EPA’s new green building report is really good, but stops short of what it should have been

I just read a terrific new report on green buildings developed by EPA's Midwestern (Chicago) region office.  Titled Removing Market Barriers to Green Development, the report thoroughly documents the state of green building practice in the US today and provides a detailed set of recommendations for leadership and policy incentives to help mainstream more sustainable building practices.

The 59-page document, which was developed in partnership with the Northeast-Midwest Institute and the Delta Institute, is the culmination of a two-year process of investigation and stakeholder participation.  Its key findings are the following:

1. Applying the integrated design approach is essential to creating a superior green development.
2. Green building and infrastructure cost less than conventionally built structures over their lifetime.
3. Incentives can stimulate the adoption of green development practices.
4. Regulatory processes and codes can help to promote green development practices.
5. Building transactions and leasing agreements can be designed to accommodate green building.
6. The cost, benefits, and performance of green buildings must be documented and communicated.

The simplicity of stating the findings doesn't do justice to the rich detail in the report, of course, and I recommend it to anyone involved in the process of making individual buildings more sustainable.

Here, however, is what the new report does not do:

Despite its "green development" title, it really reflects a one-building-at-a-time view of sustainability; and, despite references to transit, transportation, and location sprinkled here and there in the narrative, it pretty much totally misses the mark on those things.  The report considers these issues as not for today but for tomorrow:  there is one - yes, one - paragraph on location efficiency and one on brownfields (no doubt because of the Northeast-Midwest Institute's influence), both on page 50 in a section headed "Issues just over the horizon."  That's pretty much it.  Sigh.

What a missed opportunity to bring green building and smart land use together under the umbrella of green development.  One senses that the participants would actually have been sympathetic to that notion, but lacked the expertise and the elements in their process that could have facilitated a more holistic approach.

There is a long and very impressive list of participants in the process, many of them based in and around Chicago, at the end of the report.  I didn't count, but there must be close to a hundred of them.  Here are some names I would have liked to have seen on that list:

• EPA's terrific smart growth office
• American Planning Association (headquartered in Chicago)
• Congress for the New Urbanism (headquartered in Chicago)
• Center for Neighborhood Technology (headquartered in Chicago)

They aren't.

Let's not kid ourselves: "green building" isn't green when the buildings are in the wrong places; "smart growth" isn't smart if it doesn't include sustainable building practices.  Addressing this is not an issue for "over the horizon"; it is an issue for today.  If I can figure this out, so can EPA.