The USGBC is accepting proposals for educational sessions and applications for peer reviewers to evaluate these proposals for the 2010 Greenbuild Conference.
It’s not good enough to just be green anymore, you have to be great. Your product or service needs to break through the green clutter. It must do its job better, more economically, more efficiently with less ? It must be positioned better, and packaged better. It should communicate its unique promise of value better.
Robert A. Peck, Commissioner of Public Buildings at the U.S. General Services Association (GSA), presented a keynote presentation at Ecobuild America this week entitled GSA: Green Pioneer – Green Proving Ground. Peck presented his vision for the GSA as a leader in green building technology and discussed how the 5.5 billion dollar appropriation from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) will impact the GSA’s work.
A summary of the second webinar in the Sustainable Brands Boot Camp series, Innovation Opportunities in Response to Today’s Environmental Hot Buttons: Climate Change, Water & Waste. The webinar was led by Will Sarni, CEO and founder of Domani Consulting, an integrated sustainability consulting firm, and featured examples of new, innovative business and product strategies from various markets that are successfully being brought to market in response to emerging environmental and social strains.
The Green Building Certification Institute (USBGCI) is accepting applications from professionals interested in taking the LEED AP Neighborhood Development beta exam and potentially earning the credential for free. You must submit the application and required documentation online by December 15th. The final, balloted version of LEED for Neighborhood Development was recently released with a few interesting changes including new requirements for certification of at least one green building, walkable sidewalks, increased density, and an allowance for minor construction such as boat access ramps in green buffer areas that encourage human interaction with nature.
Are most homebuyers interested in purchasing a home that saves 90% over a traditional home on heating and cooling costs and requires only a small active heating system the size of a hairdryer? The Passivhaus movement is an exciting building design concept that offers tremendous energy savings due to reliance on passive heating systems. Europe is embracing the concept with between ten and fifteen thousand houses already built and governmental support of mandating the standard. The Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt was formed in 1996 to promote and control passive house design and the group only recently formed the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) to reach out directly to the US building market. It is slow to gain momentum, but holds promise for the US market in the future.
A new study by the Marine Biological Lab (MBL) of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has reported that biofuels that displace food crops may have a much bigger carbon footprint than previously thought. MBL senior scientist Jerry Melillo and his colleagues at the MBL have reported that carbon emissions from land-use change caused by the displacement of food crops and pastures by a global biofuels program may be twice as much as the emissions from lands directly devoted to biofuels production.
If you’re like most small-medium sized business owners, you own and independently operate a business with less than 100 employees, have revenues of less than $500,000 annually, and are not market dominant. You may be wondering if the new, ‘greener’ technologies can work for your company. Can your business enjoy the same benefits as your larger counter-parts by investing in ‘green’ technologies such as virtualization? The global economic downturn means that it is more important than ever to ensure that every penny counts and that your business is run efficiently and cost effectively. This post will (hopefully) help you to identify whether your company can benefit from implementing virtualization technology while reducing your environmental impact.
All things being equal, if a potential employer paid for your time away from the office to volunteer for an earth-friendly cause or provided you with free compact fluorescent light bulbs and an energy audit of your home, or even a hybrid car, would you be more inclined to join them? Leading by example, renewable energy firms are developing “green” or environmentally friendly employee benefits that align the core values of a CEO and culture of their organization with the core values of each employee.
