By Logan Broyles
It seems green building is all the rage these days. Everywhere you look there are new projects popping up, new sustainable technologies being designed, and new standards being created that are constantly setting the bar higher.
With this in mind, we decided to examine one simple question.
What is the future of green building?
“Put it another way, is there a future in not building green?” asks Matt Fulford, the head of the Low Carbon Building at Sustain Co. based out of the UK.
“In the UK, from 2019 all new buildings …

Wyndham Deerpoint Homes is renowned for paving a smooth path to homeownership for countless customers over the years. And now the homebuilder is paving a smooth road to greater environmental consciousness—literally—at its Tall Oaks single-family home community in Elgin.
Tall Oaks’ eight miles of collective pavement were recently topped and completed with a green road mixture that includes recycled asphalt roofing shingles ground up from old roofs. The new “green roads” are designed to last longer as well as divert shingle waste from landfills and reduce the amount of aggregate, sand …

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has awarded State Rep. Karen May (D-Highland Park) with a 2010 Leadership Award in the Public Sector Category.  The Leadership Awards recognize outstanding individuals and organizations that signify vision, leadership and commitment to the evolution of green building design and construction.
“State Representative Karen May has been absolutely critical to our efforts to have every child in America educated in a green school in this generation and in doing so has redefined the role of a fiscally-responsible, forward-thinking state legislator in this new green, clean …

Dream Town Realty opened its fourth brick-and-mortar location this Monday at 4553 N. Lincoln Avenue in the Lincoln Square neighborhood. The 2,000 sq. ft. state-of-the-art facility was constructed with a number of eco-friendly components and specialty features. It will serve dozens of agents and be run by Managing Broker Barbara O’Connor.
Dream Town has grown significantly in the past year, adding agents every month to its team of residential consultants. To accommodate its expanding roster of realtors, Dream Town owners Yuval Degani and Avi Ron decided it was time to get another …

When developer Tom McGrath left the healthcare industry to “follow his bliss,” he had one goal: He wanted to build quality homes in Chicago while leaving as small an environmental footprint as possible.
That’s just what developer McGrath is doing with a building renovation in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood.
McGrath’s goal is that the project, located at 1610 N. Honore St., becomes the first speculative-built Chicago home to earn LEED Platinum status from the U.S. Green Building Council.
“I’m a new developer, and I know I chose the worst time to enter the real …

BuildingGreen LLC, publisher of the “GreenSpec Directory” and “Environmental Building News,” have named the 2008 Top-10 Green Building Products. This seventh annual award, announced at the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild Conference in Boston, recognizes exciting products drawn from additions to the “GreenSpec Directory” and coverage in “Environmental Building News.”
“Our selections of the Top-10 Green Building Products represent a wide range of product types in many different application areas,” notes BuildingGreen president Alex Wilson. There are a particularly large number of interior products in this year’s group of winners: the …

Earth Advantage Institute, a nonprofit green building resource that has certified more than 11,000 sustainable homes, has announced its selections for top 10 green building trends to watch in 2010.
The trends, which range from energy “scores” for homes to Web-based displays that track energy usage in real time, were identified by Earth Advantage Institute based on discussions and transactions with a range of audiences over the latter part of 2009, including builders, architects, real estate brokers, appraisers, lenders and homeowners.

BuildingGreen LLC, publisher of the “GreenSpec Directory” and “Environmental Building News,” have named the 2008 Top-10 Green Building Products. This seventh annual award, announced at the U.S. Green Building Council’s Greenbuild Conference in Boston, recognizes exciting products drawn from additions to the “GreenSpec Directory” and coverage in “Environmental Building News.”

“Our selections of the Top-10 Green Building Products represent a wide range of product types in many different application areas,” notes BuildingGreen president Alex Wilson. There are a particularly large number of interior products in this year’s group of winners: the …

By Judy MacDonald
With new green construction grabbing all the attention, you might think that older homes have no place in the green movement; however, this is not the case. If you remember the three R’s of green  reduce, reuse and recycle  you’ll see that old homes can be made green, too.
While new construction can address the first R, by reducing the costs of transport and materials, in an urban environment there’s often an older building to be disposed of first. In this case, where does the building go? Since January …

By Fredric B. Prohov
Valuation of real estate is often more of an art than a science. When it comes to assessing the economic value of green buildings, appraisers will have a tough time for a while as they attempt to establish new methods to capture and then quantify the benefits these new types of structures create. There still is an insufficient volume of comparable sales of green buildings and not enough historical data from the higher net operating income they generate to develop wide spread survey studies. While appraisers may …