Building & Real Estate Green Practices
This page contains green practices for the Building and Real Estate Sector. How could what these people and companies have done help you in transitioning to greener a greener job or green career?
"In the crusade to adopt new green-building standards, there is much progress to report. This month's GBI covers three recent measures taken to institute greener construction practices, including efforts addressing the environmentally friendly design of buildings other than low-rise residential structures, better energy efficiency in new buildings, and mold prevention in new structures. These moves come as experts are predicting continued increases in green-building projects. Jim Bidgood, a partner in the Atlanta-based law firm of Smith, Currie & Hancock, recently told a GBI webinar audience that green construction is growing "at a terrific pace, and I think it is going to take hold in most of the projects that we deal with."
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On a former brownfield site across the river from downtown Boston, a renovated turn-of-the-century lithography factory trades in carbon copies for a lighter carbon footprint.
..The chimney of Forbes Lithography Company’s defunct boiler house stands as a foil for the 240-foot turbine perched beside it—the icon for Urban Design and Development’s ambitious mixed-use redevelopment project, Forbes Park, located along the greater Boston waterfront in Chelsea, Massachusetts.
Herman Miller’s National Design Center in Atlanta achieved a LEED Gold rating for commercial interiors.
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Greening Washington's Lodging Industry Program
The Washington State Hotel & Lodging Association (WSH&LA), in partnership with the consulting team led by Cascadia Consulting Group, Inc. of Seattle is proudly launching its Greening Washington's Lodging Industry Program.
This Program is funded by a $53,000 Public Participation Grant from the Washington State Department of Ecology. WSH&LA's application was one of only 13 grants funded by Ecology in 2009. Of 100 grants submitted, WSH&LA's earned the fourth highest overall score. Ecology noted this was a "very impressive feat given incredibly fierce competition."
Grant funds will be used to launch pilot projects with select hotels and provide educational workshops and resources to hotels across the state throughout the year.
RetroFit
Buildings are the ultimate end-users for 68 percent of coal and 55 percent of natural gas in the United States. A huge opportunity exists to mitigate fossil fuel consumption in this sector, and it has yet to be exploited.Despite new codes, design tools, technologies, media momentum and early success stories, the U.S. commercial building stock is no more energy efficient today than it was 25 years ago. Clearly, commercial building retrofits need to be a major part of any lasting solution to get the U.S. off fossil fuels by 2050. [READ MORE]