As a self-proclaimed East Coast liberal intellectual who drinks Starbucks Grande Nonfat Decaf Lattes on a regular basis, I woke up this morning after the Mid-term elections of 2010 with a heavy heart. I thought to myself, as I took public transportation to my office from my
While I was in New Orleans for the Green Matters Conference, I met the most extraordinary woman. Simone Bruni, better known in the Crescent City as the “Demo Diva,” took her personal tragedy from Hurricane Katrina and turned it into a woman-owned and run demolition
NOTE: The opinions expressed in this post are entirely those of the author, and do not represent the position of the USGBC or the Delaware Valley Green Building Council.
As almost anyone in the green community knows, last week LEED Critic Henry Gifford sued the USGBC for, essentially, a few different flavors of fraud. Mr. Gifford sued
You had to know this was coming. I even predicted a Lanham Act and Consumer Fraud Act claim would be part of a good green litigation.
Earlier this week, Henry Gifford, public critic of LEED (you may have read his Op-Eds in the New York Times) filed a class action law suit against the USGBC and its founders
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) sued the Feds this week to reinstate the PACE program. The PACE program was a component of the Recovery Act, which allowed the upfront costs of property owners’ clean energy and energy efficiency projects to be financed by local governments, and paid back by homeowners as an increase in their
Several events have occurred that will require further posts and analysis, but I want to keep my readers updated:
1. Decision in AHRI v. City of Albuquerque: My friend Steve Del Percio did a nice job of summarizing the opinion here. I will have an analysis of the opinion from my perspective on Friday.
The wild west is alive and well, and in New Jersey.
I have a client there who consults with farmers who own wide swaths of land and with renewable energy companies that are looking to develop solar farms on that land. He describes the phenomenon as a "land grab," where the renewable energy
Building green is the law in Baltimore City. And while the mandatory requirement for all to build green has been in effect since July 1, 2009, the City has just announced the regulations (that were, arguably, to have been effective July 1, 2009) were promulgated last week, effective September 16, 2010.
Make no mistake, Baltimore City is not
Several stories recently have highlighted the other side of the regulatory coin–regulations are only effective if they are enforced.
On Monday, the Department of Energy issued 27 penalty notices to companies for failure to meet energy efficiency and water conservation standards.
I am spoke yesterday at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC at a forum on green jobs for women. Although policymakers assert that government investments in green initiatives can produce 20% more jobs than traditional economic stimulus measures, women are not finding as much employment in the green sector as men. I wrote about this
In 2009, Baltimore passed an amendment to its building code requiring public and private buildings above 10,000 gross square feet to "be equivalent to a LEED “Silver” level." Obviously, the goal was to get buildings in Baltimore to be more environmentally friendly. Fast forward a year, and a controversy is brewing over whether a proposed Big Box project, including a
A few weeks ago, the EPA released its Sustainable Design and Green Building Toolkit for Local Governments.
The Toolkit was developed by EPA Region 4, and Green Building Law Blog (GBLB) was very excited to interview Karen Bandhauer, an Environmental Scientist at EPA Region 4 about the Toolkit.
This week, the EPA released its Sustainable Design and Green Building Toolkit for Local Governments. The Toolkit
The Toolkit is designed to assist local governments in identifying and removing permitting barriers to sustainable design and green building practices. It provides a resource for communities interested in conducting their own internal evaluation of
In April 2009 the U.S. Green Building Council launched LEED v3. Prior to this upgrade, any professional seeking to achieve LEED AP status had a choice of only three exam tracks: 1.) New Construction; 2.) Commercial Interiors; or 3.) Existing Buildings. Upon successful completion of the accreditation exam, you received a single encompassing designation