Peter Morris and Kathleen Smith recently both presented at GreenBuild 2011 in Toronto.  This event is the premier conference of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and this year’s theme celebrated “What’s NEXT for green building”.

Peter Morris spoke on the topic of The Economics of Green Retrofits.  This was part of the research and thought leadership track, which is a brand new track introduced at GreenBuild this year that was designed to specifically address advanced level topics and academic research.  He and academic researchers from UC Berkeley and UC San Diego presented the findings of a study that surveyed building owners who had incorporated sustainable retrofits into their commercial office buildings. This is one of the first studies that looked at retrofits instead of new construction, concentrating on the financial feasibility and paybacks of the retrofits.

Kathleen Smith addressed CALGreen, specifically an overview of CALGreen – the what, why, how, and when – and discussed:               

• How it relates to LEED
• What the cost implications are for projects and project teams – hard cost, soft cost, and other issues (Wes will be talking about implications for cities.)
• Some of the lessons learned from CALGreen

Her goal was to educate the audience so that they walked away knowing how to describe the background and basic fundamentals of CALGreen; how to compare CALGreen to LEED; how to ask the right questions and make more informed decisions about approaching CALGreen and LEED on projects; and from the enforcement and policy side of the equation, how to arrive at the best-fitting outcomes regarding what level of CALGreen to adopt and what kinds of programs or policies to develop to support teams in meeting set sustainability goals.