Green building has emerged over the past decade as a robust movement to create high-performance, energy-efficient structures that improve occupant comfort and well-being while minimizing environmental impacts. Supported by organizations such as the U.S. Green Building Council and its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, both public and private entities are increasingly pursuing green buildings in the institutional, commercial, and residential sectors. While this progress is impressive, for a number of reasons it has not included significant numbers of affordable housing projects. These reasons, several of which are unique to affordable housing, include: an almost exclusive focus on "first costs," the existence of per unit cost caps, regulatory rigidity that limits green innovation, and a finance system that fails to recognize the long-term value of green investments.

The Rutgers Center for Green Building promotes green building through research, education and training, and partnerships with industry, government and not-for-profit agencies.

Late last week, Councilman Curtis Jones and Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown introduced legislation that would modify the 10-year property tax abatement of new constructions, conversions and big improvements so that it would be contingent upon obtaining LEED certification.

With any new industry, there will be issues and conflicts that must be resolved.  The green building industry is no different.  Through Green Building Law Update, I aim to point out the problematic regulations and industry trends that are ripe for litigation (i.e. LEEDigation) in order to hopefully prevent some of these issues and conflicts from arising.

Philadelphia, PA — A comprehensive plan to make our nation’s buildings more efficient could save enough energy by 2030 to power all of the nation’s cars, homes and businesses for a year and a half, while saving Americans more than $500 billion, according to a new report by PennEnvironment. These findings offer a preview of what Pennsylvania could achieve by adopting green building policies, such as the statewide green building code proposed by Governor Rendell in February, and the many policies being pushed by state and local officials who joined PennEnvironment in releasing the report.

Given the increasing interest in sustainability within the academy, government, and the private sector, it is important to know the extent to which steps currently being taken towards sustainability differ from place to place. Namely, this paper seeks to determine the existence of a spatial pattern in the implementation of the U.S. Green Building Council's (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. For example, is green energy used more often in one part of the country, or is water conservation practiced more heavily in one region? Variation among the implementation of various LEED certification categories and variation across space were both considered and found to be statistically significant. Variation among categories is more pronounced than variation among regions, especially when the most spatially specific subcategories are isolated and considered. Altogether, this study underscores the importance of place in the growing green building field, and underlines the need for more spatially sensitive certification standards.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards of the non-profit US Green Building Council have become the accepted benchmark for designating “green buildings” in the USA and many other countries. Throughout their 10-year history, the standards have remained flexible, changing with input from designers, builders, environmentalists, and others to incorporate new types of buildings and modify the existing standards to make them more geographically, economically, and functionally sensitive. In this article, I examine through an urban political ecology lens how the LEED standards help to produce a particular kind of built environment. Political ecology has broadened from its origins in the cultural ecology of the developing world to include urban and industrialised environments. In recent years, work in this area has focused on hybridity and socio-nature to explore the ways that urban environments are constructed and maintained through biological, political, and economic processes. In this article, I show how the LEED standards and the green buildings and built environments they help to produce are hybrids of material objects and human practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Local Environment is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Highlighting research on the costs, benefits and attributes of green building that are transforming the market.

One of the most important attempts to reduce the environmental impacts of the built environment is through the construction of green buildings. This article examines the geography of the emerging green building industry through a study of the spatial distribution of two different elements of that industry. The first element is the location and diffusion of green buildings themselves as certified by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) through their Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. There is a clear shift from an original concentration in major coastal cities to a more even distribution across the country, with broad representation across commercial, public, and nonprofit owners. The second area of study is the spatial distribution of LEED-accredited professionals, who are accredited by the USGBC to oversee the certification process. The distribution of these professionals matches existing concentrations of population, suggesting two different geographies of building green.

Livagreen is a design consortium for achitects, urban designers, environmentalists, planners, and citizens intended to: provide information to those interested in land use and transportation planning; and build bridges between academia and professional practice using theoretical and practical frameworks of sustainable, systems-oriented environmental design. Thank you for your interest. Feel free to contact us if you have inquiries, suggestions, thoughts, or creative ideas.

GreenBiz.com™ is the flagship website of Greener World Media, the world's first and only mainstream media company focused exclusively on sustainability and the competitive edge it brings to businesses. Founded by green business pioneer Joel Makower and B-to-B publishing veteran Pete May, Greener World Media also produces:

Greener World Media's Web sites and newsletters, led by GreenBiz.com®, are designed to serve professionals and opinion leaders across a broad range of industries and job functions. We aim to provide clear, concise, accurate, and balanced information, resources, and learning opportunities to help companies of all sizes and sectors integrate environmental responsibility into their operations in a manner that supports profitable business practices.

The LEED green building certification system is the preeminent program for rating the design, construction and operation of green buildings. 35,000 projects are currently participating in the LEED system, comprising over 4.5 billion square feet of construction space in all 50 states and 91 countries.

The LEED for Neighborhood Development Rating System integrates the principles of smart growth, urbanism and green building into the first national system for neighborhood design. LEED certification provides independent, third-party verification that a development's location and design meet accepted high levels of environmentally responsible, sustainable development. LEED for Neighborhood Development is a collaboration among USGBC, the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The International Code Council, a membership association dedicated to building safety and fire prevention, develops the codes used to construct residential and commercial buildings, including homes and schools. Most U.S. cities, counties and states that adopt codes choose the International Codes developed by the International Code Council.

The Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC) released a new report, Building Green: Overcoming Barriers in Philadelphia, that identifies obstacles to green building in Philadelphia and recommends solutions to dissolving those barriers.

Shari Shapiro is an attorney and LEED Accredited Professional. Ms. Shapiro focuses her practice on green building law, which includes sustainable project financing, regulatory drafting, land use approvals, contracts, and conflict resolution. Ms. Shapiro is the Sustainability Coordinator for Obermayer’s Sustainability Initiative.

Green Options Media’s rapidly growing network of environmentally-focused blogs provides users with a broad spectrum of information for making sustainable choices. Launched in February, 2007, Green Options Media has grown into a leader among “green” news and information sources aimed at general audiences.