绿色建筑的早期情人
Valentine's Day for the green building movement came early this year with several "gifts" presented to advocates, owners and operators of green, energy-efficient buildings.
A box of chocolates arrived in the form ofPresident Obama's Better Buildings Initiative, which provides a Whitman's sampler of market incentives for buildings that exceed the 2005 Energy Policy Act's strict 40 percent energy savings compared with ASHRAE 90.1-2004 target. The Better Buildings program also includes a revolving loan fund that will support larger credit lines for green building retrofits that are difficult for small businesses to access. The BBI also contains hortatory challenges to local governments and businesses to make their buildings better. Given that the construction sector currently struggles with 20 percent unemployment and that commercial buildings use 20 percent of all U.S. energy, Better Buildings seems like the right effort at the right time. But with the current Congress, like Forrest Gump's proverbial "box of chawklits," we have no idea what we're actually going to get out of President Obama's proposal.
Next, a lovely bouquet comescourtesy of NRDC（披露：我是NRDC的高级科学家21年）和Earthjustice，该justice支持华盛顿州捍卫其创新的节能建筑法规。上个月，建筑顾问Chris Cheatham wrote about一组当地建筑商和HVAC承包商提起的禁令，该诉讼试图中止该法规。正如NRDC高级律师Kit Kennedy指出的那样：“国会明确允许各州采用包括合规途径在内的能量代码，只要不需要这些选项，并且还有其他选择不涉及使用这些选择这个设备。”法官同意，华盛顿州能源法规仍然存在。
The movement also received a nice card from the city of San Francisco, which joined a growing number of cities worldwide -- New York and Tokyo immediately come to mind -- thatrequire energy benchmarking, reporting and energy audits对于现有建筑物。很高兴看到旧金山复苏了《裁员的商业节能条例》（CECO），该条例要求业主在出售或进行实质性翻新后将其建筑物带入加利福尼亚州标题24能源法规。
Cheatham, who's also a legal eagle, updates us this week on the revised针对USGBC的诉讼brought by some disgruntled engineers now claiming that the organization is simply guilty of false advertising and deceptive trade practices. Gone are the class-action suit, the racketeering and the antitrust claims, as are the claims against individuals -- myself included. Rest assured, you'll be hearing more from me on these claims in the near future.
The market continues to vote with its feet against the LEED nonperformance assertions of the USGBC plaintiffs as exemplified by the 88 percent of respondents to the newCoreNet Global/Jones Lang LaSalle Sustainability Survey, who indicated that they consider green building certifications in administering their portfolio.
此外，有50％的受访者表示，他们将为绿色物业支付更多的费用，从去年的调查比37％的响应水平上涨。尽管能源效率仍然是首要任务之一，但员工的健康和生产力的重要性现在几乎等于能源（31％比32％），这是实施可持续性措施的主要原因。竞彩足球app怎么下载我想知道这是否是因为员工的成本是每平方英尺的100倍。Naaaah。
最后，将您的牙齿沉浸在一个很好的演讲中绿色牙科that was made at the San Francisco State of Green Business forum last week and check out the new IFMA Foundation guide on“转向数据中心绿色”，”authored by Teladata.
This week's Look-Grandpa-I-picked-up-the-$20-bill-you-said-was-fake-but-it's-real! award goes to theRocky Mountain Institutefor its RetroFit initiative, which promotes the energy efficiency upgrade of the commercial building stock to on average use at least 50 percent less savings by 2050. According to RMI, electricity saved by these deep retrofits is equal to $40 billion, roughly $.50 per square foot of the 80 billion square feet of nonresidential space in America. Among the early test cases of the RMI initiative is the Byron Rogers Federal Building in downtown Denver, which is on track to reduce energy consumption a whopping 70 percent. The upgrade of the Byron Rogers building, which is supported by approximately $140 million (for all costs, not just for green) from the American Recovery And Reinvestment Act has led to the creation of 2,000 jobs and based on the 63 kBtu/square foot/year estimated energy savings, could save taxpayers over half a million dollars per year from efficient operations during the rest of the facility's life.
Images CC licensed by Flickr usersthegirlsnyandblmurch.
