Gov. Kaine Supports LEED and Green Globes
While we have all (or at least I have) been focusing on the federal stimulus and its effect on the green building industry, an interesting development occurred in Virginia that may impact the future of a statewide green building regulation.
In past posts, I highlighted Governor Tim Kaine's attempts to pass a statewide green building regulation. As you may recall, in 2007, Governor Kaine indicated his preference for the LEED rating system and Energy Star in Executive Order 48. In 2008, the Governor and the General Assembly crossed paths on the proper green building rating system for Virginia:
The Governor’s original proposed budget in 2008 did not include green building provisions. As part of the budget process, the Governor’s budget was sent to the General Assembly to undergo legislative amendments and the following provision, which includes Green Globes, was added: “All new and renovated state owned-facilities . . . that are over 5,000 gross square feet shall be designed and constructed consistent with the . . . U.S. Green Building Council's LEED rating system or the Green Globes rating system.” Governor Kaine vetoed the inclusion of Green Globes but the General Assembly overrode the veto.
Based on the Governor Kaine's past work to exclude the Green Globes rating system, I was surprised by a portion of the Governor's State of the Commonwealth Address on January 14, 2009:
"A few years ago, I issued an executive order requiring that all new state buildings be constructed to high energy-efficiency standards. Later, members of the General Assembly included similar language in the budget bill. That was a smart step in ensuring that the Commonwealth makes good energy decisions, and one that saves us money in the long run.
This year, I will ask you to ratify that approach again, by requiring in the Code of Virginia that all state and local government buildings meet either LEED or Green Globes standards for efficiency."
Did you see that shift in policy? What do you think of Governor Kaine's new found support for the Green Globes standard?
Photo: Ouij
Interesting change of position for Kaine. I like the flexibility.
An interesting policy shift but one that I feel you will see become more common as individual's understanding of the various systems other than LEED continues to evolve.
My firm has a fairly dim view of Green Globes as a certfication system. When we first researched the system a number of years ago, we found it to be unduly biased by manufacturing associations and special interest trade groups, to the extent that many of the criteria and requirements were "softballed" compared to the LEED equivalent. At that time, we also had major reservations about the certification process, as it seemed to be primarily through self-assessment and not through third party review and documentation.
Green Globes has changed a lot since then as they have pursued getting their standard asopted by ANSI has driven them to make a number of more rigourous changes to the system, so we are currently reassesing our stance by doing a Green Globes analysis of one of our projects that recently received LEED Gold certification. We still have to finish this process, but so far it seems that the big problems are that it awards many points for even intending to be green and that there seems to be no minimum standard for documentation and proof of meeting any of the criteria. I know they insist they have third-party review, but it is very unclear what this person actually reviews and how rigourous they get in their fact-checking -- this process seems to be entirely opaque.
On the upside, the Green Globes self assesment does seem to be a very good tool for helping to think through all the aspects of sustainable design from the very early stages of the project through construction, which I think could be extremely beneficial to both architects and building owners as they begin to think through the entire process.
As I said, we still need to really finalize our research, but at this point my opinion is that Green Globes is a very powerful and easy to use tool for planning and thinking about sustainable design with some possibly serious shortcomings as an actual Green Building Certification system.