Green Building Law Update

Environmental Law and Sustainability for Business

Tag Archives: green building law

France is an Example of How Not to do Residential Greenhouse Gas Reduction

A Green Challenge: France's Struggle with High Emission Rental Properties… Continue Reading

Commercial PACE: Filing the Financing Gap for GHG Reductions in Commercial Building

By Stuart Kaplow on May 20, 2023 Posted in Environmental, ESG, GHG, Green Building

PACE is a game changing solution that empowers commercial building owners to invest in sustainability… Continue Reading

Questions from our webinar “Does Your Lease Address New GHG Laws?”

By Stuart Kaplow on January 29, 2023 Posted in Climate Change, Environmental, GHG, greenhouse gas

Your lease must be amended to to take into account GHG emissions… Continue Reading

Does Your Lease Need Greenhouse Gas Provisions?

By Stuart Kaplow on January 22, 2023 Posted in Environmental, ESG, GHG, Green Building, greenhouse gas

The aim of this post, about how to repair the planet through leasing, is to set the stage for new ideas… Continue Reading

Ban the Light Bulb to Repair the World

By Stuart Kaplow on January 15, 2023 Posted in Energy, GHG, Green Building, greenhouse gas

In 2023 there is nothing wrong with doing that better than Thomas Edison in 1860, with LEDs, and repairing the planet.… Continue Reading

First State to Authorize Use of the 2021 IgCC

By Stuart Kaplow on January 8, 2023 Posted in Environmental, GHG, IgCC, Uncategorized

Maryland is on the cusp of being the first state in the country to authorize use of the new 2021 edition of the International Green Construction Code … Continue Reading

ESG will be the Environmental Issue of 2022

By Stuart Kaplow on January 2, 2022 Posted in Environmental, ESG, Sustainability

ESG will be the environmental issue of the year, if not also among the biggest business issues of the year. ESG is everywhere. And yes, this is with appreciation that environmental is only the E in ESG. This is more than a Magic 8 Ball prediction, although we do regularly consult one of the 1960s … Continue Reading

45L Energy Efficient Home Tax Credit Extended for 2021 by Covid Relief Bill

By Stuart Kaplow on January 10, 2021 Posted in Energy, Federal, Green Building, Green Globes, IgCC, LEED

The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, H.R. 133, signed into law by President Trump on December 27th, extended the 45L energy efficient home $2,000 tax credit, which had been scheduled to expire last year, to cover qualified new energy efficient homes sold or leased through 2021. And yes, regular readers of this blog will notice that … Continue Reading

GRESB Purchased from GBCI in advance of ESG Breakout

By Stuart Kaplow on December 20, 2020 Posted in GRESB, LEED

Last month GRESB announced that its management had purchased the business from its parent GBCI. GRESB was established in 2009 as the Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark by three pension funds who wanted to assess and benchmark the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and other related performance of real assets, providing standardized data to capital … Continue Reading

EPA Releases Draft National Recycling Strategy

By Stuart Kaplow on November 29, 2020 Posted in Federal, IgCC, LEED, recycling

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a draft National Recycling Strategy and is seeking public comment through December 4, 2020, with the goal of finalizing it in early 2021. Maybe not since Plato wrote about the value of reusing waste in the fourth century BC has recycling faced the challenges that we are seeing right now. … Continue Reading

Supreme Court to decide Climate Change Case

By Stuart Kaplow on October 11, 2020 Posted in Climate Change, Environmental

While this week the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett begins in earnest before the Senate Judiciary Committee, last week the U.S. Supreme Court granted BP’s petition for a writ of certiorari in BP P.L.C. v. Mayor and City Council of Baltimore, a much watched climate change case. In 2017, a number of state and … Continue Reading

GSA Reviews more than 100 Green Building Systems and Selects 5

By Stuart Kaplow on May 26, 2019 Posted in Federal, Green Globes, LEED

Section 436(h) of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 requires the General Services Administration’s Office of Federal High-Performance Buildings to complete a review of high performance building certification systems every 5 years. After the review, GSA recommends to the Secretary of Energy the building certification systems most likely to encourage a comprehensive approach … Continue Reading

Nurdles are the Environmental Calamity of 2019

By Stuart Kaplow on April 21, 2019 Posted in Codes and Regulations, Environmental

A year ago, I thought a nurdle was a cricket term for a score by deflecting the ball rather than striking it. But in the last twelve months I learned that a nurdle is also a term for a small, lentil size, pellet of plastic that serves as raw material in the manufacture of plastic … Continue Reading

LEED Prerequisite Now Prohibits Smoking Cannabis

By Stuart Kaplow on February 3, 2019 Posted in LEED

The U.S. Green Building Council issued a LEED Interpretation in 2018 ruling, “smoking of cannabis is considered a form of smoking for the purposes of both the interior and exterior smoking provisions of the LEED Prerequisite Environmental Tobacco Smoke Control.” The LEED prerequisite prohibits smoking outside the building except in designated smoking areas located at … Continue Reading

State Not County has Authority to Regulate Solar Farms

By Stuart Kaplow on December 9, 2018 Posted in Energy, Solar Panel

At a time when solar panels are de riguere a recent decision by a Maryland appellate court limiting the authority of local governments to regulate the location and specifics of construction of a solar farm has broad implications far beyond this case. Perennial Solar, LLC filed an application for a zoning special exception and variance … Continue Reading

Tenant’s New Defense to Hazardous Substance Liability

By Stuart Kaplow on December 2, 2018 Posted in Environmental, Federal

Buried in the omnibus spending bill signed earlier this year were amendments to the Superfund law that for the first time make clear that tenants can qualify as bona fide prospective purchasers, protected from cleanup costs from the presence of hazardous substances on a property. The Consolidated Appropriations Act signed on March 23, 2018 included … Continue Reading

2018 IgCC – A Fast Paced Deep Dive

By Stuart Kaplow on November 25, 2018 Posted in Green Building, IgCC

The 2018 International Green Construction Code was released on November 8, 2018 by the U.S. Green Building Council, International Code Council, ASHRAE and the Illuminating Engineering Society. Make no mistake, the 203 page document unveiled by the coterie of trade group authors and available from the ICC for sale to the public (.. click here … Continue Reading

Greenbuild Clearly Showed the State of LEED is Strong

By Stuart Kaplow on November 18, 2018 Posted in IgCC, LEED

The Lorax Partnerships team at Greenbuild

This post is a compilation of the highlights from the just completed Greenbuild International Conference and Expo that took place last week in Chicago. Possibly more accurately stated, this is a report on the state of the LEED green building rating system. The state of LEED is strong. It is a given that each year … Continue Reading

Buying a LEED Certified Building Is Easy But ..

By Stuart Kaplow on November 4, 2018 Posted in LEED

Despite that a frog told us all in a song lyric, “it’s not easy bein’ green,” it is easy to buy a green building, but .. And there are many good reasons for purchasing a green building that is LEED Certified. LEED gave us the technologies and methodologies revolutionizing the way we construct and occupy … Continue Reading

Green Building Codes Not Eligible for Copyright Protection

By Stuart Kaplow on October 28, 2018 Posted in Codes and Regulations, Green Building

A decision earlier this month by the Eleventh Circuit United States Courts Of Appeals goes further than other modern courts in describing that building codes when adopted by local government cannot be copyrighted. Ruling that “the law,” whether by statute, ordinance, regulations, or code, and even when its source is a judicial opinion, is not … Continue Reading

Is There Lead in the Drinking Water of Your Green School?

By Stuart Kaplow on October 7, 2018 Posted in Environmental, Green Building

EPA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agree that there is no known safe level of lead in a child’s blood. Lead is harmful to health, especially for children. Though most lead exposure occurs when people eat paint chips and inhale dust, the EPA estimates that up to 20% of lead exposure comes … Continue Reading

With Over $3.6 Trillion in Value You Should Pay Attention to GRESB

By Stuart Kaplow on September 30, 2018 Posted in GRESB, LEED

For the uninitiated GRESB assesses the sustainability performance of real estate and infrastructure portfolios worldwide. GRESB is the global environmental, social and governance (ESG) benchmark for real estate assets. GRESB’s stated “mission is to enhance and protect shareholder value by assessing and empowering sustainability practices in the real asset sector.” They do that by offering … Continue Reading

Net Zero Certification Program Announced by USGBC

By Stuart Kaplow on September 23, 2018 Posted in Green Building, LEED

Much as NASA developed dozens of life changing and useful inventions that benefitted all as it raced to the moon, USGBC may be the catalyst for new, cutting edge technologies in the race to net zero buildings. There is no doubt that the newly announced LEED net zero certification program is aspirational. LEED has always … Continue Reading