Where is the green growth?

The sectors with the most growth potential according to product manufacturers,SmartMarket reports, are government, education, and healthcare, in that order.

The education sector has a green building foothold, with 14 percent of registered LEED projects as of 2005. Student performance and health have been drivers toward much of the initial research on green building productivity improvements. The first major piece of legislation that included a provision for green building was in the education sector in the "Healthy, High-Performance Schools" section of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. This section would provide funds to local educational agencies via state educational agencies to "plan and prepare for healthy, high-performance school building projects" that reduce energy usage, "meet federal and state health and safety codes," and "support healthful, energy efficient and environmentally source practices." If funded fully, there will be increased monies spent on K-12 education green construction projects.

The federal government is already a major green player and had a role in the initial launch of LEED guidelines by providing a grant in its development stages. Forty four percent of LEED registered projects are federal, state, and local government owned.

Another boost to green growth is through government enticements at the regional and local level. To date, 14 states and 42 localities have adopted various mandates, gubernatorial orders, incentives and other mechanisms to encourage green building for both residential and non-residential projects. Other tax credits could be forthcoming from the 2005 Energy Bill when details are worked out.

While the subject of innovative healthcare design research has had nearly two decades of serious attention from the Center for Health Design and the National Symposium on Healthcare Design, to date there has not been significant green building involvement from the healthcare community. Only 30 projects have been registered for LEED certification. This reflects the AEC community's ranking of healthcare as the fifth largest potential growth market (manufacturers ranked it third). But interest may be on the rise. In October 2005, the AIA Academy of Architecture for Health (AAH) conference addressed "Realizing a Sustainable Architecture for Health."

The newly publishedGreen Guide for Health Care launched after a three-year development process should give further impetus to greening healthcare facilities. "It's a self-certification metric tool that allows the health care industry to measure its environmental performance in facilities construction and operation," explains co-coordinator Robin Guenther, AIA, Principal, Guenther 5 Architects. "It is the first such program that incorporates health-based criteria. We developed it in cooperation with the American Society for Health Care Engineering and the U.S. Green Building Council, using LEED as a basic framework. We had 4,500 registrants download the document and 20 facilities are now enrolled as pilot projects."

*The Green Building SmartMarket Report, created by McGraw-Hill Construction in partnership with the US Green Building Council, is available by calling (800) 591-4462.