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 federal agencies are doing in complying with the requirements of Executive Order 13415, which set goals to show reductions on metrics like energy, water and waste in the agencies' operations. The agencies get red, yellow or green to show how they are faring. So what’s new this year? Well, the...

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 Build Better Codes campaign for 2013, I am doing what I can to share my expertise and my community’s story, and also to support the many code advocacy efforts across USGBC’s chapter community. Blaine County adopted...

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 course.” We’ve heard this answer multiple times just this year. What happens when you assemble a group of politicians and lobbyists and ask them the same question? Unfortunately, we’ll have to...

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, PolicyPalooza 2013, was bigger, better and bolder, comprising three full days of meetings, sessions and convening. We began by assembling the morning of the 17th at our headquarters, the aptly named Citizen Hotel, for our annual Day at the Capitol. Over 50 representatives from...

“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 month for my speech at the Colombia Green Building Council’s Urban Sustainability in Action conference, I realized that I was pretty ignorant about Colombia. I knew that the author of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” and the...

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 democracy in its purest form, demanding that their state representatives demonstrate leadership in the critical arenas of economic development, environmental stewardship and the health of their people who...

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 Branch Officials to advance legislative solutions that would equip Nevada businesses with the opportunity to invigorate Nevada's building and construction economy, all while reducing operating expenses. USGBCNV joined other members of the...

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 two weeks. We hope to see you out there. Rachel Gutter, director of the Center for Green Schools, will be joining Stephen Ritz from the Green Bronx Machine and celebrity chef Giada De Laurentiis on NBC’s Today...

E&E Daily reporter Nick Juliano got it right with his article, Supporters of efficiency measure fear amendment backed by chemicals group could be fatal 'Trojan horse.' E&E adeptly calls out the chemical lobby's attempt to ban LEED from use by the federal government via a proposed amendment to the upcoming Shaheen/Portman energy efficiency bill (S.761). The story makes it clear: the federal government's choice for a green building rating system should not be limited by high...

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 ban LEED for use by the federal government. Thanks to the quick action of our chapters and their unrelenting commitment to better, healthier places to live, learn and work, we were able to keep the amendment from...

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 business for a share of capital budget resources. For this reason, capital budget allotments usually inhibit investments in integrated energy efficiency retrofit projects and instead favor single measure...

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 price of credits within the EU ETS to plummet. The European Commissioner for Climate Action, Connie Hedegaard responded to the vote, stating, “The Commission of course regrets that the European Parliament...