$1m cash boost for US green building research

A commitment of $1 million has been made to fund sustainable building research has been announced by the United States Green Building Council.


Funds are to be used for increased research in areas including energy and water security; global climate change prevention; indoor environmental quality; and passive survivability in the face of natural and man-made disasters.

“Building operation consumes 40% of energy and 71% of the electricity in the U.S., and accounts for 39% of the country’s carbon dioxide emissions, which is directly influencing global climate change,” said USGBC’s vice president of research and education Peter Templeton.

“Given this impact, it’s critical that the building sector makes exponential performance improvements and research, development and deployment activities a top priority.”

The announcement of USGBC’s funding commitment follows the non- profit’s recently published report titled Green Building Research

Funding: An Assessment of Current Activity in the United States
, which found that research related to high-performance green building practices and technologies is under-funded by all sectors.

The USGBC says that their committee will publish a national green building research agenda this fall, which will identify key research areas for advancing building performance and market transformation.

The new research dollars are intended to match current projects, putting in place a mechanism that can leverage even greater funding for priority studies.

Rick Fedrizzi, president, CEO and founding chair of USGBC said: “Our pledge to invest $1 million in research is a reflection of USGBC’s commitment to its vision of a sustainable built environment within a generation.

“The industry needs to take giant steps forward in construction, renovation and operation practices if we want to see large scale improvements to health and environmental conditions in this generation.”

Dana Gornitzki

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