Pre-Greenbuild 2010 Blog By Malcolm Lewis

Malcolm Lewis is Chairman and CEO of CTG Energetics.


As everyone travels to Chicago for the annual Greenbuild Conference, one’s thoughts turn to what we might expect at this year’s conference: What will the mood be? What new trends and technologies will be revealed? My predictions are described below:

• The mood will be very upbeat, and there will be more attendees at this year’s Greenbuild than at any prior one.


• Green building is the major growth element in the real estate industry in 2010.


• The demand for booth space for the GreenBuild Expo has far out-stripped supply.


• The participants will report that their business is turning up faster than the general economy.


• International uptake of LEED continues to expand, making it the dominant global green brand.


• The proportion of total LEED registrations from outside the US has skyrocketed this year.


• A new LEED International Roundtable is being convened in Chicago with representatives from 18 countries to discuss how to make LEED more appropriate and adaptable worldwide.


• Increased adoption of sustainability as a major corporate driver.


• Many corporations now have CSO’s (Chief Sustainability Officers) and are integrating sustainability into every aspect of their business model.


• Evidence that LEED Certification is a value-added driver for commercial real estate.


• Developers and brokers are seeing green projects sell or lease more quickly.


• There is increased consumer awareness and expressed market demand for green building.


• Emergence of LEED-EB O&M as a major force in the real estate market.


• The proportion of LEED certifications for Existing Buildings is growing rapidly.


• The “Volume” path of certification for LEED-EB O&M is taking off for portfolio clients.


• Development of numerous web-based tools for applying sustainability.


• The new Green Building Information Gateway (GBIG) tool developed by USGBC will be introduced.


• The new Sustainable Workplace tool developed for US General Services Administration by CTG and Noblis will be introduced.


• Legitimization of GHG Emissions as a critical driver for public policy and private action.


• Work continues to move towards defining “regenerative buildings” ... buildings that actually improve the environment, rather than just being “less bad”.

So those are my quick predictions. We will report to you what our perspective is at the end of the conference. CTG will be set up at booth 1635 in hall F2 - please drop by and see us!!

Contact: ctg@ctgenergetics.com

Greenbuild 2009 – Wow! By Malcolm Lewis

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

Follow-Up Thoughts on GreenBuild 2008 By Malcolm Lewis

There was a special celebration this past week in Boston as 30,000 people came together from around the world to attend GreenBuild 2008. The celebration was the 15th anniversary of the founding of the US Green Building Council, but it was so much more. It recognized that the “market transformation” envisioned by the USGBC through its LEED Green Building Rating System is well on its way. It expressed the global spirit of relief and excitement that the politics of fear and negativity and nihilism that have governed our environmental policies for many years are starting to give way to hope and optimism and renewal. It marked the transition from creating the first steps of a more sustainable future to gathering momentum towards broader implementation. It was a clear sign of the transition of sustainability and green building from an avant garde fringe movement to the center of the action in the real estate industry.

Some of the impressions and experiences of the week:

• The context of the economic meltdown especially gave us the chance to see this as a time of opportunity to do things differently.
• Sustainability was shown in numerous case studies and examples as an effective antidote for the failed policies of the old economy.
• There were practical examples of the “triple bottom line” that combines economics, environment, and the human spirit in successful sustainable projects.
• Archbishop Desmond Tutu talking about “you Americans are a crazy (in the positive sense) and wonderful people [for taking the bold step of electing Obama]” and about the necessity of man’s stewardship of God’s creation.
• Major building product manufacturers declaring GreenBuild as the show they plan to exhibit at in hard times.
• Systems thinking making clear that transportation and buildings are inextricably linked and must be thought about together rather than separately.
• Green chemistry and biomimicry demonstrated as the basis for whole new classes of materials that are environmentally preferable and economically preferable.
• That LEED is just one step forward in the huge challenge we need to meet for reducing our carbon footprint and bringing our settlements into harmony with nature.
• At the very moment that the auto industry is on its knees, people gathered to re-vision human settlements that are walkable and appropriately located and powered renewably.
• Major real estate portfolio managers describing new approaches to “greening” their entire portfolios.
• Examples of using the carbon offset needs of a global manufacturer to improve the energy and economic performance of low-income housing in New Orleans and elsewhere.
• Discussions of how to share case studies of entire “carbon positive communities”, as the way forward globally for meeting the demand for human development that is also sustainable.
• Examples of regenerative development that restores habitats to natural conditions last seen hundreds of years ago, while also supporting human settlements and economic industry.

You could almost hear the sounds and feel the seismic shocks of change, as the old ways of the real estate industry are being discarded and replaced with new paradigms – still meeting all the conventional metrics of economic cost and value, yet doing so in ways that improve the environment and uplift the human spirit. [No, this transformation isn’t done, in fact it is only just beginning and there will be many hard fights ahead…but it is clearly and indisputably happening in very tangible ways and in measurable scales.]

So that’s the short version of GreenBuild 2008. It was a profound experience, because of the times we are in (of economic turmoil and political change) and because of the huge cumulative transformation that is taking place in the real estate and building world. It portends great things for the future, and I came away being very inspired, excited, and confident that CTG is doing the right things at the right time.

-Malcolm

Malcolm Lewis is the President of CTG Energetics

Don’t just offset. Engage with offsets. By Chris Pyke

We’re starting to understand the rules of the road for our transformation to a low carbon future: First, reduce energy demand. Next, use energy efficiently. Seek our clean energy supplies. However, we’re also learning that these steps often leave us short of carbon neutrality. To achieve carbon neutral operations, it is often necessary, at least in the short term, to seek offsite emissions reduction, also known as carbon offsets.

Offsets can be valuable and economically important tools for achieving real emissions reductions. They help address the reality that the costs of squeezing that last 10% of carbon out of a project are often much greater than the costs of eliminating the first 10%. This means that we can stretch our emissions reduction dollars by attacking the “first 10%” from many projects. This kind of thinking leads economists to call offsets “efficient” and, in theory, allows us to reduce the cost of achieving emissions reductions.

However, this kind of thinking also turns emissions reductions into a commodity. Carbon as corn, soy beans, or pork bellies. However, a ton of carbon is not always just a ton. Reductions in greenhouse gas emissions often come attached to important co-benefits. For example, they can reduce monthly energy bills for low-income households, reduce traditional criteria air pollutants, and support broader environmental and restoration protection efforts, such as lake acidification.

Used strategically, offsets can be used to reduce emissions and achieve important social and economic objectives, such as increasing housing affordability or improving schools. This is basis for an important new sustainability strategy: engaged offsets. With engaged offsets, emissions reductions are targeted at projects or populations with the goal of reducing greenhouse gases and serving a larger purpose.

CTG recently completed a demonstration project in the Lower 9th Ward neighborhood of New Orleans. CTG designed and implemented an engaged offset program that targeted a low-income community recovering from Hurricane Katrina. CTG worked with Toyota Motor Sales, USA to characterize the carbon footprint of its tradeshow operations. CTG then arranged for a donation from the company to a small non-profit organization called Hope Has a Face. This donation provided funds for solar hot water heaters to be purchased and installed in renovated housing units and a community center. Over the life of the units, the project will offset over 1,200 metric tons of carbon emissions and save residents thousands of dollars in energy bills. This win-win situation reduces impacts on the planet and helps a community that really needs it. The engaged offsets model can be applied anywhere to link entities that desire emissions reductions with those that would benefit from measures to create them.

Learn more at Greenbuild. Listen and join the discussion on Wednesday afternoon (11/19) at session GR04 Engaged Offsets: Environmental Action Meets Social Justice. Or, contact Chris Pyke for more information cpyke@ctgenergetics.com.

Chris

Dr. Chris Pyke is CTG Energetics' Director of Climate Change Services