The EBies: Honoring Great Work in Buildings Gone Green

William Nutt
Associate, Marketing and Communications
U.S. Green Building Council

Urban Green Council, the New York City chapter of USGBC, held the first-ever EBie Awards on June 28th at the Hard Rock Café Theater. Though this marks the first public showcase for the EBies, the project reflects concepts and ideas that have been discussed for years by NYC leaders in sustainability. The basic idea is this: We need to recognize and encourage the people who are making amazing improvements to existing buildings (hence “EB”ies). Last month, a total of 10 projects from around the country received awards across eight categories.

Sixty-seven entries were submitted; the jurors narrowed the list down to a select 18 finalists, and then chose the winners. Winning the All-Rounder was Glen Neville, a Director of Deutsche Bank, with a team from Jones Lang LaSalle for the Deutsche Bank Americas Headquarters at 60 Wall Street. Maintenance, operational, and capital improvements to the property increased its energy and water efficiency as it moves towards a goal of carbon neutrality by 2013. Included in the spectacular outcome of this $8 million project is the creation of a 123KW flat panel solar array – the largest rooftop array in New York City.

Forty percent energy savings over the past three years earned Jesse Dillard of the Dallas Museum of Art the Reformed Gas Guzzler Award thanks to lighting, HVAC and water heater retrofits. The Reformed Drinker Award went to Steve Allwine of the Johnson Braund office building in Seattle for reducing water consumption by 95%. The range of building types that received other innovative awards include a commercial office space, a mixed-use industrial complex and office building, an elementary school, a condominium complex and a rental apartment building.

Occupant Empowerment: Creating a Culture of Sustainability with LEED

Lonny Blumenthal, LEED AP O+M
Associate, LEED
U.S. Green Building Council

I hear people say it all the time: “Buildings don’t use energy, people do.” So then I ask myself: Why has the idea of engaging with building occupants fallen by the wayside?...Despite the fact that it’s one of the most cost-effective ways to minimize energy consumption and save money? I wish I could provide a simple answer to that question, but the reality is that influencing occupants to modify their behavior to meet the sustainability goals of a building and/or an organization is far from straightforward. It requires an understanding of the actions people perform and even more importantly, the motivation behind those actions. Sounds easy, right?

Less power, more occupant empowerment.
Photo credit: Public Domain Photos

To address the impact occupants have on resource consumption in the built environment, USGBC recently released Pilot Credit 59: Occupant Engagement. Our goal is to help improve the performance of existing buildings by enabling energy efficient behaviors among building occupants. The credit encourages building owners and tenants to create a culture of sustainability and resource conservation for occupants in LEED-certified projects. Project teams are awarded for implementing innovative engagement mechanisms that empower occupants to become aware of and responsible for their own energy consumption.

Pilot Credit 59: Occupant Engagement requires two main components:

1. Consumption feedback: Inform occupants about the actual energy consumption of the building and/or their workspace and provide a relevant comparison point
2. Occupant empowerment: Implement and maintain an occupant engagement program that includes education, empowerment and feedback components

We would like project teams to establish performance goals and develop a way to effectively track the success of the occupant engagement program. Additionally, the requirements above are only intended to serve as a foundation for an occupant engagement program and are by no means meant to display a “one size fits all” approach.

Introducing this concept as a pilot credit allows us to leverage both project team and market feedback to directly inform whether the credit’s requirements are effective or if they should be modified to better accomplish the stated intent.

So, let’s hear from you. Have you recently implemented an occupant engagement program focused on energy efficiency? What strategies did you find effective? What barriers kept your program from achieving its goals?

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.

A Green Building Opportunity: Three Million Strong

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

It’s a great time to be an existing building.

First: President Obama released last year’s Better Buildings Initiative, focusing financing opportunities on commercial retrofits.

Then: USGBC reported that LEED for Existing Buildings project square footage surpassed new construction projects.

Now: A new report has concluded that building reuse almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and new construction.

Empire State Building, LEED Gold.
Photo credit: John Donges, Flickr

It’s a hat trick for existing buildings, the many millions of them across the world. There are 838,337 alone in New York City, some three million skyscrapers across the U.S., and 71 billion total square feet covering the country. Everyone from building industry pros to the President of the United States is recognizing the vast potential to curb emissions and ramp up energy efficiency by greening this enormous stock of structures, to the tune of one million jobs. The market share of retrofit projects that are green is expected to rise to one third in 2015: An $18 billion opportunity. USGBC has been stressing the insurmountable benefits of focusing our greening efforts on the existing building stock, and we are thrilled that momentum is growing.

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.

Congressional Members Introduce Building Efficiency Measure

Bryan Howard
Legislative Director
U.S. Green Building Council

Yesterday, Representative Charles Bass (NH) and Representative Jim Matheson (UT) introduced bipartisan legislation that deploy energy efficiency programs across many sectors of the built environment.

H.R. 4017, “The Smart Energy Act,” picks up on the bipartisan work of Senators Jeanne Shaheen (NH) and Rob Portman (OH), by enhancing financing options for building efficiency at the Department of Energy (DOE), as well as boosting energy conservation within the federal government by expanding the use of private financing tools to pay for energy-efficient building upgrades and consolidating federal energy data centers.

In a statement, Congressman Bass helped demonstrate the need for action to advance energy efficiency by saying:

"The federal government spends $7 billion annually to heat, cool, and operate its 445,000 buildings. Given our nation's fiscal constraints, a common-sense place to save taxpayer dollars is by improving the energy efficiency of the hundreds of thousands of federal buildings across the country."

In a letter to the sponsors, USGBC Vice President of National Policy Jason Hartke applauded the introduction of the bill, saying:

“Programs like these offer significant opportunities to leverage private financing to deliver real utility savings to school districts, municipal governments and expand investment opportunities for private commercial real-estate.”

While this bill is far from being sent to the President for his signature, the introduction of this bipartisan legislation is an important first step in the process of increasing our nation's energy efficiency.

USGBC South Carolina Greens Veterans’ Homes With Energy Efficient Homes for Heroes Program

Melissa Le Roy
Executive Director
USGBC South Carolina Chapter

This fall, USGBC South Carolina launched Energy Efficient Homes for Heroes, a community engagement program that aims to reduce energy demand in the homes of local veterans through weatherization. In households where utilities account for three percent of monthly income, improved insulation means significant reductions in heating and cooling costs.

In the program’s first endeavor, USGBC-SC partnered with the Sustainability Institute, University of South Carolina Service Day volunteers and Energy Conservation Corps to green the home of Vietnam veteran Leon McFaddin in Columbia, SC. Supported by Lowe’s Home Improvement, the weatherization will provide a projected annual savings of $480.

Energy Conservation Corps members pose with Leon McFaddin and Melissa Le Roy in front of Mr. McFaddin’s weatherized home.

By engaging Mr. McFaddin and local citizens, the Energy Efficient Homes for Heroes program educated the homeowner and other community stakeholders on the benefits of energy efficiency and its role in sustainable living.

To learn how to get involved with Energy Efficient Homes for Heroes or start a similar program in your region, contact Melissa Le Roy, USGBC-SC Executive Director, at (843) 329-3121 or execdir [at] usgbcsc.org.

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.

---

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

“IN A TOUGH ECONOMY, IT’S A REALLY BAD IDEA TO SET FIRE TO MONEY. THAT’S PRETTY MUCH WHAT WE DO WHEN WE WASTE ENERGY.”

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

The Role of Energy Efficiency

Now that I have your attention, I will admit that this metaphor is not an original of my own, but rather a provocative and common sense remark made by Peter Molinaro, Vice President of U.S. Government Affairs at the Dow Chemical Company, during a Capitol Hill briefing yesterday on energy efficiency jobs.

Monday, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) and Northeast-Midwest Senate Coalition hosted a Congressional briefing on the “Economic Impacts of Energy Efficiency Policies and Investments.” An expert panel, including the aforementioned Peter Molinaro; Harvey Bernstein, Vice President of Industry Insights and Alliances at McGraw Hill Construction; Kevin Crawford, Senior Vice President of Orion Energy Systems; Malcolm Woolf, Director of the Maryland Energy Administration and Chair of the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO); and Paul Hamilton, Vice President of Government Affairs, addressed a full room about the role of energy efficiency in job creation and economic recovery.

In an economy where construction activities, and consequently jobs, are at an all time low, green construction has maintained its level of economic activity and has even increased in many sectors from 2008 levels. These figures come from the findings of McGraw Hill Construction’s latest research venture on the green building construction, which revealed that the green building market supports 661,000 jobs in the U.S. and represents a third of the design and construction workforce.

In addition to the employment benefits of green building and energy efficiency, let’s think about its effect on American consumers: “The average American household spends $2175 a year on home heating, cooling and electricity. Over $5000 if you add the cost of transportation,” according to Molinaro. He continued, “If we can get every household in America to save 10%, that’s $25 billion available for other things…If we can save 30%, eminently doable with existing technology, that’s $74 billion in additional discretionary spending.”

The facts and figures are clear and real. Energy efficiency is a growing industry with astronomical potential. Energy efficiency supports both job creation and workforce transformation within a rapidly globalizing economy, allowing the U.S. to maintain international competitiveness. Paul Hamilton of Schneider Electric included a graph in his presentation with the caveat that energy management and the goals of energy efficiency support a “food chain of jobs.” And Molinaro reminded us of how this discussion is more timely and pertinent than ever. The “Occupy Movement” nationwide is concerned with the ever-widening income disparity between classes in the U.S. Energy efficiency is an opportunity to rebuild the middle class and put Americans back to work.

The speakers add that the low-hanging fruit of energy efficiency is often overlooked as a financial opportunity by consumers. Government policies and incentives are critical to supporting this sector, and no, that does not mean subsidies!! We need policies that remove barriers for innovative private sector finance, such as Property Assessed Clean Energy or PACE, and policies that facilitate data access and transparency. Training and certification programs are also essential to transforming the existing workforce and assisting our students and recent graduates to find a competitive job.

Harvey Bernstein had a final remark that resonated with me, “We are on the verge of another Industrial Revolution.” If the prospect of continued rapid global population growth and resource scarcity is not enough to prompt you to action, how about something closer to home? In a tough economy, why are we setting fire to money when energy efficiency can help alleviate unemployment, rebuild the U.S. economy and restore our global competitiveness?

More information on the briefing and the individual presentations can be found on EESI’s website »

Energy Efficiency in the States in 2012: Will You Help Your State Compete for Top Rank?

Jeremy Sigmon, LEED® AP BD+C
Manager, Building Codes Advocacy
U.S. Green Building Council

If you’ve ever wondered if government policy and advocacy can actually make a difference, consider this: Despite what you may often read in the papers, state governments are plowing ahead on making energy efficiency a reality. And as USGBC mentioned in a recent report, all states are doing something. That just doesn’t happen if no one is fighting for it.

Today, the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy released its 2011 Energy Scorecard which shows significant improvements in several states and, maybe most interesting, California sliding to #2 behind Massachusetts as #1 in energy efficiency. The Commonwealth’s Stretch Energy Code – which has been adopted by nearly 50% of all Massachusetts localities – has played an important role, alongside many other state programs. (This is not to say there aren’t a lot of great things going on in the Golden State… more on that later).

One of the six energy policy metrics in ACEEE’s scorecard is state policy for building energy codes. Importantly, “Twenty-nine (29) states have either adopted or have made significant progress toward the adoption of the latest energy-saving building codes for homes and commercial properties - up from twenty in 2010 and ten in 2009.” This is a clear endorsement of minimum standards for building energy efficiency, and a vital step in the right direction if we’re to further extend fundamental protections from other non-acute threats to human and environmental health.

This rapid increase in building energy code adoption, and the advancement of other state policy initiatives (like transportation policies, appliance efficiency standards, utility and public benefits programs) has been championed by advocates of energy efficiency and green building. USGBC’s community of advocates has been behind many of these policy advancements. Have you?

If you attended Greenbuild earlier this month, you heard from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman (see 30th minute) that we very clearly still have a lot of work to do to get our nation’s leaders on board with our vision of a sustainable future – and we need your help! Are you involved with your local USGBC chapter? Tell them that you want to get involved in their advocacy and outreach activities. Do you know who your elected officials are at the local, state and congressional levels? Let them know why energy efficient, green buildings and communities matter to you, and why they should be embraced in smart public policy.

Setting sights on 2012, will you join us in our campaigns to drive green building policy that rewards responsibility, embraces a sense of urgency and catalyzes change? Together we can compel even further competition in the states in our collective pursuit of a healthier, safer, more efficient and prosperous future.

Accounting for Energy Efficiency: SAVE Act Would Improve Mortage Underwriting, Create Jobs, Save Household Money

Bryan Howard
Legislative Director
U.S. Green Building Council

On Wednesday, surrounded by leaders from business, construction, and real estate, USGBC joined Senator Michael Bennet (CO) and Senator Johnny Isakson (GA) to announce the introduction of bipartisan legislation to enhance the current mortgage underwriting and home appraisal practices to account for energy efficiency and other sustainable features.

"The SAVE Act would help provide access to useful information about energy usage that home owners, buyers, appraisers and underwriters want and need. It would lead to more complete and accurate mortgage underwriting, would encourage investments in home energy improvements, create more than 80,000 jobs and lighten the load for Colorado families' budgets," said Bennet.

The Sensible Accounting to Value Energy or (SAVE) Act would require federal loan agencies such as the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) to assess the expected energy costs for mortgage loan applicants through modest adjustments to underwriting guidelines and appraisal practices.

"I place my support behind this bill because it has the potential to create jobs without any cost to taxpayers, and it will also improve mortgage underwriting in this country by including energy as a factor in the process," said Isakson. 

Updating the appraisal and underwriting guidance has long been supported by USGBC and others in building community. Last year, USGBC and a number of organizations in real estate, housing and energy services released a report that recommended reforms including the greening of federal banking regulation. USGBC also worked with a number of partners in construction and real estate in the development of a toolkit for local Multiple Listing Services (MLS) to give buyers and sellers better information on green properties in their local markets.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) average households spends $1,900 annually on energy bills. It is nice to see a bipartisan focus on ensuring that consumers have better information on how their largest financial investment is effecting their bottom line every month.

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 Fact Sheet: Principles for reforming the tax deduction for efficient commercial buildings to create 77,000 new jobs and slash energy bills

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

Today USGBC released a fact sheet on the principles for reforming the existing tax deduction for energy efficient commercial buildings, Section 179D, which have united the commercial building industry and environmental advocates in their push to create jobs and slash commercial building energy consumption. These reforms could create 77,000 jobs across the US economy.

You can view the fact sheet here.

As background, 179D allows building owners to take a deduction of $1.80 per square foot of space for buildings that are constructed to be 50% better than a baseline energy code. The policy was originally passed in 2005 and is on the books until 2013, but the recession has severely decreased the number of new buildings being built, while interest in retrofits of existing buildings has skyrocketed. It is USGBC’s overarching goal to push for changes to this policy that will encourage retrofits of existing commercial and multifamily buildings.

In line with that goal, the principles are:

• Measure energy savings compared to the existing building baseline. Rather than requiring existing buildings to meet and exceed the requirements of the energy code for new construction, as is the case currently in 179D, measure improvements in how much energy consumption was reduced compared to where the building started.
• Link the amount of the incentive to energy savings achieved. Greater energy savings and deeper retrofits warrant larger incentives to reward innovation and to reflect the larger investments and greater environmental benefit. Energy savings in excess of 50% are possible, and will be encouraged by this approach.
• Tie a portion of the tax incentive to implementation of efficiency measures and a portion to demonstrated energy savings. There are good reasons to reward a building owner for implementing energy savings measures, and even better reasons to reward energy savings actually realized on the energy meter. This proposal uniquely does both and maximizes accountability by allowing the building owner to claim 60 percent of the incentive at the time the energy efficiency measures are put into service, and the remaining 40 percent of the incentive after two years of demonstrating the expected savings have occurred.

These are the same principles that garnered support from 86 diverse organizations that sent them in a letter to the US Senate in June. These are the same types of reforms that the President has identified as a priority component of the Better Buildings Initiative.

And last but not least, the fact sheet explains that these same principles could create 77,000 new jobs, according to an analysis from the Political Economy Research Institute.

Every legislative proposal has an uncertain future right now, as partisanship and rhetoric have superseded governing, but certainly we will press forward. We think that encouraging building owners to invest in their own buildings to make them more efficient, cheaper to operate, and more attractive to tenants while simultaneously creating 77,000 jobs and slashing energy consumption is something that should be considered by any member of Congress, regardless of party, that cares about our economic recovery.

Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Advances USGBC-Supported Building Efficiency Measure

Bryan Howard
Legislative Director
U.S. Green Building Council

On Thursday, the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee took the next step in advancing key building efficiency legislation by reporting favorably S. 1000, the “Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act,” introduced by Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) and Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to the Senate.

The measure, which passed on a wide bipartisan majority of 18-3, includes many similar proposals advanced in the “American Clean Energy and Leadership Act of 2009” (ACELA) from last Congress. The broad-based bill includes advances in building energy codes, creates new loan programs and expands existing ones to encourage efficiency upgrades, as well as boosts energy conservation within the federal government. To date, there are over 100 companies and organizations that support the legislation, including USGBC.

During committee consideration the bill was modified in a few key ways through a “manager’s amendment:"

1. The provisions dealing with building loan guarantees were clarified to ensure applicability to private commercial and multifamily buildings;
2. The section regarding appliances, which is already a standalone bill, was removed;
3. The title pertaining to energy efficiency administered by the Rural Utility Service (RUS) at the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was also removed because of committee jurisdiction.

In a statement Senator Shaheen hailed the committee’s action.

“With rising energy costs and too many Americans still looking for jobs, our country can’t afford to wait to pass a comprehensive energy efficiency strategy. This bipartisan plan will make our economy more competitive and create private sector jobs today, while also addressing our nation’s energy challenges,”

The bipartisan passage of this legislation is a good sign that it might see the Senate floor but a timeline for consideration by the full Senate was not announced.

More information on the hearing »

The House of Representatives Vote on Lighting Efficiency

Bryan Howard
Legislative Director
U.S. Green Building Council

UPDATE: The bill, which needed 2/3 to pass, failed.

UPDATE: Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issues statement, opposes H. R. 2417.

As early as Monday, the full House of Representatives is poised to consider H. R. 2417, the “Better Use of Light Bulbs (BULB) Act,” which seeks to roll back energy efficiency standards for light bulbs. The bill, which was introduced by Congressman Joe Barton (R-TX), seeks to repeal standards that became law in 2007 as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) while preempting states from setting lighting efficiency standards.

This bill, which due to procedural requirements needs two-thirds support in the House to advance, has been universally panned by consumer groups, advocacy organizations, and industry for a number of reasons.

First, a repeal of this kind would increase energy use. In testimony to Congress earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) went on record opposing such legislation and noted that eliminating these standards would increase energy consumption by 21 quads over the next 30 years. The U.S. uses about 100 quads of energy in a year, so this needless increase would be a staggering waste of money and increase in air pollution and its associated impacts, like childhood asthma. Such a move seems especially unwise considering that energy supplies are volatile enough to have warranted the release of 30 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve last month.

Second, the bill would cost consumers more money. According to analysis from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), utilizing these new lighting standards would save individual consumers annually over $85 a year, or over $12.5 billion nationwide. Raising cost to consumers would come at a time when the unemployment rate is still hovering at 9 percent.

Third, it would negate the investment in efficiency that industry has already made, therefore putting them at a competitive disadvantage to foreign manufacturing. Sylvania, for instance, has made significant investments to upgrade a facility in Pennsylvania to make new efficient lighting. Cree, a LED lighting company, has grown from a small group of engineers to about 5,000 employees to meet growing demand for their products.

A bill that would increase energy use, add costs to consumers, and threaten American competiveness sounds like an idea that Congress should reject.

View the bill »

You Can’t Manage What You Can’t Measure: Building-Level Metering

Lauren Riggs
Manager, LEED Performance
U.S. Green Building Council

As the Manager of USGBC’s Building Performance Partnership and Recertification programs here at USGBC, I spend my time thinking over and over again about which aspects of building operations should be regularly monitored and which make the maximum contribution to the continuous high-performance of each building. We have to figure out how to encourage building operators to look at the holistic performance of their buildings and act based on the full story – So, how do we do that? What do we ask them to monitor? How do we work with thousands of building operators to tell the story?

Hours of thought and numerous discussions bring me back to what many of us have always known: Start with what is accessible. For most buildings, the easiest place to start monitoring performance is at the energy meter; knowing that energy consumption data is accessible to most building operators through existing meters or utility bills, it seems fair to ask folks to start monitoring their energy performance. If you’ve got water meters, start monitoring water use performance too – remember, we’re working towards a picture of holistic performance.

Green building professionals may not know that some buildings don’t even have energy meters, or a way to differentiate one building’s consumption from multiple others on a single campus … I struggle with finding a way to motivate these buildings to begin to track their individual energy use. How much does it cost to clamp on a data logger, or install and connect building level meters to a central system as a part of planned facilities upgrades? It won’t break the bank, which makes it absolutely feasible to track the performance of every building. Not one building owner will reap the benefits of energy or water savings without monitoring and trend logging, even at the building level.

Building level performance monitoring is something every building can do. You have to know where to start in order to reach the finish. The holistic picture, the full story, can only be created if you have all of information needed to complete it. USGBC offers tools, such as the Building Performance Partnership, to help buildings begin to tell their story. We will work with them to complete it and improve on it each time the story is told. We hope that our programs will lead to meters in every building (whole building and sub-system), followed by high performance achievement in every building. We will learn to walk, then run - together.

Fine-Tuning our Buildings for Optimum Performance

Lauren Riggs, LEEP® AP
Manager, LEED and Building Performance Partnership
U.S. Green Building Council

The notion that green building is a process and not just an event is something that is often overlooked. Much like the life cycle of a building, the green building process is one that takes a building from merely a sustainable “vision” to a sustainable structure.

The LEED rating system centers on sustainable operations and providing verification through LEED certification. The first phase in the green building process is called integrated design, which requires a team of professionals who understand that the use of the building, its indoor and outdoor conditions, will vary over its lifetime, and the team must plan for every reasonable contingency.

Will the building be used in the same way forever? Will a coffee shop open on the first floor? Will the ventilation system satisfy the requirements of any potential tenant? The building must perform optimally in a variety of future scenarios. The first phase team will envision, complete and test the building before ushering it into a second phase (i.e., ongoing operations and maintenance) and a new team, with different skills and goals.

LEED drives this integrated approach building by asking teams to identify and simulate the best combination of design strategies for an energy efficient, healthy performing building and occupants. However, the green building process and LEED cannot rely on performance simulations alone – merely simulating building operations will not ensure high performance operations.

The only way to ensure high performance operations is to listen to the building. Operators must collect useful feedback from the building while it is in use and fine-tune all the building systems based on an understanding of the inherent capabilities of the design and the needs of the occupants. Are the occupants comfortable? Or, do the lights stay on far after the last person leaves for the night? Operators should always be asking questions and getting answers – fine-tuning - in order to keep the building performing at its design potential.

Every time a building goes through the tuning process, the design performance information gives the user an idea of how their green building should perform. Operating teams can use the tools that LEED provides – LEED for Existing Buildings, Building Performance Partnership, etc. - to track, benchmark and verify energy use, water use, occupant satisfaction, transportation and other key aspects in ongoing building performance. USGBC empowers the teams that use these tools to fully understand the operating intent of the building, to fix issues they identify, and to educate and inform occupant behavior in their building. The act of collecting and understanding the operating data produced by green buildings and their occupants is the best way to make sure the building continues the green process.

When starting out with LEED, think of each phase of the green building process as a new stage of life; many buildings will experience growing pains, adjustment periods and identity crises. If the building does not receive the attention it needs, its support systems (e.g., ventilation and water systems) may function improperly and the building will suffer. Maintaining awareness of the building’s systems - tracking their ups and downs - is the longest phase of the green building process and should never end. USGBC recognizes that this phase of the green building process is critical to ongoing efficiency and continues to devote time to supporting teams in their operations and maintenance efforts.

Congressional Outlook Uncertain, but Executive Branch Opportunity Abounds

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

There has been a whole lot of negative talk about the prospects for energy, climate or other significant legislation coming out of our newly divided Congress, and that is not the best news for the green building industry. However, this does not imply that green building advocates should pack up and go home – in fact, it means quite the contrary. It turns out that a renewed focus on utilizing the legal authority already granted to federal agencies by Congress could reap huge benefits for architects, engineers, builders, developers, manufacturers and others involved in the green building process.

The shocking size and scope of the United State’s potential energy and water savings were highlighted by a 2010 study on existing authorities held by the executive branch to push efficiency in commercial and multifamily buildings. USGBC commissioned this study with a diverse group of building sector organizations (e.g., the Natural Resources Defense Council, Real Estate Roundtable, and Building Owners and Managers Association).

The findings of this report were clear. There is something, and usually something very impactful, that nearly every agency can do to improve the public and private building stock. The more digging we did into the existing authorities, the more opportunities we discovered to “stoke the fire” of the building industry and its sustainable potential. I wrote about the highlights of the report when it was released, and the opportunities I noted then remain before us—still knocking—today.

In many ways, the sheer quantity of opportunities identified by the report (and sheer size of the report itself) is daunting. Where should the White House, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, etc. start? Which potentially transformative policy must come first?

That’s why the full report was just the beginning of a broader federal push. Over the weeks and months to come, we will be reaching out to our 16,000+ member companies and working with our other partners on the report to generate support for industry- and agency-specific recommendations—ones that are targeted, actionable, and potent. We want to make sure that the voices of our member companies and the larger green building community are heard by the executive branch. We expect to deliver real results from their advocacy and leadership. We have already sent our top three recommendations over to the Department of Energy. Our January 21st memo recommends action on a green real estate appraisal standard, the tax deduction for commercial energy efficient commercial buildings, and loan guarantees for financing retrofits.

And the executive branch is paying attention! The President recently announced the Better Buildings Initiative (BBI) to improve commercial building energy performance, and he touched specifically on two of the three priorities. The BBI calls on Congress to take action but also lays out the steps the Administration is going to take by utilizing their existing authorities to create better buildings, better jobs, and lower energy bills.

By targeting executive branch action— along with continuing to push Congress to make progress on BBI and our other priorities like energy and water efficiency, healthy built environments, livable and walkable communities— we will continue to push forward toward the transformation of the built environment. Elections may change our strategy, but they certainly don’t change our priorities—or our expectations for meaningful results.

From Cutting Edge to Common Practice: How Green Building Rating Systems Contribute to Energy Efficient Building Codes

Jeremy Sigmon, LEED® AP BD+C
Manager, Building Codes Advocacy
U.S. Green Building Council

2010 was a big year for building energy efficiency and state and national codes. The success of the year can be directly traced to decades of familiarity with green building programs as well as nationwide uptake of LEED. After more than 40 years of mere modest improvements in building energy efficiency (looking specifically at the predominant national model energy codes, ASHRAE Standard 90.1 and the IECC), we achieved an approximately 30% efficiency improvement in the last six years and got a first-in-the-nation green building code in our most populous state. Note the U.S. Department of Energy chart below mapping improvements in commercial building energy efficiency since 1975:


It's easy to argue that these efficiency improvements (which are mirrored in comparable efficiency improvements in residential building energy codes) are a product of the natural course of time. But these leaps would have never come to be without the huge groundswell of support from energy efficiency advocates across the country, the organizations coordinating their efforts, and above all a growing vision that we can do better: A lot better.

Bipartisan coalitions and businesses big and small have found common ground in the achievability and affordability of such leaps in efficiency. A closer look reveals a growing consciousness of the ability of buildings and communities to achieve levels of performance beyond the minimum thresholds set in even the most recently updated base building codes and standards. Minimizing pollution and toxicity, reducing vehicular miles traveled, improving water efficiency and incorporating on-site energy from renewable sources are now seen as not only viable but increasingly standard practice in the building industry. In many cases, all of these benefits are realized at no extra cost (especially for the seasoned project team).

Green building rating systems – both the locally developed programs like the nation's first in Austin, Texas or like California-based GreenPoint Rated program and nationally developed and recognized programs like LEED – have had major successes in driving the market to demand better buildings. As early as 2000, LEED building owners were realizing the benefits of higher occupant satisfaction, decreased water and energy use, and the improved marketability of a recognized brand that provides meaningful third-party verification for better building design and construction.

As consumers drove the demand for more and more green real estate, states and local jurisdictions took advantage of the opportunity to showcase the feasibility of these next-generation technologies and methods by demonstrating leadership on public buildings or providing incentives for the private sector to do the same. The climate was right for a handful of jurisdictions to even take the next step and incorporate these rating systems directly into their codes.

And while these intentionally beyond-code, voluntary, third-party verified certification programs were not designed to function like mandatory building codes, the increasing interest in applying them as such initiated the development of a complementary tool intended to raise the floor. By the end of 2006, ASHRAE Standard 189.1 was under development and so was the massive overhaul of the LEED Green Building Rating System, in response to the demand for rating system standardization and a more differentiated value attribution for building measures with greater environmental benefits.

The 2010 release of the International Green Construction Code (jointly released by ICC, USGBC, ASHRAE, AIA, IES and ASTM and including Standard 189.1 as a jurisdictional compliance option) now provides jurisdictions with an adoptable, usable and enforceable code to raise the floor for all buildings. This set of codes and standards is a critical complement in the policy toolbox to green building rating systems, like LEED, that are often adopted to demonstrate leadership in public buildings and for projects seeking government incentives. And while the IGCC was released as a fully published code in March of 2010, later this year we will welcome its 2012 version, and the next version of LEED not long after. We will then look forward to ushering in a new age of improved base codes, integrated green building codes, and next-generation beyond-code green building rating systems like LEED, each working with one another in an important, distinct and complementary manner.

On the road to truly sustainable buildings and communities, it's not a choice between minimum green building codes and beyond-code green building programs. We need both.

The cycle is virtuous. We need rating systems like LEED to continue to serve as the proving ground for technologies, methods, verification protocols, and more aggressive levels of efficiency. As those practices are adopted by market leaders, innovators and building industry pioneers, they too will be incorporated into code books of progressive jurisdictions, which will in turn inform the base codes – the building code, the plumbing code, the mechanical code, the fire code, the zoning code, and so on. Rating systems and green building codes play distinct, complementary and ultimately vital roles on the road to sustainable buildings and communities, and when applied on a broad scale, speed up the conveyor belt of green building information – from groundbreaking and leading-edge to common practice.


We hope you'll join us in embracing both rating systems and codes, both carrots and sticks. We need every tool in the toolbox – particularly the push and pull forces of these separately-intended, but equally important rating systems and codes – to carry out our mission and achieve our vision.

For more on USGBC's work on green building codes, read USGBC's white paper, Greening the Codes.