San Francisco Department Showcases Sustainable Design
SAN FRANCISCO — When the San Francisco Department of the Environment was looking for new office space in 2013, the department made it a priority to make the space environmentally friendly and highly energy-efficient.


SAINT PAUL, Minn. —The Saint Paul RiverCentre and Xcel Energy Center have been certified to three international sustainability standards: LEED, Green Globes and APEX/ASTM. The complex is the first in the world to receive those three designations.
MERCED, Calif. —The University of California, Merced, received its 13th LEED certification when its student services building was awarded LEED Platinum by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC).
FOLEY, Ala. — Energy savings performance contracts (ESPCs) are becoming increasingly attractive to municipalities looking for an alternative financing mechanism to support capital improvements through utility and operational savings.
PRINCETON, N.J. — NRG Energy has broken ground on its new headquarters in Princeton, which is being described as an ultra-green, grid-resilient complex.
NEW YORK — A midtown Manhattan building has become only the third Class B office property in New York City to achieve LEED-Existing Building (EB) Gold Certification.
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Construction completed last week on the Brock Environmental Center, a facility that promotes environmentally friendly efforts toward its neighbor, the Chesapeake Bay.
DENVER — In the past year alone, the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has updated its LEED certification program and introduced a tool to help certified buildings benchmark their efficiency.
Sustainability for buildings and interiors has become a fundamental tenet of design, whether or not a project pursues LEED certification. The products and processes used for building should be thoughtfully manufactured, installed, recycled and disposed of when they are no longer of use.
NEWPORT, R.I. — The Claiborne Pell Bridge, known commonly as the Newport Bridge, in Newport recently retrofitted its antiquated lighting systems with state-of-the-art, high efficiency LED lighting.