Beginning this week all construction projects pursuing LEED certification will be subject to new, stricter standards.  The biggeset change is how energy usage is reported.  Building owners must now report their total annual energy and water consumption or be recertified every two years.  The idea is more reporting will lead to energy consumption reduction as owners will have better information to plan for the future.  The end result will be better “performing”  buildings, operating with optimum efficiency.

USGBC’S LEED program has often been criticized for its shortcomings and inaccuracies.  While the program is far from perfect, the good news is that the USGBC is constantly improving upon the original idea.  This should also improve the future of companies who provide services and technological solutions for maintaining green buildings.  The new standards do not remedy every flaw in the LEED certification process, but do improve the future of sustainable building.

To read more about the new LEED standards click here.

Here are a few articles from around the super information highway that tripped our alarms this week: 

Downsizing your dream home.  New home buying trends lean to the green.  (ABC News)

eVolvo Skyscraper Competition is ready for entries: (Inhabitat)

Chicago’s Sears Tower to receive $350 million green facelift:  (AP )

Sustainable Industries Top Green Products of 2009 (Jetson Green)  

Konstructr TV Episode 1 (collector’s edition)  (Konstructr)

7 ways to conserve water usage (Treehugger)

Ms. Cape gives us advice on how to approach sustainability and her unique perspective as a public servant makes this a video not to be missed.

Click below for the full video.

For me, this was a breath of fresh air. Often when in a green convention, you’re likely to meet a huge mass of straight-ticket voters who hold the party line no matter what. Joseph Malki seemed pleased to rock the boat a little in revealing that he was a self-proclaimed radical green Republican. It was startling for a minute, and then it made sense. In order for the green movement to stick, it needs to have firm supporters on both sides of the aisle. Joseph Malki could be that guy.

Joseph talked to us about the science of sustainability, and made the point that business and government aren’t cooperating on green initiatives in a meaningful way. Joseph argued that green was turned into an ideology by progressives, activists, and the political left. He cited numerous instances where green initiatives turned out to be disasters, namely biofuel and CFL life-cycle risk-assessment.

It all makes sense to me. Creating meaningful change with this momentum requires a scientific, codified approach if we want it to last longer than the current administration. Joseph Malki may represent the future generation of green conservatives, or even the green movement as a whole.

-by Nate Kharrl of ecofactory

Our partners over at EcoFactory were able to catch up with Jerome Ringo of the Apollo Alliance for a few quick questions at Green Cities Florida. Fresh off his workshop “The Color of Green: The Next Inconvenient Truth “, Mr. Ringo addresses several issues. A personal favorite is “The problem of nature vs. Nintendo” and how we reconnect youth back to nature in the age of digital entertainment. Ringo’s focus on the human element brings the green movement back to where it matters the most. Hope you enjoy the interview and stay tuned for more highlights from Green Cities Florida.

We here at EcoFactory managed to catch Steve Cochran at Green Cities™ Florida and talk to him a bit about Open Space. It’s quite an impressive concept, to think that you can solve problems that might take weeks of meetings by doing an Open Space session for a few hours. I didn’t have the chance to ask everyone what they accomplished in sessions on May 21, but judging by past successes, I’d say some good things were accomplished.

Cochran told me that he’s done Open Space sessions with groups of all sizes, most recently with attendees at the Green Cities™ Alabama Summit. Seems like it always produces some good ideas. I can believe that, considering that some of my best classes in college were based on the sort of discussions that Open Space tries to foster.

Here’s how Open Space works: You gather a bunch of people together and encourage them to bring up topics on a particular theme. Those topics are written on pieces of paper, and anyone interested in that topic follows the piece of paper to the sidelines, where a discussion will start on the topic. Essentially the idea is that the people, not the leadership, set the agenda. If you get a bunch of people together in one room and encourage them to think freely to bring up solutions, odds are you’re going to come up with something original and creative.

The only requirements Open Space puts on participants govern how the discussion works, rather than what is discussed. Principles like “if you’re not contributing or learning, move on” and “when the discussion is over, it’s over” indicate that the direction is not to force accomplishment, but instead to foster it.

I hope that the Green Cities™ Florida Open Space session managed to accomplish some great things. Certainly there were some big movers involved in the discussions, with people coming from businesses, non-profits, and government offices. The biggest thing I brought away from the whole event was that there are people out there with big dreams for a greener planet. Let’s hope those dreams come true!

The founder, CEO and president of Natural Logic (a strategic sustainability consulting firm) was one of the more active elements of Green Cities Florida, contributing to two different sessions. One session based around his book, dedicated to explaining the opportunities of green business and debunking some of the myths. The other session was a speaking engagement along with Terry Gips (Sustainability Associates Minneapolis) for a discussion on greening your business while turning a profit in a recession. This session focused on getting everyone in an organization on the same page when it comes to making a business more eco-friendly. As Gil puts it, “The engineering is easy…Getting it so that Joe and Mary do different things when they show up at work on Monday morning, that’s where the real art and challenge of this work is.”

After helping such clients as Nike and General Mills develop strategies to become more sustainable while still being profitable, Friend had plenty of experience to offer the attendees of Green Cities Florida, who ranged from local government types to university officials developing sustainability curriculum. His experience in the field is a goldmine for Green Cities and the future of Florida’s sustainability movement. In his interview, Gil talks about Green Cites as a place to connect and refers to several people developing courses for their educational institutions that are now have a relationship to build a better model for sustainability in academia. Building relationships to find solutions is the essence of Green Cities and the idea is gaining momentum with every event.

We at Green Cities Media would love to thank Gil Friend for helping to make the Florida event one to remember and hope to work with him again in the near future.

Want more Gil Friend? Of course you do. Below is the Green Cities Florida onsite interview with Mr. Friend, by one of his biggest fans Kimberly Miller.

Make sure you check out the pre Green Cities Florida interview
You can learn more about Gil Friend and Natural Logic here
Interested in reading Gil’s newest work? Order here online.

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I’m Kimberly Miller with Green Cities Media, standing here with Gil Friend of Natural Logic, on site at Green Cities in Orlando, Florida.
Could you recap for me what you’ve been doing here at Green Cities and the sessions you’ve been teaching?

Well I taught two sessions here. We did one yesterday on the Truth About Green Business, based on my new book coming out on May 29th from Financial Times Press. It was a high density overview of Green Business, like Green Business for Dummies except not for dummies. So, we did a course based on that, a one hour drinking-from-a-fire hose, here are some of the basics about green business, to a full room. This morning I shared a session with Terry Gips from Sustainability Associates in Minneapolis and we did a 2.5 hour session on how to green your company and profit from greening in a recession. So, a more sweeping overview that was grounded very much in the Natural Step framework as a basic way of thinking about these issues and communicating about them and getting everybody in the organization on the same page. Because the truth is, that’s really the key. The hard part isn’t the technical issues. As much innovation as it requires, the engineering is not the hard part. If you tell an engineer you need a building that uses half as much energy, she can build it. If you tell an engineer you need a building that uses 40% or 80% less water, he can build it. But getting the human beings who live and work in that building to change their behavior is where the real art and challenge of this work is. The natural step framework is really one of the indispensable tools for doing that. So, we did a basic quick introduction to that and talked about how to apply it with case studies of how companies have put this to use. Then, there was a lot of discussion with the room.

Who were the attendees in your sessions?

It was a broad mix. We had people from government, mostly county and city governments in the region and all the way down to South Florida, a bunch of people from Universities and Colleges who were developing curriculum programs in this area, a lot of business people, too. Both small businesspeople and from larger aerospace companies, a number of scientists and a bunch of folks just checking it out trying to figure out what their place in this new revolution is.

What do you think is the vibe here? Are people optimistic for the future, are they hopeful?

I think some are. I haven’t been through the Open Space session yet so I haven’t had a chance to really feel that. But, the people I’ve talked with one-on-one and in my sessions are very enthusiastic and eager to be a part of this. If we’re being realistic, there is more fear today than there was a year ago. I find it in myself. I am a congenital optimist, always have been. We’re in a world of challenge right now. We’ve got the financial meltdown to deal with and stacked up behind that are a half a dozen other crises waiting to roll in from off shore. Ranging from energy to carbon to soils to biodiversity to collapse of fisheries and on down the list. So, it is important not to be facile about this.
On the other hand, it is an enormously exciting time because we’re in a sustainability explosion. Not just the number of people, but the type of people, and the range and diversity in the business world and in government who get this, that understand we’re in a transformative moment at least in American history if not world history. I know that sounds “high falutin.” but this is the kind of time that when people look back 50 years they will say ‘that was historic’. We are in historic now. And we have the opportunity to reinvent the economy, and reinvent infrastructure and reinvent the ways we do business. OR not. We might fail. But if we do that successfully it’s like opening a new frontier and there’s enormous business opportunity for businesses and people of all sorts.

How do you think a conference like Green Cities fits into this historic moment?

A conference like Green Cities fits into this historic moment because it brings together this kind of diversity of people: government, business, academia, NGO and individuals with an interesting focus around a region, here, where we are in Orlando, central Florida. One thing that has happened here is not just people hearing from experts but people meeting with each other and forging connections with each other. Now, this open space session that the conference is ending with is an opportunity for people to find where their common interests are, where they can support each other, where they can work together. Just one example of that, today: we had somebody leading an MBA program at a college, someone developing a sustainability bachelors program at another college, someone developing an online program at another college, several people in the extensions service doing outreach to agriculture and industry, and I think none of them knew each other before today. It’s a place to connect not just for friendship, relationships, and support (although that is good too) but to connect for action and to connect for commitments to move things forward because there is a lot of work to do.

Did you have a chance to attend any of the sessions?

I attended a few sessions myself. I attended the opening keynotes yesterday morning and in particular I thought Brian Nattrass’s talk was a real knock out. You would expect that I have a bias toward Brian because he’s also based in the Natural Step framework. What was really striking in his talk was the work he’s done with the US military. And the way the US Military has embraced sustainability to a surprising degree. It is one of the big surprises, and of course Wal-Mart is another surprise. Places that were the least expected players and the least expected leaders are doing remarkable work. So I was in a session yesterday with some lawyers and people from NRDC and from a sustainability consulting firm talking about some of the finance and strategy issues specifically in relation to the power industry. One person pointed out that FPL here is planning to build some nuclear reactors. There was significant cost as there always is with nukes. There are now looking at about 22 billion dollars to develop about 1.1 megawatts of generated capacity and the woman from NRDC pointed out that for that much money you could generate 4.4 megawatts through efficiency. So, the question is – what’s economical? Why do we make the financial decisions that we make? And how would the nuclear industry survive if it wasn’t heavily subsidized? And for all of the people who say ‘Oh gosh, we can’t afford solar” I ask, what can we afford if we pull the subsidies out from under coal, oil, and nuclear and actually have a free market in energy?

What are you doing after you leave Orlando?

I’m hopping a plane to Los Angeles. I have a meeting tomorrow with a Chinese delegation that’s looking into clean tech developments in cooperation with the United States and China.

Good luck with that and with your future projects. It was nice to see you!

Thanks so much, great to see you.

The saying “Necessity is the mother of invention” has never been more relevant.  The world is facing environmental degradation on one side and economic collapse on the other.  Fortunately, one can counter with the adage of “crisis is another word for opportunity” still holds true.  The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is an annual contest for harvesting big ideas and strategies that aim to solve a pressing global problem.  These strategies are systematic means of changing the world which take into consideration the complexity of such a large task.  First place winners receive a cash prize of $100,000.00 to support the on-going development and implementation of their winning solution.  The first two contests have shown just how wide the scope of focus has been.

The ”Idea Index” is a catalog of the entries submitted to the contest in its first two years.  Here you can see what issues the contestants thought to be most pressing and how they would solve them.  The 2008 winner, John Todd, focused on restoring the overly strip mined areas of Appalachia in a piece named:  Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World: The Challenge of Appalachia.  Todd suggested a four stage process that took account of all angles, including land purchasing and funding to create a better design for producing energy (namely replacing coal power with wind power in Appalachia).  This year saw 33 contestants make it to the final round of judging.  The winner was the student team from MIT’s Media Lab with their entry titled:  Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility on Demand Systems.  The winning entry was much more than futuristic cars and transportation systems.  A 2009 juror stated:  “Sustainable Personal Mobility isn’t just about the design of these lightweight, highly efficient, electric vehicles, it also about inserting that technological innovation into the social and cultural environment and designing an intuitive system within which they function.”  To view a detailed list of entries and submitters, the Buckminster Fuller Challenge website has created the Idea Index.  Here is where one can go to see what problems people see around them and what strategies they would utilize to solve the conflict.

Buckminster Fuller will always be known as one of the greatest visionaries and forward thinking people who have changed the world.  This challenge series will keep his spirit alive as others attempt to tackle the troubles of the world.  We’ll keep you posted with any updates for further Buckminster Fuller Challenges.

 Visit the official Buckminster Fuller Challenger site:  http://challenge.bfi.org/home

Read Eric Corey Freed’s monthly column.