The Mainstreaming of Green Buildings (and Everything Else)

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Christine Ervin, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Energy, former president of the U.S. Green Building Council, recently joined Greener World Media as Editor at Large. As an introduction to her background, she sat down with Greener World Media's managing editor, Matthew Wheeland, on June 1 for a discussion about her take on the past, present and future of all things green.

Matthew Wheeland: You've been active in the green energy and green building worlds for some time now. But how did you actually get started?

Christine Ervin: I can trace my interest in clean energy to the moment that I read this amazing sentence from the Economist magazine back in the early '90s. It went something like this -- actually, it went exactly like this: "The production and use of energy causes more environmental damage than any other human activity, with the exception of war."

MW: You remember it verbatim?

CE: Yes. That kind of statement has a tendency to clear your mind and sharpen your focus. At the same time, I was beginning to explore the world of pollution prevention at the World Wildlife Fund and found, of course, that energy efficiency was the classic win-win strategy for addressing both environmental and economic productivity issues. So energy presented both the compelling challenge and the solutions -- and I was hooked.

MW: Then what?

CE: After that, I went to head up the Oregon Department of Energy, then and now, one of country's pace setters in energy policy. Aside from its efficiency and renewables programs, it also served as the state watchdog for the now-closed Trojan nuclear power plant and Hanford Waste Reservation -- the world's largest Superfund site. So that was my baptism into the broader world of energy. Two years later, I went into the Clinton administration as assistant secretary.

MW: So how did green buildings enter the picture?

CE: Oddly enough, my interest grew directly out of the partisan response to our efforts in the Clinton Administration to boost investment in efficiency and renewables. Collectively, we spent thousands of hours fending off deep cuts proposed by different interest groups and members of Congress. We still managed to accomplish a great deal, but more was possible.

Of course, it wasn't the first time these programs had experienced see-saw politics since the first energy crisis in the 1970s. And we've paid a steep price for it -- just look at our record levels of oil imports and our dismal record on climate change. Contrast that with California's record of holding per capita electricity consumption constant over the last 30 years while the rest of the country has risen 50 percent.

Jeffrey Immelt, GE's CEO, summed it up nicely a couple years ago when he argued that uncertainty is the biggest impediment to private investment in environmental technologies like renewable energy.

In any case, I came to appreciate how energy policy was too often held hostage to whoever's in office and the price of oil. So this emerging area of green buildings was intriguing because it brought a new and stronger platform of drivers. Efficiency and renewable energy were still the core, but a holistic approach opened the door to other issues -- the building site, its water use and materials. Which inherently brought in a broader array of motivations -- from smart growth to indoor health -- promoted by a broader array of industry sectors and interest groups. Plus, green building was largely free of the political baggage that had dogged clean energy for so many years.

MW: You came to the USGBC in 1999, just before it launched LEED, and LEED is now the de facto standard for sustainable building practices nationwide, even though there have been other rating systems then and now. Why do you think LEED has been so successful?

CE: Several reasons. One is the tool itself. It's a pragmatic, clever rating system that responds to evolving market needs. For example, it's performance-based and has few prerequisites, so it responds to the needs of the building team. And those graduated levels -- Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum -- are brilliant because they allow both an entry point for mainstream markets yet offer more demanding opportunities for those wanting to push the envelope. That's exactly what you need to jump start a market transformation.

Second, it's the people and credibility behind the system -- a diverse coalition of interests across the entire building industry and supply chain.

LEED's success today also benefited from a very highly credible market launch -- which is often critical for a fledgling program. Not only because of its year-long pilot test across the country. But when we launched the final product in 2000, literally at the evening reception in Washington D.C., it came with the blessing of the country's largest property manager -- the Administrator of the General Services Administration. Believe me, his announcement that GSA would use LEED Silver for all new buildings sent a ripple through the markets that you just couldn't buy.

MW: At the same time, we sometimes hear that LEED doesn't go far enough, that it's just used as a checklist, or that we need to move "beyond LEED." What do you say to that?

CE: I'm way too pragmatic to find much fault with the most powerful market transformation tool around! But LEED was always designed to evolve. Our theory went something like this: LEED would strive to capture the top 25 percent of best practices in the country. Over time, those best practices would become more commonplace, real (or perceived) risk and costs would drop, and building codes and standards would start incorporating them. LEED would then raise the bar.

That's pretty much how it's playing out. Thousands of buildings are registered or certified. More jurisdictions and companies are adopting green practices as a matter of practice. ASHRAE, USGBC and others are cooperating on a first-of-its-kind green building standard that could be adopted widely in code. And USGBC is advancing LEED into a new 3.0 platform that will, among other things, reflect higher performance levels.

Finally, the Cascadia chapter has offered a "Living Building Challenge" that attempts to articulate a series of required benchmarks for a building to be truly sustainable -- much like the Natural Step does for sustainability as a whole. Regardless of whether or not it's formally incorporated in LEED, it will most certainly inspire new strategies for the leading edge.

But I want to stress that this market should always evolve with any change in either demand or supply. Energy prices rise, and expensive technologies become affordable. New data on climate change force different societal priorities. And so forth. A tool like LEED will continue to be relevant if it responds to those changes.

MW: You see a lot of focus on green buildings these days -- it seems like every company is greening its headquarters now. Does that mean that green building is really going mainstream?

CE: Just compare its growth with other green markets. Organic agriculture has been the fastest growing part of the retail foods market for well over a decade, but it's still hovering at just 3 percent of the overall market. Renewable energy is also exploding in growth, but still represents less than five percent of the market. (Of course, we have our historical problems in energy policy to thank for that.) Green buildings already represent 5-7 percent of new commercial buildings within just seven years and are predicted to reach at least 10 percent by 2010 with no end in sight. This is phenomenal growth -- particularly for an industry where innovation spreads rather slowly.

But one of the most exciting indicators of the market going mainstream is in the financial market. When you have financial institutions like Bank of America investing $20 billion to promote green building in their own portfolio and for their customers, that's a sign of deep market change. Fireman's Insurance is another example, when they introduced lower premium and other incentives to encourage building and rebuilding green. Here's an industry, that earns its living from actuarial tables, making the calculation that an investment in a green building lowers risk and liabilities. That's huge. Once the industry can better quantify benefits from higher performing buildings, we'll see even higher levels of market penetration.

MW: How is global warming changing the market landscape for green buildings?

CE: I see it as a propellant to all the other drivers we're talking about. 2005 was the year in which science took on a new sense of urgency -- mainly due to the surprising rate of polar ice melt. 2006 was the year of unprecedented public reaction to those findings, in part because of Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" made the science so accessible.

I think 2007 will be the year in which green buildings emerge as a major part of the global warming story, in part because of the highly persuasive 2030 Challenge, which sets a really ambitious -- but achievable -- goal for reducing the emissions causing by buildings worldwide. Few people realize that it's the building sector -- not industry or transportation -- responsible for most greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that this vibrant market proves that we can dramatically cut emissions sharply and reap a broad swath of economic and other benefits at the same time. Part of the solution is right in front of us. We can do this.

This kind of positive story is really important for changing the tenor of climate change dialogue. For years, arguments against taking strong actions to cut emissions have focused on the science -- but that's essentially history. Now, the debate is shifting to arguments over strategies and economic costs. The green building market offers strong rebuttal to the economics argument. And thousands of practitioners can articulate the kind of clear priorities that we need: put energy efficiency first and don't wait for new technologies because we can make huge strides with existing technologies.

MW: If green buildings are going mainstream, then along those same lines, carbon offset projects and going carbon neutral are practically de rigeur amongst green-minded companies today. What's your take on the help or harm caused by companies outsourcing sustainability?

CE: The role of carbon offsets is messy right now because they vary so much by quality and definition. If we don't fix that by adopting clear standards, offsets will diminish in importance -- which would be unfortunate. They play a useful role -- but as second tier strategies so to speak. In other words, most would agree on three steps for anyone wanting to cut emissions. First, do an inventory to establish your carbon footprint. Then reduce your footprint through efficiency and clean fuels. Last, buy quality offsets for what you can't reduce. Practically speaking, though, they're a useful bridge at the front end too because it can take time to carry out a full inventory and reduce emissions. So offsets can provide early money for useful projects elsewhere.

MW: And the big news from last week's G-8 meetings is President Bush finally announced some willingness to discuss climate change treaties and goals. Do you have a prediction for where we'll be in two years or five years in terms of a coordinated, global effort to slow or stop global warming?

CE: Well, we appear to have set a low bar for measuring success at the G-8. And I'd be one wealthy person if I could predict something this fluid.

Of course, the good news about the lack of national leadership is that it's galvanized leadership at the local and state levels and in private companies, and that means that a deep and wide grassroots foundation has been built out of necessity. So in the end we may actually have a stronger consensus of commitment.

MW: Right -- if there can be an upside to the White House's refusal to move on this over the last seven years, maybe it's that a variety of other groups -- RGGI and California's leaders, to name just two -- have been able to test-drive a variety of ways to address the issue.

CE: Absolutely, and those tests and deliberations may help us accelerate results at the national level. Timing is not on our side -- the longer we delay, the more expensive and risky it will be.

For me, there will be three litmus tests of the Administration's G-8 commitment to take this seriously. Will they quickly multiply efforts to deploy existing technologies even as they invest in tomorrow's technologies? We need both. Will they commit to a firm cap and timetables? Because you can't marshal the private and public resources without them. Will they embrace more of an ethical commitment given our nation's impact on current and future generations? And will that translate into more collaborative efforts to help China and other developing economies raise their standards of living through clean technologies? Because these are matter of both equity and pragmatics.

As I mentioned before, the early actions that we need are not a question of technology. They're a matter of leveraging what we see in the green markets today.

Christine Ervin, a frequent speaker, Board advisor and consultant from her own firm in Portland, Oregon , is an Editor-at-Large with Greener World Media. As first President and CEO of the U.S. Green Building Council, she led its growth to serve nearly 5,000 members, the LEED portfolio and Greenbuild. She also served as Assistant Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration overseeing efficiency, renewable energy and climate programs. Her website is ChristineErvin.com.

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