Tag: Sustainable Buildings

  • Arizona desert hosts world’s largest ‘net zero energy’ building

      The new Phoenix regional office of DPR Construction has been officially certified as a “net zero energy” building by the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). It’s the largest building in the world to achieve net zero energy building certification through the institute to date. SmithGroupJJR designed the comprehensive renovation of the windowless, 1970s concrete block building, transitioning it…

  • On the front lines of climate adaptation: Part 2

    Drought, by THEMACGIRL With the business community grappling to understand how the impacts of climate change will affect their bottom line, Sustainable Industries recently interviewed two authors who literally wrote the book on resilience to find out more on the topic. Cole Roberts and Alisdair McGregor are sustainable design gurus from Arup who teamed up with their colleague Fiona Cousins and…

  • SFPUC Headquarters earns LEED Platinum certification

    SFPUC, by Bruce Damonte The statuesque new $147 million San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) Headquarters this week achieved LEED Platinum certification.  The 13-story, 278,000-square-foot headquarters at 525 Golden Gate Avenue, a half block away from San Francisco City Hall, offers Class A office space for roughly 900 workers. SFPUC provides water and waste services to…

  • ABCs of EPDs

    A major tenant of corporate responsibility is transparency. Corporations are under increasing pressure to understand, report and manage social and environmental externalities – side effects of business operations that businesses have not traditionally been obligated to pay for, or even account for.   In a world of increasing demand for transparency, shouldn’t every company be…

  • Skanska drops U.S. Chamber membership over LEEDv4 battle

    Following a year of dispute, global construction and development firm Skanska USA unabashedly announced Tuesday that it has withdrawn its membership of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest. The company denounced the Chamber’s backing of a chemical industry-led initiative to effectively ban the future use of LEED for government buildings. The initiative, linked to lobbying…