Gaia’s LEED Gold Project Receives Recognition

The first of Watson Land Company's warehouse buildings that Gaia assisted in meeting and exceeding their LEED certification goals has received recognition in a local publication. The INLAND VALLEY DAILY BULLETIN
www.insidesocal.com/the_bizz did a brief write up (below) on Watson Legacy Building 816 which Gaia worked extensively on to finally achieve a LEED gold certification… one of the first LEED gold speculative warehouse buildings in the nation. This project presented a unique challenge for the Gaia team. LEED for New Construction did not specifically address some of the The results speak for themselves and the countless hours of hard work paid off. Watson went into this project expecting to achieve basic LEED certification with a hope to achieve a Silver Rating. In the end, we were able to exceed even that goal. The energy savings, water savings and reduced maintenance mentioned below are only part of the picture. Speaking with some of the employees at the building, they expressed their enthusiasm for the new building telling us how happy they were with their new workplace. LEED studies often mention the improved worker productivity. The testimony of these employees certainly corroborates this assertion.

Watson Legacy Building 816

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE BIZZ

www.insidesocal.com/the_bizz/

New Chino industrial building

earns Gold-level LEED certification

Watson Land Co.'s recently completed

297,107-square-foot industrial Legacy Building in the

Watson Commerce Center Chino, 6810 Bickmore Ave.,

has been awarded Gold-level LEED certification by the

U.S. Green Building Council.

This was the first speculative industrial building in

Southern California to be awarded LEED Gold,

according to a company news release. The building is

occupied by Motivational Fulfillment & Logistics

Services Inc. According to the news release, the

company has reported that its electricity bill has

dropped 50 percent and its landscaping fees are nearly

40 percent lower since moving into the new facility.

Recycle or Pay in San Francisco

San Francisco, which already boasts one of the most aggressive recycling programs in the country, has raised the ante, vowing to levy fines of up to $1,000 on those unwilling to separate their Kung Pao chicken leftovers from their newspapers. I just read the posting below in The Huffington Post. This is very encouraging. Trash and the amount we generate has always been a topic that I am especially adamant about. I don't think most people have ever been to a landfill so it is easy to forget that there is no "away" when you throw something away. LEED has adopted standards to encourage recycling of construction and demolition debris, but too often this does not go far enough. It should be a prerequisite first of all, and because there is no distinction between inerts and other debris, the LEED requirements can usually easily be met by recycling concrete. Not that that is a bad thing, but there is so much more that could be done with little extra effort.

Congratulations to San Francisco for making this a priority and setting their goals high. I have no doubt that the people of San Francisco will meet their goals and set a great example for the rest of the country.

 

 

 

Gavin Newsom

Mayor of San Francisco

Posted: June 23, 2009 12:00 PM

The Nation's Most Ambitious Recycling Law

 

Composting will prevent tons of material from going to the landfill, create healthy soil for our local farms and help us fight global warming.

Today at the Farmer's Market in front of San Francisco's iconic Ferry Building I am signing the nation's first mandatory composting law. It's the most comprehensive recycling and composting legislation in the country and the first to require residents and businesses to compost food scraps. Watch the press conference live at 10:15 AM PST.

A number of years ago, San Francisco set a lofty green goal--we wanted to divert 75 percent of our resources from the landfill by 2010 and achieve zero waste by 2020. At the time, many people thought our targets were overly ambitious. However, San Francisco is poised to meet these goals. We are currently keeping 72 percent of recyclable material out of our landfill.

We recently conducted a waste-stream analysis and discovered that about two thirds of the garbage people throw away--half a million tons each year--could have been recycled or turned to compost. If we were able to capture everything, we'd be recycling 90 percent--preventing additional waste material from going to the landfill, and creating hundreds of green-collar jobs.

San Francisco already converts over 400 tons of food scraps and other compostable discards into high-grade organic compost every day. It's so nutrient-rich that the final product is almost jet black in color. It's snapped up by farms and vineyards across the Bay Area, we can barely keep up with the demand. By requiring all residents and businesses to compost, we'll increase the amount of "black gold" available for sustainable regional agriculture and improve our environment.

When food scraps break down in an oxygen-starved landfill it creates large quantities of methane gas, a greenhouse gas 72 times more potent than carbon dioxide when measured over a 20 year period. It also creates acids that can leach toxins from the landfill.

Composting food scraps produces little to no methane because there is sufficient oxygen in the process. And using the resulting compost reduces greenhouse gases by returning carbon to the soil, increasing plant growth, and reducing emissions associated with chemical fertilizers, pesticides and irrigation. Recent studies show that farming one acre of land using conventional industrial methods releases 3,700 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere each year. Farmed sustainably, with compost and cover crops, that same acre will put 12,000 pounds of carbon back into the earth.

I believe that composting will become second nature for Americans, just like sorting bottles and paper. It will take time, but I believe mandatory composting will spread across the country--improving the air we breathe and reducing our need for landfills.

For more info on our recycling programs please visit - www.sfenvironment.org/.

Follow Gavin Newsom on Twitter: www.twitter.com/GavinNewsom

Van Jones Joins White House CEQ as Green Jobs ‘Adviser’

Here is another bit of encouraging news. I have seen Van speak on several occasions and each time he has been inspiring, optimistic and practical. Another great addition to the Obama team. The President would have a hard time finding a more dedicated, intelligent person than Van Jones to work on environmental justice and sustainability issues.

Van Jones will join the Obama administration, but not as any sort of czar.

The green jobs promoter will join the White House Council on Environmental Quality, his current outfit said today, as a "special adviser for green jobs."

According to Green For All, the Oakland-based green jobs advocacy group Mr. Jones founded, his duties will include: "helping to shape and implement job-generating climate policy; working to ensure equal protection and equal opportunity in the administration's climate and energy proposals; and publicly advocating the administration's environmental and energy agenda."

That first job description is key. Since the campaign, President Obama has touted the job-creation potential of his clean-energy initiative. Now, the focus seems to be on making sure that the administration's overall climate policy—including a cap-and-trade bill to curb greenhouse-gas emissions—will create more jobs than it endangers.

Tweaking the climate bill that way is politically very important. One of the administration's biggest challenges in passing a comprehensive cap-and-trade bill is convincing members of Congress, especially Democrats in Rust Belt states, that cap-and-trade's likely negative impact on manufacturing will be offset somehow through new "green jobs."

Of course, plenty of economists are still skeptical about the idea of two-for-one policy making, such as shaping climate policy from a jobs-creation perspective. Harvard University's Robert Stavins is one of the most vocal critics:

Addressing the worst economic recession in generations calls for the most effective economic stimulus package that can be devised, not a stimulus package that is diminished in effectiveness through excessive bells and whistles meant to address a myriad of other (legitimate) social concerns. And, likewise, getting serious about global climate change will require the enactment and implementation of meaningful, dedicated climate policies, most likely a comprehensive national CO2 cap-and-trade system. These are two serious but different policy problems, and they call for two serious, carefully-crafted policy responses.

So President Obama has created one green job, just by hiring Van Jones. Can he create more before the clamor for jobs of any color becomes deafening?

UPDATE: The WSJ's Stephen Power spoke briefly with Mr. Jones today and reports:

In a five-minute telephone interview Tuesday, Mr. Jones said he wasn't prepared to describe his duties in detail but that the focus of his new job would be "creating new policies going forward and trying to make sure as we design new policies that we build in smart ideas."

He said he doesn't expect to advise the administration's appointees at the Department of Energy on how to dispense roughly $40 billion allocated to it for various stimulus projects under the recently passed economic recovery legislation. The agency has "great people already working on that," he said.

Asked to respond to critics who say that the transition from cheap fossil fuels will result in job losses or lower wages, Mr. Jones said "There's a debate among economists about what's true, but I think there's not much more jobs to be had in the coal mines." Asked whether he considered nuclear power a "green" source of energy, Mr. Jones said, "I'm not going to comment on that."

Eli Mervine

www.gaiadevelopment.com

eli@gaiadevelopment.com

EPAct Tax Incentives for Commercial Buildings

Here's an article about a seminar in Florida this March. The seminar is on EPAct and the federal tax incentives for commercial buildings that incorporate energy efficiency measures into their design.

Go Green and Get Green ($1.80/sf) - Energy Tax Benefits for Commercial Properties to be Focus of Seminar March 18 in Fort Lauderdale

First signed into law in 2005, it was extended to 2013 by the 2008 stimulus bill. Incentives are awarded on a per square foot basis and can be as high as $1.80 per square foot. Many of our commercial projects would easily qualify for this incentive, but there is a lack of awareness and sometimes an inability to take advantage of the incentives due to tax liability status.

The actual text of EPAct is long and cryptic, which is not surprising for a government document. There are many ways to qualify for and take advantage of these incentives, and there needs to be more awareness about how to assess and document the requirements.

The seminar below is in Florida this March, but we need to spread the word and help educate peopole here in LA about these potential sources of savings. They could significantly offset the upfront costs of energy efficiency measures considered by commercial developers. Maybe we need to have our own EPAct seminar out here on the west coast. Just a thought.

Maybe next time I'll write about how to decipher the new legislation for potential boons for energy efficiency. The full text is available through www.recovery.org

 

Welcome to my blog

Welcome! I have set up this blog to be forum for discussion of all subjects related to the environment, sustainability, energy, education and in general, all things green.

More specifically (and the reason for the name of this blog), this is a place to discuss L.E.E.D. certification, the process, problems encountered, lessons learned and insights.

Over the past few years "green" has become a key element in nearly all major business discussions. Now the economic collapse has presented both challenges and a huge opportunity to fundamentally change the way we build, consume and produce energy, live and even think. There are great ideas everywhere and now finally the tide seems to have shifted. The ideas that a decade ago seemed too radical to some are now given serious consideration. The green economy has finally arrived.

Eli Mervine
Gaia Development
www.gaiadevelopment.com
310.591.8172