Green Building Legislation

• Is USGBC's LEED for Homes program too expensive?
• Syracuse breaks ground on another LEED project , converting a parking garage into a two-story office building
• 2008-09 legislative session in New Jersey features number of green building initiatives
• New York City expands street corner public space recycling program by 105 bins
• While his LEED-hopeful Atlantic Yards project continues to slowly unravel, another "green" Bruce Ratner project - 80 DeKalb Avenue - is rising in Fort Greene
• Read more

We've commented extensively here at gbNYC on proposed state- and local-level green building legislation. One consistent critique we've had is that many pieces of legislation have either left key green terms undefined or failed to accurately and comprehensively articulate how the legislation will be implemented.

These considerations are critical given that (according to USGBC) 100 state-level, LEED-driven green building bills have been introduced here in 2008, with 18 actually taking effect. Connecticut's construction industry recently voiced these types of concerns with respect to proposed legislation that would mandate LEED Silver certification- or its "equivalent"- for public and private sector projects over $5 million. The legislation would take effect on January 1, 2009, with the dollar threshold dropping to $2 million the following year.

Industry representatives are concerned over the legislation's ambiguity, pointing out that there is no definition or guidance within the legislation with respect to what an "equivalent" rating to LEED might be.

Earlier this week, Hudson County Assemblyman Ruben Ramos of Hoboken sponsored two green building bills as New Jersey’s fall legislative session opened up in Trenton.

The first, A1626, would require affordable housing to implement green design features, though the bill as proposed does not mandate any particular formal certification or include specifics on how the legislation would be enforced. The second, A2065, would provide low-interest loans available to developers who construct or renovate a building that qualifies as a “high-performance green building,” which is defined in the bill as “a building having at least 15,000 square feet in total floor area that is designed and constructed in a manner that achieves at least a [S]ilver rating according to the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Green Building Rating System as adopted by the United States Green Building Council.”

In its 2006 Green Building White Paper, Building Design + Construction magazine called upon the legal profession to examine the potential liability issues that could arise from developers and owners failing to build to green standards. It asked the American Bar Association or a leading law school to lead the charge and critically analyze the legal implications that green building regulatory regimes might implicate in the form of a symposium or scholarly, law review-quality research. It’s now 2008 and, as far as I can tell, the first such conference that will actually begin to dig into these issues as suggested in the 2006 White Paper (and hinted at repeatedly here at gbNYC) is taking place next week at DePaul University’s Real Estate Center in Chicago. Sponsored by the Alberti Group, it’s not too late to register for Managing Risk in Sustainable Building: Policy, Performance & Pitfalls.