Dan Geiger Recommends: USGBC’s Green Building Policy Database
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Ah, the wisdom of crowds!
If you follow the author who made this phrase famous, then you know that having a large group of people solving a problem is better than an elite few (his words).
And that thinking has definitely propelled lots of solutions in the green building sector.
So, with that, let me thank Green Journey reader Dan Geiger, Executive Director of the USGBC Chapter here in Northern California for contributing a helpful reminder for all those who, like my friend in the previous post are in the process of drafting green building policies.
Dan reminded me that the USGBC maintains a searchable database of public policies — including green building ordinances. Check it out. It’s awsome.
Not quite the download template, copy, paste action that my friend was hoping for, but it would definitely advance your municipality’s climate change mission way beyond what you could accomplish just doing it yourself from scratch.
The Rapid Growth of Green Building Ordinances
I was teaching a workshop a couple of weeks ago, and a participant who was also a municipal employee raised his hand and asked if anybody knew of a website where he could download green building ordinances. He wasn’t kidding.
We gave him a long-winded answer about why he wouldn’t want to skip too many steps when enacting new green building ordinances (community input, developer input, that sort of thing…). His reasoning was pretty clear: “Heck, everybody’s doin’ it, so we thought there oughta be some place on the web where you can just download a template”.
Yes, times have changed.
At the beginning of this year, I posted about how municipalities are becoming sustainability’s cowboy’s in 2008. And we’ve arrived at a great point in the year for an update that underscores the assertion.
Over the past few days, the AIA’s put out a a new report detailing the state of green building ordinances in the US, called “Local Leaders in Sustainability”. You can download the study findings here.
While many of us active in sustainability warmly welcome the increased acceptance of green building by private investors, not many people up to now have a clear sense of the velocity happening at the “structural” level — via codes, regulations, etc. Here are three factoids showing warp speed adoption of green building ordinances:
- In 1997, study statistics show that barely one million US residents lived in green cities. Ten years later, in 2007, that number has increased to nearly 45 million.
- The majority of green building ordinances have been passed after 2003. Wow!
- At the time of sampling, the study identified 96 cities across the US, which had enacted some form of green building ordinance. At the same time, researchers had identified an additional 36 cities which were on the way to passing green building ordinances. So you have a potential 37% increase in the number of green cities was in th pipeline even as the study was being conducted.
Green Building Incentives
With all that growth, how are cities getting developer buy-in? I’ve posted before about trade associations making continuing efforts to lobby governments about keeping and/or increasing monetary incentives for developers to further promote green building. Here’s the study’s list of municipalities all-time favorites for promoting private green building development (the study does not supply any ranking):
- Expedited Permitting
- Green Loan Fund
- Density Bonuses
- Permit Fee Waivers
- Subsidized LEED Fees
- Property Tax Abatement
- Discounted Energy Star Appliances
- Subsidized Green Premium
I left out two items - “green building awards” and “training of public officials” because many people would not put these types of incentives in the same category as the above list. They do not put cash in developers pockets.
We would have liked to see the study comment on any specific trends related to how the incentives were being utilized — some measurement of the efficacy of any particular incentive listed beyond the others presented. However, I think we’ll all have to glean that understanding from other work being done.
In the meantime, there is still enough trend evidence on green building ordinances within the study to make it a worthwhile read.
Enjoy!
California’s Green Building Codes: Tahoe or Prius?
Photocredit: labadieautoGood news!
As of Thursday, we have Green Building Codes in California — on a voluntary basis till 2010, when they become mandatory.
The two step-process to mandatory green building codes probably looks like a politically necessity today. Many would say that we should be happy to have any green building codes at all. Plus California still maintains its image as a leader in sustainability.
But could the attachment to our shiny green image cause us to shy away from policy that addresses the public’s best interest in energy security and climate change?
Too much more brinksmanship and California’s green building codes risk being called a Chevy Tahoe Hybrid, voted “the green car of the year” and “the most fuel efficient car in its class”**. The codes might look good when compared to other “SUV”-codes around the US, as long as you accept SUV’s as a benchmark. But we fool ourselves if we keep quietly ignoring the Prius’s out there: Germany and Japan have been proving for years that construction of buildings with much lower energy usage is a feasible, achievable goal. And they’ve got the numbers to prove it.
Of course, I could be wrong. By 2010, we could be so far down the road to better resource use and energy independence that we will look upon the passage of these voluntary codes as being a milestone moment of courage.
And if that’s how things shape up, then I don’t mind being wrong at all.
Banks, Climate Change & Green Real Estate: Money Talks
Mindy Lubber, head of Ceres, talks about how the big US banks are taking responsibility to reduce the negative effects of climate change. You’ll notice that she mentions the banks being signatories to the Carbon Principles and changing the way they go about financing coal-fired power plants.
This is good to keep in mind because people often get confused about why some of the big banks advertise their corporate social responsibility, as if its a global policy applicable to all lines of business, but still have no committed capital, specific products or policies earmarked for green commercial real estate.
No, I’m not saying that they are greenwashing. Certainly tightening due diligence and financing guidelines for coal-fired power plants is a good thing.
The Green Journey take on it is caveat emptor**, but in a proactive, not a lazy or disaffected, sense.
Keep in mind that any company — not just banks — advertising their social responsibility can (and often do) “choose locally” and “talk about it globally”. Yes, they can pick out a few business areas to be more green, ignore the others, claim to be totally socially responsible, and then use that to enlarge their corporate reputations, win awards, and make more money. All of which keeps watchdogs like Ceres in business in the first place.
How to navigate this space? Its up to all of us to give credit where credit is due, and at the same time ask more pointed questions about their business policies regarding sustainable real estate and then vote with our wallets.
Notes:
** Means ‘you’re on your own, dog’. Thousands of years ago in Latin, it meant ‘let the buyer beware’.
Al Gore: Big Vision or Unrealistic?
Photo credit: World Resources Institute, on Flickr
Re: Al Gore’s 17 July speech:
1) Lead Article title by Environmental Leader, emailed around earlier today:
“Gore Calls For 100% Clean Energy by 2018, Keeps Straight Face”
2) Quote from Time Magazine article on the same speech, published today:
“Night terrors aside, the 10-year target is a mistake for strategic
reasons. It feeds into the perception still held by a large number of
Americans that Gore is an alarmist, and alarmists can be ignored. Such
a wildly ambitious goal sets us up for failure, and obscures the fact
that the battle against climate change won’t be won in a decade, or
even two — it will last for the foreseeable future and beyond. (And if
you think Gore has thoughts about returning to the political arena,
forget it. His speech couldn’t have come at a worse time for Democrats,
who are already fighting off accusations that they’re insensitive to
rising gas prices.”
3) Here’s Al’s YouTube explanation to the AP yesterday of why he made such a far-reaching proposal.
One coincidental, parallel happening: today (18 July) was also Nelson Mandela’s 90th Birthday. I happened to catch a radio show that played back segments of his four hour speech to the court, just before he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964.
At the time, his ideas were deemed to be too radical for lots of people. Today, some years later, it all sounds completely different.
Clearly Gore is not facing the same personal circumstances as Mandela in 1964. But he’s making bold claims about a very sensitive topic for the entire country. His proposals call for us to literally change our view of ourselves, how we live and do business - very radical and very difficult to accept for lots of people, I’m sure.
And look at the immediate reaction he’s getting. Even from the environmental media.
So who’s unrealistic? Al Gore, the media, or perhaps the rest of us?
