America's Greenest Office Building

Alex Wilson — Wed, 22 May 2013 02:17:21 +0000

Author name:

Alex Wilson

Blog Category:

Energy Solutions

The Bullitt Center in Seattle is showing that a six-story, 52,000 square-foot building can meet the net-zero-energy, net-zero-water Living Building Challenge

The new Bullitt Center with its cantilevered cap of PV modules. Click to enlarge.
Photo Credit: Alex Wilson

I’m just back from a week in Seattle, where I attended the Living Future Conference, which this year had a theme of resilience and regeneration—a major focus of mine with the Resilient Design Institute. While there I visited what is almost certainly the greenest office building in America if not the world.

The Living Future Conference was created initially to provide a networking and learning venue for designers and builders involved in creating buildings that achieve the Living Building Challenge. Unlike its better known cousin, the LEED Rating System (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) of the U.S. Green Building Council, the Living Building Challenge (LBC) is not a points-based system, but rather a collection of very specific, very challenging requirements.

The Hidden Beltway Lobbyists Who Shape Green Building Policy

Paula Melton — Wed, 15 May 2013 17:31:22 +0000

Author name:

Paula Melton

Blog Category:

BuildingGreen's Top Stories

Poison pill pushed by illegal lobbyists, or exciting, bipartisan energy bill that could change everything? It could be up to you.

We’ve been keeping an eye on the sweeping Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act (PDF), introduced by Senators Jeanne Shaheen (D–NH) and Rob Portman (R–Ohio).

The common-sense bill, likely to come to the Senate floor any day now, enjoys broad support across the political spectrum. It would boost the national model energy code for both homes and commercial buildings, support commercial retrofits with financing help, and develop training programs for green building jobs.

Mineral Wool Boardstock Insulation Gaining Ground in the Homebuilding World

Alex Wilson — Wed, 15 May 2013 14:10:43 +0000

Author name:

Alex Wilson

Blog Category:

Energy Solutions

GreenSpec Insights

Roxul ComfortBoard IS has some important environmental and performance advantages over XPS and polyisocyanurate insulation

ComfortBoard IS, Roxul's exterior insulation board, is being distributed nationwide in the U.S. at thickensses up to 3".
Photo Credit: Roxul

Readers of this Energy Solutions blog may be aware that I’ve been critical of some of our foam-plastic insulation materials. I’ve come down hardest on extruded polystyrene (XPS), which is made both with a blowing agent that contributes significantly to global warming and with a brominated flame retardant, HBCD, that’s slated for international phaseout as a persistent organic pollutant.

So I’m always keeping an eye out for alternatives. I’ve written here about two of those alternatives that I’ve used in our own home: a cellular glass material called Foamglas with high compressive strength that works very well below-grade; and Thermacork, an all-natural rigid insulation material made from expanded cork.

I like both of those materials a lot, but they have two big problems: high cost and limited availability. They just won’t be able to enter the mainstream home building industry—not yet, anyway—since they cost more than twice as much as XPS and polyisocyanurate and are hard to get hold of.

Earth Measure—A Stone Product That’s Green from Start to Finish

Paula Melton — Tue, 14 May 2013 18:13:33 +0000

Author name:

Brent Ehrlich

Blog Category:

BuildingGreen's Top Stories

Turning waste into a unique architectural product, Coldspring and Jason F. McLennan have teamed up on a new dimensional stone product.

As the founder and CEO of the International Living Future Institute and its influential Living Building Challenge, Declare product database, and Living Future unConference, Jason F. McLennan has been busy setting a high bar for “green.” Now the former BNIM architect has crossed over into product design, as he is set to announce tomorrow the launch of a unique line of sustainable dimension stone products called Earth Measure, in a collaboration with Coldspring, one of the nation’s largest natural stone providers.

In a world in which green products are defined by recycled content and low VOCs, natural stone has arguably gotten short shrift, as we noted recently in Environmental Building News, in Stone, The Original Green Building Material. Stone is simply cut from the earth and processed., It emits no VOCs or hazardous airborne pollutants, it is water-resistant, will outlive most buildings, and can be reused after the structure is no longer usable. How can you build on that pedigree?

How about turning the relatively small amount of quarry waste produced by stone manufacturers into a valuable product? While working with Coldspring as a consultant, McLennan recognized that the offcuts from stone processing still had value beyond landscaping and aggregate, and with Cold Spring’s corporate goal of creating zero waste from processing, a partnership was born.