February 29, 2012  

Dear Clients, Friends and Colleagues,

At Green Edge it's all about making a meaningful difference, whether we are helping our private sector clients transform their companies or our public sector clients transform their communities. Now that we have put our stake in the ground (see our New Year's resolution) here is a preview of how we are making a difference when it comes to the good, bad and ugly of greening the built environment.  

The Good 

As of yesterday, almost 1.8 billion square feet of commercial property and over 18,000 homes in the United States had earned the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building certification. Over 6.5 billion square feet of commercial property and almost 75,000 homes are registered for certification. This is a clear sign that green features such as energy and water saving infrastructure are being incorporated into new and existing buildings throughout the country. The meteoric rise of "green building" from a concept that had barely emerged five years ago to one that is transforming the real estate and construction industries is certainly noteworthy.   

Tracking the LEED certification and registration numbers is a good way to gauge just how far we have come in a relatively short period of time. But we have a lot more work to do if we are going to make a meaningful dent in the carbon footprint of the built environment. In addition to building green, we need to learn how to operate and occupy our buildings in a sustainable way, with a focus on conserving resources and maintaining optimum performance levels and non-toxic indoor environments.  

Green Edge has taken on this challenge and is working with clients at the intersection of behavior modification science and sustainability to achieve exponentially meaningful, measurable and verifiable carbon reduction goals.

The Bad 

As encouraging as the LEED certification and registration numbers are, there is an even more compelling number that conveys the magnitude of what we have not accomplished to date. It also confirms that the real estate industry is not taking advantage of an enormous opportunity for bottom line and carbon reduction results. That number is $32 billion. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), commercial property owners and tenants in the United States could shave more than $32 billion annually off their current energy bills if they plugged up holes and installed other energy efficiency features in existing buildings. Also according to the EPA, energy efficiency is the fastest, cheapest, and largest untapped solution for saving energy, saving money and preventing greenhouse gas emissions. Our collective failure to capture this opportunity is bad for business, bad for the economy and bad for the environment.   

At Green Edge, we are helping commercial property owners and tenants take advantage of this opportunity to enjoy the bottom line and carbon reduction results that go hand in hand with increased energy efficiency.

The Ugly 

What's downright ugly, in our opinion, is the status quo when it comes to a public financing vehicle, often referred to as Property Assessed Clean Energy bonds or PACE, which was developed to facilitate energy efficiency improvements in residential properties. Beginning in 2005 in California, PACE enabling legislation quickly spread to more than 16 states, but in 2010 PACE programs throughout the country were stymied when Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refused to back mortgages on properties that had benefited from a PACE financed retrofit.

Notwithstanding this impasse, Green Edge is currently working with a local municipality to transition its residential PACE financing program to commercial tenant occupied properties in a manner that can be scaled regionally and ultimately nationally.  

With the potential to retrofit millions of inefficient, leaky buildings, save millions of dollars in energy costs, create thousands of jobs and save tons of CO2 from being emitted into the atmosphere, this ugly reality of stalled PACE programs can be transformed into an exponentially significant economic, carbon and physical win-win-win. Green Edge is on the front lines working to make it happen.