Elizabeth Waters

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Articles

USGBC Certifies First LEED v5 O+M Projects

Nov 26, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Elizabeth Waters

News Brief Three existing buildings: a retail space, an office skyscraper, and high-rise apartments achieved LEED certification under the new v5 rating system. USGBC announced the first three projects certified under the new LEED v5 Operations & Maintenance (O+M) rating system, still in beta testing. In LEED v5 O+M, USGBC has added prerequisites and credits focused on carbon, health, equity, and resilience. For instance, project teams are now required to assess a building’s resilience and...
USGBC Launches Program for Real Estate Portfolios

Nov 18, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Nadav Malin |Elizabeth Waters

News Brief Building on the 2023 Portfolio Accelerator, PERFORM will formally verify portfolio-wide progress toward sustainability goals High-performing, LEED-certified buildings are great for showing what’s possible, but the vast majority of existing building will never pursue—much less achieve—certification. But those buildings are responsible for the lion’s share of carbon emissions from the built environment, so it’s imperative to improve their performance. At Greenbuild 2024 in...
EHDD Launches Spinoff of its Free Whole-Life Carbon Tool

Nov 18, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Nadav Malin |Elizabeth Waters

News Brief With independence, C.Scale aims to advance building decarbonization Architecture firm EHDD announced on November 12 that it’s established a new company, C.Scale, as an independent public benefit corporation. Jack Rusk, EHDD’s former director of climate strategy, left the firm to become C.Scale’s CEO. And Brad Jacobson, FAIA, principal and partner at EHDD and co-founder of C.Scale, will join the C.Scale team while remaining at EHDD. With this move, the company can bring in investors...
C2C Launches a New, More Accessible Circularity Certificate

Nov 5, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Elizabeth Waters

News Brief With its Certified Circularity Standard, Cradle to Cradle hopes to expand the reach of its product circularity efforts The Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute (C2CPII) recently announced the release of a new certification option, the Certified Circularity Standard. Derived from the full standard, the new certification is “designed to provide an accessible pathway for companies of all sizes to create and verify circular products,” explained Ren DeCherney, global lead of...
Equitable Neighborhood Decarbonization Gets the Go-Ahead

Oct 21, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Elizabeth Waters

News Analysis A new California law will allow utilities to replace aging gas infrastructure with zero-emission alternatives in 30 pilot projects The clean energy transition is upon us. But if we’re not proactive about making it equitable, many people—especially renters along with homeowners in disadvantaged communities—could be left behind paying ever-increasing gas prices. With its newly passed Neighborhood Decarbonization Act (SB 1221), California seeks to demonstrate—through 30...
Carbon Now or Later: The Arguments for Delaying Emissions

Oct 8, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Elizabeth Waters

News Analysis A new Arup report demystifies the time value of carbon, why it matters, and why we need to be careful with it. Are today’s carbon emissions worse than tomorrow’s? Should embodied carbon be a higher priority than operational carbon? Published October 8, 2024 Waters, E. (2024, October 8). Carbon Now or Later: The Arguments for Delaying Emissions.
IRA Accelerates Low-Carbon Building Products

Sep 17, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Elizabeth Waters

Federally funded projects are responsible for as much as a third of all U.S. construction emissions, estimates the General Services Administration (GSA) Green Building Advisory Committee. As one piece of a comprehensive strategy to reduce this impact, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is creating a labeling program to drive private sector development and demand for lower-embodied carbon construction materials.
New Recyclable LVT Replacement Is PVC Free-and Affordable

Aug 5, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Elizabeth Waters

Product Review Shaw claims its EcoWorx Resilient flooring performs better than vinyl and that the material can—and will—be recycled. There are few commercial-grade drop-in alternatives to luxury vinyl tile (LVT)—a state of affairs that flooring manufacturer Shaw Industries is hoping to change. Shaw has introduced a new PVC-free, polyolefin-based flooring collection called EcoWorx Resilient. The company claims the collection, whose name leverages the well-known brand of its PVC-free carpet...
Circular Economy: Better Design from Start to … Start

Jul 15, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Paula Melton |Elizabeth Waters

Explainer “Circularity” is about more than just recycling. It means building and buying things only when necessary—and without wasting anything. Ever since the invention of plastics, the global economy has become more and more linear, meaning that building products, and even whole buildings, follow a one-way trajectory: resource extraction, then use, then disposal. This model boosts short-term profits, but it relies on fast and cheap manufacturing to do so, which can directly harm people and...
Build Green on a Budget: Lessons from Affordable Housing

Jun 11, 2024 | buildinggreen.com | Elizabeth Waters

This is Part Two of a two-part series related to affordable housing. It supports project teams across disciplines and building typologies with 12 specific ideas for building green on a budget. Part One emphasizes the critical importance of sustainability in affordable housing and details six steps building professionals can take to help that happen. The built environment is responsible for an immense amount of greenhouse gas emissions, toxic chemical pollution, and waste.