28,000 people traveled to Phoenix to attend Greenbuild in the midst of a major economic downturn! What is going on?
Well, the messages seemed clear:
- Even though the overall market is down, there is a lot of activity and growth in the "green space".
- As the markets come back, green will be much more prevalent in regulations, projects, and market demand.
- What started as a focus of USGBC on making individual buildings "green" has now morphed to include:
- community scale development and re-development
- widespread public policy (at local, state, and national levels – around the world)
- climate change reductions (both mitigation and adaptation)
- green products and green supply chains
- transportation modes and policies
- green best practices for corporate sustainability.
- » In other words, green is spreading out to encompass the entire real estate economy (and beyond).
- Even as innovations continue, the green industry has become "mainstream" ... no longer the purview of early adopters and environmental organizations, but widely embraced across many industries and sectors as the new approach to business.
- In prior years, we have noted that it was clear that green building was not a fad but a major trend, and this was strongly reinforced this year, both in the hundreds of educational presentations and in the 1,800 exhibitor booths in the Exposition.
- There were countless presentations describing actual projects and policies that have been implemented, in the US and internationally.
- The USGBC has seen its LEED Green Building Rating System become the de facto international standard for certifying green buildings, and the growth in the quantity of buildings and square footage enrolled in the LEED program is staggering. This is creating enormous opportunities for LEED, including:
- Much of the success and growth described above can be attributed to the successful uptake of LEED by the real estate industry. This has created extraordinary "brand power" of LEED that is truly transforming the practice of design, construction and operations of real estate.
- The need to document the benefits and savings of operating LEED-certified buildings.
- This is being addressed through LEED’s new requirement that all LEED 2009 projects report their monthly energy and water usage to USGBC once operations begin.
- The new USGBC Building Performance Initiative, which was announced at Greenbuild, will take this benchmarking effort mainstream.
- LEED-EB registrations this year now exceed LEED-NC registrations.
If you were at Greenbuild this year, what themes or trends did you notice? I welcome your comments and feedback, and am eager to learn what others took away from the conference.
-Malcolm
Malcolm Lewis is President of CTG Energetics
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