LEED Blogger

Tag: Advocacy and policy

  • GSA’s Green Building Advisory Committee Responds “LEED is the Best Choice”

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    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 wait to find out in the coming months.

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  • Nevada Chapter Advocacy Day

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    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.

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  • Metrus Infographic: Which Financing Vehicle Gets You on the Road to Energy Efficiency

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    Metrus Infographic: Which Financing Vehicle Gets You on the Road to Energy Effic

    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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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.

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  • EU Parliament Rejects Carbon Market Solution

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    Photo credit: BR33 via Flickr

    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.

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  • 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.

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  • 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 326

    Dear Senator Whatley,

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  • The Private Sector uses LEED and so should the Federal Government

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    It’s simple, really. There’s nothing else like LEED to advance green building, whether you are a Fortune 100 company or the U.S. General Services Administration. If you’re serious about saving money, saving energy, reducing water, improving indoor air quality, making better material choices, and driving innovation, then LEED is the best choice, bar none. There’s nothing else even close.

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  • Include Household Expenses to Better Assess Borrower’s Ability to Pay

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    Photo by Jay Coble

    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.

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