Building Green: Keeping Up With it All

Spending hours wading through piles of new green laws and incentives could produce a hefty carbon footprint in itself.

The California Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco, Calif. features a 2.5-acre living roof that is blanketed in native plants. The 'green roof' reduces rainwater runoff and serves as a wildlife habitat. David Paul Morris/Getty Images

NEW YORK—Spending hours wading through piles of new green laws and incentives could produce a hefty carbon footprint in itself. Dissecting the acronyms can prove just as tricky—what is LEED, ASHRAE, NYSERDA, EPA, USGBC, PlaNYC?

All of these organizations are changing the way cities move into the future and how buildings need to function. Experts are encouraging industry players to get educated fast and stay up with the play.

“It’s not the big that eats the small, it’s the fast that beats the slow,” said energy reductionist Chris De Weaver at a Greenpearl forum recently. De Weaver advocated a team approach and at least knowing people who are experts.                                                                             

The most significant legislation to impact New York City inhabitants and real estate owners is the new Greener, Greater Buildings Plan announced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg late last month.

The plan, said Bloomberg, “will dramatically improve New York’s energy efficiency and reduce energy costs by some three-quarters of a billion dollars a year.”

That’s a shaving off the yearly $15 billion in energy costs that the city’s one million buildings account for—or 80 percent of the city’s carbon emissions.

Greener, Greater Buildings Plan

There are four major facets of the Greater, Greener Buildings plan, should the legislation be passed in its current form.