Author: LEaD Blogger

Policy and Advocacy

A Summit to Explore the Building Blocks of Energy Performance: Data, Data, Data

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The Minneapolis skyline. Photo credit: bradleypjohnson via Flickr

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Finding ways to better share monthly aggregated energy data from utilities to building owners and operators is critical to understanding and improving building performance across our country. But it’s easier said than done, requiring cooperation among local industry stakeholders including building owners, utilities, governments and advocacy groups. On Jan. 24, a group of these stakeholders from across Minnesota gathered in Minneapolis to discuss ways to improve the flow of building data in the state.

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Policy and Advocacy

GSA On the Right Track with Green Buildings and LEED: Now’s Your Chance to Help Them Stay There

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Credit: Texasgopvote.com via flickr

Earlier today, GSA released a request for information (RFI), publicly lauding the value of green building rating systems like LEED and asking for additional input into important issues that could help GSA accelerate and improve its green building work. With the direction laid out in today’s RFI, it looks like GSA is on the right track to continue its success.

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Uncategorized

Public Health Gets a Place at the Design Table

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Imagine a world in which buildings and communities clearly and definitively help to prevent some of our most widespread illnesses, improve our mental health, and strengthen our overall wellbeing. We are now one step closer to this place after this week’s Summit on Green Buildings & Human Health, hosted by the US Green Building Council. If there’s one thing that I took away, it’s the enormous potential of public health professionals joining forces with the green building community to significantly improve human health and wellbeing.

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Uncategorized

Healthy Places are a Human Right

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On Wednesday, I walked into our boardroom at USGBC for our Green Building & Human Health Summit and I got goose bumps. Of the hundred or so folks in the room, many have been with us forever, long-time leaders in the green building movement and I’m always humbled when I’m in their company.

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Policy and Advocacy

Greener Buildings: An Early Priority for 113th Congress

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Chair of Senate Public Works Committee Sends a Strong Signal by Introducing Federal Building Efficiency Bill

On the first day of the 113th Congress, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, sent a strong message about the committee’s focus by introducing several measures, including legislation aimed at promoting energy efficiency in federal buildings.

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LEED

LEED for Neighborhood Development and the 2013 CNU Charter Awards

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Each year the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) recognizes excellence in urban design through its Charter Awards. The program recognizes “outstanding architectural, landscape, and urban designs built in harmony with their physical and social contexts.” Winning projects embody the characteristics walkable, sustainable, and vibrant places at all scales – from vast, interconnected urban regions to well-designed buildings and city blocks.

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LEED

A Reflective Recipe for LEED: A Dash of Archimedes, a Smidge of Mead, a Pinch of Jobs…

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There have been many before us who have provided insight into the formula for creating positive change, paving the road through action and articulating ideas that catalyze and lessons that ignite. Their contributions resonate today and continue to instill in us the feeling and spirit of what’s needed to successfully drive market transformation.

Reflecting on some of these ideas, I’ve put together my recipe of great thinking that in many ways has influenced, guided, propelled or inspired LEED and its remarkable, flexible, market-based approach to creating change.

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