Tag: Advocacy and policy

Feature image: 

Last Monday at the University of Southern California, I joined housing policy luminaries, including ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and former Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros, at the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) Housing Commission Forum. The forum is a series of engagements around the country to discuss the need for robust housing policy reform.

read more

Feature image: 

People like to talk about the environment in terms of protecting nature — making sure we don’t pollute or ensuring conservation of natural resources for future generations. That’s a worthy goal; since buildings in the United States account for 39 percent of our carbon emissions, more than industry or transportation, it’s a good place to start if we want to cut emissions.

read more

Feature image: 

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

That’s what General Services Administration (GSA) concluded again on October 25. After a lot of study, the GSA decided that the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED green building rating system can and should be used in government buildings. LEED, it said, advances energy efficiency and saves taxpayers’ money.

read more

Feature image: 

Check out Stuart Kaplow’s Green Building Update to see a highlight of how much LEED does in just one week. Some stand out stats include:

read more

Feature image: 

October is not even 10 days through and it’s already been a great month for greener building codes.  Here are four of this month’s highlights (in reverse chronological order). Thank goodness none of these required any action by the federal government!  One thing seems pretty clear to me: we’re getting a little smarter and more sophisticated about the greening the codes…

read more

Feature image: 

After two weeks of deliberation, the Senate couldn’t advance this important bipartisan bill.

read more

Feature image: 

Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento, Calif., delivered a major national address last Friday at the National Press Club, outlining a blueprint for local leaders to join together and implement solutions to build a more resilient America.

read more

Feature image: 

The USGBC Inland Empire Chapter (USGBC-IE) has been reaching out beyond architects, engineers and builders to low-income communities through its Sustainable and Healthy Community Initiative. This initiative aims to provide green building education and hands-on project experience to underserved communities, and to increase engagement with local programs related to green homes, green schools, green workplaces, and healthy communities.

read more

Feature image: 

Breaking news: On Wednesday, Sept. 11, the Chicago City Council passed the Energy Use Benchmarking and Disclosure Ordinance introduced by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The new ordinance will provide another opportunity for Chicago building owners and tenants to learn about their energy use and work together to lower their costs. In addition, the ordinance sets a strong precedent that will help promote energy benchmarking and energy efficiency measures elsewhere in Illinois.

read more

Feature image: 

It wasn’t easy to pull together state-by-state facts and figures about the strength of our growing green building marketplace. But we did it, thanks to the help and support of all 77 chapters.* We now have at our fingertips—state-by-state and region-by-region—an impressive collection of some of the countless, market-moving highlights of our 50-star studded flag under one green building nation.

With your help, next year we’ll have even better stories to tell. Already…

read more