building-changing-climate / Green Building & Sustainable Home Renovation Information & Advice

Courtesy of the USGBC, the following is a guest post by Harvey M. Bernstein, Vice President of Industry Insights & Alliances, McGraw-Hill Construction and John Mandyck, Chief Sustainability Officer for United Technologies Climate, Controls & Security. There is no doubt that sustainability initiatives and envir...

We often think of the land underneath our feet as fixed and unmoving. On a calm day, if you sit next to the ocean, it seems quite stationary. It does change though - with the shifting of tectonic plates, erosion, wind, super tides and flooding.  These changes are most noticed when we have a large event like a rain, win...

Future-proofing homes for Climate Change:  Anticipating future climatic challenges and constructing resilient buildings to withstand them should be an important consideration when building any new home - but we're often told that "a Green Home costs more", and too many people then decide in the face of resistance from ...

While governments have a role in shaping and improving the built environment through zoning, development bylaws and other means, developers also play a large role. They choose where to build, the types of homes or buildings that get built, and many of the details that make up a home, neighbourhood and community.  The b...

The U.S. Green Building Council and the University of Michigan’s Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning released a landmark report Feb. 29 that describes how green buildings advance resiliency in disasters. “Green Building and Climate Resilience: Understanding Impacts and Preparing for Changing Conditions” ...

Future-proofing homes: Our society has a collective trust in its commercial building industry to provide us with homes that we assume meet some realistic standard of resilience. They do to an extent, but a very minor extent. Assuming the climate putters along with relative normalcy, your home will keep you warm, dry an...

Representatives from 18 communities across Canada attended three week-long intensive sessions last summer as part of the clean energy capacity-building 20/20 Catalysts Program, sharing knowledge and experience in the development of clean energy infrastructure. Riding on that success, this summer the focus will be on en...

The first step to building a durable and energy-efficient home in North America, including Passive house to PHIUS standards, LEED or Net Zero Homes is knowing your climate zone. Just as we need to wear different outfits in different climates, homes need to be properly designed to meet the temperatures, humidity levels ...

There are probably only two general desires we share when imagining a dream house - we all want the nicest one possible for the least amount of money. And we want both of those things right away, rather than waiting a lifetime to see the 'payback' for noble design choices we might have made to save polar bears, bees, p...

I’m writing this during a heat wave in June, 2021, as much of the US and Canada seem poised to experience yet another record-breaking hot summer. Those who are not climate geeks might ask if this warmer-than-average weather is caused by climate change. In fact, weather is not climate. Weather is what happens day-to-day...

Bluewater Health announced today that it has been selected as one of the first Canadian hospitals – and the first acute care hospital in Ontario – to achieve LEED® certification. Bluewater Health’s construction of a 588,000-square-foot complex at the hospital’s Sarnia location consisted of a new addition attached to th...