A ‘living roof’ is planned for Biosite’s second phase expansion.

Biosite, which is being bought by Fullerton-based Beckman Coulter in a $1.55 billion merger this quarter but expects to remain in San Diego, has long had a green approach to growth as one of San Diego’s most successful biotechs.

When Biosite executives decided they needed a new headquarters, research labs and manufacturing plant, they didn’t want just any industrial building. They wanted a special place — innovative, with an open feel. A campus setting that would remind employees that there’s an outside, and allow sunshine inside as much as possible. More than that, they wanted quirky and fun. Not to mention as green as possible.

To accomplish this, Biosite turned to Frank Ternasky, a principal at Architects Delawie Wilkes Rodrigues Barker. The $300 million campus they’re creating together is set to move this year into its second phase of construction. The design includes expansive glass areas throughout and a “living roof” planned for a Phase II building. When complete, the five buildings will total 335,000 square feet.

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Hunter Industries in San Marcos expects that its 80-kilowatt solar system will provide 100 percent of the company’s daytime lighting needs and will pay for itself in less than five years. Designed by Smith Consulting Architects, the building is LEED-registered. The 100,000-square-foot warehouse portion will have its daylight lighting needs met with 162 daylight harvesting units provided by Daylight Technologies and cooled by a wall of vines supported on a metal grid. The vines are placed to block the sun’s heat from much of the exterior walls while reducing the perceived scale of the 45-foot high walls. Additional green measures include an Energy Star “cool roof” manufactured by Johns Mansville, high efficiency mechanical equipment and user friendly interior finish materials that have low or no off-gassing normally present in paint, carpet, wallpaper, insulation and glue.

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Four new members have been elected to the board of the San Diego Regional Energy Office. Richard Hertzberg is CEO of Enpex Corp., a privately held energy company; Mark Loukides is head of operations for Johnson & Johnson Product Research and Development; Louis Smith is v.p. of facilities for Sharp HealthCare; and Karen Van Winkle is senior architectural manager at Pardee Homes.

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Stone Brewing Co. is fueling its trucks with something that smells good and tastes good: Arrogant Bastard Ale Onion Rings. Sort of. The decade-old brewery in Escondido has begun using a biodiesel blend in its delivery trucks. Co-founders Steve Wagner and Greg Koch say switching to biodiesel came naturally. “One of our brewers has been making biodiesel for his personal truck for some time and it only made sense that if he could do it on his own, we owed it to the environment to do the same,” says Wagner, president and brewmaster. For its delivery trucks, Stone Brewing uses a blend with 20 percent biodiesel that equates to about 2,000 gallons per month of pure biofuel being used (Stone uses about 10,000 gallons of fuel monthly). The company is working to switch to pure biodiesel later this year.

John Egan, lead brewer, began converting waste vegetable oil into biodiesel two years ago. “It’s renewable, it’s good for the environment, it’s good for American farmers and it eliminates my contribution to foreign oil,” says Egan, who runs a 1980 Mercedes and a 1999 Dodge-Cummins Turbo Diesel on fuel he converts himself. His source is Stone’s Arrogant Bastard Ale Onion Rings, or more precisely the waste oil from cooking the appetizers.