President Obama Underscores Building Efficiency as Part of the Energy Solution

Nathan Robb
Chairman
USGBC Maryland

“If we don’t develop other sources of energy, if we don’t develop the technology to use less energy to make our economy more energy-efficient, then we will always be dependent on foreign countries for our energy needs.”

President Obama made this statement last week before a packed auditorium (a crowd I was fortunate enough to be a part of) at Prince George’s Community College in Maryland. The President laid out his vision of America’s energy future, a vision where true energy independence doesn’t only come from energy development, but through energy efficiency.



This is something all of us in the green community understand. While developing new sources of energy is important - especially for an “all-of-the-above strategy” that harnesses renewable energy forms like wind, solar, and bio fuels - our country will never be truly energy independent unless we are smarter and more efficient in using energy. This means we need to reduce our energy consumption through the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency, which starts with better buildings.

Report: Build Green to Build a Better America

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

Here at USGBC we often say that green building sits at the nexus of saving energy, saving people and businesses money, and creating jobs.

Yesterday our friends at Environment America put that powerful combination of green building benefits into their own words. The organization, made up of a vast federation of state-based, citizen-funded environmental advocacy groups, released a new study showing how green building is all about…well, the title of the report: Building a Better America: Saving Energy and Money with Efficiency.

Access the report. 

The report details a set of policy opportunities that could help accelerate green building - so much so it could save American families $450 every year in energy and reduce greenhouse gases by 30% from buildings.

What does that mean, though? As the report points out, that’s the equivalent of taking 320 million cars off the road.

“It’s time to build a better America by investing in efficiency,” said Courtney Abrams of Environment America during the launch of the report.

“Bold efficiency measures that slash energy use in our homes and businesses can reduce pollution and save consumers money. The best part about making energy efficiency improvements is that they pay for themselves as consumers enjoy lower energy bills and a cleaner environment year after year,” said Abrams.

Obama Budget Charts Bold Course for Green Building Priorities

Bryan Howard
Legislative Director
U.S. Green Building Council

On Monday, President Obama released an ambitious $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal year 2013 that seeks to pump billions of dollars into the economy through clean energy and infrastructure improvements, while seeking to eliminate existing incentives for oil and gas and ending tax cuts for those making more than $250,000.

As part of the Better Buildings Initiative, a 10-year initiative to make non-residential build¬ings 20 percent more energy efficient, the budget aims to re-design the cur¬rent tax deduction for commercial buildings 179D to a credit, and change the eligibility program to cover other taxable entities such as real estate investment trusts (REITS). This budget proposal mirrors a 2012 request made by the Obama Administration, which has yet to get traction on the hill. USGBC has been working with others in the real estate and environmental community to advance solutions to improve the existing 179D so it is encouraging that the Administration continues to show support for improving the deduction.

The budget also includes billions of dollars to modernize at least 35,000 schools across the country, including energy-efficiency upgrades and comprehensive, green retrofits. This proposal was included in the President’s American Jobs Act last year but has yet to be considered by Congress.

An America Built to Last: The Five Wins for Green Buildings in the SOTU

Maggie Comstock
Associate, Policy
U.S. Green Building Council

This week I watched the President’s State of the Union address with a notepad of buzzwords ready to take down some tallies. I’m certainly not the only person who keeps track keywords mentioned by the President in his annual speech. Not surprisingly, the President mentioned “jobs” more than 40 times in the 90 minute speech. I was also pleased that he referenced “energy” 20 times. Keeping track of my favorite hot topics became overwhelming only 30 minutes in, but in this case, too much of a good thing is a good thing.

I’m going to take some artistic license with the President’s SOTU title and emphasize the word “built.” Everything that we do to promote a sustainable built environment supports the long-term economic and environmental health of the nation. We cannot support our society if we deplete our natural resources at an unsustainable rate. We cannot maintain economic prosperity and resiliency without long-term, high quality jobs.

New USGBC Report: Better Buildings through Executive Action

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

President Obama’s We Can’t Wait strategy is all about leveraging Executive Branch opportunities the Administration can take - without Congressional approval - to boost the economy, spur job creation and make America more competitive.

For the sake of all Americans, this We Can’t Wait ethos is something we share and strongly support, especially since green building sits at the nexus of saving people money, saving energy and creating jobs.

For the second time in two years, the U.S. Green Building Council has convened a diverse group of 15 businesses and organizations to help develop a series of green building policy recommendations that could be achieved via executive action.

Today, we are releasing that report, Better Buildings through Executive Action, and we hope the Obama Administration will take note and seriously consider advancing these new recommendations.

The Promise of the Green Economy: Strengthening the Economy While Protecting the Environment

Maggie Comstock
Associate, Policy
U.S. Green Building Council

The author of an article posted yesterday on CNN couldn’t be further embedded in the spin zone he arguably says he’s trying to debunk. In his opening line, the author, Steve Hargreaves, wrote, “The tactic du jour for environmentalists trying to sell a skeptical public on tighter regulations is this: spin the thing as a job creator.”

If you want to substantively get into a discussion on driving job creation, it won’t be long before you’re talking about green jobs. Green building is Exhibit A. In hundreds of communities across the country, green building is strengthening the local economy and creating jobs. Unfortunately, Hargreaves, with his clear predisposition, and others, work tireless to further politicize the established economic benefit of clean energy solutions. Interestingly, these economic opportunities, and green building in particular, are rooted in energy conservation and fiscal responsibility —basically prudent spending of taxpayer dollars to build healthy schools for our children or energy-conserving hospitals that provide a significant return on investment through significant energy and water savings. And from Kentucky to Ohio, Florida to California, we are seeing very diverse political stakeholders advance these opportunities simply because they are smart financial decisions (and wholly apolitical).

For starters, let’s look at a study by the Pew Charitable Trust which reports that the clean energy and green economy sector is the fastest growing job sector, producing twice as many jobs as the sectoral average between 1998 and 2007. A 2009 Booz Allen Hamilton study estimates that by 2013, the green building industry will create 8 million jobs in a range of occupations including construction managers, carpenters, electricians, architects, truck drivers and cost estimators, among many others. Today, McGraw Hill Construction estimates that green construction supports 660,000 jobs, which represents a third of the green design and construction industry. The McGraw Hill Construction study uses a very narrow definition of green jobs which is limited to workers who spend more than 50 percent of their time on green projects or designing and installing green systems, this excludes administrative professionals and manufacturing, production or transportation-related services. This sector only has potential to grow. And this number is only likely to grow with support and investment from both the public and private sectors. A prominent report from McKinsey & Company reveals that energy efficiency improvements in the residential and commercial sectors could create 600,000 to 900,000 stable and on-going jobs. The job creation potential of building energy efficiency could be increased by 114,000 jobs through the President’s Better Buildings Initiative, with the greatest proportion of jobs (over 77,0000) coming from a revised tax incentive for commercial retrofits, also known as 179D (see joint report "A New Retrofit Industry").

Simply, green jobs are win-win. The green building retrofit jobs that President Obama and President Clinton have worked to encourage are new jobs that can’t be outsourced. And in addition, green jobs have the added benefit of creating healthier communities, protecting the planet, and fostering a globally competitive workforce. Thus, the CNN article, which compares the jobs created by the potential Keystone XL pipeline to environmental jobs, sets up a false choice. We have long shown unequivocally that we can advance our economic prosperity without compromising the protection of our environment.

Ultimately, we shouldn’t allow green jobs to be a political punching bag (like Congressman Issa’s hearings as Chair of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform). We need to fight back against the slander. Get involved in advocacy for green buildings and green jobs. Tell Congress what we want, because, after all, they’re supposed represent us, right?

Green Retrofits on the Rise: LEED for Existing Buildings Surpasses New Construction Projects, Echoes Industry Shift

Doug Gatlin
Vice President, LEED
U.S. Green Building Council

The U.S. landscape is covered by more than 60 billion square feet of existing buildings, many of them hogging inordinate amounts of resources and energy due to outdated infrastructure. The potential to green this building stock is vast, and more importantly, the potential is being realized: We announced last week that LEED-certified existing buildings are surpassing new construction projects by 15 million square feet, cumulatively.

This news comes just one week after President Obama and former President Clinton announced that the federal government will invest $2 billion in energy efficiency, with an equal investment from the private sector in response to the Better Buildings Challenge, covering 1.6 billion square feet of commercial building space. Job creation potential there? 50,000 new jobs.

Earlier this year, the administration threw the lights on over the potential of a greener building stock with the Better Buildings Initiative, the goal of which is to cut energy consumption in commercial buildings by 20 percent, saving businesses $40 billion.

It’s no secret that revisiting our existing buildings and making them cleaner, safer, and more efficient is one of our strongest opportunities to cut global emissions and conserve precious resources; create jobs and save taxpayer dollars. The announcement about the growth of LEED-certified existing buildings is significant because it heralds that project teams, developers and building owners around the world are seizing this opportunity in greater numbers than ever. Green building is not just for new buildings – that way of thinking is evaporating faster than you can say “EB.”

Global projects like the recently LEED-certified Empire State Building are proving this, and setting an example for other forthcoming retrofits. Greening this globally known New York City landmark will result in a predicted 38 percent energy savings and $4.4 million in energy cost savings annually.

Another skyline-defining project, Taipei 101, not only is known for being the second tallest building in the world, but also one of the greenest: The skyscraper was designed to use 30 percent less energy, reducing annual utility costs by $700,000 per year.

The FBI Regional Headquarters in Chicago, the first Platinum LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance (O&M) project reduced operating expenses by 25 cents per square foot, achieved an ENERGY STAR rating of 95 and reduced water use by 43 percent. One Bush Street in San Francisco successfully implemented for only 31 cents per square foot while still earning covetable LEED Platinum. You can learn more about these projects in the USGBC LEED Stories from Practice, case studies submitted by LEED project team members detailing goals, strategies, processes and lessons learned from completed projects, along with a detailed LEED scorecard. We encourage you to take a look at these blueprints for success in the beta library and provide your feedback.

Scaling up Energy Efficiency Financing

Hope Lobkowicz
International Advisor
GLOBE Alliance

Here at COP17, some experts have said that the single most important outcome that can emerge from Durban is an agreement on the design of the Green Climate Fund – the new long-term mechanism for dispersing billions of dollars of climate finance for clean technology, adaptation, and capacity-building.

I’m interested in seeing a fair and equitable design for the fund. I’m also interested in watching how agreement on the fund can help bolster climate finance for energy efficient building projects – which so far occupy only a slim piece of international finance – yet offer the largest mitigation potential.

At a UNFCCC side-event on financing energy efficiency, panelists from the Global Environment Facility (the GEF), World Bank Group, and the Asian Development Bank presented a briefing note that summarized the results of an independent evaluation of these institutions’ investments in energy efficiency. Unsurprisingly, the evaluation acknowledged that:

• Investments in energy efficiency are highly cost-effective
• Fossil fuel subsidies are hampering investment
• Current obstacles and perceived barriers can be overcome – and the financial sector can in fact be persuaded to invest further in energy efficiency

To underpin these findings, the World Bank Group’s analysis offered some insightful statistics: Every $1 of GEF support for energy efficiency catalyzes a reduction of about 2.2 tons of CO2. The same investment in renewables catalyzes a reduction of 0.4 tons. Some energy efficiency investments, such as lighting, offer paybacks in a matter of weeks. Meanwhile, fossil fuel subsidies, which hinder efficiency investments by artificially lowering the cost of energy, remain larger than public spending on health in many countries.

This event made me realize that major international financial institutions do understand the environmental and economic benefits of energy efficiency. As President Obama recently said in his announcement of another $4 billion to improve commercial buildings and industrial facilities in the U.S.., “It is a trifecta.” So what’s standing in the way of global large-scale investment?

The panelists offered some suggestions. First, we need more data to help reduce the perceived risk. Second, we need capacity-building and technical assistance. Third, we need instruments such as loan guarantees from international institutions (and national governments) to catalyze investment in countries that are perceived as risky – especially the many in the developing world with poor credit ratings.

There are many drivers and varied approaches for financing green and efficient buildings. I am hopeful that the Green Climate Fund, which will oversee resources on the scale of $100 billion per year come 2020, can help with some of the above in order to leverage climate finance and spur even more investment in this “win-win-win” solution.

For more on how green buildings also improve lives, check out the COP17 legacy project spearheaded by the Green Building Council of South Africa.

Leadership Abounds: President Obama, President Clinton and Green Building Leaders Join Forces to Commit to Energy Efficiency

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

This entry is cross-posted from Rick Fedrizzi's blog on Huff Post Green.

Last week from the White House Old Executive Building it was like a different planet -- outside the white walls, D.C. politics continued to swirl, but for one moment we found something we can all agree on. I sat there as President Obama and former President Clinton joined forces to make three huge announcements on energy efficiency in buildings. First, that the federal government will be investing big time in energy efficiency, to the tune of $2 billion dollars that will ultimately be returned to taxpayers many times over through lower operating costs. Second, that the private sector will do the same, as companies respond to the President’s Better Buildings Challenge with their own $2 billion dollar investment covering 1.6 billion square feet of commercial building space. Last but not least, the IRS and Treasury will finally revise the guidance on the under-utilized 179D tax deduction for energy efficient commercial buildings.

What does this tell us? That jobs and energy savings are possible with little effort from companies. Sounds too good to be true, but that’s $4 billion dollars and around 50,000 jobs if you are counting, all without any tax increases, spending cuts, offsets or other partisan mud-slinging from Congress. President Clinton called this a “free lunch.” He’s right.

Revising Section 179D is, has been and will remain a focal point of our federal agenda and we’ve long advocated for the federal government to use the tools at its disposal, like performance contracting with energy service companies, to slash energy consumption in federal buildings. (The recommendations were front and center in our 2010 “Using Executive Authorities” report. We are thrilled to see that recommendation taken, and we look forward to adding these initiatives to the successful agency actions in the next version of the report, to be released soon.

No less exciting are the commitments made by USGBC member cities, universities, and companies. In all at least 27 member companies, four member universities, and six member cities and states accepted the challenge (see below for full list). Member company LendLease America’s CEO Bob McNamara CEO, for example, told the group he is building green-based housing for 40,000 veterans, setting an example and showing strong leadership in sustainability.

Our member company leaders are truly at the forefront of green building and energy efficiency. In particular, I want to highlight Best Buy, CBRE, Citi, Intercontinental Hotels, Kohl’s and PNC as participants in the LEED Volume Program that are building and improving tremendous numbers of buildings every day.

While $2 billion dollars is nothing to sneeze at, remember it’s only the tip of the iceberg. The efficiency opportunity is $130 billion dollars a year and 1 million new jobs if we keep working. The green building industry will be the workhorse that pulls us along the path of economic recovery.

The green building industry is not going to let up in our push to realize this potential. That’s why we have joined with the Real Estate Roundtable and the Natural Resources Defense Council to launch the “Coalition for Better Buildings” (C4BB), where all interested organizations can come to coordinate, share information and take action on commercial building energy efficiency. There is a groundswell of support from the private sector to move forward on energy efficiency policy, and we hope you will join us today.

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Accepting the Better Buildings Challenge:

USGBC Member Companies
3M
Alcoa
CB Richard Ellis
Cleveland Clinic Foundation
Cummins Inc.
Forest City Enterprises
GE
IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group)
Jones Lang LaSalle
Kohl's Department Stores
Legrand
The PNC Financial Services Group
Prologis
RREEF Real Estate
Schneider Electric
Serious Energy, Inc.
Shorenstein Properties LLC
TIAA-CREF
Southern California Edison
Wyndham Worldwide
Best Buy
Citi
Green Sports Alliance
Lend Lease
Transwestern
USAA Real Estate

Member Cities and States
Los Angeles, CA
State of Minnesota
Sacramento, CA
Houston Independent School District, TX
Seattle, WA
Denver, CO
The District of Columbia

Member Universities
Allegheny College
University of California, Irvine
University of Utah
Michigan State University

Who Cares About Better Buildings? A Diverse Group of Companies Answer, “We Do!”

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

As a movement, we knew we had come a long way when President Obama announced the Better Buildings Initiative in February, establishing the goal of slashing energy consumption in commercial buildings 20 percent by 2020. Groups like USGBC, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Real Estate Roundtable (RER) applauded the plan. But articulating the goal and achieving it are two different things, and we all realize that so much of the initiative hinges on coordinating and communicating as we are pursuing building improvements and smart policy changes. That’s why we have again joined with NRDC and RER to launch the Coalition for Better Buildings (www.C4BB.org), an action network dedicated to improving energy efficiency of commercial and multi-family buildings. The website went live last week and new members are joining daily.

With representatives across the building industries, we are stepping up to tell all who will listen how everyone benefits from better buildings and what changes are needed to realize those benefits. Whether it's for job creation, energy and water savings, health improvements, increased productivity, or other reasons, we are once again coming together to show why we care about better buildings.

• Building owners want to stop wasteful energy consumption. They want access to their building energy information so they can start making improvements. They want to see investments in their buildings lead to higher value. And they want access to financing so they can start the improvements immediately.
• Building operators want support to implement the money saving solutions they identify. They want to be able to get the data so they can show how much they are improving the buildings.
• Tenants want to make efficiency upgrades in their spaces and make sure their bills actually go down. They want to work with the owner on upgrades that will improve the entire building.
• Lenders want to get the information they need to understand the savings that will occur and risk of the project before they lend.
• Architecture and engineering firms want to design and sell better building systems.
• Builders want to see their best buildings in high demand on the market.
• Manufacturers want to sell their best, most efficient products that they have researched and brought to the market.
• Energy service companies want to increase opportunities to scale their low risk, high reward services.
• Commissioning companies want more jobs tuning building systems so that they operate as they were designed.
• Affordable housing providers need solutions to the same problems they find in multi-family buildings.

I could go on and on, but you get the point. And if you look at the C4BB mission and member list, you'll see that's exactly what these companies are saying.

We know you care about better buildings, too, so have your company join us in C4BB as we coordinate to tear down the barriers that are keeping us from achieving impressive reductions in energy consumption even before 2020. Let’s get started.

The President, the Packers, and Winning One for the American People

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

I found myself sitting at the kitchen table last night, long after the President and the Packers were done.

The Packers won. What was keeping me up was the thought that the country might actually be able to pull our own victory out of what has been increasingly feeling like an end-of-the-fourth-quarter goal-line stand.

Clearly the President was channeling Knute Rockne, Joe Paterno, Bear Bryant and every other great coach out there. Focus on the fundamentals. Block, tackle and don’t get distracted. Want it more than anything you’ve ever wanted in your life. That’s how you win.

And we need a win. WE. The American people. We need a game plan that’s clear, straightforward and no-nonsense. And fewer are better at delivering on the fundamentals than our USGBC members and the green building movement. I say, “Put us in, Coach.”

Despite all the technology enablers that we’ve dreamed up, and all the fantastic advances in materials science and the awe-inspiring design innovations that have been conceived, what we do in our industry is as straightforward and as people-centric as it gets: Our industry puts shovels in people’s hands and foundations get poured. It puts wrenches in people’s hands and steel rises. It puts hammers in people’s hands and homes get built. It puts the controls of massive bulldozers in people’s hands and roads and bridges get shored up.

Building is a noble act and building sustainably is an act of nation-building that in 10 short years has created a $60 billion industry that never existed before. Our hard-won environmental efforts have spawned jobs and unleashed innovation, and unlocking the massive fuel source of energy efficiency creates jobs that can’t be exported.

Nowhere is that more important than in our homes, our neighborhoods and our schools. In fact, our schools have long been ringing the alarm, and there are thousands of projects out there that are ready to go the minute the funding is available. On average, our schools are more than 40 years old. Nearly a quarter of them require extensive repair just to meet basic health and safety standards, and 15,000 schools have air that had been deemed unfit to breathe. Our kids deserve school buildings that enhance their learning and their health, not compromise it, and this is a way to deliver on that promise.

Our workplaces are no less in need of improvement. The green building industry has suggested a fix to an existing tax incentive, Section 179D, that would put 77,000 people to work improving offices, malls, and supermarkets immediately. There is no downside for the Administration or any member of Congress to picking up this suggestion and running with it.

It’s baffled me that we let ourselves get to this fourth and inches situation on the jobs front. But we’re here. So I say, let’s get on with it. It’s time we won one for the American people.

Access the press release »
Read the blog post: President Obama Announces $25 Billion For Improving Schools »
Browse the fact sheet on the American Jobs Act »

For Prosperity and Security, Build a Resilient Nation

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

Tonight President Obama will address the nation to outline a jobs plan, propose a robust infrastructure initiative, restore confidence in a fragile economy and ensure our continued leadership in the new global economy.

We need a plan for immediate and long-term employment. We need a strategy to reinvigorate the economy and make America a safer place. We need to build a resilient nation. Advancing a resiliency agenda, a post-partisan plan will help us meet the challenges of today and tomorrow.

While over the years our politics has sharpened, seeming more stinging and acidic, our leaders from both parties and those of all political ideologies in America are uniformly guided by a primary principle – strive for greater prosperity and security for the citizens of this country. Those two hallowed objectives – prosperity and security – are inextricably linked. And a strong and sustainable America is a prosperous America.

But we’re facing a silent onslaught at home that is jeopardizing that future. Our brittle infrastructure is crumbling below our feet and all around us. Our roads and bridges and buildings – the bones of our economy – are in dire need of attention. It is imperative that we avoid a cascading effect where one system’s breakdown leads to another system’s collapse. In 2005, the U.S. was ranked first in infrastructure, according to a World Economic Forum report. In a reprisal of the report released this week, the U.S. has dropped to 24th.

Take our schools for example. Sadly, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) gives the state of our public school facility infrastructure a shameful “D” rating, calling for tens of billions of dollars in urgent investment. If education is the foundation, we’re chipping away at this precious bedrock of American leadership and success. The average school in America is more than 40 years old. A fifth of our schools, roughly 25,000 school buildings, require $112 billion in extensive repairs and renovations just to bring them up to minimum standards. And more than 15,000 schools have air that has been deemed unsafe to breathe.

ACSE, further diagnosing our severe osteoporosis, grades our “infrastructure GPA” (which covers other categories like roads, bridges, levees, transit, and drinking water) a “D,” saying we need a $2.2 trillion five-year investment.

Resiliency adds calcium to the bones. It would make us stronger, reignite our ability to lead and innovate, and ultimately power our productivity.

That’s why, among other clean energy policy proposals we may hear about tonight, one of the most important is an Infrastructure Bank that builds resilience, advances sustainability and stimulates long-term investment opportunities. We can put Americans back to work by focusing on nation-building at home and strengthening the very sinews of our country. There are more than 2 million jobless construction workers. An infrastructure bank would put these people back to work to build and rebuild our roads, bridges, buildings, dams, levees and transit – better, stronger, greener. And a strong infrastructure is the backbone of a resilient nation and a sustainable future.

Tonight, as President Obama stands before Congress and the American people to call for action to spur job creation, many of us will be at the Newseum for the Nine Eleven Tenth Anniversary Summit. The theme is Remembrance, Renewal, Resilience. We will remember those family and friends who lost their lives. We will honor the survivors and heroes who responded and carried on to rebuild America. And together with leading organizations such as the Center for National Policy and the Community and Regional Resilience Institute, we will launch of a National Resilience Campaign that calls on individuals, communities, and companies to become more involved in a national effort to build a more resilient America.

Encouraging Energy Efficiency: A Tax Fix Everyone Can Get Behind

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

Pretend you are a small business owner. You happen to own the building where your business is housed, which has helped you weather the recession. Things seem to be getting better, and you have the opportunity to make some investments in your company that could really pay off in the long run.

You’d like to figure out how to cut your operating expenses, especially utilities, which have gone up and up and up over the last 10 years. You know your building is pretty old and leaky, and that much of that energy you buy is wasted. You’ve heard the President talk about efficiency retrofits and think that might be a smart investment that will cut your energy bills and pay for itself.

But there is a problem. If you invest in your own building energy efficiency, you will have to pay federal taxes on the value of the investment. If you were to keep wasting energy, all that wasted money would be completely deductible from your taxes.

That’s right; in effect our tax code unintentionally subsidizes wasted energy. Despite the economic benefits (not to mention the domestic job creation and the environmental benefits), investments to create energy efficient, better buildings do not receive the same treatment under the tax code as wasted energy.

That’s why USGBC is working with a diverse coalition of industry and environmental organizations, like the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Real Estate Roundtable, to change that. It’s our highest priority to convince Congress that energy efficiency is at least as valuable to the nation’s prosperity as wasted energy.

We’ve proposed changes to fix Section 179D of the tax code, and existing policy designed to encourage energy efficient new construction to make it usable for existing buildings. You can read more about those changes here.

The positive impact of this tax code tweak would be immense – 77,000 new jobs and immense savings on energy bills where we live and work. Those are benefits that will be felt not only by those who do the work, but also by everyone who works in an office, stays in a hotel, shops at a mall, or lives in an apartment.

But what will be the cost to the treasury? Not much if anything for one major reason – all those investments we want to encourage will drastically decrease the total amount of money spent on energy at businesses across the country, thereby lowering the total expenses deducted from their taxes for years to come. Instead of deducting wasted energy, they will reap energy savings and reinvest that money in much more productive ways.

This is one tax fix that nearly everyone can get behind. We plan to advocate tirelessly for these changes on behalf of our members, many of whom own the buildings, make the more efficient products, and will design and engineer the retrofits. Stay tuned for opportunities to get involved.

New Report: Better Buildings = 114,000 New Jobs

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

Today USGBC, with our partners at the Real Estate Roundtable and the Natural Resources Defense Council, released an analysis conducted by the Political Economy Research Institute that concludes that President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative (BBI) will create over 114,000 jobs.

As background, the Better Buildings Initiative is a collection of legislative proposals and federal agency actions designed to encourage the efficiency improvement of commercial buildings. The President has recommended tax incentives, grant and challenge programs, and increasing the availability of financing for the improvements. The analysis covers the major components of the initiative: the tax incentives, the financing programs, and the grant programs.

The full report is available at http://www.USGBC.org/advocacy/BBIJobs. Here’s what you need to know:

• The Better Buildings Initiative would create more than 114,000 jobs.
• The greatest jobs-creating impact – over 77,000 new jobs – would derive from a revised tax incentive to encourage building retrofits.
• New job creation would ripple throughout the economy. New jobs would be created directly at construction sites, which in turn would spur more jobs in the manufacturing and service sectors.
• The Better Buildings Initiative’s federal incentives are an investment to trigger private sector spending, which in turn produces widespread benefits. For example, tax incentives would encourage at least three times as much private investment to make buildings more efficient.
• Businesses would save over $1.4 billion in energy bills as a result of retrofit projects spurred by the tax incentive, which would in turn be re-injected into the economy.

The most significant job creator considered is the revision of the existing tax deduction for energy efficient commercial buildings, section 179D. These are the same revisions supported by 86 diverse organizations and the subject of the recent letter to the Senate written about last week. The proposal with its unique structure would create 77,000 jobs while achieving real quantifiable energy efficiency improvements. Actual measured performance is required to take full advantage of the redesigned incentive.

The report also outlines how these jobs would be created in engineering and in performing the retrofits, manufacturing the new efficient equipment and materials, operating, commissioning, and servicing the buildings, and finally in the re-spending of the significant energy savings.

The conclusion that commercial building energy efficiency creates jobs, and a staggering number of new jobs is not new. This report joins and supports the conclusion of a host of others on the topic.

• McKinsey found 600,000 to 900,000 new jobs in energy efficiency over all sectors.
• ACEEE found 333,000 new jobs in proposed energy efficiency legislation last year. Over 150,000 of these jobs were from the bi-partisan yet now politically infeasible HomeStar program for home retrofits.
• UC Berkeley found that California’s energy efficiency policies on the books will create 200,000 jobs by 2020, with more jobs of higher quality possible with some additional measures.

With this new analysis we now know how much of the huge opportunity for job creation through energy efficiency may be achieved through implementation of the Better Buildings Initiative. USGBC and its member companies will continue to support the agencies moving forward with the administrative components of the BBI while working with our many allies to convince Congress to move forward with the changes to the tax code that could potentially unlock a huge number of jobs in commercial energy efficiency. Stay tuned to this blog for opportunities to get involved.

There’s More to Be Done: Government Summit Will Expand on Federal Government’s Green Building Efforts

Aaron Lande
Sustainable Cities Specialist
U.S. Green Building Council

With the release yesterday of the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) sustainability scorecards for federal agencies and departments, the public got its first progress report on federal agency efforts to cut emissions. Specifically, the scorecards gave insight to federal progress on President Obama’s government-wide goal of cutting direct GHG emissions by 28 percent and indirect GHG emissions by 13 percent over the next decade.

Though federal agencies and departments were early adopters and key leaders of green building, demonstrated by their early and continuing use of LEED, a review of the scores made one thing quickly apparent: There is more work to be done. The agencies have a long way to go to meet the Executive Order that 15 percent of all federal agencies' building stock must meet high performance green building standards by 2015. What better forum to commune and strategize on greening governmental buildings than USGBC’s upcoming Government Summit?

Coming up May 10 and 11 in Washington, D.C., USGBC’s annual Government Summit (formerly Federal Summit) is a gathering place for leaders in government sustainability, offering many tools and resources for agencies to improve their sustainability scores. The event will include education sessions sharing best practices and implementable strategies related to green building from practitioners who have had success within the federal framework. The Summit will also feature opening plenary speaker Nancy Sutley, Chair of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, who will discuss the results of this year’s sustainability assessments and the steps that must be taken to improve upon them for next year.

The green building accomplishments of the federal government have been vast, but efforts must be increased in order to meet national goals. As it has done in year’s past, USGBC’s Government Summit will facilitate those necessary conversations, and spur real progress in the realm of governmental green building.

Registration for this year’s Government Summit is open now and Early Bird pricing is available through Tuesday, April 26.

Related articles:
Tapping the Business Opportunities in Green Government Buildings
Government Sector Leads the Green Building Movement from the Front

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Featured Speakers: USGBC Government Summit 2011

Nancy Sutley, Chair
White House Council on Environmental Quality

Kathleen Hogan, Deputy Assistant & Secretary of Energy Efficiency
Department of Energy/The ENERGY STAR Program

Governor Martin O'Malley, Governor
State of Maryland

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

Access the full Government Summit speakers list and education program »

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.