Senate Hearing Highlights Sustainable Success by the Navy and Marine Corps

Bryan Howard
Legislative Director
U.S. Green Building Council

Senator Jeanne Shaheen (NH) and Senator Mark Warner (VA) convened a field hearing on the USS Kearsarge on the role of the Navy and Marine Corps in reducing energy consumption, minimizing water use and expanding renewable energy generation. As a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator Shaheen has been heavily involved in advancing energy efficiency efforts including her work with Senator Rob Portman (OH) on S. 1000, the “Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act.”

The hearing featured testimony from Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, former Senator John Warner of Virginia and other leaders from the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. While the hearing varied in topics from weapons systems to alternative fuels it did have a fair share of discussion about the role of buildings in driving down energy costs Navy wide.

Army to Congress: LEED Doesn’t Cost More

Note: This blog was cross-posted from BuildingGreen.com
 
The Army is still going for Gold and Platinum despite recent legislation calling a halt to LEED spending.

The federal government has been one of the biggest supporters of LEED certification in the last few years, with the General Services Administration (GSA) requiring basic LEED certification for all federal buildings starting in 2003 and then upping that requirement to LEED Gold in 2010.

The military has been on the cutting edge of green building from the beginning. The Navy adopted sustainable design principles before LEED even existed, as we reported way back in 1998. The Army embraced LEED in 2006 and recently began the much more radical work of moving all its installations to net-zero energy, water, and waste. As Katherine Hammack, assistant secretary of the Army for installations, energy, and the environment, put it to EBN earlier this year, "Energy security is mission critical."

Fort Carson is piloting net-zero energy, water,
and waste--and expects to meet that target by 2020.

It doesn't cost more

We feared that might all change when we saw that the most recent military appropriations legislation requires explicit justification for any spending on LEED above the Silver level. What's worse, this decision pretends to be about money but appears to have been made over certified wood credits. (Watch this space for in-depth coverage of the "wood wars" in coming weeks.)

Hammack is having none of it. In a call with reporters yesterday, she reiterated the Army's commitment to net-zero and LEED and gave an update about some of the progress that's already been made. "We're finding it does not cost more to design and construct to LEED" standards, Hammack said.

Read the full article on BuildingGreen.com »

National Defense Authorization Act Makes the Mission Harder For Military But Not Impossible

Bryan Howard
Legislative Director
U.S. Green Building Council

Congress recently passed the 2012 authorization bill for the Department of Defense (DoD) and included a provision that bans LEED certification at the Platinum and Gold level for DoD buildings. To be clear, this provision is irrational and misguided at best, and deliberately problematic for the leaders in the defense agencies at worst. But before reacting as if the sky is falling, it’s worth taking a deeper look at the “provision” and noticing that it isn’t really all that iron clad.

Nothing in the bill indicates that the Department can’t keep certifying buildings, since the provision only forbids certifying to the highest levels of LEED. Why certain members of Congress think that our military service men and women do not deserve the best buildings possible is unanswerable.

As background, DoD was one of the earliest users of LEED and has the largest number of LEED-registered and certified buildings owned or occupied by any federal agency. We doubt that the Department would walk away from a more-than-decade-long commitment to sustainability. DoD knows that LEED and building efficiency is delivering real savings to the department. In 2009, in its own Department of Defense Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan, DoD noted that energy use per square foot declined by 10 percent and total water consumption decreased by 4.6 percent, in spite of increased military operations.

DoD can still LEED certify to Gold and Platinum levels if there is no additional cost or they document a positive return on investment, which they have done and will continue to do. For example, earlier this year, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced that new Navy and Marine Corps buildings would attain a LEED Gold certification level beginning FY 2013 and would do so at no additional cost.

“It shouldn’t cost anymore, particularly in this economic environment, to build buildings that are sustainable than it is to build building that are not. It’s going to require some creative contracting and some creative building and construction practices, but I am absolutely confident that we will be able to do it,” Sec. Mabus said on Tuesday, May, 10, 2011.

We think the Navy and Marine Corps will be able to keep their commitments despite obstructionists in Congress. Hopefully, this will be a learning moment for some of our elected officials on how build sustainably and how to reach these higher levels of performance.

The one somewhat good thing in the bill is the request of a cost effectiveness study on LEED certification and other building efficiency tools, although it has been done before. A study released just this August by the General Services Administration (GSA) found their green buildings have 27 percent lower energy use compared to the national average, while reducing operational costs by 19 percent compared to the national average. LEED Gold buildings were singled out as being particularly high performers. We have no doubt that this new study will come to the same conclusion, and we are happy that this time the LEED Volume program can be specifically explored for DoD. We’d love to work even more closely with leadership agencies to certify more buildings and drive down costs.

Bottom line – our military will be able to continue its leadership on sustainable building and energy security, despite the indefensible actions of some of our elected “leaders.” Something tells me that they’ll be able to rise to the occasion.

Government Summit Highlights Accountable, Results-Based Government

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

At USGBC’s 9th annual Government Summit last week it was as clear to all in attendance that governments at every level are leading by example in building sustainability. Among the signs of progress was Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announcing an increased commitment by the U.S. Navy and Marines to build to LEED Gold, up from their previous LEED Silver commitment. We also saw USGBC award the 2011 Federal Green Building Leadership Awards to both Kathleen Hogan and the ENERGY STAR program for their foundational work. Attendees received an update from the White House Council on Environmental Quality Chair Nancy Sutley on the President’s Better Buildings Initiative. The fighting spirit of our government employees as they look to meet the challenge of building energy efficiency and sustainability was plain to see, in sharp contrast to the attitude displayed a mile away at the Capitol.

Perhaps most uplifting was the closing plenary, which featured world-changing energy efficiency scientist, advocate, and former California Energy Commissioner, Dr. Art Rosenfeld and the Governor of Maryland and former Mayor of Baltimore, Martin O’Malley. The timing and content of their presentations drove home a point that often gets lost in the everyday noise of politics – that government, when advised by science, can be effective in everything from reducing energy consumption to fighting violent crime, and can be open and accountable to the people they govern.

Dr. Rosenfeld told the story of testifying in California in the late 70’s, where he made the then-revolutionary claim that energy efficiency could stop the ever growing need for more power plants and more fossil fuels. The truth of this claim is plainly evident today, as California’s per capita energy consumption has been maintained from that point forward, while doubling in the rest of the country. This is a clear example of a state government honestly assessing the direction in which they were headed and acting on the science clearly presented to them to change course.



Dr. Rosenfeld then explained a new opportunity to change course at the global level by presenting his most recent research on the "global cooling capacity" of white roofs that, by reflecting light (and thus, energy or potential heat) back out of the atmosphere, are offsetting greenhouse gas emissions to the tune of 10 tons of CO2 for every thousand square feet of white roof. Dr. Rosenfeld added that the CO2 emissions from half the cars in the world could be offset for 20 years if all urban flat roofs worldwide were white.

Governor O’Malley followed Dr. Rosenfeld with present day examples of how Maryland is reacting to the reality his state’s needs and using GIS technology to deploy resources to where they are most needed. The Governor showed the evolution of a map of locations of violent crimes in Baltimore and you could see how the city became safer every year. Maryland is now applying this approach across the state, from the cleaning the Chesapeake to encouraging green buildings. Real results will trump partisan bickering every time, and in the case of Maryland we can see these results in the green building world, as the state has more than 28 million square feet of certified commercial space. We expect this success to continue, as the day before the summit, the Governor signed a bill that made Maryland the first state to enable the adoption of the International Green Construction Code as a minimum building code.


The idea of accountable, results-based government is certainly a breath of fresh air in today’s political climate. I’d venture to guess that the standing ovation that followed these presentations demonstrates that the Government Summit attendees felt the same way. Next year, when many of these same folks gather together at the 2012 Government Summit, there certainly will be more green building dots on the map and many more positive results to celebrate.