Blogs & Ecology

GreenerBuildings.com released its 2008 Green Building Impact Report yesterday, the first comprehensive evaluation of the real and verifiable environmental improvements of LEED design and construction.

The report is filled with figures measuring the amount of emissions reductions or the impacts of indoor environmental quality, but for the more the casual observer, what’s more interesting is the tepid tone the report takes.

Next week I am off to Boston for GreenBuild, the US Green Building Council's premier event. Greenbuild International Conference and Expo was launched in 2002 as the world's largest conference and expo dedicated to green building. This year attendees will learn about new green building products, innovative projects, the latest building research and more. The conference boasts over 100 eco friendly educational sessions, 800 exhibitors, international master speakers, practical green building workshops and green building tours in Boston November 19-21 for Greenbuild 2008.

Residential green building has arrived. Once the niche of innovative companies like Living Homes and Michelle Kauffman Designs, green building has begun to be embraced by traditional residential builders. In the recent McGraw Hill Report: The Green Home Builder, Navigating for Success in a Down Market, they report that 6-10% of the market this year will be green vs. 2% in 2005.

What if zero carbon building became the standard? What would towns look like? Are carbon free homes only for the rich? These questions dominate the news headlines in Great Britain, which is preparing to have all new houses being built to be zero carbon by 2016. The UK government issued the strictest rules in the world on its building industry two years ago and the impact of the new regulations is drastic.

Whether the 2016 deadline is going to be achievable is doubted by both builders and regulators, but a lot of effort is made at making building green. The rest of the world looks on with eager anticipation at how it all unfolds.

Thousands of home-owners and business-owners swarmed the convention center floor at West Coast Green this past weekend, fawning over the energy-efficient windows, lighting, textiles, and home performance specialists that would help them save money through energy efficiency in their homes, offices, and warehouses. The vendors there knew that they were not just delivering a trendy product or service. They were positioning themselves at the forefront of a fundamental market shift that is being created by a wave of green building policies soon to be sweeping the nation.

The financial markets may be in turmoil, but one market still holds promise for growth. You can learn more about it this weekend at West Coast Green, kicking off tomorrow at the San Jose Convention Center. Over a hundred exhibitors and speakers will be on hand, educating 14,000 attendees from architects to homeowners on green building products and services. If you are an entrepreneur, job-seeker, or investor who is looking for up and coming opportunities, this may be the place to look.

Get ready! We're gearing up for West Coast Green, the residential green building expo--happening on September 25 to 27--and we'll be posting live on various keynotes, seminars and exhibits throughout the event.

This year's West Coast Green coordinators promise that this year's lineup will be even better than last year. Green building and a model home made up of shipping crates won't be the only highlights of the show. There will be something for everybody for everyone to talk about. Seminars run the gamut from green building and design to business and innovation.

A green building is energy efficient, resource efficient and environmentally responsible…

Calling a building green in SA, up until now, has been taken more or less at face value; those with a little bit of savvy are able to scrutinise the details more closely, but most people just have to take the developer's word for it. Not a great rating system.

Environmental Building News has published a directory with products for the residential green building market. The directory is targeted specifically at homeowners and home builders and includes over 1,400 products from the GreenSpec® database which the company's internal editors have maintained since 1998.

Products listed in the directory are selected for GreenSpec based on specific criteria including recycled content, FSC-certified wood, avoidance of toxic constituents, reduction of construction impacts, energy or water savings, and contributing to a safe, healthy indoor environment.

Certainly that is what Owens Corning would tell you, devoting an entire website to the proposition that Pink is Green. Our own Business Roundtable agreed. Greenstrides asked the question and did not really come to a conclusion, so I will stick my two cents in.

Moments like these make me realise I live in a bubble (this theory isn’t new to me, don’t worry, I’ve not had an epiphany, merely a moment!). Either that, or the Hull Street integrated housing project – a bona fide government eco project that uses all the alternative energy technologies available to us, built as far back as 2003, wasn’t given the press it deserved.

Heard about One Planet living? I hadn’t until this morning. One planet living, a joint venture between BioRegional and WWF, sets up eco-villages around the world according to 10 guiding principles:

The largest rooftop solar power station in the world is being built in Spain, on the roof of a General Motors car factory. GM, who has taken a recent knock to their Hummer sales, also plans to install solar panels at another 11 plants across Europe.

The power station, with a capacity of 12 megawatts of power, is made up of 85 000 lightweight panels that cover an area of two million square feet. It should produce power by September, and will produce enough energy to power a third of the GM factory or the needs of 4600 households with an average of 3300kWh. The solar energy produced should cut CO2 emissions by 6,700 tonnes a year.

One of the many travesties of the Howard Government was the establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC) and its supporting legislation, the Building and Construction Industry Improvement Act (BCII Act).

Together they strip away the basic human rights of workers in these industries, taking away the right to silence and giving the ABCC sweeping powers to compel evidence with harsh penalties for not complying with their demands. The legislation also imposes severe restrictions on the rights of building and constructions workers to organise and collectively bargain.

The May 12th earthquake in Sichuan province, China was completely devastating. In some towns near the epicenter, 80 percent of structures were destroyed.