The Green Tragedy: LEED’s Lost Decade was released while I was away last month. Author and Community Solutions executive director Pat Murphy traces the historical argument promoting minimal green building cost premiums, reviews the ongoing marketing effort behind LEED, and concludes that policy makers should demand energy efficiency standards more akin to the German Passive House rather than “cheap quick ‘green’ solutions.”
I think it’s interesting to compare the treatment that green building risk management issues received at Greenbuild as compared to West Coast Green. We pointed out over at gbNYC earlier this fall that the latter included a panel discussion titled “Packing a Parachute: Practices that Minimize Risk and Prompt Best Use of Green Features,” while the legal issues associated with building green received very little attention at Greenbuild. As we have noted extensively at gbNYC, the West Coast Green panel similarly stressed that there is no such thing as a form green construction contract or “magic” green provision that can satisfactorily account for the risks associated with green construction. It’s important for stakeholders – or other organizations staging similar conferences – to recognize that attorneys in this space are attempting to assist the industry in mitigating emerging risks up front, in the transactional context, rather than through litigation.
