Green Building Council Announces Green Product Innovation Grant Awards

The Green Building Alliance in Pittsburgh this week announced a total of $240,000 in Product Innovation Grants for five Pennsylvania projects that seek to develop and introduce new and enhanced green building products.

 

This is the third round of Product Innovation Grants awarded since GBA initiated its Green Building Products Initiative in 2006; in total, fifteen Pennsylvania recipients have received over $800,000. Previous grants were awarded in December 2007 and June 2008.

 

GBA’s fourth and final round of Product Innovation Grants will be disbursed in June 2009. (See separate article for details.)

 

In the third round of GBA Product Innovation Grants, the five recipients include:

-- $100,000 for commercialization of plastic composites that use renewable and recycled raw materials and achieve greater thermal insulation and lower embodied energy – a project of Bedford Reinforced Plastics, Inc. and the University of Pittsburgh.

 

-- $80,000 to develop an energy-efficient air conditioning system that will employ a natural refrigerant with no global warming or ozone depletion impacts, thus consuming substantially less electricity than conventional systems – a project of TharProcess, Inc. and Carnegie Mellon University.

-- $20,00 for development of a web portal resource for architects and engineers that will feature sustainability and performance measures for building façade materials and assemblies that optimize natural resource flows – a project of Carnegie Mellon University.

 

-- $20,000 for use of residual silt from water treatment as a growing medium for landscapes and green roofs – a project of GTECH Strategies.

-- $20,000 for development of a wearable bio-sensing comfort controller that will measure a person’s comfort level and then maximize it by adjusting their immediate thermal environment – a project of Carnegie Mellon University.

 

For more information, visit the Product Innovation Grants webpage.