Late last week, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) released their annual agency sustainability scorecards. These scorecards track how...
“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams." Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1927- present, Colombian/global literary phenomenon/Nobel Prize winner)
When I began to prepare last...
As a resident of Idaho’s Wood River Valley, which encompasses the cities of Hailey, Ketchum and Sun Valley, I have been involved with and impressed by the commitment of several local jurisdictions that have adopted above-code ordinances. As co-chair of USGBC’s...
So far this year, USGBC chapters have organized Advocacy Days in 20 states where they take their cause to the capitol, challenging state legislators to support green public policy for the betterment of their districts and their state. I love that picture: well-intentioned groups practicing...
This past month has been a real doozy.
We, here on USGBC National’s advocacy team, got wind that Big Chemical was lobbying the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (SENR) Committee to attach a “poison pill” amendment to popular energy efficiency legislation that would...
What happens when you assemble a prestigious group of private and public building industry experts and ask, “How should the federal government build green?”
First, they will look at you a bit funny for asking an obvious question with such an obvious answer: “LEED, of...
Last Tuesday was an active day for the USGBC Nevada chapter (USGBCNV) at the state capitol in Carson City. USGBCNV members Kelly Thomas, Louis Helton and myself, along with USGBC Legislative Director Bryan Howard, engaged our State Legislators and Executive...
While many building owners and facilities managers understand that the cheapest kilowatthour is the one you don’t consume, most energy efficiency projects leave a lot of energy savings on the table. Retrofits typically compete with strategic investments that are in a company’s main line of...
After last year’s epic USGBC California Road to Greenbuild/ "Top10” Advocacy Day, more than one commentator posed the “how can we top this?” question. It turns out that there was little need to worry. This year’s model,...
Earth Day is just around the corner, and while USGBC believes that every day is Earth Day, we can’t resist packing our schedules with a long list of events to celebrate an opportunity to promote healthy, sustainable buildings. Here are a few of the events we have lined up over the next...
Today, the European Union Parliament rejected a proposal to backload (or postpone) the auctioning of additional credits within the EU Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS). The proposal was aimed to rebalance the supply of credits and stabilize the price of carbon. The rejected vote prompted the...
