LEED Building Adoption appears to rise after some natural disasters, but the timing and evidence are uneven. The strongest recent evidence comes from a Sept. 1, 2026 study using U.S. city-level data from 2000 to 2020. It found that major flooding events were followed by a statistically significant increase in LEED-certified buildings three to six years later, while hurricanes showed a short-term decline in registrations before later recovery. That pattern matters for planners, code officials, developers, and sustainability staff because disaster recovery often sets the technical baseline for decades of future building performance.… Read the rest

On September 22, 2026, the U.S. Green Building Council published new resources aimed at Building Decarbonization in existing real-estate portfolios. The release included The Decarbonization Blueprint: Reducing Emissions and Creating Value in Existing Buildings and a Corporate Practice Toolkit for High-Performance Buildings, both framed around helping owners convert existing assets into lower-carbon, higher-performance properties USGBC release.

The timing matters because most building-sector carbon work cannot rely only on new construction.… Read the rest

Mass timber construction is attracting university project teams because it can reduce time on site, cut some foundation and labor demands, and lower embodied carbon in certain building designs. The evidence is not uniform: some projects report clear cost savings, while other analyses show a premium compared with concrete. For campus owners, the practical question is not whether timber is automatically cheaper, but where it changes the project economics enough to matter.… Read the rest

AI Building Management is most useful when it improves decisions that a conventional Building Management System already needs to make: how much air to move, when to cool or heat, which zones are occupied, and whether equipment is performing as expected. The technology should not be treated as a stand-alone sustainability claim. Its value depends on reliable sensors, clear control logic, verified baselines, and staff who can act on the findings.… Read the rest

Elephant-Skin Tiles are drawing attention in green building research because their wrinkled, cracked, or textured surfaces can hold and distribute water in ways that support evaporative cooling. The evidence is promising, but it is still mostly lab-based. The strongest current findings come from prototype cementitious and mycelium-bound tiles tested under controlled heating, humidity, and simulated rain conditions.

For building teams, the question is not whether an elephant-inspired surface is visually interesting.… Read the rest