Last month, while everyone was still coming down from presidential election frenzy and ramping up for Greenbuild, Building Design + Construction offered up another distraction: their annual white paper on the State of Green Building.  This is the sixth in an annual series that was initially inspired by the success of Greenbuild 2002.  While reports from the early years included remarks on the chances for the green building movement to keep rolling, the editors get a little more definitive this time around, starting on page four: "…no matter where you stand personally on the social, economic, political, or environmental issues related to climate change, you will soon have no choice but to factor it into your professional work."

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This is Hangar 25, a LEED Platinum certified airport hangar located at the Bob Hope Airport in Burbank, California.  It’s the world’s first aviation hangar to achieve such a high level of certification from the USGBC.  The 60,000 square foot structure was built by Shangri-La Construction without a significant cost increase over building a non-green airport hangar — a fact that furthers the financial case for green building development.  Check out this green list of accomplishments:

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What would it take to create a fully sustainable city block in downtown Dallas?  That’s the question and discussion that will begin this Friday, December 5, 2008, at Dallas City Hall.  The City of Dallas, in collaboration with Urban Re:Vision and Building Community Workshop, is hosting a Design Charrette to examine the framework and community impact of a sustainable, urban square block.  And by sustainable, the vision is to create a place that is healthy in social, economic, and environmental terms. 

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Over the last month, I’ve seen several reports on green building, and we’ll try to address them all in due time.  With reports like this, though, we have to spread it out – this is geeky stuff, it’s not leisurely eye candy or anything like that.  But we like to follow the numbers in anticipation of future trends.  In that regard, the Green Outlook 2009: Trends Driving Change report by McGraw-Hill Construction has some interesting information.  According to the report, the value of green building construction starts was up five times from 2005 to 2008, with values escalating from $10 billion to $36-$49 billion.  Also, by analysis, the report estimates that construction starts could triple over the next five years and reach $96-$140 billion.

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Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to sit on a Greenbuild panel with four other respected and popular bloggers: Lloyd Alter of Treehugger, Willem Mass of Green Home Guide, Stephen Del Percio of Green Buildings NYC, and Leigh Stringer of The Green Workplace (moderator).  In preparation for the panel, we sent out a survey and the basic results of that survey are embedded above.  Click through it, you may see some interesting information.  The panel raised several interesting issues, and some of those have been discussed below.  I also wanted to clarify my thoughts on things like Twitter and PR because I think my perspective may not have come through adequately.  First, let’s check out the interesting survery stats:

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