Michelle Moore

CEO at Groundswell

Michelle Moore is CEO of Groundswell, a nonprofit that builds community power to connect low and moderate income communities with clean energy through place-based programs in equitable community solar, affordable wind power, and energy efficiency.

A social entrepreneur and former White House official with roots in rural Georgia, Michelle is a relentless agent for change. Her accomplishments range from helping build the global green building movement to leading the sustainability team for the Obama Administration.

What does the sustainability movement look like from the perspective of economic equity? You might measure your response in how much affordable housing is LEED certified, or whether there’s a cost premium for green. But if you’re a family living in poverty paying 10 percent of your total income for dirty power, is the promise of sustainability accessible to you?

That’s the question facing an estimated 16 million Americans who are paying more than 10 percent of their household income for electricity. The reality today is that working families pay more to keep the lights on despite falling prices and growing affordable clean-energy options. This burden isn’t uniformly shared by region or by race. Forty-six percent of all households with high energy burdens are in the South, and 50 percent of all families struggling with disproportionately high power bills are African American. In many cities, the challenge is even more acute. In Jacksonville, Florida, for example, 14.5 percent of households living in poverty are paying $200 or more per month for electricity. So what can we do?

First, it’s important to understand that, while good public policy is an essential part of the solution, it’s not the only answer. There’s an important leadership role for the market, too, because new clean energy technologies tend to follow typical technology adoption curves. The visionaries behind LEED understood this dynamic for sustainable building practices, which has been fundamental to USGBC’s successful strategy for market transformation. New clean energy technologies debut at the upper end of the market and are purchased by early adopters who can afford the premium. Then, as adoption grows, prices come down, and the once-new technology becomes economically accessible to everyone.

The thing is, energy isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. We can’t afford the social cost of waiting for the benefits of affordable clean energy to trickle down to those in need.

Nearly 50 percent of America hasn’t been able to switch to solar because they are struggling financially and don’t qualify for financing, don’t own their roof, or don’t have a roof in the right location. Community solar radically expands access to affordable clean energy by allowing anyone to purchase locally produced solar power from a centrally located solar array.

Today, there are only about 100 community solar projects in operation around the country, but that number is about to boom. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, community solar is on its way to becoming the single largest source of distributed renewable energy in America—outpacing rooftop solar and providing an up to $8 billion investment opportunity. The problem is that most community solar models have the same barriers to access as rooftop solar.

Groundswell is developing an equitable community solar program that works for working families—complementing market leadership with nonprofit innovation. Through our partnership with Sustainable Capital Advisors, the model takes consumer credit scores off the table as an obstacle. It’s one among a growing vanguard of solutions that will give everyone a seat at the abundant clean-energy table.

Community solar promises to be a game changer that means your next green building project could provide access to affordable clean energy to your neighbors who need it most.

LEED ON,

PREVIOUS | NEXT

Anne Hidalgo

Mayor of Paris and Co-host of the Climate Summit for Local Leaders

Climate change endangers people’s health and poses serious economic threats. Yet by protecting the environment, we not only invest in the future but we also bring immediate public health and economic benefits. By acting boldly to address the perils of climate change, cities can improve millions of lives today—and build a safer, healthier future for the generations to come.

Cities around the world are taking the lead in the battle against climate change, and, in doing so, are determining the course of our planet’s future. Cities are more agile than national governments—cities have immediacy in their relationship to the impacts of climate change. They can take bolder actions and can see the benefits of climate action directly.

Here in Paris we introduced a Climate Action Plan unanimously approved by the Council of Paris in 2007, updated in 2012, committing our city to decrease its overall emissions by 75 percent in 2050 compared to 2004. In this perspective, Paris implements ambitious programs of construction of green buildings and retrofitting of municipal and privately owned buildings, as part of a major energy saving initiative.

On transportation, Paris is expanding Autolib’, an electric car sharing system inspired by the success of the Parisian bicycle sharing system Velib’. Our city also announced a major plan to ban diesel cars from Paris by 2020 and an adaptation and resilience strategy for 2015 through 2020.

City leaders have already emerged through their commitment to the Compact of Mayors and their participation in COP21 at the Climate Summit for Local Leaders hosted by the City of Paris and Michael Bloomberg, UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change. The Summit built on the ideas and efforts of the Compact of Mayors, which was established in 2014 by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and Michael Bloomberg, in partnership with city-networks, to create pathways for a data driven framework for reducing local greenhouse gas emissions, enhancing resilience to climate change, while tracking their progress transparently. Currently more than 460 cities around the world are committed to the Compact of Mayors representing over five percent of the global population.

The Climate Summit for Local Leaders was instrumental in providing mayors from all over the world who are taking action in their community with the opportunity to come together to collaborate on policy, public engagement strategies and professional development to promote sustainability and progressive leadership. As a result, these leaders went back to their communities with a stronger commitment to implementing climate solutions, setting targets, and measuring progress.

As we turn toward implementing the Paris Agreement, we must recognize that climate change represents an urgent and potentially irreversible threat to society and the planet and requires the largest possible cooperation by all countries and the greatest possible action by all cities.

We also need to make sure mayors continue to look outward, to commit to the Compact of Mayors and work with cities near and far to reach the emissions standards set by the Paris Agreement and help to fill the gaps left by national commitments.

Our world faces many serious environmental challenges. We can meet them—but only if we act now.

LEED ON,

PREVIOUS | NEXT

Roger Platt

U.S. Green Building Council

In early December, some of the brightest minds in government, business, and civil society gathered in Paris to discuss perhaps the greatest threat of our time: climate change. At the COP21 talks, USGBC’s voice was central in showcasing green buildings as critical solutions to climate change, and I was honored to lead our delegation to the conference.

COP21 was about more than a commitment to change or a concern for the environment, it was about leadership and transformation, two concepts we are very familiar with at USGBC.

In the months preceding the negotiations, we called on our base of member companies, many of which operate in industries or sectors directly impacted by the effects of climate change, to come together as one voice in support of a global agreement in Paris. More than 150 major companies, a third of which are USGBC members, signed on to the American Business Act on Climate Pledge. Additionally, a growing number of companies in our sector joined the Building and Real Estate Climate Declaration, a collaborative effort among USGBC, the Carbon Leadership Forum, and Ceres, spotlighting the role of green building in climate action.

USGBC was proud to partner with the National League of Cities, the World Wildlife Fund, and ICLEI to support a contingent of mayors from cities and towns across the U.S. who proactively address and mitigate climate impacts. The voices of these local leaders were heard on the international stage in France, and their efforts provided examples of the power and purpose of leadership on every level.

COP21 concluded with 195 countries signing on to the Paris Agreement, marking the broadest global consensus on the need for individual and collective actionon climate change to date. At USGBC, we continue to advance green building as a viable solution to the monumental challenge of climate change mitigation. Studies show that green buildings measurably reduce greenhouse gas emissions from water consumption, solid waste, and transportation, as compared to conventional buildings. Moreover, green buildings are designed and built with the full life cycle in mind and actively influence inhabitants in ways that support the climate.

Our commitment to climate action focuses on large-scale transformation. Specifically, we have pledged to scale up to support the LEED certification of more than 5 billion square feet of real estate over the next five years. Additionally, we will work to support the adoption of EDGE as a key tool for energy efficiency in developing countries.

We will work to expand non-English educational offerings. We will use the holistic LEED framework to boost net-zero building programs. And we’ll support carbon reductions through better integration of demand-side technologies and supply-side modernization, including the application of the Performance Excellence in Electricity Renewal (PEER) system.

There has never been a more critical moment for our industry to lead and to transform the status quo into something greater. Two decades ago, green building was a vision for the future; today it is a reality across the country and around the globe. It is a tool we can leverage for a still greater good. The challenge of climate change mitigation demands our best ideas, our best intentions, and our best efforts, and the green building industry is poised to respond.

LEED ON,

PREVIOUS | NEXT

Rick Fedrizzi

CEO and founding chair
U.S. Green Building Council

In our world, there is very little that is permanent. And as the world around me inevitably changes, I’ve discovered that the single thing that tends to last is the power of an idea.

That doesn’t mean an idea is static. Rather, we constantly tinker with the environment in which it sits so that we can nurture it to full flower. And there is no better example of this than all the changes we’re undergoing at USGBC.

Across the globe, LEED is booming. We’ve registered and certified 14 billion square feet in more than 150 countries precisely because we’ve kept evolving the rating system to take advantage of the changes in process and products that the green building movement has inspired.

And that’s led to changes in the tools we have deployed. Few things were more analog than the three-ring binders that held the documentation of the first LEED projects. Now we have not only a richly functional LEED Online project management platform, but we also have the LEED Dynamic Plaque that can serve as a performance management tool to help building owners and managers continuously improve a building’s performance.

It’s also become clear that the world now needs to aggregate building performance across entire portfolios and encompass other aspects such as landscape and human wellness and comfort. So we’ve significantly expanded GBCI’s portfolio to now include credentialing and certification for SITES and WELL, and we’ve added data and financial reporting tools such as GBIG and GRESB, bringing in new audiences and broadening our reach.

This has been the pivot that has caused us to think of ourselves more as the NGO version of a B-Corp than a traditional nonprofit, because we’re constantly changing and adding to the ways we fund our work— whether it’s green schools, green affordable housing, or a LEED Platinum children’s center in Haiti. At the same time, we’re partnering with the business community in ways that are expanding their top lines and improving their bottom lines, permanently shifting the sustainability conversation from the pages of the CSR report to the 10K of annual reports.

We’re also evolving our organizational structure. We’ve just completed the process of changing our governance by seating our first-ever Advisory Council, made up of members of our 2015 Board of Directors, and electing a new board slate whose experience and expertise better reflect the needs of the far-reaching organization we are becoming. We’re also changing how our army of volunteers is structured as we complete the evolution of our chapter network and deploy ADVANCE.

And I’m part of the change, too, as I announced my intention to step down as CEO of USGBC and GBCI at the end of 2016. I’ll spend much of next year working closely with Mahesh Ramanujam, who will take over as CEO of USGBC and GBCI in January of 2017, as well as with the amazing USGBC and GBCI teams all over the globe.

All of these changes are intentional, undertaken to help us evolve and adapt, so we can grow and thrive. Because what will never change is our commitment to the powerful idea on which our mission is founded: green buildings and communities for everyone within this generation.

LEED ON,

PREVIOUS | NEXT

Majora Carter

President, MCG Consulting

No matter how good you believe your product, your idea, your policy, or even how good you think your intentions are, it doesn’t matter if nobody is “buying” it. There are tried-and-true ways of getting people to buy things and “educating” folks is far down the list. Relationship building continues to be a leading strategy in the foreseeable future, so let’s work with it!

Serving on the Board of USGBC for four years, I was able to see its good products, ideas, policies, and intentions firsthand. But I come from the South Bronx, and my consulting firm works in the “South Bronx” you find in every city around the world: “low status” communities where good intentions have come and gone for generations, producing less than expected results.

People debate why that is: not enough money, spending on the wrong things, insufficient community education; and all of them are probably correct.

Whatever success my company has achieved is based on principles used in nearly every successful commercial product launch: identifying and developing a market that demands what you have. Otherwise it doesn’t make any difference how good that product is. It’s that simple.

But nothing simple is ever easy. As U.S. reurbanization gains momentum, increasing pressures on real estate development affect people at all levels of influence and income. How we engage communities with USGBC’s gospel of Environmental Equality now— during these pivotal years of geographic transition from sprawl to density—will be a continuing factor in the level of demand for that which USGBC has to offer.

The first step is an initiative we use called Advisory Boards: a collection of local people curated to avoid the usual suspects who often come with preconceptions and motivations based on funders’ jargon and assumptions about what poor people “should” want, or get, or deserve.

Advisory Boards in this context are meant to collect real concerns among the broader community and generate fresh ideas by bringing together disparate voices within a geographic area comprised of business owners, residents, and local influencers.

USGBC is taking a leading role in the development of its long-term market viability by supporting this kind of relationship with amazing communities in Philadelphia, Baltimore, Detroit, Los Angeles, and on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota.

Once you build real relationships with people who are motivated to improve their communities, the potential demand for your product can be detected in a more accurate way. Then, you launch a beta version of your offerings, learn from how people react, refine, reiterate, and expand.

When you market from a position of mutual self-interests, your chances of effective and ongoing engagement improve dramatically and can leverage any resources that might otherwise meet the typical deadends that plague philanthropic sectors in all markets.

I am different than many of my peers in the urban and building design worlds, and I’m also set apart from most of the people in the community where I was raised and continue to live, work, and invest in.

My experiences in both worlds are coming together in ways that give me so much hope for how USGBC and the United States can effectively develop market demand for environmental equality in ways that none of us can predict—but all of us will benefit from.

LEED ON,

PREVIOUS | NEXT

Brendan Owens

chief of engineering, USGBC

A few years ago I was chatting with a new USGBC employee who had just joined us in a senior leadership position. We had just wrapped up a meeting about something or other and this new leader was explaining how excited they were to be working at USGBC. I get to hear that a fair amount— people like to work here and we do inspiring, important work with really fun, smart people. But the next statement they made blindsided me. It was something to the effect of “and I’m so happy to be at this place in such early days—this organization has so much potential.”

I didn’t know what to say. Had they missed the memo that LEED had fundamentally changed the construction industry? In less than a decade! In 150 countries! And 10+ billion square feet!

Sometimes the prideful, automatic reaction is the exact wrong one. The hard truth of it is that we’ve got a long, long, long way to go. In the face of the causal role that the buildings industry plays in global calamities like climate change, resource scarcity, biodiversity loss, drought—the list goes on—it’s fundamentally irresponsible to look backward and think that our job is done. It was a humbling lesson that I’ve tried very hard to carry with me ever since.

This issue of USGBC+ is about past success to be sure, of which these examples are but a few of thousands we could have chosen. But more importantly it’s about how these buildings must be a catalyst for an even more rapid, effective, and inclusive revolution of the built environment.

I have a semi-tortured relationship with at least one of the projects we’ve chosen to highlight. Back when I joined USGBC as staff, we didn’t have very many options in terms of case studies that we could present during trainings about LEED. As such, I have, if the rough calculations I just made are correct, spoken about aspects of the Phillip Merrill Environmental Center almost 350 times in the last 15 years. Needless to say, it got kind of stale. But seeing it here is like visiting with an old friend (a friend who, in hindsight, turns out to have been more of a professor and mentor than drinking buddy) and it brings me joy.

So enjoy these case studies of the transformative work that your colleagues in this movement are responsible for— but don’t enjoy them as memorials to great work. Enjoy them as gauntlet’s thrown directly in your face as a dare to create something better. Draw inspiration from them, but more importantly draw motivation from them and then go and do it better.

USGBC’s best days, in my opinion, are the days when we work to make ourselves obsolete. The idea that we’ll look back on these buildings as artifacts of a bygone era may seem preposterous, but that time will come. We’ll look at them as buildings that used more energy than they produced or polluted rather than cleaned water and that is thrilling to me, and existential for those who come after us. So while we want to—and should celebrate what we’ve achieved, let’s also use it as a place to demarcate where we jumpstart what’s next and the future that we’re counting on you to deliver.

LEED ON,

Brendan Owens

PREVIOUS | NEXT

Andy Cohen, FAIA

Co-CEO, Gensler

As we approach Gensler’s 50th anniversary, we look back at many important and transformational collaborations with global-shift thinkers. In particular, we celebrate our tremendous partnership with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). USGBC’s tools are integral components to our firm’s everyday practice, which currently includes more than 800 LEED certified projects and nearly 1,300 LEED Accredited Professionals.

Whether we’re designing a new workplace interior for an up-and-coming law firm, or finishing one of the world’s tallest high-rises in the Shanghai Tower, the sustainable design partnership with USGBC has been extremely valuable to Gensler and our clients. The Shanghai Tower broke various records and far exceeds expectations for design excellence and user experience—but its LEED Gold target was a vital measure of success from the project’s inception.

Our founder, Art Gensler, was instrumental in the dialogue that gave birth to many of the green building programs that have become a cornerstone of the industry. Since then, our firm has partnered with many developers and investors to realize the life cycle value of LEED as a return on investment tool. This tradition of engagement will continue in the 21st century as we focus on elevating design performance for the direct benefit of our clients and our communities. LEED’s value is easy to justify: It helps us quantify meaningful and measurable performance opportunities by guiding our clients from where they are now to where they want to be.

Today, business is evolving more rapidly than ever and our world is becoming increasingly complex. To address this, we need a more comprehensive way of understanding the changing global economy and adapting to it. Where do we go next? After many conversations among our global leadership and teams, we believe the next opportunities in sustainability lie in resilient communities and net-zero design—two vital arenas that address global climate and demographic and resource shifts in order to transcend the building efficiencies of today. These aspirations for zero energy, as well as water conservation and waste reduction design, are embraced by the new USGBC offerings.

In addition, Gensler’s robust research program and its client engagements around the globe are making strides toward a healthy workplace—building people-centered places and creating regenerative urban environments through a new level of collaboration. Emerging metrics and perpetual feedback will help Gensler unlock hidden environmental, social, and economic value and make the holistic goals of our clients achievable. The community that USGBC as well as Global Green Building Councils have heralded is imperative to the growth and education of a design community that is proactively anticipating the needs of the global population and our planet.

Our commitment to these passionate stewards of the environment and quality of life remains steadfast. It’s a mission we all share.

LEED ON,

Andy Cohen

PREVIOUS | NEXT

ANTWI A. AKOM

Professor at San Francisco State University and co-founder of (I-SEEED)

I recently gave a TEDx talk on Mastering TAO. Not TAOism in terms of Eastern philosophy—although, in some ways, yin and yang are a part of it—but in this case TAO stands for Turning Adversity into Opportunity. I call the people, places, and policies that have mastered the art of Turning Adversity into Opportunity “Hope Dealers.”

Hope Dealers ask questions like: What kinds of public and private investments in green infrastructure can help us innovate our way out of poverty? How are our ghettos, slums, and barrios hotbeds of green innovation? What is the role of so-called “slum dwellers” in the future of green cities and in building the green economy? And how can we change the negative narrative of “slum dwellers” so that they can be seen for who and what they are—everyday people and community members—not slums, but neighborhoods with families living, working, playing, praying, loving, living, eating, drinking, walking, biking, and taking their kids to and from school.

These are important questions because the fastest-growing cities are not skyscraper cities like Dubai, Singapore, Shanghai—places that try to make poverty invisible in order to attract investment—but rather informal settlements, ghettos and slums, where poor people typically face inadequate housing structures, enormous environmental health hazards, land use rights, safety threats, vulnerability, and social exclusion.

An estimated one billion people live in slums all over the world. These communities are often beyond city planning and regulation, and account for more than 30 percent of the developing world’s urban population. This means 1 in 7 people on the planet are experiencing spatial—and to a certain extent 20^th-century remnants of racial apartheid.   The most formidable challenge of the 21^st-century city, then—in the face of massive population growth, climate change, and rapid urbanization—is extending public–private partnerships and green infrastructure solutions—clean energy, water, sanitation, parks, protected pathways, greenways, busways, health services, LEED, and especially LEED for Neighborhood Development— to these informal settlements.

Mastering TAO and understanding how slums and ghettos can be transformed into hot,beds of green innovation are critical for the U.S. Green Building Council, EcoDistricts, Urban Land Institute, Energy Star, and others who want to grow and fulfill their promise of “democratizing development” (without displacement) and “scaling sustainability.” Because if these organizations want to remain green global leaders, they will have to make their tools, products, and resources more culturally and community responsive to the fastest-growing demographics and the fastest-growing cities that are becoming the world’s major commercial centers of the 21st century.  In other words, “Greening the Ghetto” as my friend and MacArthur Genius Award winner Majora Carter’s inspiring call to action suggested many years ago—is the next frontier.

If Greening the Ghetto 2.0 is the next frontier it is because the challenges of rapid urbanization and advances in technology offer new opportunities for communities to engage with planning and development from the ground up. The necessity to innovate our way out of poverty is clear. In slums and ghettos innovation is a lifeline for these communities, not about business opportunities or gentrifying physical spaces.It’s life and death. It’s about moving from surviving to thriving. The shift from viewing “folks in the ‘hood” as a billion problems to the power of a billion potential solutions is the first step in revolutionizing community transformation.  Rather than finding ways to further exclude and make these “popup” communities more invisible, mastering TAO requires creative engagement, inclusion, and shared respect.

That’s what happened in Medellin, Colombia, which has to be one of the most remarkable green urban redemption projects in modern history.  Just 20 years ago the name Medellin, ruled by the infamous cocaine drug lord Pablo Escobar, was synonymous with “murder capital of the world.”  Today, Medellin is internationally recognized for its carbon reduction, stunning botanical gardens, library, parks, and innovative public transportation systems. What made all of this possible? The municipal government now spends 85 percent of its $2.2 billion on infrastructure and services for the poorest parts of the city. Strong government financial and policy commitment has spurred investment and public–private partnerships to such an extent that Medellin was awarded the Most Innovative City in the World by ULI, the Wall Street Journal, and Citigroup in 2013.

Pune, India, is another example of innovation out of poverty. In the Yerwada slum upgrade-design, incremental housing strategies allowed shantytowns to be replaced with one-, two-, and three-story single and multifamily townhouses. A key innovation was their culturally aware use of space where small—150 to 250 sq ft—felt bigger by building vertically instead of horizontally and enabling extended families to stay together. 
But the real magic was how everyday people in Pune were the Hope Dealers who drove the urban redesign processes from community mobilization to designing of re-blocking plans and upgrading of homes, to negotiations with city governments around building regulations and delivery of basic social services.  More recently, Pune has switched from using private contractors and trucks for waste management to using informal unions of self-employed waste pickers who hand sort the city’s garbage.  In ghettos and slums this type of arrangement can raise waste pickers’ income, improve quality of life in the slum, save the city money, and reduce landfill and pollution all at the same time.

What can we learn from these examples?  Government leaders in Pune, and across the world in places like Portland, Detroit, Dakar, Denver, Atlanta, Amsterdam, San Francisco, Oakland, Sydney, Cairo, Cape Town, New York, London, and Paris have indicated that the biggest obstacle to slum upgrading, development without displacement, and green building design is the lack of diverse community engagement platforms.

Mastering the art of Turning Adversity into Opportunity through culturally and community responsive technology platforms is a new and resurgent solution that will help democratize how we produce, consume, and solve social problems. Community- driven technology has the power to transform the way we do business, build community, and accelerate sustainable neighborhood development from the ground up.  It is the missing link in green and healthy built environment conversations, and is central to the concept of building healthy, resilient, and vibrant communities.  Amidst the white noise of creating and maintaining sustainable buildings and communities, TAO is emerging as the only solution that is big, global, and will impact every element of what we do—now and in the future.

Democratizing data and decisionmaking in our ghettos and slums shows that it is possible to solve the world’s greatest social problems—like poverty and global warming—by unleashing what best-selling author Lisa Gansky calls “people-poweredcommunities.”  And through the power of collaboration Hope Dealers show that it’s possible to govern ourselves, build a green economy, and create meaningful lives together. We can have development without displacement, social equity, clean energy, green healthy schools, and sustainable employment and economic development for everyone.  Hope Dealers understand what some of us too often forget—the age-old axiom that we are much stronger together than we are alone. So be a Hope Dealer.

LEED ON,

Antwi  Akom

PREVIOUS | NEXT

Mahesh Ramanujam

Chief Operating Officer, USGBC, president, GBCI

The U. S. Green Building Council (USGBC) has been established for 22 years, and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for 15. As we travel around the globe, we hear one consistent message from our leaders: “USGBC is leading the way.” LEED, our tool for market transformation, is used in more than 150 countries and has helped create a trillion dollar industry. USGBC and LEED continue to serve as inspiration for many green building councils and green building rating systems around the world.

USGBC has been able to realize this phenomenal success by associating equal emphasis on the development and implementation of LEED. While USGBC focused on the development aspects of LEED, Green Building Certification Institute (GBCI) began focusing completely and singularly on LEED implementation in 2008. In the past six years, GBCI has accelerated the growth, adoption, and implementation of LEED.

From my past experience with IBM and Lenovo, I know very well that to stay relevant in today’s global landscape, an organization must focus and scale its core competency. In 2013, our board of directors gave me and Rick Fedrizzi, CEO of GBCI, the mandate to “enhance the performance continuum.” Our response to this mandate was a three-step strategy: (1) Continue to focus on capacity building, (2) Create access to a wide variety of markets, and (3) Create significant value to the community, both perceived and actual.

First, GBCI has developed strategic partnerships with Canada, Korea, and Sweden green building councils, in addition to Green Building Japan. We also have established a global strategic partnership with Bureau Veritas (BV) allowing access to their certification capacity in about 100 countries around the world. The Energy Resources Institute (TERI) will help GBCI in India and the Southeast Asia region. These partnerships will focus on establishing regional and local capacity for certification, credentialing, education, and building performance.

Second, in addition to LEED, GBCI also will become the exclusive certification and credentialing provider for the WELL, Performance Excellence in Electricity Renewal (PEER), Sustainable Sites, and Green Garage Certification standards. Through these engagements, GBCI is able to extend its core competency to new sectors like health, wellness, electricity, microgrids, green parking garages, sustainable land design, and development.

Third, GRESB was added to the GBCI portfolio in September 2014. Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) provides the same kind of transparency into the sustainability performance of global real estate holdings as LEED provides to a building. For the first time, there is an asset to portfolio sustainability measurement solution for the world’s largest asset class.

By integrating the LEED Dynamic Plaque, which delivers a live LEED performance score for a building; and GBIG, which provides insights into a green building; into GRESB, GBCI will establish the next generation platform for demonstrating actual and perceived value of green buildings and communities. This is the future.

Recently, I heard a Michelangelo quote in one of our member meetings: “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.”

I am grateful that USGBC and GBCI are aiming high with our goals for market transformation. “Everyone in a green building within this generation” is our target, and I have no doubt—with our entire green building community leading us from the front—we will achieve our mark.

LEED ON,

Mahesh Ramanujam

PREVIOUS | NEXT

Harriet Tregoning

Director of HUD’s Office of Economic Resilience

Traditionally, the word “community” conjures the notion of a small geographic area: a city block or small neighborhood, where you might enjoy a potluck at the local recreation center or get together with your neighbors to do an alley cleanup.

More and more, however, changes in the way we interact with one another—as well as our recognition of common interests—are redefining the term community into something that morphs those geographic boundaries. These days, we are just as likely to think of our online communities the same as we are about our next door neighbors when we consider those who share common characteristics and have mutual interests. Likewise, when addressing the community-scale challenges of the 21st century, we are not bound by the solutions discovered in our own zip code.

To build resilient communities—to prepare for climate change, to make critical infrastructure decisions, and to establish new physical and business models—we must plan, develop, and invest at different scales and, often, outside our neighborhood or jurisdictional boundaries.

Not only do we have the ability to use the strengths and tools developed in communities to effect change at different scales, but we also have the obligation to do so. Many of the fundamental building blocks for a healthy and resilient community—reliable transportation, a clean and dependable energy supply, healthy schools, healthy and affordable housing, robust opportunities for employment and economic development—can’t be tackled by one zip code or census block at a time and operate at a regional scale.

At the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Economic Resilience, we are working with communities and regions around the country to find new ways to apply the criteria of sustainability, health, and resilience in public investments and apply those decisions across city, county, and even state lines. By replicating successes at scale, we will not only be able to leverage strategies to conserve resources, but also will better prepare ourselves for future challenges. HUD will also be a step closer to succeeding in its mission of creating strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) continues to be a critical voice and resource for how green and healthy physical development is core to the concept of resilient communities. Their Center for Green Schools is transforming the places where we learn; and empowering children, scholars, and teachers to act as community and environmental stewards. Their Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system provides a toolkit and a blueprint for building and maintaining sustainable buildings, and LEED for Neighborhood Development program looks beyond individual buildings to green neighborhoods, measuring everything from walkability to green infrastructure.

USGBC’s solutions for healthy and resilient communities work at different scales—from a single shop at the town center to an entire neighborhood, which provides many entry points, tools, and resources for communities wherever they are along their journey to sustainability and resiliency.

It is harder to cross property, neighborhood, and jurisdictional boundaries to address the critical issues that confront us, but we find we must match our approach to the scale of the problem. Together, our collective efforts can transform our communities—whatever their scale—into more vibrant, diverse, economically competitive, and resilient places.

LEED ON,

Harriet Tregoning

PREVIOUS | NEXT