The Vibrancy of Green- Greenbuild 2006

This year’s Greenbuild, the annual conference of the US Green Building Council (USGBC), was all about two things:

Green has gone corporate—and that’s exactly what everybody wanted.
Past gatherings may have been intimate affairs, but this year’s event, in Denver, was a full-scale trade show, with 13,000 attendees walking around with tan totes emblazoned with Honda on the side, lots of corporate-sponsored parties, and a sold-out exhibition hall, with 700 exhibitors hawking their green products. It left little doubt that green, at least as it’s represented by the USGBC, isn’t about the counter-culture anymore. And yet, does that mean green’s gone mainstream?

When it comes to green building, now that we know what to do, how will we do it?
USGBC president and CEO Rick Fedrizzi turned the question into a catchphrase: “immediate and measurable.” Green building needs “immediate and measurable” impacts; we need “immediate and measurable results in our efforts to reverse global warming.” It was the topic of the week, and the question that guided the podcast audio interviews you can download here: What can architects, builders, building owners, and building product manufacturers do that will have an immediate and measurable positive impact on the environment? And then, how do we measure that impact? Is it with LEED ratings, carbon offsets, and Cradle-To-Cradle certification? Or maybe one of the new “marks” that were announced at Greenbuild, like a “Living Building” or “Planet Positive.”

The three episodes are organized with those questions in mind:

Episode 1: Green Standards
– Jason McLennan, CEO Cascadia Region Green Building Council: Post-Platinum
– Scot Horst, chair, LEED Steering Committee: LEED’s evolution
– Jay Bolus: Executive Vice President, Benchmarking and Certification for McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry: Cradle-to-Cradle, the product

Episode 2: Green Tools
– Guy Battle, Battle McCarthy Consulting Engineers/founder, dCarbon8: Carbon is the new gold
– Phil Bernstein, Vice President, Industry Strategy and Relations, Autodesk: Design tools for green
– Michael Murray, President, Lucid Design Group: A building dashboard

Episode 3: Mainstream Green
– Jon Ratner, Director of Sustainability Initiatives, Forest City Enterprises: Developer green
– Clark Brockman, SERA Architects & Chris Ziegler, Sage Hospitality Resources: Portland green
– Patti Purcell, CEO, The Beam and Green Building Blocks: Consumer green