The Workhorse W-15, built in Ohio, costs about $10,000 more than a gas-powered truck, and has an 80-mile all-electric range with extended mileage capabilities.

If you ever saw the documentary, ''Who killed the Electric Car?'' you may recall that one of the tragic heroes of that tale was the poor little Ford Ranger that had been converted into an electric vehicle. Decades later, the elecric pickup could be about to make a triumphant return, thanks to an Ohio based company called Workhorse.

We are quite proud of the fact that green implies a sincere commitment to the natural environment, as well as an awareness and concern for social issues that are directly affected by the shelter industry. But there is so much more to the whole concept of green.

I enjoyed reading and learning about the amazing projects featured in the March/April 2017 issue of Green Builder, highlighting our annual green home award winners, and perusing the lists of outstanding building materials, products and systems that these extraordinary builders and designers have employed in their entries. But I can’t help but shake my head and privately chuckle in amusement, as well.

Scientists now assert that we have 10 years to curb our carbon emissions and solve our increasingly urgent climate challenges. Sustainability advocates are bellowing. People are marching. Will Washington listen?

A recent study released by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) suggests that we have 10 years to make massive changes in sectors like energy, transportation, and agriculture—or else. 

Trump is in charge at a critical moment for keeping climate change in check. We may never recover.

President Trump’s environmental onslaught will have immediate, dangerous effects. He has vowed to reopen coal mines and moved to keep the dirtiest power plants open for many years into the future. Dirty air, the kind you get around coal-fired power plants, kills people.

Saying the right things about climate change is meaningless if you keep digging up more carbon and selling it to people to burn.

Donald Trump is so spectacularly horrible that it's hard to look away (especially now that he's discovered bombs). But precisely because everyone's staring gape-mouthed in his direction, other world leaders are able to get away with almost anything. Don't believe me? Look one nation north, at Justin Trudeau.

Shelter Dynamics and Green Builder® Media demonstrate right-sized living with this net-zero energy modular demonstration home.

Last year, Green Builder Media and Shelter Dynamics introduced The Arc House, a small-footprint, resilient demonstration home that showcased the convergence of intelligent, connected and solar technologies. Jim Gregory, founder of Shelter Dynamics and creator of The Arc House, called his prototype “a demonstration of a direction” in sustainable housing. This year, the two partners are expanding on that direction with the debut of The Flex House.

Green Builder Media proudly introduces the next project in our esteemed and long-running VISION House demonstration project series: the Flex House. Manifesting the concept of “Right-Sized” living, the Flex House is designed to help homeowners use exactly the amount of resources they need—no more, no less.

Green Builder Media and specialty modular builder Shelter Dynamics have joined forces to create the Flex House, a model for “Right-Sized” living in a small-footprint, flexible space that is completely connected, intelligent, resilient, solar, and sustainable. 

Outside the D.C. bubble, politicians see green issues as common sense priorities.

I’m always excited to introduce you, our readers, to some of the best green projects of the year. And yes, once more you’re going see some real showstoppers in our annual awards lineup. But before you get there, I want to mention what happened in Orlando in January, when we held our first Sustainability Symposium.

Here's how we can get guys to buy into "green".

Going Green — Just for Girls?

Eco-friendly products have gained a reputation as being primarily feminine. A study completed in 2012 found women are more likely to take active steps toward creating a greener lifestyle. Overall, females are more environmentally conscious than their male counterparts, and that shows in the marketing techniques that have been used.

Paying up to 100 percent of the upfront cost of a product to dispose of it transfers the costs of bad product design from the maker to consumers.

I took a 5-gallon bucket full of spent electronic devices to my local waste management yard this morning.

Total cost to get rid of 20 CFL light bulbs, two smoke detectors and one cordless drill battery: $55.00. Are you kidding me? In case you're wondering, it's $1 per light bulb, $5 per battery, and $15 per smoke detector.

Transformative building design can bring climate hope.

Returning from Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training, it’s clear to me that if we hope to avert catastrophic climate change we need to start viewing our buildings as clean energy power plants. It might be easier than you think.

Make no mistake, the all-out assault on virtually every form of regulation and government oversight by the current Administration and its lackeys in recent weeks is part of a larger ideological war that is being waged—a war on being forced to take responsibility and be subjected to accountability.

Being held responsible and accountable for waste, pollution, environmental degradation, social exploitation, and unethical business practices gets in the way of generating maximum profits, but there is even more to it. For those whose mantra has become the endless condemnation of “onerous” regulations and the call for the demise of “government overreach,” the fundamental, gut-level resentment of “being told what to do” has been festering for a long, long time, just itching for a chance to boil to the surface and erupt.

Public reaction to "The New American Home," has ranged from snarky to mocking to straight up outraged—not just toward the home itself, but toward the designers and the “hapless” writer who gushed about it in The Washington Post.

The $5 million annual project promoted by the NAHB appears to have misfired badly with the general public. The latest iteration of what one of our staffers dubbed "The Next American Hoax" ignores virtually every housing trend currently in play: tiny homes, multifamily, net zero, smart plus solar, resiliency. You name it. They ignored it. The houses show just how far from the mainstream the good old boys at the shrinking national organization have strayed.