AGC releases decarbonization playbook to help assess, track, reduce GHG emissions

The Global Green Cities of the 21st Century conference in San Francisco is filled with mayors, architects, academics, consultants, and financial types all struggling to understand the process of building smarter, greener cities on a scale that's practically unimaginable—and make money doing it.

This week the USGBC launched its long-awaited LEED Interpretations process and database. LEED Interpretations are like project-specific Credit Interpretation Rulings, but unlike those CIRs, they can be applied to multiple projects. LEED project teams with a unique situation or a question not answered by existing LEED resources have had access to CIRs since 2009, but those CIRs have been limited. With the launch of LEED Interpretations, the USGBC hopes to broaden its scope.

The mile high city has a decidedly green tinge. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) today noted that nearly 30 projects in Denver have achieved LEED green building certification since 2010 and two of these developments achieved LEED’s highest rating, Platinum.

Procter & Gamble will pursue LEED certification for all new sites. P&G's Taicang plant in China - which is breaking ground today - is the first P&G manufacturing site to pursue LEED certification, with several additional new P&G sites currently working toward the same distinction globally.

Two new reports from the Zero Energy Commercial Buildings Consortium (CBC) on achieving net-zero-energy use in commercial buildings say that high levels of energy efficiency are the first, largest, and most important step on the way to net-zero.

Leanne Tobias, founder and managing principal of Malachite LLC, an advisory firm that specializes in the development, leasing, management, financing, and certification of sustainable or green real estate on a global basis, writes about new government policy proposals that have her cheering—and one that makes her gravely concerned.

A massive 4.5 million-sf expansion of the Carousel Center shopping complex in Syracuse, N.Y., a project called Destiny USA, allegedly failed to incorporate green building components that developers had promised the federal government—including LEED certification. As a result, the project could lose its tax-exempt status, which reportedly saved developer The Pyramid Cos. $120 million, and the firm could be penalized $2.3 million by the IRS.