Noted green building consultant, green building book author, and sustainability planning expert, Jerry Yudelson addressed a large gathering of public officials and LEED Spanish green building experts on June 4, 2012 in Bilbao, Spain, giving the keynote speech at the celebration of Spain’s first public-sector LEED Platinum green building.
In addition to Yudelson, speaking at the half-day event were Sr. Ibon Areso, head of the Bilbao City Council; Sr. Aurelio Ramírez, CEO of the Spain Green Building Council; former US Green Building Council Vice-Chair Zaida Basora from the City of Dallas, Texas; and Lynn Perkins, AIA, representing the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, Washington.
Yudelson’s keynote speech was titled “The Business Case for the Rapid Adoption of Green Building in Spain.” He said, “The key issue now in the green building industry is how such projects perform, using actual operating data, not design projections. For the past two years, I have researched this issue internationally, and in this conference, I shared some of the results of my global research with the Spanish building industry and local government hosts.”
The green building consultant continued, “If we are serious about cutting our carbon emissions, we have to deal with the rapid greening of public and commercial buildings, which globally account for nearly 20 percent of all emissions of greenhouse gases. In this presentation, I challenged the building industry—and those involved in green building and sustainable design in particular—to get serious about adopting high-performance buildings as the New Normal.”
A professional engineer and experienced sustainability consultant, Yudelson has been involved with promoting the LEED green building rating system for 15 years and is the author of twelve (12) books on the subject of green buildings, green homes, green marketing, water conservation and sustainable development. In 2011, the US Green Building Council named him to the first class of LEED Fellows. +
Related Stories
| Apr 5, 2011
Top 10 Buildings: Women in Architecture
Making selections of top buildings this week led to a surprising discovery about the representation of women in architecture, writes Tom Mallory, COO and co-founder, OpenBuildings.com. He discovered that finding female-created architecture, when excluding husband/wife teams, is extremely difficult and often the only work he came across was akin to interior design.
| Apr 5, 2011
What do Chengdu, Lagos, and Chicago have in common?
They’re all “world middleweight cities” that are likely to become regional megacities (10 million people) by 2025—along with Dongguan, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, and Wuhan (China); Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of the Congo); Jakarta (Indonesia); Lahore (Pakistan); and Chennai (India), according to a new report from McKinsey Global Institute: “Urban World: Mapping the economic power of cities”.
| Mar 30, 2011
China's low-carbon future city
In 2005, the Chinese government announced its target to reduce energy consumption per GDP unit by 20% by the year 2010. After a multi-billion investment, that target has been reached. The Chinese Climate Protection Program’s goal to increase energy efficiency, develop renewable energies, and promote energy savings while reducing pollutant emissions and strengthening environmental protection is reflected in the “Future City” by SBA Design.
| Mar 30, 2011
Is the AEC industry at risk of losing its next generation leaders without better mentoring?
After two or three horrifying years for the AEC industry, we are finally seeing the makings of a turnaround. However, data developed by Kermit Baker as part of the AIA Work-on-the-Boards survey program indicates that between 17% and 22% of design firms are eliminating positions for interns and staff with less than six years of experience. This data suggests the industry is at risk of losing a large segment of its next generation of leaders if something isn't done to improve mentoring across the profession.
