Welcome to the April edition of the Green Building Journal. This month we celebrated Earth Day with a two-day celebration here in Santa Barbara, CA - The home of Green Building Pro. The shocking and devastating blowout of an oil platform here in 1969 coated our local waters, birds, and beaches with black goo, prompting locals to launch the first Earth Day as a way to bring change from our local crisis and raise awareness of where our energy comes from and the price we pay for the luxury.

With this in mind, this month's issue is focusing on lighting. Daylighting, lighting, and the issue of lightbulbs is hard to avoid, since the phase out of the old school incandescent is well in to play world-wide. Lighting has and will always be necessary, but making it efficient, affordable, and readily available is an ever evolving mission. Whatever project you are working on lighting is a key component to consider in your next project, whether it’s a school, office, or even your home.

Contributing author Steve Fronek, PE, LEED® Green Associate, Vice President of Technical Services, Wausau Window and Wall Systems offers us an insight into daylighting and denigrated facade design with a piece on maximizing a buildings design to utilize natural light to minimize artificial light to benefit the students and staff at the University of Illinois’ Business Instructional Facility.

Dave Ranieri, Acuity Brands Lighting Vice President and General Manager gives us an update on LED lighting and how the evolution of new lighting solutions will rival the performance of linear and compact fluorescent lighting systems.

Be sure to check out our video spotlight this month, part of our five part series documenting the home energy audit that Allan and Associates of Santa Barbara performed on our remodeled craftsman home. This video focuses on lighting efficiency and address daylighting as well as the benefits and costs of lighting options. In other parts of this series we'll cover: the initial interview, checking for HVAC leaks using a duct blaster, general HVAC efficiency, and the smoke test, using a blower door to check for structure air tightness.

While this is a snapshot of what you will find in this month’s journal, dive in and enjoy the articles, blogs, videos, and news. Explore the Green Building Pro social media community, engage with other members, and contribute your expertise to collaborate and communicate with other green building professionals.

We welcome you to join us in our community and attend our monthly webcast series, either as an attendee, sponsor, speaker or all of the above. Feel free to contact me with your input on our community and Journal editions. I look forward to joining you online in the Green Building Pro community.

Jenica Egan
Editor in Chief
Green Building Journal
Jenica.Egan@SparkInteractive.com
Follow us on Twitter @buildgreenpro

Solid-state lighting systems using white light LEDs are quickly becoming a viable solution for interior, ambient lighting in new and existing commercial buildings as they begin to rival the performance of linear and compact fluorescent lighting systems. This is good news for those involved in commercial construction and renovation who are interested in the multiple “green” and related economic benefits of LED lighting. In fact, as the short case study on Virginia Commonwealth University demonstrates, commercial buildings across the country are already specifying LED overhead lighting for retail spaces, universities, corporate offices and housing.
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Successful daylighting is achieved by integrating climate, site and solar access into the design of the building envelope. In many, new buildings, the design team attempts to:

• maintain high visible light transmittance (VT) to connect occupants to the outside, provide views, and exploit natural daylighting.

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An independent statewide report1 says Lutron® lighting controls are delivering “considerable energy efficiency” as the school district in Lewiston, Maine aims to cut high energy costs and improve the learning environment with Quantum® total light management and the EcoSystem® lighting control solution.
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Demand-response (DR) programs, in which facilities reduce their electric loads in response to a utility signal, represent a powerful tool for cutting peak demand and reducing stress on the electric power grid. It is also an effective strategy for customers to control energy costs. Lighting reductions can be a significant element of DR programs because lighting use coincides with periods of peak demand, and light levels can be reduced significantly for short periods with little impact on a building’s occupants. Commercially available advanced lighting-control systems can be used today to reduce demand, but the cost, the potential savings, and the best way to implement these systems have not been adequately defined. technologies considered included land-line phones, text messaging, commercial and dedicated radio, pagers, powerline communications, TV cable, and satellite.
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We’re lucky this month to have a new text devoted to lighting and its application towards green building. James Benya and Donna Leban came together to write ‘the ultimate guide to the retrofitting of lighting for greater efficiency and performance.’ The book, Lighting Retrofit and Relighting: A Guide to Energy Efficient Lighting, is the perfect reference for professionals or students.
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This is part 4 of a 5 part video series in which we'll walk through a standard home energy audit of a 4 bedroom 2,200 sq ft Craftsman remodel.

In this segment, we'll focus on lighting efficiency. In other parts of this series we'll cover: the initial interview, checking for HVAC leaks using a duct blaster, general HVAC efficiency, and the smoke test, using a blower door to check for structure air tightness. Come back regularly as we add the rest of the videos in this series.
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