The Green Building Top 5 - June 24, 2015

First Solar CEO - We'll be Under $1.00 per Watt by 2017 Fully Installed

Utility-scale: The CEO of one of the world's largest utility solar builders said, "There's lots of talk around distributed generation, and yet the bulk of the photovoltaics added on a global basis is still utility-scale...[and] will continue to be utility-scale. Read Full Article

Green Buildings Pay Off for Real Estate Owners

Green buildings perform better in the stock market, according to a study released today by the Carbon War Room. The study, commissioned by the Carbon War Room to the University of Cambridge, is titled The Financial Rewards of Sustainability: A Global Performance Study of Real the Estate Investment Trusts. Read Full Article

Building Product EPDs: Can We Now Take Them Seriously?

An EPD is a verified document that reports environmental information on a specific product or service, in accordance with the international standard ISO 14025 (Type III Environmental Declarations). The reported information is based on the results of a peer-reviewed Life Cycle Analysis (LCA), itself a lengthy and complex report. So you could say that an EPD is a very short and readable summary of an LCA. Read Full Article

Duke 'green' building blamed for bird deaths

One of the first Duke University buildings to be certified as "green" appears to be causing more bird deaths than any other building on campus. Read Full Article

The case for a human-centered sustainability strategy

The goal of green building is to make the building perform better. Historically this has led to a focus on energy, water and materials, with a heavy emphasis on predicting performance on such things as energy usage but not measuring it for long, if at all. Read Full Article