My first reaction was that the Alliance to Save Energy was stretching a bit by titling its October 6 talk: “Is energy efficiency the key to recovery from the recession?”

But after hearing David Goldstein’s presentation, I must admit I’m thinking about energy efficiency in a whole different way. Goldstein, author of the book, (more…)

Several events have occurred that will require further posts and analysis, but I want to keep my readers updated:

1.  Decision in AHRI v. City of Albuquerque: My friend Steve Del Percio did a nice job of summarizing the opinion here. I will have an analysis of the opinion from my perspective on Friday.

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Although Latin America boasts a number of the world’s largest urban areas, green building in Latin America has lagged far behind its counterparts north of the Rio Grande. The green building market in Latin America is an early-stage market in which the main developments center around risk-takers and early adopters. Many building owners still don’t understand green building (more…)

To follow up with my recent post on energy efficiency in K-12 schools, I wanted to take a look at some trends in higher education as well (it is that time of year when everyone’s returning to school, after all).

In the realm of higher education, the issues are a little different. Whereas the annual energy cost for K-12 schools is about $1/sf, (more…)

Building green is the law in Baltimore City. And while the mandatory requirement for all to build green has been in effect since July 1, 2009, the City has just announced the regulations (that were, arguably, to have been effective July 1, 2009) were promulgated last week, effective September 16, 2010.

Make no mistake, Baltimore City is not (more…)

In 2009, Baltimore passed an amendment to its building code requiring public and private buildings above 10,000 gross square feet to "be equivalent to a LEED “Silver” level."  Obviously, the goal was to get buildings in Baltimore to be more environmentally friendly. Fast forward a year, and a controversy is brewing over whether a proposed Big Box project, including a (more…)

At the onset of the 5^th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, students and emerging professionals are putting their time towards helping to rebuild New Orleans in a sustainable fashion.  The 2010 US Green Building Council Natural Talent Design Competition, in partnership with the Salvation Army’s EnviRenew program, is (more…)

“Most everyone has green materials that are made from recycled this or that. That is fine of course. But the public doesn’t really care. In fact the impact to our planet, or the savings to the impact to our planet is quite minimal if we recycle something. But if we drive CO2 down – that’s the high order bit – drive energy down, drive CO2 down. Those are the high order bits today.” – Kevin (more…)

The image of living in a steel cargo container usually conjures up scenes of poor, third-world communities, but Los Angeles architect Peter DeMaria sees their conversion into modern urban homes as an environmentally sustainable idea that will fit into most any neighborhood. While designer Frank Lloyd Wright was famous for his “destroy the box” philosophy, DeMaria (more…)

A few weeks ago, the EPA released its Sustainable Design and Green Building Toolkit for Local Governments.

The Toolkit was developed by EPA Region 4, and Green Building Law Blog (GBLB) was very excited to interview Karen Bandhauer, an Environmental Scientist at EPA Region 4 about the Toolkit. (more…)