Green building is also sometimes known as "sustainable building" or "environmental building", although there are slight differences in the definitions. The practice of green building can lead to benefits including reduced operating costs by increasing productivity and using less energy and water, improved public and occupant health due to improved indoor air quality, and reduced environmental impacts by, for example, by lessening storm water runoff and the heat island effect.

Green building is an essential component of the related concepts of sustainable design, sustainable development and general sustainability.

Practitioners of green building often seek to achieve not only ecological but aesthetic harmony between a structure and its surrounding natural and built environment. The appearance and style of sustainable homes and buildings can be nearly indistinguishable from their less sustainable counter-parts.

Green design often emphasizes taking advantage of renewable resources, e.g., using sunlight through passive solar, active solar, and photovoltaic techniques and using plants and trees through green roofs, rain gardens, and for reduction of rainwater run-off. Many other techniques, such as using packed gravel for parking lots instead of concrete or asphalt to enhance replenishment of ground water, are used as well.

Standards and ratings
Many countries have developed their own standards of energy efficiency for buildings.

Green Star, Green Building Council of Australia
House Energy Rating, Australia
EnerGuide for Houses, Canada
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), USA and Canada
Haute Qualité Environnementale, France
Comprehensive Assessment System for Building Energy Efficiency (CASBEE), Japan, http://www.ibec.or.jp/CASBEE/english/index.htm
Green Globes - www.greenglobes.com, USA and Canada
[Cradle To Cradle http://mbdc.com]

Types of Green Buildings

Straw Bale Houses[1]
Straw bale is actually the dry leftover part of the plant after harvest. Wheat, oats, barley, rye, rice and others are mostly used in straw bale houses to construct walls which are then covered by stucco.

Any type of hay or straw can be used for this for construction, although the less roughage that's still on the straw stems, the better (because moisture in the roughage can cause mold, which can spontaneously combust). The preferred straw is actually clean, white straw, like oat straw, barley straw.

Three string bales are optimal to build with as they are more solid.[2]

Extruded Straw Panel Houses
Straw Panels are a commercial alternative to erecting labor-intensive Straw Bale Houses and require less deviation from the present home construction techniques that the existing workforce is comfortable with. Several workers can erect a single-family straw panel home in less than a day.

Built from straw that is milled and super-compressed in a fiber extrusion mill, straw panels have the durability of concrete, the finish surface of gypsum, the insulating value of conventional glass insulation product and the sound absorption characteristics of sound insulating panels.

As fiber extrusion takes advantage of the plant fiber's own cellulosic 'glue' no MDI or polymeric chemicals are used in the panel and therefore there is no chemical offgassing into the environment where the panel is deployed. Upwards of twenty different agricultural waste fibers can be extruded into straw building panels, including switchgrass, rice and wheat.

Because the fiber extrusion process makes high-quality building material so inexpensively it is being reviewed for large housing projects around the world. A photogallery of a fiber extrusion mill can viewed here.

Green buildings worldwide

Australia
The Green Building Council of Australia has its own green buildings standard known as Green Star [1]. In 2007, the GBCA will host an Australiasian green building conference and expo called “Green Cities - Where Our Future Lives”.

Canada
Canada has implemented "r2000" guidelines for new buildings built after the year 2000. Incentives are offered to builders to meet the r2000 standard in efforts to increase energy efficiency and promote sustainability. In December 2002, Canada formed the Canada Green Building Council and obtained an exclusive licence in July 2003 from the US Green Building Council to adapt the LEED rating system to Canadian circumstances.

Beamish-Munro Hall [2] at Queen's University, which features sustainable construction methods such as high fly-ash concrete, triple-glazed windows, dimmable fluorescent lights and a grid-tied photovoltaic array.

Germany
German developments that employ green building techniques include:

The Solarsiedlung [3] (Solar Village) in Freiburg, Germany, which features energy-plus houses.
The Vauban development, also in Freiburg.
Houses designed by Baufritz, incorporating passive solar design, heavily insulated walls, triple-glaze doors and windows, non-toxic paints and finishes, summer shading, heat recovery ventilation, and greywater treatment systems.[4]
The new Reichstag building in Berlin, which produces its own energy.

India
Main article: Energy efficient buildings in India
The Confederation of Indian Industry is playing an active role in promoting sustainability in the Indian construction sector [5]. There are many energy efficient buildings in India, situtated in all manner of climatic zones:

cold and cloudy
cold and sunny
composite
hot and dry
moderate
warm and humid

Malaysia
The Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM) promotes green building techniques. Malaysian architect Ken Yeang is a prominent voice in the area of ecological design.[citation needed]

United Kingdom
The Association for Environment Conscious Building has been promoting sustainable building in the UK since 1989 AECB.

The Green Building Press publishes daily green building news on its central website.

The UK Building Regulations set requirements for insulation levels and other aspects of sustainability in building construction (see Energy efficiency in British housing).

[edit] United States
The U.S. Green Building Council has developed influential definitions of what constitutes sustainable design of green buildings through its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED ((R) USGBC) green building rating system. USGBC has attracted over 7000 organizations as members to date. The U.S. Green Building Council maintains a list of state and local green building programs and initiatives in the U.S.

The Green Building Initiative™ is a non-profit network of building industry leaders committed to bringing green to mainstream residential and commercial construction. The GBI believes in building approaches that are environmentally progressive, but also practical and affordable for builders to implement.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency's EnergyStar program rates commercial buildings for energy efficiency [6] and provides EnergyStar qualifications for new homes that meet their standards for energy efficient building design. [7]

In 2005, Washington became the first state in the U.S. to enact green building legislation. According to the law, all major public agency facilities exceeding 5,000 square feet (465 m²) in floor area, including state funded school buildings, are required to meet or exceed LEED standards in construction or renovation. The projected benefits from such a law are

20% annual savings in energy costs
20% reduction in water costs
38% in waste water production
22% reduction in construction waste

[edit] Noted Green Designers & Builders
Advanced Environmental, Australia
Rocky Mountain Institute
J. Baldwin
Tom Bender
Peter Calthorpe
Buckminster Fuller
William McDonough
Sim Van der Ryn
James Wines
Ken Yeang
Eric Corey Freed
Steve Baer
Glenn Murcutt
John Boecker
Thompson, Ventulett, Stainback & Associates
Brenda and Robert Vale

References
^ Expert Village: Environmental Building Video Series Teaches how to make your own green building in the form of a straw bale house in a free video series.
^ Video on Preparing to Build a Straw Bale Home
Article on green building law and benefits
Ji Yan and Plainiotis Stellios (2006): Design for sustainability. Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press. ISBN 7-112-08390-7