SF to Require Meeting LEED Standards

A new law set to be enacted in San Francisco will set increasingly higher energy requirements on new construction.  Large construction/development organizations can be notoriously scheming and vile in order to cut costs, so energy efficiency standards is not something that will ever get any traction as a “voluntary” measure.

I asked a super-smart engineer about possible issues with forcing a company to build to energy specifications that aren’t in their economic best interest and he said, “Building fire-escapes isn’t in their economic interest either, but we force them to do that for the greater good, and they don’t complain.”

Point being, there are a lot of reasons why, as a society, it makes sense to reduce energy demand.  The main three that I can think of being:

1. air pollution / global warming
2. infrastructure and electric grid stress
3. save mad $$ yo

Hopefully, energy code, and public sentiment, will get to the point such that, if a building were to be built with shoddy energy efficiency, it will get the same backlash as if it were built without fire exits.

Nationals Park is LEED Certified

…How did I miss this?

The new stadium that the Washington Nationals play in (Nationals Park), which opend at the beginning of this season has achieved LEED Silver and incorporates a whole bunch of cool stuff like green roofing and innovative waste/recycling collection.

Compared to other stadiums around the world, its not particulary impressive, but this is Amerca, god damnit, and we should be proud of our baby steps!