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Committee of private and public sector leaders says LEED is the best green building tool to meet the goals of the Energy Independence and Security Act.
Category: Policy and Advocacy
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GSA’s Green Building Advisory Committee Recommends LEED for all GSA Buildings
State Legislatures Sow Seeds of Opportunity for Healthy, High-Performing Schools
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Since the beginning of 2013, the Center for Green Schools at the U.S. Green Building Council has followed more than 90 bills across 30 states that seek to advance healthy, high-performing schools. This number is up even from last year, and continues to validate what our movement has long understood – that there’s a lot of common ground around the potential that healthy, high-performing schools provide (see our related advocacy campaign).
Metrus Infographic: Which Financing Vehicle Gets You on the Road to Energy Efficiency
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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 upgrades.
PolicyPalooza 2013 Recap: Three Big Days in Sacramento
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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.
The Greenest Day(s) of the Year
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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.
EU Parliament Rejects Carbon Market Solution
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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.
Good Jobs Green Jobs Conference: Let’s Get to Work
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Let’s Get to Work: Climate Change, Infrastructure and Innovation, the theme of the 6th annual Good Jobs Green Jobs Conference, focuses on how to address the realities of climate change. Hosted in Washington D.C. next week (April 16-18), the conference will bring a diverse group of dynamic speakers and organizations together to discuss how national goals for resiliency and sustainability, and goals to grow our economy and create jobs, are one and the same.
SB 326 Will “Restrict our Collective Ability to Create Healthier, More Energy Efficient Buildings” – Constituent Letter to AL Sen. Whatley
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We love seeing positive support for the benefits of LEED at the national, state and local levels. Here’s a recent example in Alabama:
The Honorable Tom Whatley Room 733
State House
11 South Union Street Montgomery, Alabama 36130
RE: SB 326Dear Senator Whatley,
Include Household Expenses to Better Assess Borrower’s Ability to Pay
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This article was originally posted on americanbanker.com on April 2, 2013
Since the 1930s, when the Federal Housing Administration published its earliest underwriting manuals, mortgage lenders have used a loan applicant’s debt-to-income ratio to measure his or her ability to pay a mortgage loan. But lenders today typically count only a limited basket of loan applicant expenses toward DTI: the new mortgage payment, taxes and insurance and other loan payments.