
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Buildings For the People
Author name: Allyson Wendt Social justice--it's a topic of conversation throughout the green building industry, but what does it mean, exactly? And how does it relate to buildings?I worked with the...
View ArticleAlex Wilson and Peter Yost Interviews
Author name: Mark Piepkorn These shorts were filmed at West Coast Green; for more like them, see revision.tv.link to videoread more
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A Wider View of Social Justice
Author name: Allyson Wendt In October, we published an article on social justice and green building. We've gotten several responses, including a letter from Raphael Sperry of...
View ArticleGreen Economies of Scale (post-Greenbuild ruminations)
Author name: Jennifer Atlee By the end of Greenbuild, I was exhausted/troubled/elated with all sorts of conundrums swirling around in my head — not to mention a few partly written blogs, abandoned in...
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Is LEED on Track to Save the World?
Author name: Nadav Malin Rob Watson recently published "Green Building Market & Impact Report," his second annual report on the impact LEED is having in addressing environmental problems. The...
View ArticleAIA Responding to Green Building Concerns
Author name: Allyson Wendt In this month's feature article, I talk about the risks of green building. I note that one of the problems with model contracts, such as those from AIA, is that they don't...
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Is Worker Safety a Missing Piece of the Green Puzzle?
Author name: Tristan Roberts If the jobsite for a green building isn't any safer than the jobsite for a conventional building, is something missing from our definition of "green"? That is the question...
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New Report Helps Untangle Green Product Certifications
Author name: Tristan Roberts Blog Category: BuildingGreen Sounds Off Greenbuild '10 Product Talk The Industry The number of green product certifications is large and growing--perhaps 100 so far in...
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Green Building Product Certifications Report Errata and Update
Author name: Jennifer Atlee Blog Category: BuildingGreen Sounds Off Product Talk The Industry Our new report, Green Building Product Certifications: Getting What You Need, covers every relevant...
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Living Future 2012 Was a Riot
Author name: Nadav Malin Blog Category: On Our Radar The Industry Now in its seventh year, the annual gathering of Living Building Challenge project teams and their kin—known as Living Future—has...
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