Green Building Articles
New Home Sales Jump; Slow Pickup Ahead
The 11% jump in new home sales in June confirms that the housing recovery has begun
The 11% jump in new home sales in June confirms that the housing recovery has begun. Eventually the beginning of the recovery will be dated earlier in the spring. The June gain was the largest in nearly a decade but much overestimates the expected increase in home sales over the coming months.
The initial spurt will be followed by slow progress. The factors that drove the June jump are temporary. State tax credits for new home purchases have expired. The federal credit continues through the year but will not produce an additional jump in sales. Mortgage rates are 50 basis points higher than when then in April and May. Homebuilders' supply of finished homes available at a steep discount is shrinking.
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BIM: Autodesk provides drivers with a 3-D preview of rebuilt Doyle Drive
Marin drivers won't have to wait until 2013 to see what the new and improved Doyle Drive will look like.
They can see it right now in 3-D, and no funny glasses are required.
San Rafael-based Autodesk has developed software that is being used by the California Department of Transportation that gives the public as well as contractors, engineers and others working on the major San Francisco highway project a critical preview of the work.
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U.S., China to Collaborate on Building Efficiency
BEIJING, CN -- The United States and China have agreed to a research partnership on energy efficient buildings and communities, redoubling collaborative efforts between the two countries in the development of cleaner, greener technology.
The agreement between the U.S. Department of Energy and the Chinese Ministry of Urban-Rural Development was announced Thursday, just a day after the two countries unveiled plans to establish a joint research center that is to focus on low-carbon technologies for green buildings, clean cars and carbon capture and storage.
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Architects urged to adopt BIM
Wisconsin is already requiring use of three-dimensional modeling software on bigger projects; could Oregon be next?
Nearly every project can benefit from three-dimensional building modeling, said Mannie Mills, project manager for Lease Crutcher Lewis. But it won't become universal until architects embrace it.
"Until more designers are using it and buying into it, it won't happen," Mills said. "The designers will help the industry by grasping it and running forward with it."
In Oregon, as in most states, using building information modeling, or BIM, is optional. Wisconsin this month went further, requiring architects and engineers to use BIM on new projects worth $2.5 million or more.
That decision thrilled architect Gary Bley, a Wisconsin native and BIM evangelist who now works in Northwest Portland. "I've been using it exclusively for the last six years and would not even consider going back to two-dimensional (software).
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Building Materials: What Makes a Product Green?
Quite a bit of attention has been focused on the issue of green building materials. What makes a given product "green"? How do you evaluate the relative greenness of different products? How do you find green products? More important, perhaps, manufacturers are asking, "How can we make our products greener?"
There are several directories of green building products available, some national in focus, some regional. In compiling any directory of green building products, the authors have to figure out what qualifies a product for inclusion. That was an exercise the EBN editorial staff went through when we began developing the GreenSpec directory, our own entry into the products directory field, in the late 1990s.
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Those Sexy Building Codes
Buried deep within the 1,428-page Waxman-Markey climate bill (H.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) passed by the House and now on the Senate floor, is Section 201, pages 320-348. It is this section that makes H.R. 2454 worth passing.
No matter what else is compromised or changed in the climate bill working its way through the Senate, Section 201 must not be changed or weakened. Why? Because all other energy and emissions reduction approaches pale in comparison to what Section 201 will accomplish. Without it, we simply cannot meet the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction targets called for in the bill. We won't even come close.
Section 201 covers building energy codes - that's right, building energy codes - that will transform the entire built environment in the U.S. by 2050. That's because Section 201 affects all new building and major renovations and by 2050, more than three-quarters of the built environment in the U.S. will be either new or renovated.
Section 201 requires updating national building energy codes to meet the following energy reduction targets:
* in 2010, 30% below the baseline energy code (IECC 2006 and ASHRAE 90.1-2004),
* in 2014-2015, 50% below the baseline energy code, and
* every three years after, out to 2029-2030, an additional 5% reduction.
The targets outlined in Section 201 are simply more effective than any other energy and emissions reduction approach. The following graphs compare Section 201 with the call by some in Congress for a massive U.S. effort to build 100 new nuclear power plants in an attempt to move the country toward energy independence and significant GHG emissions reductions.
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Box Stores Target Lighting Inefficiencies
American retailers looking to save energy are aiming high — just below the roof rafters. That's where a small revolution is underway to replace 70-year-old magnetic-ballast lighting technology with efficient electronic circuitry. By using electronic ballasts - the transformers that regulate the current and voltage needed to operate the lamps - and a software-based energy management system, Wal-Mart, Publix and other retailers say they can typically cut a store's lighting costs in half.
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Lighting Revolution Forecast By Top Scientist
ScienceDaily (July 22, 2009) - New developments in a substance which emits brilliant light could lead to a revolution in lighting for the home and office in five years, claims a leading UK materials scientist, Professor Colin Humphreys of Cambridge University. The source of the huge potential he foresees, gallium nitride (GaN), is already used for some lighting applications such as camera flashes, bicycle lights, mobile phones and interior lighting for buses, trains and planes.
But making it possible to use GaN for home and office lighting is the Holy Grail. If achieved, it could reduce the typical electricity consumption for lighting of a developed country by around 75% while delivering major cuts in carbon dioxide emissions from power stations, and preserving fossil fuel reserves.
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