As we posted in June, President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative updated tax incentives aimed to encourage retrofitting buildings to reduce energy bills. Although considered the “low-hanging fruit” of carbon reduction, financing of commercial building retrofits for energy efficiency has largely remained in the realm of public subsidies. Opening the floodgates of private financing could expand [...]
Archive for the ‘Development’ Category
23 Aug
“Green Value” and Mortgage Collateral
In a recent article, law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf addresses head-on how the only-recently-ubiquitous “green” metrics, terminology, and technology in real estate and development have affected building valuation, and, specifically, how one can hedge the risks when green value is lost. The Dewey & LeBoeuf piece discusses two general ways that “green” that can add [...]
13 Jun
Interior Secretary Salazar Looking for New Trails to Blaze
One of the most important pieces of environmental legislation passed under the Obama administration so far has been the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009, which inducted 2 million acres of previously unprotected American wilderness across nine states under the Wilderness Act of 1964, which was itself enacted under President Johnson. Additional wilderness acts [...]
18 Feb
Why Derelict Government Buildings are Like Brownfields, Why that Matters, and Why Paintballers are Paying Attention
Here’s a follow-up on last week’s “Don’t Forget to Turn Off the Lights Before You Leave,” our post about President Obama’s June 2010 directive to the federal government to dispose of unneeded and underutilized property — and about the GAO’s subsequent Testimony, released last week, reporting that the process was hitting a lot of speed [...]
9 Feb
Is Your Building Living Life to The Fullest?
Move over LEED, there’s a new green building standard in town. Most of us are at least peripherally familiar with Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED), a now-ubiquitous green building certification system that, in their own words, provides “third-party verification that a building or community was designed and built using strategies intended to improve [...]
