This report might be of interest to those of you dealing with commercial projects (as well as some of you that are not).

<http://www.greenbuildconsult.com/pdfs/mcerf.pdf>

I have been working in Europe for the past 12 years and have had the opportunity to see much of this firsthand.  The high rise building with the operable windows shown on page 41 was developed by my company.  We did our first underfloor (displacement) air conditioning system in the USA in the the early 90's, largely as a result of what we learned during our expansion into Europe. 

It is fair to say that some of statements in the report are perhaps based on opinion rather than fact and that some significant cultural changes on the part of office tenants, office developers and the brokerage community is necessary before many of these concepts can be put in practice in the USA.

It is also fair to say that not all of the projects using these concepts are successful, but the northern Europeans are further up the learning curve than we are.  Unfortunately, as the report correctly points out, the climatic conditions of northern Europe where these technologies are most widely used are not applicable to much of the USA, so adjustments must be made accordingly.

Bruce