The 2022 ranking of “green” buildings shows Texas in 9th place, demonstrating a commitment to LEED certification, according to the U.S. Green Building Council. LEED stands for “Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design” – a standard created by the Council and used worldwide to define best practices for healthy, high-performing green buildings.
Ryan Snow, regional director for U.S. Market Transformation & Development, said in 2022 the top 10 states plus the District of Columbia, certified just over 1,200 projects.
“They had seven projects in Texas that were over a million square feet, upwards of two-million square feet,” Snow said. “Those larger projects certainly have a larger environmental and health footprint.”
Snow said the LEED rating system is the world’s most widely used green building program. Texas was in 9th place last year, and has often appeared in the top 10 since the program began in 1994. In 2022, Massachusetts topped the list.
Rhiannon Jacobson, managing director of U.S. Market Transformation and Development, and also a member of the U.S. Green Building Council, said the annual LEED listing is based on U.S. Census data and includes commercial and institutional building projects that show a commitment to climate action, occupant wellbeing and resource efficiency.
“When you think about a LEED building – it is going to be covering everything from the air quality of the building itself, the amount of energy and water that it’s using, the amount of waste it’s creating, to the occupant experience,” Jacobson said.
Jacobson said LEED certification shows a level of leadership to company employees who understand its importance and, in turn, makes working in a LEED certified building more attractive.
“There is a kind-of natural inclination towards being in places that you know are going to be healthier and that are going to meet your interests,” she said.
Jacobson said Washington, D.C. does not appear in the official top 10 list, but consistently leads the nation in LEED-certified square footage per capita. She added in addition to addressing climate change, LEED buildings can also help reduce operational and maintenance costs.
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Environmental groups are headed back to court this Friday in hopes of setting a clear deadline for Gov. Jared Polis’ administration to start reining in climate pollution at the West Elk Coal Mine in the North Fork Valley.
Nathaniel Shoaff, senior attorney for the Sierra Club, said the mine has been operating without a permit in violation of the Clean Air Act for years, and is a major contributor to climate change due to its methane emissions.
“Its heat-trapping properties are far more powerful than carbon dioxide, and scientists around the globe have told us that we are in the critical decade,” Shoaff pointed out. “If we want to avoid the worst effects of climate disruption, we must act, and we must act now.”
A Colorado district court ruled in December the Polis administration violated state law by failing to approve or deny an air pollution permit for the mine, owned by Arch Resources, formerly Arch Coal, by a statutory deadline of September 2021. The state did not dispute the ruling, but told the court due to staffing issues and lack of cooperation by Arch, a draft permit would not be possible before June 1 of this year.
The court is also expected to review records it ordered released related to the state’s claims of Arch’s “uncooperativeness,” and how the state has responded. Shoaff noted Colorado’s statute does not indicate the state must act only if it gets paperwork from the mine, the statute said the state must approve or deny a permit within 18 months of receiving the application.
“A facility like the West Elk Mine that has been operating for years without the required permits, and it’s the largest industrial source of methane in the state, that should get a high priority from the state,” Shoaff contended.
Colorado has set a goal of removing coal from its energy portfolio by 2030. Because federal and state governments have provided subsidies to extract and burn fossil fuels for decades, making communities dependent on those industries, Shoaff argued it is not enough to tell people living in the North Fork Valley there is a job for you in another state. It is incumbent on the government to provide solutions.
“And provide financial incentives for new companies to operate in these areas,” Shoaff stressed. “If you don’t, you’re doing a disservice to those families and those communities that worked for a long time to help keep the lights on.”
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Oregon is high on the list of states focused on sustainable building practices, according to a new report.
The state comes in at number 10 in U.S. Green Building Council’s ranking released today. The ranking is based on the construction of LEED-certified buildings, a widely used system which rates environmentally friendly practices.
In 2022, Oregon added more than six million square feet of LEED certified space.
Stephanie Gabriel, pacific regional director for the U.S. Green Building Council, said the next step for the state is to expand this type of construction outside major cities.
“Bringing green buildings to more rural environments or small towns outside of Portland metro area and Salem; the larger cities of Oregon,” Gabriel emphasized. “Making sure that we’re addressing green building throughout the state.”
Gabriel pointed out the Inflation Reduction Act signed by President Biden last year will bring federal funding to states with green building initiatives, which could increase the pace toward more sustainable construction.
Rhiannon Jacobson, managing director of U.S. market transformation and development for the council, said LEED certification involves rating operations of buildings such as air filtration, and stressed greener practices within a building have been shown to benefit the workers inside.
“A lot of the design principles that are put forth are going to allow for top performance,” Jacobson noted. “We do see things like lower levels of absenteeism in a LEED building. We see lower turnover rates.”
Oregon appears on the list for the second year in a row. California ranks fourth, and Massachusetts came in at number one.
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A study co-authored by a University of New England researcher finds the majority of the world’s glaciers could disappear by the end of the century, leading to increased storm surges like the one that hit the Maine coast before Christmas last month.
Researchers say models show climate change and the continued use of fossil fuels could cause more than 80% of the world’s glaciers to melt, which would also lead to significant sea-level rise.
Study co-author Will Kochtitzky – a visiting assistant teaching professor at the School of Marine and Environmental Programs at the University of New England – said Maine has already seen 6 to 8 inches of sea-level rise in the past 100 years.
“This is going to add a few more inches on top of that,” said Kochtitzky, “and every inch really matters in some of these places.”
Kochtitzky said communities need to plan now for what’s to come.
The study predicts even under the most ambitious targets set forth in the landmark 2015 Paris Agreement, the world will still lose more than a quarter of its current glacier mass.
This research focused on 215,000 glaciers across the planet, excluding the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets.
Most of them are smaller in scale – but the study says their melting could dramatically impact local water resources, infrastructure and even tourism in America’s national parks.
Kochtitzky said the data show that reducing carbon emissions can still slow or reduce glacier loss, to give countries and communities more time to prepare.
“There’s not much we can do to stop sea-level rise in the coming decades,” said Kochtitzky, “we more need to plan for how we’re going to manage that, and build infrastructure that can be resilient to changing sea levels.”
Maine’s Office of Policy Innovation and the Future notes any modest cost savings in infrastructure today will come at the expense of much higher repair and replacement costs in the future, as seas continue to rise.
Despite the bleak findings, Kochtitzky called the study a “huge advance” in data processing to create the projected glacier models.
It’s published in the journal Science.
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