Peter Fairley

Peter Fairley, a journalist based in British Columbia, covers environmental issues for multiple publications including Technology Review and Nature.

A Law School building for the University of California, Hastings in San Francisco.

New Technologies Help Concrete Go on a Greenhouse-Gas Diet

Peter Fairley

March 2, 2020

One Comment

A number of innovators are working to clean up the world’s leading building material by pumping it full of CO₂.

Berkeley Says No to New Gas Connections

Peter Fairley

July 30, 2019

3 Comments

This summer, the city council of Berkeley, California, voted to ban gas connections to new small and mid-sized residential buildings.

Continuing Education: Green Walls

Peter Fairley

July 1, 2016

No Comments

Greenery on buildings is gaining traction, but needs validation.

Continuing Education: Post-Occupancy Evaluations

Feedback Loop: With a frequent gap between predicted and actual performance, post-occupancy evaluations begin to catch on.

Peter Fairley

August 16, 2015

No Comments

Post-occupancy evaluation, or POE, is a diverse practice that can feed back data into the design process on everything from energy and water consumption to workplace satisfaction and even occupants' sleep cycles.

New Tools for Predicting Climate Change Promise Better-Performing, More Adaptable Buildings

Peter Fairley

March 16, 2015

No Comments

Architects and engineers must consider a building site's climate to create structures that efficiently keep occupants comfortable. Some new tools help buildings to perform as anticipated and gracefully adapt to a changing climate.

Seattle's Bullitt Center Shines

Peter Fairley

April 30, 2014

No Comments

Designed to be the greenest commercial building in the world, the six-story structure is outperforming its energy goals with an integrated design and motivated tenants. The Bullitt Center used 75 percent less energy than a new building that meets Seattle’s rigorous energy code. The designers of Seattle’s Bullitt Center have overachieved. The Miller Hull Partnership, co-founded by the late Robert Hull, set out to demonstrate that a six-story office building could generate all of the energy it needs, but after one year of operation, it is sending a sizable energy surplus to the local power grid, according to data released

Converging Networks

As building-control apps go mainstream, home-automation providers explore wireless options.

Peter Fairley

April 16, 2014

No Comments

The Apple Store isn't a place you would typically look for residential building components. But you can find a new Wi-Fi-enabled lighting system from Philips called HUE there. This screw-in LED replacement for traditional bulbs can be easily controlled for color, color temperature, and intensity from a computer or smartphone.

10 U.S. Cities Tackle Efficiency

Peter Fairley

February 12, 2014

No Comments

Buildings are the source of one half to three-quarters of greenhouse-gas emissions in most American cities. Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, Houston, and six more large cities have joined forces to tackle the problem by targeting their biggest buildings. “The largest buildings tend to be 3 to 4 percent of the overall number of buildings but account for 40 to 50 percent of the square footage and energy consumption. You have this terrific opportunity to work with a handful of buildings and make a big dent,” says Laurie Kerr, director of the City Energy Project (CEP), which launched in late January.

Green Globes Gets a New Leader

Peter Fairley

January 16, 2014

No Comments

The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED standard, long synonymous with environmentally conscious construction in the U.S., is being forced to share some of its limelight, first with the Living Building Challenge, which has only certified a handful of buildings since its 2006 launch but is steadily gaining momentum since its 2006 launch, and now with Green Globes. Photo © Jill Richards Jerry Yudelson, president of Green Globes The rating system, which advertises cheaper and faster certification, is winning some important backers. In October the U.S. Government Services Administration (GSA) recommended, for the first time, that federal agencies consider Green Globes

Performance Anxiety

Peter Fairley

December 16, 2013

No Comments

Creating buildings that deliver on progressively more ambitious environmental goals will require energy simulations that reliably predict post-occupancy consumption. Higher energy performance has evolved from an aspiration to an expectation. Owners of buildings—especially those certified under rating systems like LEED—increasingly count on an energy savings payback. And a wave of “net zero energy” buildings promises to generate enough energy on-site from renewable sources to equal or exceed demand. As a result, predictive energy models face new scrutiny. “In the last five years, energy modelers have learned that they will have to answer for their models,” says Laurie Canup, an associate