Fin MacDonald

Part of my new job over the next two months will be to maintain and improve the website www.atlanticgreenbuilding.ca . I will be working as part of a three person team with another student in Halifax and one in Newfoundland.

Atlanticgreenbuilding.ca provides information on green building products and services available in Atlantic Canada. This can be very useful to building owners and builders who are working to obtain LEED certification. Having all the information together for them in one place and verified by a third party makes planning easier. It also helps eliminate green washing, which is when a company pretends to be environmentally conscious but really isn’t.

The website features a virtual tour of green buildings in the area, as well as project profiles on them. The list is short at the moment but we will soon be adding case studies on some of the new and amazing green buildings that have been opened in the past year. This year we will have lots to choose from and that is evidence that green buildings are becoming the standard way of building. There have been several LEED for homes projects in the area over the past year.

Information on rebates is available to consumers on the website for Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, PEI, and Newfoundland. This section will be changing quite a bit for Nova Scotia because of the recent launch of programs by Efficiency Nova Scotia.

I know this project will be a learning experience for me and I am excited to begin. Researching the different products and services on the market will make me more aware of what options there are out there. By doing case studies of existing LEED buildings I will witness the different approaches that can be taken to achieve the different levels of LEED certification. I am planning to someday write my LEED AP exam and I think that this work will contribute to my studying for that as well.