December 2011

2011 Green Building Trend Watch

Trends in Green Building Design & Construction

1. Living Buildings becoming reality. Even more living buildings opened their doors this year, including our first completed building: the Bertschi School Living Science Classroom.
2. Multifamily still going strong. The City's FAR bonus incentive is bringing new developers into the green building certification world.  We certified over 130 units under LEED for Homes this year in Washington and Alaska. 
3. Increased interest in durability and energy performance. In part due to ENERGY STAR v3, we’re finding more production builders of single family homes motivated to integrate durability and energy efficiency into new designs to both meet the rating system and improve customer satisfaction.

Trends in Green Building Programs, Planning, and Policies

1. Looking beyond buildings. We just helped King County update their Sustainable Infrastructure Scorecard which is designed to rate the environmental attributes of a wide variety of infrastructure projects.
2. Moving to performance measurement. We’re seeing clients, like City of Shoreline, take the next step from their high level sustainability plan to a more detailed effort to measure and track specific indicators. Their new indicators web site will be live in early 2012.
3. Pushing the envelope in C&D recycling. Local governments are still looking for ways to move the market to increase diversion rates and create new opportunities for C+D salvaged materials. This year we supported industry research and outreach efforts to gain input on the City of Seattle’s draft Comprehensive Solid Waste Management Plan.

Trends in Green Building Education & Training

1. Behavior-based energy efficiency. Affordable housing providers are using new tools we created for Enterprise Green Communities to engage their residents in energy-saving actions.
2. LEED credential maintenance gets easier. With GBCI involving more volunteer reviewers (including one on the O’Brien & Company staff), more events, presentations and trainings are pre-approved with the CMP program.
3. Demonstrating weatherization. We’ll never be done using demonstration projects to educate visitors about the next wave of green building. This year we helped Kitsap County and the HBA of Kitsap County promote the Kitsap Energy Upgrade, a weatherization demonstration project.