GreenBuild Blog

Is There a Climate Change Tipping Point? Green Buildings May Provide an Answer

Sunday, March 29, 2009

Leading climate scientists argue about whether we need to take drastic action in the face of certain climate change, that we have a “planetary emergency.” Count me as an agnostic in this debate over a precise timetable for climate change; it’s clearly going to happen. What’s also clear is that green buildings and energy retrofits are critical to any climate action program.

The Revolution in Property Management: Chapter 14 of The Green Building Revolution

Monday, March 23, 2009

Green building advocates realized early on that existing developments represent a major opportunity for achieving energy and water savings and reducing the overall environmental impacts of building operations.

What Do They Know (about Sustainable Design) That We Don’t (and Should)?

Sunday, March 22, 2009

U.S. and Canadian Building Teams that fail to use green technologies and innovative design approaches already common in western Europe are going to fall behind competitors who adopt them.

How Will Green Building Fare During the Great Recession?

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

See my take on this, via press release and YouTube video. What I found in my research is that green building is accelerating - the numbers keep going up and up. Whether it’s residential construction, commercial development, or retrofitting of older structures, the trend is accelerating. My projections are for a growth rate this year for the overall green building industry of at least 50%.

The Business Case for Green Buildings: Chapter 3 of The Green Building Revolution

Monday, March 09, 2009

The business case for commercial green buildings is simply stated: if your next project is not a green building, one that’s certified by a national third-party rating system, it will be functionally outdated the day it?s completed and very likely to under perform the market as time passes.

Is Going Green Worth The Trouble?

Thursday, March 05, 2009

A recent study showed that only 66 percent of building professionals surveyed thought certification was worth the trouble, down from 76 percent a year ago. USGBC stats show that only 13 percent of all projects registered to date have been certified. Even allowing for two years to build and certify, the number of certified projects is still less than half the registered projects at the end of 2006. What are all the 81,000 LEED Accredited Professionals doing with their time?

Is the Severe Economic Slowdown Beginning to Bite into Green Building’s Shining Apple?

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Analysis of the first two months of LEED registration and certification data seems to point to a slowdown from the rapid growth in 2007 and 2008, but LEED projects are still rapidly gaining market share. In other words, if it’s being built at all, odds are about one in three that it’s going to be a LEED project.

World’s Leading Green Building Rating Systems Agree on Common Standards

Wednesday, March 04, 2009

In what is actually a big deal in terms of international cooperation between the three best-established green building rating systems, leaders from the U.S., the U.K. and Australia Green Building Councils signed yesterday a Memorandum of Understanding to develop a common way to measure carbon emissions from new homes and buildings.