Green Building Initiative President Testifies Before Congress

Ward Hubbell, president of the Green Building Initiative, a U.S.-based nonprofit whose mission is to accelerate the adoption of green building practices, testified today in support of an open playing field for green building certification in the federal sector, particularly within the General Services Administration (GSA).

In his testimony, Hubbell urged the GSA to reconsider its LEED-only policy, arguing that competition will lead to innovation in the green building sector and citing examples from other government agencies including the State Department and Veterans Administration who have used the Green Building Initiative's Green Globes rating system to assess and certify numerous buildings.

"An open playing field has given several federal agencies much more flexibility to choose an assessment and rating tool that best fits their needs," noted Hubbell. "The American public benefit from competition in the form of reduced government expenditures and enhanced environmental outcomes. Government agencies benefit from competition in the form of better customer service and labor savings. The market benefits by incenting suppliers to improve their product and service offerings and increase value."

Hubbell added that Green Globes is well suited to sustainability assessment needs of federal government agencies because its interactive, web-enabled platform enables a) a cost effective, and practical assessments of large numbers of buildings, b) a mechanism for tracking building environmental performance through time, c) criteria that overlap with a significant portion of the Federal Guiding Principles, and c) a cost effective, credible third party certification option. These are the attributes that have led to the recent high-volume deployment of Green Globes with Veterans Affairs.

The Green Building Initiative is the exclusive licensee of Green Globes, a nationally recognized green building assessment and rating system. The GBI's Green Building Assessment Protocol for Commercial Buildings is now an ANSI standard.

AIA Introduces Tool to Help Architecture Firms Track Predicted Energy Use in Building Projects

As part of the voluntary 2030 commitment program where architecture firms and other entities in the built environment pledge to develop multi-year action plans and implement steps that can advance the American Institute of Architects’ (AIA) goal of carbon neutral buildings by the year 2030, the AIA has unveiled a new tool that generates a report on predicted energy use and project modeling.

“This tool is a valuable resource for architecture firms and will be used on their entire portfolio, not just for projects seeking green building certification,” said AIA President, George H. Miller, FAIA. “The tool was specifically developed to be simple to use and to be used by firms of all sizes on a variety of building types, large and small.”

The Excel-based reporting tool will only require the user to enter project use type (from a drop down menu), gross square footage, (GSF), yes/no questions: Is project Interior only? Is project modeled? and predicted energy use intensity (PEUI).

Based on that information, for modeled projects the tool will automatically calculate the national average site EUI for that project type and the project’s percent reduction from the national average EUI toward meeting the firm’s 2030 goal for the current year (currently 60%). For non-modeled projects, users will enter in the design standard or code and similarly the sheet will calculate the project’s contribution toward the firm’s 2030 commitment.

The excel tool will generate three easy to decipher graphs that aggregate the individually listed active projects within the Excel sheet. These three graphs represent the report that firms will forward to the AIA. The three charts will show a snapshot of the firm portfolio including: the percentage of GSF of active projects meeting the current reduction goal, the percentage of GSF being modeled and percentage of GSF for which the firm will gather actual energy performance.

Firms are asked to track all active design projects for the reporting year, not just ones that are seeking green building certification and the reports developed through the tool are meant to provide a year-to-year look of a firm’s work. Firms of all sizes and building type expertise will use the same tool and report in the same manner.

The tool can be used for any type of building project and was developed through a collaboration between members of the AIA Committee on the Environment, the AIA Large Firm Roundtable, AIA Chicago Chapter Working Group and numerous individuals from AIA member firms.

Building a California for Future Generations

Summit Brings Government, Private Sector Together

From April 7-9, thousands of representatives from California government and the commercial real estate sector will gather in Sacramento for the 2008 Green California Summit and Exposition. The event, developed under the leadership of an advisory board chaired by Secretary of State and Consumer Services Rosario Marin and Secretary of Environmental Protection Linda Adams, is designed to support statewide efforts to build clean and sustainable communities. Read more about the summit on iGreenBuild.com here.