December, 2008

Time’s Best Inventions of 2008 – its annual list of all that’s new and cool – includes several facility-related entries. Two actual buildings made the list as inventions in and of themselves. First, the $700 million Dynamic Tower...

Data centers are expensive. Not only are they energy hogs, but they’re a serious drain on real estate budgets as well. For that reason, many companies have begun moving data centers offshore to cut costs. Google also has a plan for offshoring its...

Recently, at a manufacturer’s media event, I learned about an emerging technology called CFAIRS (pronounced “sea-fairs,” it stands for combined face and iris recognition) that can scan irises of people anywhere in a room without them...

While the stories themselves may not exactly be what you’d call “good news,” the timing of the stories may wind up as a nice touch of serendipity. That’s because they both hit the wire at almost exactly the same time – which...

You may not have thought of it as such, but email is inherently a green technology – it saves a lot of paper (well, assuming you don't print your e-mails, a practice against which you're being increasingly warned by clever little taglines...

First, the facts: A r eport released this week by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) stated that carbon dioxide emissions released from fossil fuels increased 1.6 percent from 5,888 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (MMTCO2) in 2006 to...

Does your organization have a Director of Sustainability or a Vice President of Environmental Practice, or maybe just a Green Guru? If not, your organization may be in the minority. Even as the economy slows and unemployment grows, green collar jobs continue...

A survey of more than 1,150 executives and facility managers released this week reveals some fairly interesting details about how the industry is dealing (or plans to deal) with the rising cost of energy. For all intents and purposes, what the study ...

If your boss said the words “ Six Sigma ” in the course of a conversation, would you run screaming in the other direction? Does Six Sigma conjure up images from the movie “Office Space” complete with business buzzwords like “process...

There’s greenwashing, and then there’s GREENWASHING, and sadly, it’s often hard to tell the difference. Sometimes greenwashing is a purposeful and blatant distortion of the truth. Often, it takes the form of half-truths or little green...

If you’re a stats/metrics/numbers person, and you haven’t yet found your way to the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey (CBECS) Web site, created by the Energy Information Administration (EIA), here’s a warning: Clear your...

Green success stories are coming in fast and furious these days, but here’s one that definitely stands out from the crowd. The Dell Children’s Medical Center of Central Texas, a new 500,000-square-foot, $200 million facility designed to be...

We’re under construction – literally! Part of our headquarters building here at Trade Press Publishing is finally getting a bit of a makeover. That’s the good news. The bad news is that we have at least six weeks of pounding nails, sawing...

There’s a fascinating article in the NY Times today that reports that electricity prices in deregulated markets – where competition is supposed to benefit the consumer and keep prices at fair market value – have actually increased at...

How familiar are you with LEED? At the very least, you probably understand that it’s a rating system that is supposed to tell you how environmentally responsible your building really is. And you’d be right. LEED has been around since 2001...

Al Gore uses them to justify his Tennessee mansion’s enormous annual energy use. Planners for both the Super Bowl and the Academy Awards used them to declare the events carbon neutral. And you can even purchase them quickly and conveniently as an...

I recently had the pleasure of spending a week in Switzerland with about 30 other journalists from all over the world. We spent the week touring Swiss renewable energy companies and learning about Swiss strategies for energy efficiency. There were several...

If you checked FacilitiesNet within the past few days, you may have noticed the news that USGBC members voted overwhelmingly to make a pretty significant change to LEED. Projects now must meet at least two “Optimize Energy Performance” credits...

I don’t know about you, but whenever I find an article about our industry in the mainstream media, the emotions are a bit mixed. This article about green workplaces that appeared in the June 18 issue of Time is a perfect example. The article is...

Last week, the Illinois state Senate voted 52-5 to mandate green cleaning in the state’s schools. While seemingly innocuous on its own, this law is emblematic of a much more widespread trend: State and city governments forcing publicly funded, and...

A few weeks ago, New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a lengthy, and rather convincing piece , about why America needs to go green. His central argument is quite simple, really: Going green is the only way to discontinue our...

Last week was a pretty phenomenal week for the city of Chicago. For one, the U.S. Olympic Committee chose Chicago as the U.S.’s candidate to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. And then, the Chicago Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval...

They say there’s a fine line between genius and insanity. And when desperate times require desperate measures, that line can become much blurrier. Thankfully, in the case of climate change, we still have a few more practical alternatives –...

A few interesting notes about this week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Mass. vs. EPA case : It is another strong indicator of how politicized the debate over global warming in general and greenhouse gas reduction specifically has become. The...

The recent International Roofing Expo in Las Vegas didn’t provide much in the way of new technology or brand new products – of course, that show rarely does; the roofing industry isn’t exactly on the same technology schedule as, say...