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The Federal Emergency Management Agency recently sent a letter to officials in Lee County, Florida alleging that hundreds of homes were rebuilt in violation of the agency’s rules following Hurricane Ian. The letter provoked a sharp backlash as homeowners struggle to rebuild following the devastating 2022 storm that destroyed a large swath of the county.
The Biden Administration recently released “Decarbonizing the U.S. Economy by 2050: A National Blueprint for the Buildings Sector,” a comprehensive plan to reduce greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions from buildings by 65% by 2035 and 90% by 2050.
Boston has placed significant aspects of its plan to protect the city from rising sea levels on the actions of private developers. Amid a post-Covid commercial development slump, though, efforts to build protective infrastructure have stalled.
On February 8, 2024, Mayor Muriel Bowser presented the Zero Waste DC Plan to the Council, outlining policies, programs, and initiatives to meet the District’s aim of reducing per capita waste generation by 15% and transitioning from a disposable culture to a circular economy. Of the 43 actions in the plan, a handful are essential for building owners and design professionals to know about now.
There is record global demand for new data centers, but availability of power is hampering market growth. That’s one of the key findings from a new CBRE report: Global Data Center Trends 2023.
New York City has a new Office Conversion Accelerator Team that provides a single point of contact within city government to help speed adaptive reuse projects. Projects that create 50 or more housing units from office buildings are eligible for this new program.
Gas and construction industry groups recently moved to dismiss a lawsuit they had filed to block new Washington state building codes that require heat pumps in new residential and commercial construction. The lawsuit contended that the codes harm the industry groups’ business, interfere with consumer energy choice, and don’t comply with federal law.
nZero, developer of a real-time carbon accounting and management platform, is offering free carbon emissions assessments for buildings in New York City. The offer is intended to help building owners prepare for the city’s upcoming Local Law 97 reporting requirements and compliance. This law will soon assess monetary fines for buildings with emissions that are in non-compliance.
The City of Cambridge, Mass., recently mandated that all non-residential buildings—including existing structures—larger than 100,000 sf meet a net-zero emissions requirement by 2035.
In a recent editorial, the USGBC cited a growing number of U.S. state legislators who are “aiming to roll back building energy code standards and/or preempt local governments from advancing energy-efficient building codes.”
The City of San Francisco released a Request For Interest to identify office building conversions that city officials could help expedite with zoning changes, regulatory measures, and financial incentives.
Using IAPMO’s Water Demand Calculator tool can result in energy, carbon, and water savings as compared to using traditional plumbing specification methods in plumbing codes, according to a study by Arup.
Two members of the U.S. House of Representative have asked the Department of Housing and Urban Development to end the use of biometric technology, including facial recognition, for surveillance purposes in public housing.
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) will invest $30 million from the Inflation Reduction Act to increase the sustainability of federal buildings by testing novel technologies. The vehicle for that effort, the Green Proving Ground (GPG) program, will invest in American-made technologies to help increase federal electric vehicle supply equipment, protect air quality, reduce climate pollution, and enhance building performance.
