Students at Explore Charter School in Brooklyn

Recently, Director of Programs, Tiffany Broyles Yost and I were invited to speak about sustainability in the classroom at Explore Charter School, a K-8 public school in Flatbush, Brooklyn. At Urban Green Council, most of our educational events are geared towards building professionals, so it was a nice change to meet with middle school students newly introduced to the world of green building.

We took the opportunity to speak with the students about USGBC’s Center for Green Schools’ Green Apple initiative to provide healthy and environmentally responsible schools. We wanted to discuss how schools with clean air and plentiful access to daylight have more engaged students and that better acoustics and more comfortable classrooms enhance productivity and alertness.

This information was not news to the 7^th and 8^th graders at Explore. Our first question to them was, “Why does it matter if your school is green?” The first student to answer said it mattered because schools need to be a healthy environment, so children can learn and take care of the planet for the future. I was impressed! As we presented images of “green” schools, the students immediately recognized the sustainable features, including everything from skylights to bicycle racks. The students also spoke of the difference between their school’s current location, in a large building with plenty of operable windows, and its previous location, inside an “old warehouse” with fewer and smaller windows. They described how hot it had been, which made it difficult to concentrate, or worse, made them tired.

Throughout our presentation, Tiffany and I emphasized the importance of conserving resources and how “using less” is really the first step to going green. By simply turning off lights, students can help lower the school’s energy use. The students also offered several ideas for renewable energy sources, citing biomass and geothermal among the more common solar and wind. To end our discussion, we talked about some innovative systems, such as soccer balls that generate power, solar backpacks, and energy producing sneakers. The response was fantastic!

In addition to being a nice change from the office, our visit to Explore was an extremely encouraging experience. The students already had a firm grasp on sustainable practices and how they can positively impact their environment. They are now more aware of the benefits of green buildings and will inevitably bring that knowledge home to their families. As they continue through school, they’ll want to attend green colleges and eventually work in green offices, creating a demand for sustainable building. That’s a good sign.

The work of the Building Resiliency Task Force, convened at the request of Mayor Bloomberg and Speaker Quinn, is now well underway; over 200 members have rolled up their sleeves and taken a first pass at detailed policy proposals.

This week the Task Force Steering Committee is sharing two key documents that chart our progress:

1. Working Group & Committee Guidelines provides a high level statement about our common and differing expectations for the various building sectors (Residential, Commercial, Critical, and    Homes).

2. Summary of Proposals frame the proposals we have heard thus far from the working groups and committees. It’s a summary and conceptual overview; teams are  hard at work on the details that underlay each “big idea.”

As reflected in the Guidelines, there are certain parameters common to all building types, including an expectation to drive change through best practices, removing barriers, and heightening standards for new construction in areas not covered by existing codes.  But we also see very different levels of public interest and obligation for different building types, especially when it comes to retroactive requirements.

On one end of the scale are commercial buildings, where we will largely look to the market and incentives to drive changes in existing buildings. On the other end are critical buildings, which we expect to be fully functional no matter what our changing climate may bring. And somewhere in the middle are residential buildings where some level of functionality is absolutely necessary, though we must balance any requirements against financial hardship.

These documents will guide our work going forward. We look forward to early summer when the Task Force’s work will be complete and we can issue our report and recommendations.

Within the next decade, an aqueduct that supplies half of New York City’s drinking water will be shut down for 6-15 months of repairs. Amazingly, almost no one knows about this.

The Delaware Aqueduct is the world’s longest tunnel and an engineering marvel, delivering water 85 miles to the city using only gravity. However, a portion of it travels through soft limestone and this has become a problem. A small stretch has been leaking water for decades – up to 35 million gallons per day, or more than 3% of the city’s water consumption.

From 2015-2019, NYC will be constructing an 8-mile bypass tunnel around these leaks. During most of this construction the Delaware Aqueduct will continue delivering water, but at some point it will need to close to make the connection to the bypass. Read the details from the Department of Environmental Protection here.

How will New York function with 50% of its water supply turned off? Thankfully, by the time the Delaware spigots close, those at the new Croton Filtration Plant will open. Right now, 10% of our water comes from Croton; when the plant is completed, it can supply 30%. The city has a few other tricks up its sleeve like moving water between various reservoirs and relying on groundwater supply in Queens. The challenge is also mitigated thanks to a 2010 law that increases water efficiency standards for new plumbing fixtures (a Green Codes Task Force recommendation). However, it seems probable that there will be some restrictions on water use that year, such as limits on water for landscaping. Without restrictions, NYC might be forced to “borrow” water from neighbors in New Jersey and Long Island.

From time to time I’ve heard the sentiment that thanks to climate change, we no longer need to worry so much about water efficiency in New York. This theory is that our region is getting wetter, which is why we haven’t had a drought in 10 years. That may be the case, but I wouldn’t want to bet my money – or my drinking water supply – on what the weather forecast predicts for next week, never mind years out. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that water efficiency ensures we aren’t needlessly wasting resources and enables us to operate our drinking water infrastructure below capacity, giving us critical breathing room at times like the closing of the Delaware Aqueduct.

At the request of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Urban Green Council has convened a special Building Resiliency Task Force of leaders in the NYC real estate community. The Task Force is taking an in-depth look at how to better prepare our buildings for future extreme weather events and infrastructure failures, and the grand kickoff was this morning, with Task Force members assembled for the first time.

Held in the Council Chambers at City Hall, over 100 Task Force members gathered to hear Speaker Quinn, Deputy Mayor Cas Holloway, and Commissioner of Buildings Robert LiMandri welcome them and describe the urgency of their work. Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability Director Sergej Mahnovski described some of the challenges facing New York City infrastructure and how this may affect buildings during future extreme events.

Members also learned more about the purview and structure of the Task Force. As described by Russell Unger, Urban Green Council’s Executive Director, the Task Force will consider both direct effects of extreme weather on buildings, such as flooding or wind damage, as well as secondary effects on buildings caused by infrastructure outages like loss of electricity and water. The Task Force will be fully focused on buildings, both new construction and potential retrofits to existing structures. The Task Force will not take up the important issues of infrastructure or zoning, which are being considered simultaneously by other city groups; as the city’s overall response to Sandy and preparation for other potential risks develops, the Task Force will adapt its process to fit in harmoniously with the larger effort. The Task Force will also include a “rapid rebuilding” component, to fast-track the review of policy proposals affecting buildings currently under consideration by City agencies and the City Council.

My role was to explain the inner workings of the Task Force itself. The main technical efforts will take place in Working Groups, organized by functional area and expertise and co-chaired by designers (architects and engineers). With input from cost, code, and legal experts, the Working Groups will develop proposals based for all types of buildings. These proposals will then be considered  by Committees, organized by building type (Residential, Commercial, and Critical buildings, the latter including hospitals, senior centers, shelters, fire stations, and so forth) and co-chaired by owners. The Committees will consider what parts of the technical proposals should apply to which buildings, with the most stringency likely given to Critical buildings, then Residential, and finally Commercial buildings, with the latter perhaps leaning more towards suggested best practices rather than new requirements. Put simply, Working Groups work in their technical area of expertise to describe what could be done, and Committees work in their building type area to decide by should be done.

There is also a separate Homes Committee, since the issues facing 1-3 family structures are unique. The Task Force will also have At-Large members, with wide-ranging expertise who will consult across all proposals, and a Steering Committee made up of the co-chairs plus representatives from Urban Green Council and New York City government agencies, the Mayor’s Office, and the City Council. The Task Force is blessed with an incredible array of highly experienced experts, including owners, property managers, architects, engineers, contractors, subject matter specialists, and representatives of utilities, city agencies, code consulting, cost estimating and law.

To dive in as deeply and as quickly as possible when meetings begin in the new year, it’s important that all members of the Task Force have a common understanding of what risks the city is facing, now and in the future. We were very lucky to hear remarks from Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig, Senior Research Scientist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University. Dr. Rosenzweig was able to compare current risks to those New York City may face in upcoming decades due to climate change. 100-year coastal floods may occur every 15-35 years by 2080, with flood heights increasing by 1-2 feet. Similarly, the risks of heat waves and intense rains will also increase. It was sobering to see the extent of the hazards we may encounter, but knowing the science gives the Task Force a firm base upon which to begin its work.

The Task Force will release a report in summer, 2013. Stay tuned for updates between now and then!

There is no doubt that we need to transform our entire consumer process.  The question is: How?  Most of the focus is on simple reductions in the amount of consumption, but folks like Michael Braungart of Cradle to Cradle fame are imagining a different path.

There are many ways to look at this issue but the first step is understanding the scale of problem we are dealing with.  The environmental impact of our consumption is staggering, but rather than bury you in the raw data on our depletion of global resources and our poisoning of the planetary ecosystem, I will simply point to some of Chris Jordan’s photographs- among the most effective means of communicating the terrifying scale of our impact that I have seen anywhere.   I’ve posted these before on this blog, and if you have visited the offices of Urban Green you’ll see some of these hanging on the walls.

The image above looks like blurry grey pixels but is actually a composite image of 426,000  cell phones- the number that are “retired” every single day in the US alone.

Again- the above looks like colored pixels but is actually a composite of 38,000  shipping containers- the number that move through U.S. ports every 12 hours.

It’s clear, I think, just from looking at these images that something has to give.  The planet simply can’t produce enough precious metals, fossil fuels, wood pulp and other raw materials to sustain this wild orgy of consumption.  If the photographs aren’t compelling I recommend you spend a few minutes with Annie Leonard’s short movie, The Story of Stuff.

So what do we do?  Those of us that care about this subject spend most of our time getting people to use less- a simple message of conservation.  It’s a natural response to the problem of over-consumption- but maybe there’s another way to frame the problem.  As William McDonough (co-author of  Cradle to Cradle) has said, being “more efficient” with resources is like a driver whose destination is Mexico finding that he is heading north toward Canada and responding by driving slower.  You haven’t really corrected the fundamental problem.  You need to turn the car around, 180 degrees.

In terms of our material cycle this would mean rethinking what we mean by “resources” instead of simply displacing a small percentage of raw materials with down-cycled product waste.  (The classic example here is turning copy paper into newsprint and newsprint into cardboard and . . . . cardboard into landfill waste.  You’ve spared using raw wood pulp twice, which is great, but that is all.)  In nature, these questions have been answered.  Millions of years of evolution has produced almost perfectly balanced ecosystems in which all waste is essentially food for the rest of the system.  A tree falls in the forest.  Whether anyone hears it or not, it is now food.  The tree is not sent to a landfill.  It is not shredded into 10,000 tiny pieces and distributed around the globe so that it is unrecoverable as a nutrient.

Along these lines, Michael Braungart has an article on the Ellen MacArthur Foundation website encouraging us to treat CO2 emissions, that bogeyman of global warming, as a valuable resource.  Now, the message from Braungart isn’t that we shouldn’t be trying to curtail our CO2 emissions- but that in the absence of federal and global leadership in this arena there is no reason we shouldn’t be finding ways to encourage industry to use those emissions.  And there are uses for CO2.  Examples Braungart provides include industrial greenhouse agriculture that introduces huge quantities of CO2 as a nutrient for plants, and similar applications of CO2 to support the growth of algae for biofuels.  As our political system remains ineffective in the face of such a complicated set of problems, reorienting our thinking along the lines promoted by McDonough and Braungart might be just what is required.

Dear Friends,

The Staff and Board of Directors at Urban Green Council wish you and your families the best during this trying time in the tri-state area. We know many of you have been without power in your homes and offices since the storm hit, and some have suffered far worse.

Among other things, this storm has left us at Urban Green thinking about how personally buildings affect our lives. We have also been considering, from the range of issues we tackle as an organization, what the right emphasis is to place on maintaining the habitability of buildings during a major infrastructure failure. The NYC Green Codes Task Force struggled with this question back in 2008 when it was somewhat in the realm of the hypothetical. The consensus on the Task Force at that time was that it didn’t make sense to impose any major requirements on buildings to improve their resilience.

We recommended fairly limited code changes like requiring toilets and sinks to be able to operate in a blackout, water tanks to be retained in buildings that already had them, and that protective measures be taken for hazardous materials stored in flood zones. One significant exception is that we proposed flood maps be based on projected future flooding that takes into account climate change instead of historical flooding. In an article published in the Gotham Gazette on Monday, advocacy director Cecil Scheib and I discuss the challenge of addressing building resilience through public and private efforts, but it’s an uphill battle.

It’s breathtaking to witness the destructive scenario now unfolding in lower Manhattan. Countless high-rise buildings have been rendered inoperable due to the power outage now in its fourth day. For most of these buildings, especially public housing, this means there has been no water to flush toilets unless it was carried upstairs by hand, no water to wash dishes, and no water for showers. And it’s dark. New buildings are required to include backup generators for elevators and water. In light of Sandy, we (and many others) will be thinking hard about potential new requirements for existing building stock.

Was Sandy climate change in action? The technical answer is that no particular weather event can be ascribed to climate change, but the increased frequency of extreme weather events has been predicted by climate scientists for years. Governor Cuomo nailed the general sentiment with his comment this week: “We have a 100-year flood every two years now.” About the only good thing that can be said about Sandy is that it may prompt more serious discussion about climate change.

This terrible storm is a good reminder of the critical importance of the work of the green building movement and Urban Green Council. We are hoping to minimize the number of storms like Sandy through our efforts to reduce carbon pollution, but we nevertheless need to prepare and adapt for more of them in the future. If you are interested in volunteer opportunities to help in the aftermath of this storm please visit NYC Service.

Please note that our office in lower Manhattan remains closed until power and access is restored but most of the staff remain available via email. Again, we hope this message finds you safe, and we look forward to working with you on the many lessons to be learned from Sandy.

Sincerely,

“If you have information that is important to the public, you should try to communicate it.”
-Dr. James Hansen, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

A couple weeks ago Urban Green gathered a NASA scientist, leaders of environmental organizations responding to climate change, academics with expertise in understanding how Americans assess risk and deal with this issue, and design professionals trying to communicate their environmentally responsible intents to clients. As one of the organizers of the event, I was anticipating a good conference full of new information and insight.  What I didn’t anticipate was the fluidity of the morning and the fantastic ability of the speakers to play off of one another to draw out new conclusions and leave the audience with a such clear set of principles for talking about climate change.  Actually, make that carbon pollution.

As noted in our live blog posts and other pieces since the conference, it’s clear that climate change and carbon pollution can be challenging topics for discussion. It’s a global problem that requires immediate action and potential sacrifice to produce benefits in a near or distant future, but it’s not widely viewed as a pressing problem.  It’s easy to think someone else will sort it all out for us. Unfortunately, we know this is not the case, but luckily our speakers discussed a host of ways we can hone our message and get through to our colleagues, clients, and others.

If you were unable to attend or you were in the audience and would like a refresher, we’ve provided an overview below. Urban Green Council members can also take a look at the presentations through our secure weblink.

How to talk about climate change in five easy steps:

1. First and foremost, know your audience. All of our communication experts agreed it’s best to have multiple messages for different groups; family, friends, staff, clients, public, etc. Talk to scientists with graphs and charts, speak to clients about health and cost savings, encourage colleagues with business opportunity and productivity improvements, and stir family members to action with personal benefits to children and grandchildren.

2. Scientific facts alone do not convince many people of the dangers (or existence) of climate change. However, talking about climate pollution and associated health risks, for example, make the problem more real and actionable. According to speaker David Ropeik, the brain is four parts subconscious and one part conscious, which means reason is only one-fifth of the decision-making process. He suggests discussing risks that are local and personal instead of global and abstract.

3. Credibility is key so speak from your area of expertise.  Trusted validators from various fields need to deliver the message. All of us in the green building community from developers to construction workers should be speaking out.

4. Counter specific arguments.  This means you must be well-versed in the arguments made by those who support climate action and those who do not.

5. Talk about solutions and quality of life improvements. Don’t just dwell on the problem without proposing solutions. It can be very dismal as compared to opportunities for improvement. Show how changes that mitigate climate change improve health and quality of life and can also improve business. Panelist Dan Probst of Jones Lang LaSalle argued that you can increase financial returns while reducing carbon pollution.

Once you figured out what to say it’s important to remember to do more than talk; act.  As part of the green building community we have the ability to speak out about climate change and the risk of carbon pollution AND take action in the projects we design, develop, and occupy. Let your organization be a driver of change.

That’s all it takes. For those of you who were there, we would love to hear your comments on the day and what you’ll take away from the conference.  Do you have new ideas on how to speak about climate change? Please add your comments below.

Our firm has come across a way to substantially lower energy use in many commercial buildings using a simple, readily implemented measure. This observation arose from our work on two large energy conservation efforts for NYC office buildings.  The first was NYC’s Energy Conservation Capital program (the largest municipal program at that time) highlighted in this 1980s article. The other was our more recent effort to identify and implement energy efficiency projects in high-rise commercial buildings in New York City (August issue of ASHRAE Journal).  Despite the intervention of almost three decades, at least one large wasteful concern persists: the excessive amounts of outside air most buildings draw in through defective outside air dampers.

Though not always inexpensive, this is a relatively straightforward issue to correct and one that most building owners and managers should consider.

In one major office building, after the outside air quantities were field tested, we found that leaking dampers allowed several times more outside air in than that recommended by ASHRAE Standard 62.1-2007 (see Test Building 1 in Table #4 below, taken from our ASHRAE article). Even with ostensibly closed dampers, the leakage rate exceeded 40% in this building. Testing in subsequent buildings confirmed that a large majority of the ubiquitous 1960’s and 70’s commercial office buildings are over-ventilated, resulting in wasted energy, some for heating, but mostly for cooling.  Many of these dampers date from the original construction of the building.  Table #4 shows the results of air testing of a number of other properties.

Table #4: Excess outside air is common in older large, commercial buildings

If a majority of Manhattan office buildings have excess outside air quantities similar to Table #4, installing new dampers would significantly reduce wasteful energy use as well as overall energy costs.

Another measure connected with curbing excess outside air is demand controlled ventilation (DCV), a process for reducing the cooling and heating costs associated with excess air. It has wide ranging applications not only in office buildings but in hospitals, recreation spaces, auditoriums, museums and many other facilities. The DCV technique employs equipment that measures the freshness of air in a building, typically done by measuring carbon dioxide (CO2). Although typically associated with global warming, in this case CO2 turns out to be an excellent proxy for determining appropriate ventilation conditions. (Because people breathe CO2 out, the concentration of CO2 reflects the number of people in a space.) Typically outside air in New York City is 400 to 450 ppm of CO2. An occupied air environment is normally considered “fresh” when the CO2 level is less than 1100 ppm.  Clearly, unless tightly-closing dampers are in place, DCV will not be fully effective since it relies on being able to stop outside air exchange when ventilation is not needed.  Using Test Building 1 as an example, Figure #2 shows the extent to which installing low-leakage dampers can be key to the effective use of DCV.

Figure #2: Test Building 1 proportional outside air savings; low-leakage dampers vs. DCV.

Unfortunately, some dampers constructed by local shops are not always engineered appropriately.  The linkages and damper motors often do not properly close the large damper assemblies and the damper blades become deformed, further limiting closure.  Outside air dampers must be installed on a modular basis, with appropriately sized damper motors and linkages, to provide adequate torque to close the dampers leaktight. High quality dampers, properly installed and adjusted, are the key to reducing outside air to appropriate levels and employing DCV effectively.

Panelist David Ropeik at Cooling on Climate Change

Urban Green pulled together a fascinating conference last week on the current science of climate change, exploring how it is impacting the building industry and why polls reveal public skepticism on the subject.  The format included two excellent panels and a short keynote by the distinguished scientist and activist, Dr. James Hansen.  There was a lot of intellectual firepower on display, including fascinating data on perceptions of climate change from Lisa Fernandez at Yale, and deep discussions of the role of the building industry.  David Ropeik, a risk perception consultant and the author, most recently, of How Risky Is It Really? Why Our Fears Don’t Always Match the Facts, offered the most unexpected perspectives of any speaker and clearly challenged our assumptions about how to effectively message on climate change.

Ropeik walked the audience through the current neurological research on risk perception, all of which supports the sense many of us have had over the years- that something as abstract and slow moving as climate change does not appear to motivate most of us to change our behavior.  Ropeik points out that very few of the tools we use to assess risk are cognitive- most of them are subconscious.  Our brains are wired to focus on things that will impact us directly, right now or in the very near future.  Threats that are catastrophic are deeply important, but chronic issues barely register on our internal threat scale.  Most of us in the environmental community act as if the simple communication of additional knowledge will cause people to change their minds- the more facts people know about climate change the more they will be motivated to change behavior.  But a deep body of research (and probably if we are honest with ourselves and our own experiences) tells us this simply is not the case.  People are not generally motivated to significantly alter their behavior because of threats to other species, or threats to our own that are likely to occur years from now.  Mr. Ropeik’s distillation of this context colored all the other discussions at the event and made for lively discussion.  In this context, Mr. Hansens’ slides communicating the impact of climate change through bar graphs and statistical plots seemed, though intellectually rigorous and important research, seemed somehow not up to the task at hand.  Based on Mr. Ropeik’s presentation I came away with the overwhelming sense that we need to find new ways of communicating that humanizes climate change and describes how it will impact each of us directly.

Which is not to minimize the critical importance of Hansen’s presentation.  For those of us familiar with his work and the work of his colleagues on the IPCC it was exciting (though sobering) to see the latest research on climate change.  Hansen pointed out that we have increased the amount of atmospheric CO2 from 280ppm to 390ppm, with every indication that average global temperature will increase by 2 degrees within a century.  The last time this happened, sea levels were 15 meters higher than today.  Already, significant changes are moving through the system.  The extent of arctic sea ice at the end of the melt season, as reported elsewhere, is reduced by half.  And the sea ice is significantly thinner, so the actual mass has been reduced by three-fourths.  This is a monumental shift that augurs more changes to come.  In addition, the % of land mass that experiences extreme weather events annually (droughts, flooding, fire) has increased 10 times since about 1920.  Dr. Hansen’s primary concern today are impacts that might be irreversible- like losing the ice sheet altogether, or a melt off of the Greenland ice sheet, or climate zones that move so fast that it triggers mass extinctions and failing ecosystems.  These are sobering but very real possibilities in our near future.

To produce a reduction in greenhouse gases Dr. Hansen proposes a “fee and dividend” policy that would ramp up a tax on carbon emissions and distribute the collected money equally among the population.  The funds would not go to the government and if current subsidies were removed it would level the technological playing field.  With our political establishment locked in a sweaty wrestling hold that allows for considerable activity but no resolution, it is highly unlikely that Hansen’s proposal will be enacted, or even discussed seriously.  But considering such a proposal allows us, at a minimum, to contemplate the high degree to which our current system is reliant on petroleum, and the significant degree to which the “market” is currently weighted in favor of the fossil fuel industry- which dominates energy subsidies despite being wildly profitable and flexes its lobbying muscle to influence almost every aspect of federal and state energy policy.  As Dr. Hansen stated, “the government should not be in the business of picking winners and losers.”  His fee and dividend proposal would remove the embedded advantage of the wealthiest industries and if ramped appropriately would spur innovation. Activism and individual action, Dr. Hansen points out, are wonderful but without a price signal that makes carbon emissions pay something like their share of externalized costs there will be little movement on the issue.  In fact, he seemed almost concerned that making buildings and other users of energy more efficient simply reduces demand and drives the price of oil down, incentivizing others to burn it.

Some years ago, Gore Vidal recommended that the world would be considerably improved if we simply swapped the cost of a university education with the cost of an intercontinental airline ticket- thereby making education available to all and significantly reducing the swarms of tourists senselessly marauding the globe.   Whatever the merits of this improbable idea, Dr. Hansen’s “fee and dividend” proposal might go a long way to achieving Vidal’s dream.  In a world where there is no tax on aviation fuel- the “market” will have to change significantly for us to re-assess how we do things. Without a bold move like carbon tax it is difficult to feel confident about our prospects for combating climate change.  As we wait (hopefully not in vain) for such a solution to gain traction, it is heartening to consider how much we now know about how our brains function. Amory Lovins likes to say, “The good news about climate change is that it is cheaper to fix than it is to ignore.”  The bad news might be that we are not well equipped to deal with it.  Despite this, I found myself invigorated as I left the conference.  We are truly beginning to understand how, at a primal, subconscious level, we respond to long range threats. This knowledge suggests a way of crafting our messages that might actually compel a majority of us to take the threat of climate change seriously.  Nothing could be more important, though I can’t expect my saying that to change your mind.

The following was blogged live from our Fall Conference on September 18, 2012 – “Cooling on Climate Change: Designing the Message.” Panelist Dan Probst, Chairman of Energy and Sustainability Services at Jones Lang LaSalle, discusses the role of the green building industry in addressing global climate change.