The Scoundrel's Handbook

Rick Fedrizzi
President, CEO & Founding Chairman
U.S. Green Building Council

It was Samuel Johnson who said that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. He talked a lot about false patriots, those who "appeal to the rabble, circulate pointless petitions, and who allow their passions to confound the distinctions between right and wrong." He never said if he had anyone particular in mind, but I sure do. A lot of people in Washington, D.C. have become quite adept in using the Scoundrel's Handbook to advance their narrow view of the world.

The first chapter in this primer for the morally challenged, of course, is denial, and we've seen any number of people over the years willing to stand up and lie bold-faced to the American people simply because admitting to their actions would expose them for the scoundrels they are.

But it's the second chapter I'd like to talk about: the one in which the scoundrel goes on offense and attacks anyone and everyone willing to expose him for what he is.

Unfortunately these scoundrels come in a variety of shapes and stripes. The ones that concern me most are those who attempt to savage a mountain of scientific evidence in favor of obfuscation and innuendo. They cloud what's clear because the light of day would expose them for what they are -- scoundrels of the worst sort. In their effort to protect a status quo that is good for them but not so much for the rest of us, they wrap their world view in flag and country and patriotism, and loudly proclaim that to question their self-interest is somehow un-American.

Important News About LEED 2012: A Message from Rick Fedrizzi

Rick Fedrizzi
President, CEO & Founding Chairman
U.S. Green Building Council

To USGBC members and LEED users:

The amazing volunteers on all our LEED committees have been working extremely hard for the past 3+ years to get LEED 2012 ready for launch. The continuous evolution of LEED is made possible through hard work, and these committed technical experts undertake this work because they have a passion for USGBC’s commitment to market transformation and they see LEED as the best tool to help us get there. We are all deeply in their debt.

We always have to remind ourselves that LEED is only about 12 years old as a rating system. It was launched and grew during one of the greatest economic expansions in US history. Then 2008 saw some 60,000 architects lose their jobs, the new housing market shrink by 1/3, and commercial real estate new construction ratchet down. Though focus has shifted to improving our existing buildings, critically important work to be sure, financing remains difficult.

Despite this, LEED continues to thrive. More than 1.6 million square feet of space is certified every day.

LEED 2012 has always been envisioned as a significant step forward in the rating system, one that would raise the bar on performance, and push all the players in our industry – everyone from the architects to the product manufacturers to the financial community – to the next level. However, as we’ve gone through public comment on LEED 2012, and engaged in hundreds of discussions with our members, the LEED community and numerous other stakeholders, we have heard repeatedly that while our community continues to fully embrace our mission, they need more time to absorb the changes we’re proposing and to get their businesses ready to take the step with us. Most importantly, they want more visibility into the infrastructural improvements we’ve promised with the LEED 2012 program — forms, documentation, education and LEED Online – to inform their internal adoption strategies.

Therefore we’ve decided to delay ballot on LEED 2012 until June 1, 2013, (or potentially sooner in 2013 if our members and the market tell us they are ready). We will use this time to deliver on the infrastructural improvements to the LEED program already underway.

Our marketing team has been hard at work for the last 18 months on a comprehensive brand strategy taking into account LEED’s much stronger role in the global green marketplace. Our team believes that a simpler rating system nomenclature is more conducive to continuous improvement and maintaining clear communications throughout development. Therefore, we see this ballot date change as an opportunity to begin to refer to this next version of LEED as LEED v4.

Also, USGBC will ensure that LEED 2009 and LEED for Homes will remain available for registration for three years. This means that the rating system our stakeholders have begun to master is still there so they can make the switch when they are ready.

We will, as previously announced, continue to ask for the market’s assistance in "test driving" the fourth public comment draft. This test will give us important insight to make program improvements in advance of ballot and launch.

We’re also committing to a fifth public comment, and it will open on October 2, 2012, and run thru December 10, 2012. This has been done to take advantage of Greenbuild in November, where we will hold public forums and educational sessions on site in San Francisco to help stakeholders better understand the requirements as well as any final changes that may appear in the new draft. It will also allow us to debut some of the new forms, submittal documents, LEED Online enhancements and other infrastructural upgrades that will help improve and enhance the project teams' experience. We will solidify the infrastructure of the LEED v4 program in early 2013 in advance of ballot.

Speaking of ballot, I want to give a large thank you to the USGBC members who opted into the consensus body and to whom we commit to providing as much education and insight as possible over these next months so they can head to the ballot with full knowledge of all aspects of LEED v4.

To be clear… this change is 100% in response to helping our stakeholders fully understand and embrace this next big step. We intend to do everything we can to ensure that the market is ready for LEED v4 because it represents progress on both carbon reduction and human health improvements. Greenbuild will provide us the perfect venue to start to experience the look and feel of the new system as an integrated package, and ensure the information necessary for informed voting in ballot is available.

The passion for market transformation that resides in our membership and our LEED users is undeniable, but we also acknowledge the reality of the day-to-day assessment of market conditions that has informed this decision. Our commitment to you is that the balloting and launch of LEED v4 will be seamless for our users and successful in terms of advancing the market transformation we all seek.

Please let us know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

S. Richard Fedrizzi
President, CEO and Founding Chairman
U.S. Green Building Council

Cc: Elizabeth Heider
Chair, USGBC Board of Directors

A Toast to LEED: Volume Program Brings Industry Leaders Together

Emily Kirk Willson
LEED Volume Program Manager
U.S. Green Building Council

What happens when Kohl’s Department Stores, Wells Fargo, and Subway Restaurants walk in to a room?

At the USGBC offices, it means a great conversation on green building is about to ensue – among some of the foremost business leaders in sustainability.

USGBC's Rick Fedrizzi and Scot Horst raise a toast to LEED Volume participants

Last month, we were thrilled to welcome participants in our LEED Volume Program to USGBC’s Washington, DC headquarters for full-day orientation seminars to kick-off their journey in scaling up with LEED. The LEED Volume Program allows companies to certify vast numbers of projects by integrating LEED strategies into their standard practice and internalizing the LEED process - and all at a much lower certification cost. We are currently working with 33 participating organizations that have cumulatively certified over 800 projects through the LEED Volume Program.

Quick! Use Duke Energy, USGBC and Sustainability in a Sentence

Emily Scofield, LEED® AP ID+C
Executive Director
USGBC Charlotte Region Chapter

On Monday, April 23, 2012, the Carolina blue sky contained just a few pure white clouds and the sun was shining at the perfect angle through a slanted wall of glass to make the most picturesque back drop for an executive sustainability conversation between USGBC President, CEO and Founding Chair Rick Fedrizzi and Duke Energy Chairman, President and CEO Jim Rogers. Since the event was open to the general public but capped at 160 to maintain intimacy, the professionals in attendance on the 46th floor vista of the Duke Energy Center (DEC) felt like they were part of the sustainability conversation. Topics ranged from the power of public-private partnerships to new technology designed to engage consumers in conservation.

Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers with Rick Fedrizzi

 Learning from Mr. Rogers about how much energy will be needed in the future and how critical it is that we shave peak loads coupled nicely with Mr. Fedrizzi’s affirmation that LEED certification is on the rise both domestically and internationally, creating more energy efficient homes and buildings. When an audience member asked about government energy policies, Mr. Rogers demonstrated his unique leadership by encouraging industry to lead government instead of waiting on the government to set a minimum standard.

Fine Gardening Lessons for All of Us

Rick Fedrizzi
President, CEO & Founding Chairman
U.S. Green Building Council

One of the things that may surprise people about me is that the first place I head when I arrive home to upstate New York on the weekend is to my garden. After a long week in Washington, DC or the stress of long stretches of international travel, my garden is my place of quiet and reflection. It's my creation.

Recently I had the absolute joy of touring two of the UK's most extraordinary gardens-- each with its own twist on the important role gardens play on how we interact with our world.

This wasn’t some retirement practice event of clicking photos of roses and watching birds do their bird stuff -- (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Rather, it was a well-timed break in the action during an intense weekend of strategic planning with my World Green Building Council counterparts, Paul, Romilly, and Bruce...from the UK, Australia, and South Africa GBC’s respectively, and WGBC’s executive director, Jane Henley.

We Asked, You Answered: #LEED2012

Rick Fedrizzi
President, CEO & Founding Chairman
U.S. Green Building Council

Last Thursday, many of you – architects, writers, USGBC chapter members, activists, consultants – joined me on Twitter for a live tweet-up on LEED 2012. It was a doozy – and I mean that in the best way. Your questions were thought-provoking and interesting, spanning from building performance to market transformation to the cost of LEED. Thanks to your participation, we covered a lot of ground in one fast-paced hour. If you missed the chat, I’d encourage you to check out my Twitter feed for a recap.

Our Twitter conversation was a snapshot of the vital insight our community has in regards to LEED. I encourage all of you to participate in LEED 2012 public comment, open for just a week more!

I closed the Twitter chat with a question: Tell me about your favorite part of the changes proposed in LEED 2012.

Without further ado, here’s what you had to say:

On Leadership: An Ode to Maverick, Goose and You

Jason Hartke
Vice President, National Policy
U.S. Green Building Council

Even 25 years later, who can forget Maverick and Goose’s memorable exchange? “I feel the need…the need for speed.”

While the green building movement continues to move forward at an incredibly rapid pace, that’s not why I bring up this seemingly non-sequitur reference to Top Gun. The quote, oddly, reminds me of something deep and soulful to the green building movement – the need to lead.

Just think about our movement’s standard bearers – Rick Fedrizzi, David Gottfried, Gail Vittori, Rob Watson, Bill Browning, the late (and very missed) Ray Anderson, and the list goes on. This mantra – the need to lead – is clearly a core and universal driver that excites us, impels us, influences us, sustains us and inspires us.

Photo credit: NY Daily News/Everett

At any given moment, we could take a snapshot of any given layer of the movement and see how the need to lead is propelling us all forward. For example:

• I think of the $1.4 trillion net opportunity of green building, an economic driver that would drive enormous energy savings and job creation (See Mathias Bell’s recent blog).
• I think of Project Haiti, bringing green building to those who need it most (See Marisa Long’s recent blog on the inspirational project).
• I think of a university set to build 5 LEED Platinum buildings.
• I think of McGraw Hill’s forecast that green homes will increase five-fold from $17 billion in 2011 to between $87 and $114 billion by 2016.
• I think of the 1.5 million square feet of real estate that is certified to LEED each day, the equivalent of three Empire State Buildings a week.
• I think of the revival of the innovative financing vehicle of Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) Bonds, which could provide “unlimited funds for energy efficiency.” (See Green Technology’s interview with the head of Ygrene Energy Fund, which is advancing a $100 million investment in building retrofits).
• I think of the new Green Ribbon Schools Program, a program advanced by Secretary Arne Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education that will recognize schools that save energy, reduce costs, feature environmentally sustainable learning spaces, protect health, foster wellness, and offer environmental education.
• I think of all the opportunities the Obama Administration can take right now to advance Better Buildings through Executive Action.

The progress and the work that is happening each and every day (i.e., the leadership that you all are showing) makes me want to put on a pair of aviator sunglasses, do my best Tom Cruise imitation and say, “I feel the need…”

Well by now, like Goose, you know the rest of the bit. You live it. And you do it everyday.

Postscript: Yes, this entire blog also serves as a monitory note on the dangers of watching the Sunday Matinee with green building on the mind.

Self-Reliance Becomes a Movement

Rick Fedrizzi
President, CEO & Founding Chairman
U.S. Green Building Council

Read Rick's entry on Huff Post Green.

By now, most of you know the cautionary tale of the old railroad barons, those filthy rich guys who, nearly a century ago, made the tragic mistake of thinking they were in the business of trains. Can you imagine how things might have gone differently for those complacent and ridiculously misguided yahoos had they realized they were actually in the people-moving business?

That's why I continue to get frustrated when people try to put narrow, self-important labels on our green building movement. Unlike the train business of 100 years ago, our movement is not self-defining. It is not limited in scope. And it is not linear.

Happy Holidays from USGBC

Rick Fedrizzi
President, CEO & Founding Chairman
U.S. Green Building Council

Dear Friends of USGBC,

As the year winds to a close, I am honored to reflect on yet another historic year for the green building movement. Thanks to our faithful USGBC members, committed LEED Professionals and project teams, dedicated volunteers and advocates, and the myriad other invaluable contributors to USGBC, we took great strides toward our collective mission in 2011:

• 3,500 commercial and 5,400 residential projects were LEED certified this year, with cumulative totals exceeding 11,000 and 14,600, respectively. And another 31,800 commercial and 61,500 residential projects have been registered. More than 125,000 projects are part of LEED –– an extraordinary accomplishment. And now we look forward to the development of LEED 2012, focusing on the technical rigor of the rating system, expanding the market sectors able to use LEED and striving for simplicity in terms of usability.


• When enrollment closed in October, more than 61,000 LEED APs had opted into LEED AP with specialty credentials. Today, more than 175,000 professionals hold a LEED Professional credential and the industry is even more equipped to handle the different types of building and community projects coming through. In September, we announced the 34-member inaugural class of LEED Fellows, the most distinguished professionals in green building. These folks are inspirations to us all.


• This year our USGBC chapters played a critical role in influencing local and state government policy. The Charlotte Chapter worked closely with local officials to get Oct 24-28 declared Environmental Sustainability Week, coinciding with a series of sustainability programs hosted by the chapter. The Delaware Valley Green Building Council received a USGBC innovation grant that has enabled them to develop a green building legislation "action alert" online system. The California Advocacy Committee, representing all eight California chapters, kicked off its first year of statewide collaboration around green building policy and advocacy with a new, community-developed model for decision-making and engagement and already has a list of wins.


• Our national and chapter members are working hard to fulfill the Administration's Better Buildings Initiative, supporting the aim to make America's commercial buildings and plants more energy- and resource-efficient over the next decade by providing incentives for private-sector investment.


• The Center for Green Schools at USGBC placed the first Green Schools Fellows in Sacramento and Boston, and commissioned the first nationwide survey on green schools with founding sponsor United Technologies, hosted a Healthy Schools Summit and released its inaugural "Best of Green Schools" list.


• Despite the challenges of holding the first Greenbuild outside U.S. borders, Greenbuild secured a record number of partnerships, sold out our expo floor and welcomed 23,000 attendees to Toronto. With the help of our progressive host city and devoted volunteers, we achieved 95% waste diversion, setting a Greenbuild record.
  


• The USGBC App Lab launched in November as part of LEED Automation, which is transforming the way project teams interact with LEED data. Comprised of applications designed by LEED Automation Partners for Web browsers, tablets, smartphones and other devices, the App Lab simplifies the certification process and maximizes building performance.
  


• As of this month, cumulative square footage of LEED-certified existing buildings surpassed LEED-certified new construction for the first time. As the U.S. is home to more than 60 billion square feet of existing commercial buildings, most of which are energy guzzlers and water sieves, this trend serves as a promising indicator of our progress.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of the hundreds of accomplishments that we can celebrate this year, as we should. But we also have much to do.

As we enter this season of giving, the USGBC family has always been a generous one, especially as we've worked to bring the benefits of green building to those who need it most –– populations made vulnerable by age or poverty or natural disasters. And this year we continue our work on behalf of the impoverished victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.

Through the generous USGBC community, we have secured contributions and pledges totaling more than 50% of our fundraising goal for Project Haiti Orphanage and Children's Center, a zero-impact, LEED Platinum facility and Clinton Global Initiative Commitment of 2011 that will not only provide for the immediate health and emotional needs of orphaned children in ravaged Port-au-Prince, but will also serve as a model for sustainable rebuilding and a teaching tool for local architects, contractors and students. As you consider your year-end charitable contributions, we urge you to consider a contribution to Project Haiti at USGBC.org/Haiti so we can bring this important effort to fruition.

Celebrating our achievements of the past year, I gaze ahead with great optimism. The economic and political winds continue to shift, but in spite of that, green building continues to thrive, and the stage is set for a remarkable 2012. Thank you for your significant contributions to this transformational journey toward a more sustainable, healthy and prosperous built environment. From all of the staff at USGBC, we wish you a safe and joyful holiday.

Sincerely,

S. Richard Fedrizzi
CEO, President and Founding Chair
USGBC

Ray Anderson: Great leader of our time passes

Rick Fedrizzi
President, CEO & Founding Chairman
U.S. Green Building Council

If there was a Dictionary of Green Building, Ray Anderson is whose picture you’d probably see alongside the word “leader.” And I’m saddened to hear that he passed away yesterday, losing a heroic 20 month battle with cancer.

Ray was a legend of corporate sustainability, a man whose personal story – a story of an epiphany that changed a life and an entire industry – could be a metaphor for the entire green building movement. When he started Interface Inc. in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1973, his entrepreneurial genius was immediately clear. Before long, Interface was a billion-dollar-a-year business and one of the largest interior furnishings companies in the world.

But Interface is in the business of carpeting, and carpet traditionally uses a lot of petroleum, a lot of water, and creates a lot of waste.

Ray’s epiphany moment, the moment of truth that he has called a “spear to the chest,” was the same one that several of us experienced — reading Paul Hawken’s Ecology of Commerce and getting permission to be both a capitalist and an environmentalist. It launched the transformation of Interface, and of the entire carpet industry, and set the foundation for USGBC.

Under his leadership, Interface was set on a goal of zero environmental impact companywide, a target of eliminating petroleum entirely from its manufacturing process, and a commitment to sustainability as Ray defined it: taking nothing from the earth that is not naturally and rapidly renewable.

But perhaps what made Ray’s leadership so important and so effective was the way he has completely negated the argument that environmental sustainability can only be had at the expense of economic prosperity. Interface’s remarkable success – and the positive business impact that has come as a result of its reputation as a sustainability pioneer – stands as a strong example that without a strong triple bottom line, you’re never truly successful.

Ray was a personal hero of mine, a man who truly changed the world.

I’m grateful that last year, USGBC was able to present him with a USGBC leadership award at Greenbuild. It was a small tribute to a great man, but it meant more to me than anything I’ve done in a long time.

I invite you to share with us your personal and favorite Ray story. He touched us all in one way or another.

How President Clinton Lifted Green Building onto the National Agenda

Jason Hartke
Vice President, National Policy
U.S. Green Building Council

Forging green building market solutions and partnerships that save energy, save money and create jobs

The opportunity available in green building is like its own annual stimulus package. But instead of seizing the opportunity, we’re losing $130 billion a year from inefficient buildings, according to McKinsey & Co. The culprit, also according to McKinsey in their influential study, was sundry barriers – micro and macro and in broad categories like finance and behavior – that were often grimly described as intractable and pervasive.

But what a difference a president can make.

In 2007, President Clinton launched – what we can now say as we look back – one of the industry’s most prescient and effective programs: the Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program. The program, helped launched in partnership with USGBC and several other key stakeholders including cities, energy service companies and key players from the financial sector, took a creative and market-based approach designed to leverage collaboration (btw, does anyone do that better than President Clinton?) to tear down the stubborn barriers to retrofitting our existing building stock.

The program has spurred thousands of retrofit projects around the world and worked effectively to institutionalize and multiply its impact by creating the standardization models – for things like procurement, contracting and financing – that make the process easier for each subsequent retrofit project. Most importantly, President Clinton showed the power of leadership. He used his unparalleled post-presidency bully pulpit and his organizational capacity at the Clinton Foundation to shine a light on the tremendous opportunity in energy efficient buildings. (For example, in addition to the opportunity to save $130 billion a year, we could also create nearly a million jobs from a robust retrofit industry).

For us, it’s no coincidence that since President Clinton and our President and CEO and President Rick Fedrizzi began working together five years ago, USGBC is now certifying more LEED existing building space than new construction, and, more importantly, that the total square footage of LEED-certified existing buildings exceeds the total certified space of new construction projects. Their leadership significantly contributed to a more universal focus on unlocking the efficiency potential in our existing buildings. This heightened focus yielded the certification of more LEED for Existing Buildings projects in 2010 than in the six previous years combined. Even more convincingly, existing buildings now account for nearly half of the more than 1.5 million square feet of LEED projects that are certified every day.

To put a finer lens on the work the President is doing in this area, note his recent Time Magazine article where he summarizes 14 of his job creation ideas. Four of them are green building related. One is simply titled, “Copy the Empire State Building.” Not a bad example. The signature project, a partnership of the Clinton Climate Initiative, Jones Lang LaSalle, Johnson Controls, Rocky Mountain Institute and Nyserda, cost about $20 million, has a just a 3-year payback, reduces energy by 38 percent, saves $4.4 million annually, and created more than 250 jobs.

Further, President Clinton’s work and message have helped seed the substantive and significant policy and program ideas for President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative (BBI), which was launched this past February. In fact, President Clinton was asked by President Obama to lead the efforts on energy innovation in the important work the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness is doing to stimulate job creation.

And today during the Clinton Global Initiative America (CGIA) conference, President Clinton is doing it again. To spark jobs in the US, the President is convening leaders from across the country to explore solutions and make commitments that will create jobs and get America working again. Because the President sees such opportunity in green building, it will be one of ten major working areas. As a topic facilitator for the Green Building working group at CGIA, I’m helping organize the session and I’ll also be reporting on both the discussions and the exciting green building related commitments.

Again, at this next inflection moment for green building, President Clinton is showing the way and fostering the type of partnerships that will inspire new thinking and spur new investment, innovation and action - ultimately accelerating the movement and our transition to sustainable built environment.

USGBC and the Better Buildings Initiative: How Do We Get Started Sooner?

Lane Burt
Technical Policy Director
U.S. Green Building Council

Pretend you are the President of the United States for a minute. The economy has pulled out of the recession, but everyone is cautious about the fragility of the recovery. To get the energy we need, we’re razing mountains in Appalachia and sending billions for oil to undemocratic, unfriendly governments in the Middle East. And last summer oil drilling trashed the Gulf of Mexico and the state economies that depend on it.

So what do you do? Double down on the status quo and sacrifice more of your own country to mining and drilling? Or use less energy so you don’t have to? Seems like an easy choice, but you wouldn’t think so from listening to some members of Congress.

But where are the opportunities to use less energy? According to McKinsey and Company, most of the $1.2 Trillion (!!!) efficiency opportunity is in buildings. And where are the largest efficiency opportunities in the building sector? Well, the biggest buildings of course. Last month, President Obama announced an initiative designed to do just that.

The Better Buildings Initiative seeks to cut energy consumption in commercial buildings by 20 percent, while saving businesses $40 billion…per year! That’s money that will be spent on salaries and supplies rather than in just keeping the (inefficient) lights on. Click here for a section by section explanation of BBI.

Of course the USGBC community is thrilled to have the President add commercial buildings to his overall efficiency focus. Many of the elements of the Initiative are actions we have long championed (see our report of Executive Authorities available to encourage energy efficiency in commercial buildings, or our memo on our top 3 priorities sent in just a few days before the announcement, and we look forward to working with the White House and Congress to make them a reality. As our CEO, Rick Fedrizzi, said during the White House call that followed the announcement, the only question USGBC member companies and chapter members have, is “How can we get started sooner?”

Click here for the detailed breakdown of BBI.

Rick Fedrizzi on Winning the Future

Read USGBC Founding Chairman Rick Fedrizzi's piece on President Obama's Better Buildings Initiative in the The Huffington Post:

In his State of the Union address, President Obama boldly proclaimed that our nation has reached a "Sputnik moment" -- a point in time that will be characterized by our ability (or inability) to respond to an era as ripe for innovation as any that has presented itself in more than a generation. Seizing this moment, he said, is our opportunity to win the future.

Of course, a huge part of winning the future is to reduce our reliance on the fuels of the past. And last week, the president showed exactly the kind of leadership we will need to when he unveiled his Better Buildings Initiative.

Click here to read the rest of the Huffington Post article.