Congratulations to the City of San Francisco for receiving the World Green Building Council’s Government Leadership Award for Best Green Building Policy at the first annual United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Government Leadership Awards are given to cities that demonstrate proven success in implementing policies that address long term greenhouse gas emissions reductions, as well as meeting budget priorities. San Francisco’s Green Building Ordinance, which took effect in 2008, requires all new commercial, residential and municipal construction to be built to LEED green building standards, and existing buildings to publicly disclose energy labels, undergo periodic energy audits and implement mandatory water efficiency retrofits at the time of sale. Financing options were established to assist the private sector in meeting these targets, which are expected to lead to a reduction in emissions of over 100,000 tons. At the time of adoption, this ordinance was one of the most progressive green building standards for private sector development in any city in the country.
Davis Langdon, an AECOM Company, has worked closely with the City of San Francisco providing recommendations and guidance during development of the report of the 2007 Mayor’s Green Building Task Force which informed the 2008 ordinance, providing support for the city’s ongoing educational and green building code development efforts, and ongoing data collection to assess existing green buildings within the city. Our continued support to the City includes surveying property owners and developing case studies for commercial buildings within the City that have improved energy performance through energy benchmarking efforts. Cynthia Hughes-Doyle, who is developing the benchmark case studies, notes: “We are very excited to be part of the City of San Francisco’s green building efforts. The City’s ground breaking work in green policy is not only providing real economic benefits and a healthier San Francisco, we see how it is providing leadership and guidance for the new state green building codes and for many other cities in the country to address a green building policy. Their work is supporting the transformation of development and construction as we know it, allowing the built environment be part of our environmental solutions, instead of remaining one of our environmental problems”.
Other winners of the World Green Building Council’s Government Leadership Award included Mexico City, Birmingham (UK), Singapore, New York City, and Tokyo.
