I can tell your future … look what’s in your hand.

‘Tis the season to look back and look ahead.  OGBL will let our archive of posts speak for what was, and this post will contemplate what will be in 2013.

To paraphrase Harvey Keitel as The Wolf in Pulp Fiction, if self-preservation is an instinct that we as a species possess, we have to act now to be more efficient and less wasteful in all of our activities.  Transforming the design and construction of buildings where we live, work and play is a great place to start.

This author will continue outreach, education, and advocacy on behalf of the USGBC-Central Ohio Chapter (USGBC-COH, working to transform Central Ohio’s built environment to be more healthy, prosperous, and sustainable).  USGBC-COH recently won a significant grant from USGBC (national) to identify & retain a consultant to build relationships between the various USGBC Chapters in Ohio, USGBC National Members, and other regional stakeholders.

This author will also contribute to the American Bar Association’s seminal Green Building Law treatise (green building litigation, aka “LEEDigation,” subsection).  Thankfully for this attorney’s clients, the predicted/feared maelstrom of litigation surrounding green buildings hasn’t materialized.  But there are some noteworthy examples to be evaluated and risk management lessons to be learned.

Whether or not LEED is a worthwhile mechanism to effect market transformation will be the subject of an ongoing research project in 2013.  Teaming with Battelle, and thanks to grant funding from USGBC, USGBC-COH is developing the ”Green Schools Compendium,” a scientific evaluation of data from Ohio’s approximately 300 LEED certified or registered schools to determine if there is any statistically significant deviation between traditionally constructed schools and LEED schools.  Green schools are (duh) just green buildings, so the results of this study could change the game for, or against, LEED.

But change is hard.  We’re creatures of habit, and doing things differently is contrary to human nature, so it’s easy for the short-sighted and the entrenched interests to dominate.  The Grateful Dead sing that “some folks trust in reason/others trust in might/I don’t trust to nothing/but I know it come out right.”  We shall see.

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Red Flag Against the Blue Dot on Green Schools

You know you’ve made it when you have haters, so if nothing else the recent series of articles by the USA Today (aka “the Blue Dot”) about LEED only reinforces that the sustainable building rating system has arrived.

But the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC), which is responsible for Ohio’s nation-leading array of LEED schools, throws a red flag on the Blue Dot for sloppy journalism.  Lisa Laney, the OFCC Sustainability Administrator who is quoted in the latest installment of the series, notes that the reporter quite simply “doesn’t understand the funding for sustainability efforts on [OFCC] projects.”

OGBL respects that the OFCC and Ms. Laney give the reporter the benefit of the doubt.  Maybe he simply didn’t understand the data.  Maybe he wasn’t just weaving a diatribe of sensationalist drivel in a transparent effort to stir controversy.  Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that conflict & dissent sell more newspapers than would a thoughtful, reasoned, and objective discussion of the yet-to-be-determined cost/benefit of green schools (or any green building).

None of these possibilities explain why, as Ms. Laney points out, “the information that [OFCC] provided to [the reporter] was not used in the context it was given to him.”  We don’t know why the reporter failed to note the OFCC’s ongoing efforts to “develop performance metrics to potentially enhance the [green schools] program.”  We don’t know why the reporter failed to mention the OFCC’s support of the USGBC-Central Ohio Chapter’s ongoing collaboration with research giant Battelle (with grant funding from USGBC) to develop the “Green Schools Compendium,” a scientific evaluation of data from Ohio’s approximately 300 LEED certified or registered schools to determine if there is any statistically significant deviation between traditionally constructed schools and LEED schools.

But we do know that the OFCC specifically mentioned the Compendium to the reporter, and Ms. Laney went so far as to offer to “share this data with [USA Today] once the grant period is complete and the data is published.”  OFCC is still waiting to be taken up on this gracious offer.

Perhaps that data will justify the cost/benefit of LEED schools, or perhaps it won’t, or perhaps it will be inconclusive.  All we know for certain is that the evaluation of the data will be objective, thoughtful, and well-reasoned … perhaps the USA Today will learn something from the effort.

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