Green Plants for Green Buildings New
at the Green Building Expo
By: MJ Gilhooley - Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Source: iGreenBuild.com

Loveland, OH, August 3, 2009- Green Plants for Green Buildings, a 501c3 non-profit charitable education group (GPGB), will inform expo attendees on the importance of integrating natural foliage within the green building design at the International Conference and Expo in Phoenix Convention Center, Phoenix, Arizona slated from November 10^th through November 12^th 2009.

GPGB will present significant evidence indicating that live interior plants are crucial to the overall environmental quality within a building. The group’s LEED AP’s (Leadership in Energy and Environment Accredited Professional), including Phoenix based GPGB Executive Board member, Joe Zazzera will be presenting a rich body of relevant research including green building credited case studies from around the globe. The Greenbuild expo is the world's largest conference and expo dedicated to green building, with last year’s event hosting 28,224 registered attendees representing 85 countries.

Upon their visit to educational table T-30 attendees and media will learn of findings, which vastly expand upon the credited benefits of planted/greenspace window views. GPGB will be sharing the vital environmental quality advantages of including interior plant installations in commercial spaces (including published and in-progress study findings on the quantification of carbon assimilation of interiorscape plants).

 

According to GPGB, such benefits result from the interior plant’s capacity to produce cleaner air, their demonstrated provision of feelings of pleasure, calm and relief from attention fatigue; decline in sick-leave absences by 60%, a substantial increase in productivity, improved performance on test computer tasks, card-sorting and creative thinking tests, classroom reduced illness absences among primary-school children, as well as reductions in pain perception, anxiety, depression and feelings of hostility.

Introducing the next generation in networked zoning control systems New
By: Maria Pensato - Monday, August 3, 2009
Source: Viconics Electronics, Inc

 

Montreal, Canada – July 23^rd, 2009 (Viconics) Viconics Electronics Inc is pleased to announce the release of the VBZS (Viconics BACnet Zoning System). This system is a native BACnet based changeover bypass type zone control system offering features only found on the most complex networked controls systems yet as simple to install as a standard wall-mount thermostat. The VBZS features pre-programmed zoning system algorithms, automatic binding of time schedules, and heating and cooling demands and on-board menu driven set-up /configuration tool for ease of installation. The system’s unique energy saving features such as an integrated PIR sensor and adjustable heating and cooling lockouts enable energy savings during occupied periods.

 

The system integrates easily into existing or new BACnet based supervisory systems prevalent in today’s marketplace. This allows you to offer customers a scalable core-energy-management system, which can be mixed and matched with others for future expansion.

 

The VBZS represents a breakthrough in mid-market building control systems. Offering all of the most used functionality, BACnet scalability, and interoperability without the complex installation, engineering tools and time consuming commissioning associated with most systems. These milestones equate to a lower total first installed cost, and superior return on investment to end-users.

Greg Kats favourably reviews breakthrough Cascadia Code Report by Eisenberg and Persram

Media release:

Buildings are getting greener but building codes and regulations often stall progress
Breakthrough report from the Cascadia Region Green Building Council tackles building regulations

(August 4, 2009) Tucson, AZ, USA & Toronto, ON Canada – The enthusiasm for Living Buildings continues unabated, but a key stumbling block in the shift toward truly sustainable projects is the existing set of codes and regulations. Federal stimulus funds for green building and infrastructure projects are important drivers of the shift in how buildings are designed and constructed, but there needs to be a “greening” of the regulatory systems to fully meet sustainability goals.

Stepping in to help resolve the impasse is a new report published by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council entitled Code, Regulatory and Systemic Barriers Affecting Living Building Projects, which presents a case for fundamental reassessment of the regulatory sphere related to the built environment.

“This report will reframe the conversation about building regulation and what is required to safeguard public health, safety and welfare,” says Jason F. McLennan, CEO of Cascadia and the creator of the Living Building Challenge. The Challenge is a call to those in the design and construction industries to create buildings that function like plants and are net-zero in energy, water and waste.

Greg Kats, Managing Director of Good Energies, notes, “This report is both timely and important. There are widespread obstacles to adopting green design. This report maps out these obstacles in detail and provides a series of integrated recommendations to eliminate them and replace them with a regulatory environment that supports smarter, greener healthier design.”

Report authors David Eisenberg of the Development Center for Appropriate Technology and Sonja Persram of Sustainable Alternative Consulting researched the issues surrounding regulatory barriers in the US and Canada. These included examining the range of regulatory and other approvals required for leading-edge projects, as well as surveying Living Building project teams and interviewing experts throughout North America.

According to lead author David Eisenberg, “Though people speak of the building regulatory system, it isn’t a system. It was never designed as one, and so it is not based on over-arching societal goals or system principles. Instead, what we have today emerged from thousands of reactions to problems serious enough to require a regulatory response. We need a comprehensive regulatory system that enables best practices, instead of simply preventing the worst from happening.”

Recommendations also include the creation of an integrated regulatory process that would embrace Living Building goals, explicitly considering human and ecosystem health today and tomorrow. This process would formalize regulatory relationships between the traditional regulatory spheres for the built environment and those in the finance, real estate, investment and insurance sectors.

“Green building has reached a tipping point,” notes Sonja Persram. “There is a growing recognition in the insurance and investment communities that organizations have a fiduciary responsibility to address climate change. An increasing body of research links specific green building practices with mitigating these ecological risks and adding enormous triple-bottom-line benefits. This means money now spent on conventional projects rather than on these green measures could be seen as money at risk.”

Kats concurs: “The gravity of climate change requires that we move quickly to embrace deep improvements in energy efficiency and in use of renewables to achieve zero net CO2 buildings. Building green is cost effective and provides both financial returns and a reduction of risk for owners and tenants. This report provides an important roadmap toward buildings that cut costs, cut risk, improve heath and allow us to live within our earth’s increasingly imperiled environmental means.”

The project was made possible through funding to Cascadia from the Summit Foundation and King County.

Access the report from any of these weblinks:
Development Center for Appropriate Technology: www.dcat.net/about_dcat/announcements.php
Sustainable Alternatives Consulting Inc.: www.sustainable-alternatives.ca/Cascadia_Code_Report_Eisenberg_Persram.pdf
Cascadia Region Green Building Council: http://ilbi.org/resources/research/CodeStudies/09-0729%20code%20paper%20Eisenberg.pdf


About the Authors:
David Eisenberg, Co-founder and Director of the non-profit Development Center for Appropriate Technology (DCAT), has pioneered efforts to create a sustainable context for building regulation since 1995. He served two terms on the Board of Directors of the U.S. Green Building Council where he founded and chairs the USGBC Code Committee. He has written and presented extensively on sustainability and building regulation in the U.S. and abroad. He was recently selected to serve on the new International Code Council Sustainable Building Technology Committee. David and DCAT were recipients of the International Code Council 2007 Affiliate of the Year Award and the 2007 USGBC Leadership Award in the category of Organizational Excellence.

Sonja Persram, BSc, MBA, LEED® AP is President of Sustainable Alternatives Consulting Inc., a policy and market research firm that aims to catalyze green building sector expansion, focusing on triple-bottom-line alternatives. Sonja’s publication credits include: Green Buildings: A Strategic Analysis of the North American Markets for Frost & Sullivan; the USA segment of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s International Sustainable Building Policy Initiatives; and lead author of two Canada Green Building Council projects, Marketing Green Buildings for Owners/Tenants of Leased Properties. She is a Corresponding Committee member of the USGBC’s Code Committee and served on the USGBC Social Equity Task Force.

About Cascadia
The Cascadia Region Green Building Council is a non-profit organization in both the US and Canada. Cascadia promotes the design, construction and operation of buildings in Alaska, British Columbia, Washington and Oregon that are environmentally-responsible, profitable and healthy places to live, work and learn. Cascadia is one of the first chapters of the US and Canada Green Building Councils, and is the only international chapter in North America. It is also the originator of the Living Building Challenge. For more information, please visit www.cascadiagbc.org.

Media contacts:

Authors:
David Eisenberg, Development Center for Appropriate Technology
strawnet (at) aol.com / 520.624.6628
www.dcat.net

Sonja Persram, Sustainable Alternatives Consulting Inc.
sonja (at) sustainable-alternatives.ca / 416.324.9388
www.sustainable-alternatives.ca

Publisher:
Jason McLennan, Cascadia Region GBC
jason (at) cascadiagbc.org / 206.223.2028
www.cascadiagbc.org

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