The process to adopt the next version of LEED has been pushed back according to an announcement by USGBC President and CEO S. Richard Fedrizzi earlier this week. The change means LEED 2012 (now being called LEED v4) will likely not be brought up for a vote on adoption until the middle of next year.

The new standard has already been through four comment periods, with the credit language and the manner in which credits would be evaluated under discussion. There have been revisions in each of these comment periods. A fifth comment period is now scheduled for this fall (October 2 – December 10) and the actual balloting on adoption of LEED v4 is expected to begin June 1, 2013.

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Wood, metals, and plastic are all beginning to give way to a new category of materials that combine the best properties of each along with advanced properties. Many of them come from renewable stock utilizing biomaterials as the raw ingredients. One manufacturer of such biocomposites is e2e Materials, which is producing a range of plant-based products which the company describes as “like a form molded plastic – but stronger, fire resistant, biodegradable and looks like wood.”

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Wood is a desirable construction material for many reasons including its low embodied energy. But, until recently, it has not been possible to build tall wooden structures because of the relative weakness of conventional wood stud construction methods. This is starting to change as a new method of fabricating wood panels, called cross-laminated timber, or CLT, is making “massive wood” construction a possibility for mid-rise construction, as well as for other construction uses.

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This seems to be a busy week for LED bulb announcements. We’ve already seen a 20-watt, clear globe, filament-style bulb and a 40-watt A19 bulb that takes the shape of a standard frosted incandescent.  And now, LEDO has a series of three LED bulbs — Bulled Classic, Bulled Modular, Bulled Star — that provide the 60-watt equivalent, which is on par with the typical incandescent, but these bulbs use only 11 watts.

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What can you do if you’d like to use an energy efficient light bulb, but you think that they look funky? How about a LED bulb that looks and functions almost exactly like an incandescent filament bulb?

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