Environmental Health Perspectives and can be found at ehponline.org.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has released the Sustainable Design and Green Building Toolkit for Local Governments, which offers a guided assessment of codes and ordinances as they relate to green building practices. The toolkit is designed to help officials identify—and remove—barriers and obstacles to sustainable design. It leads officials through everything from site development and planning to green materials, energy efficiency, and water conservation.

The toolkit’s assessment tool uses green, yellow, and red as indicators of potential barriers—the more red that shows up in response to survey questions in the toolkit, the more difficult sustainable development may be in a jurisdiction. EPA encourages community leaders to use the results from the assessment to create a six-step action plan to remove barriers—establish priorities, conduct internal and external situation assessments, design, implement, and evaluate. The document is available for download at www.epa.gov/region4/recycle/green-building-toolkit.pdf/.

—Emily Catacchio

Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, the first green building insurance provider in the U.S., has added benefits to its Green Financial Incentive Coverage for customers who use grants, loans, or tax incentives to pay for energy-efficient renovations. Since 2006 Fireman’s Fund has offered insurance for both residential and commercial properties that are already certified through LEED or Green Globes, or for customers who would like to make their properties more green following a loss (see

"Insurer Offers Special Coverage for Green Buildings," EBN Nov. 2006). Under the new coverage, certified buildings are allowed to upgrade to the next level of certification through repairs after a loss, and covered upgrades now include power generation equipment, alternative water systems, and vegetated roofs. Coverage of vegetated roofs now includes other vegetated surfaces that help reduce heat island effects. Fireman’s Fund has also consolidated its coverage of building commissioning, as well as adding an option for porous paving. More information is available at www.firemansfund.com.

First Statewide Paint Recycling Program Launched in Oregon—With encouragement from the Product Stewardship Institute (PSI), Oregon recently instituted a new paint-recycling program, administered by the nonprofit PaintCare, for unused architectural paint. That makes Oregon the first U.S. state to institute statewide paint recycling for quantities less than five gallons (19 l). Paints accepted include interior, exterior, latex, oil, coatings, primers, and varnishes. To pay for the $4.5 million program, consumers will pay a $0.75 fee per gallon container and a $1.60 fee for five-gallon containers. So far, 38 retailers have volunteered to serve as paint drop-off sites for consumers and contractors. The unused paint will be sent to recycling centers for reuse, recycling, energy recovery or safe disposal, depending on the product. Oregon will reevaluate the program in 2011 to decide if it will continue. PSI is currently pushing for similar programs to be established in California, Connecticut, and Vermont. More information is available at www.paintcare.org.

Worldwide, the square footage of certified green building space will increase 780%, from approximately 6 billion square feet (560 million m²) in 2010 to 53 billion square feet in 2020, predicts a new report from Pike Research. Most of this space—80%—will be commercial and will be certified under LEED in the U.S. or BREEAM in Europe; programs in China and India, however, will be responsible for 30% of new certifications. The report notes, “In many markets, such as Class A office space, green building certification is the standard rather than the exception.” The demand for certified commercial buildings will only grow, says the report, as “many corporations and government agencies are beginning to establish policies that they will only own and occupy spaces that have received green building certification.” Approximately 60% of currently certified commercial space worldwide is in existing buildings, but both that sector and certified new construction will continue to grow. In the residential sector, the vast majority of certified buildings are new construction; this will remain the case over the next ten years.

The reuse of buildings is often touted as an environmental benefit, but solid, up-to-date data to support that idea is scarce (see “Historic Preservation and Green Building,” EBN Jan. 2007). A new partnership hopes to change that by early 2011. The National Trust for Historic Preservation, Green Building Services, and the Cascadia Green Building Council have teamed up to generate a full report quantifying the respect impacts of value building reuse versus demolition and new construction.

Funded by a grant from the Summit Foundation, the study will focus on a range of building types in four regions of the U.S., and will include a life-cycle assessment (LCA) and examination of building materials and methods to better understand scenarios that may favor either building reuse or new construction.

While the LCA will be the culmination of the study, says Ralph DiNola, Assoc. AIA, a consultant at Green Building Services, the team will start by painting a broad picture of the built environment, gathering data including the number of existing buildings, their types, ages, and geographic distribution. “We are not familiar with a resource that has all of that in one place,” said DiNola.

Then, the team will conduct a broad survey including groups from developers to architects, policymakers, and bankers, said DiNola, “really trying to get a sense of the factors that influence decision-making when it comes to either demolition or reuse.” Reuse or demolition decisions go beyond LCA data, says DiNola, and the team hopes to capture that information in the report. That survey will also help the team build scenarios to give the LCA data context, he says.

DiNola emphasized that the study would go in a different direction than some past studies that have sought to quantify the “embodied energy” in existing buildings. “Both from a capital standpoint and with environmental impact, that is water under the bridge,” he said. “We’re really trying to talk about the avoided impacts of reuse versus new construction.”

The study may help bridge a gap between the historic preservation and green building communities, who have sometimes clashed over the fate of existing buildings. Although plenty of middle ground has been staked out over the years, environmentalists have tended to focus on energy efficiency even at some cost to historic fabric, while preservationists insist that the “greenest building is the one that’s already built.”

DiNola, whose firm has a track record of high-performing historic rehabilitation projects, said, “We’re really not tied to an outcome—we want the LCA work to give the results.”

– Tristan Roberts and Allyson Wendt

Alex Wilson, the founder of BuildingGreen and executive editor of Environmental Building News and GreenSpec, is the 2010 winner of the Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership in Sustainable Housing. Now in its second year, the Hanley Award is sponsored by The Hanley Foundation, EcoHome magazine, and publisher Hanley Wood. Wilson will receive the award and an accompanying $50,000 grant at the USGBC Hanley Award Dinner ceremony on November 17th at the Greenbuild Conference in Chicago.

For more information on Alex's contributions to the world of green building, including links to his most influential writing, see his online biography.

The Public Service Commission of Maryland rejected implementation of “smart grid” metering proposed by Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) in June 2010. The commission based the rejection on fears of rate increases and tiered pricing that would increase costs for consumers.

Smart grid technologies have the potential to reduce strain on the power grid by increasing rates and thus decreasing demand at times of peak use, and even allowing utilities to reduce non-essential loads at those times. Reducing peak demand can reduce the need for new power plants, and reduce the use of dirtier, less-efficient plants that only come online to meet those demands. In areas directly affected by power plants, reduced smog can also be a benefit.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) saw Maryland as a large proving ground for smart grid technologies, and had promised a $200 million Smart Grid stimulus grant to BG&E in 2009, most of which was to fund the proposed smart metering program in Maryland. BG&E had expected $2.6 billion in benefits over 15 years. BG&E planned on charging consumers for the new meters through a surcharge; the Public Service Commission, charged with protecting consumers’ interests, is often reluctant to approve surcharges.

The commission has requested that BG&E’s proposal be revamped and resubmitted; its suggestions include in-home displays to warn customers of rate increases at peak times. However, DOE may take its funding to other states that can move faster, although the concerns being voiced in Maryland may crop up elsewhere.

– Emily Catacchio

The Canada Green Building Council (CaGBC) recently announced its acquisition of Smart Growth BC, a Vancouver-based organization that advocates land-use and development principles for creating compact, diverse, and green communities. Smart Growth BC has been instrumental in the adoption of sustainable urban planning practices in Canada, and CaGBC plans to build on that by working toward establishing a national Smart Growth Canada program. The new national program will include a range of green building and community development tools that can be applied at several scales, from single buildings to whole regions. According to the organization, the new program will work in concert with the Canadian version of LEED. CaGBC is assembling a steering committee that will guide the delivery of the program to communities. For more information, visit www.cagbc.org.