As of today, any project in Seattle that trips a SEPA review will need to calculate its greenhouse gas emissions.

What do you think? Is this a good move or is it impinging on your rights? Should the city, county and state move in this direction, and if not, what would you tell them to do?

I’ve written about this subject pretty extensively since King County kicked off the crusade last June. Back then, King County Executive Ron Sims declared his intentions to connect developments to greenhouse gasses in an executive order. To read that story, click here. 

As the deadline for action neared, I spoke with representatives of local business groups NAIOP, AGC and the Master Builders Association. They told me what their concerns were about the process. To read that story, click here.

Then Seattle began considering the changes, read about it here, and Washington State Department of Ecology Director Jay Manning advised anybody seeking a permit to start considering the same questions, read that one here.

Now, Seattle’s day has finally come. Seattle is using the same checklist that King County has had in place, though there may be some tweaks to it. To see a draft of the checklist, go here. DPD has also devoted a whole Web site to today’s changes. To see that site, visit here.

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If there are green rock stars in the national sustainability movement, three of them are coming to Seattle/the Pacific Northwest in April. 

On guitar, there’s Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute, who will speak about profitable solutions to oil, climate and proliferation at Seattle’s Green Festival on April 12-13. Lovins’ talk is at 3 p.m. on April 12.

On vocals, there’s Paul Hawken,  who will speak about “how the largest social movement in history is restoring grace, justice and beauty to the world.” Hawken, basically the U.S.’s guru of green guru’s, will headline Cascadia’s Living Future Unconference in Vancouver, B.C., April 16-18. His talk on April 16 is FREE! And open to the public.

And on drums,  there’s Ed Begley Jr.(of HGTV series Living with Ed-fame), who is the keynote speaker at the AIA’s Regeneration 2008 conference. (P.S. check out the picture of him on his Web site!)

These conferences (and others) feature a whole host of other well known backup singers and knowledgeable speakers, but these three are the ones that will draw the crowds.

I for one will be at all three. Will you? Who are you most excited to hear speak, and what do you hope to learn?

So you know what the greenest projects in the Puget Sound are…. but what about the country? If you want to find out, the AIA will host a reception in Seattle FOR FREE on April 6 that features submissions and project judging for the year’s AIA COTE Top Ten Green Projects. 

But to attend, you have to register first, and being a high profile event, this might fill up quickly. To do that, press here.

To whet your appetite for what you’ll see, I’ve included pictures of last year’s winners. The picture above is the Hawaii Gateway Energy Center in Kailua-Kona, Hi., by Ferraro Choi and Associates. The middle picture is Heifer International Headquarters in Little Rock, Ak., by Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter Architects. The last picture is the Whitney Water Purification Facility in New Haven, Ct., by Steven Holl Architects.

Award judges include Glenn Murcutt, winner of the 2002 Pritzker Prize. The award winners will be not be announced until Earth Day.

The reception and viewing of award submissions will be at Kane Hall at the University of Washington from 6 to 8 p.m. This is the first year since the AIA COTE’s inception that the judging for the awards is taking place outside of Washington, D.C.

For more information on the awards, go here, or to check out a list of past winners and more photos, press here .

If you had an energy budget for your meeting today, would you think twice about turning on an extra light? Experts in the field say you would and will in the not-too-distant future.

It’s called smart energy - the idea behind it is the energy used in your home or building will interface with the grid the same way your Internet can interface with a well tuned entertainment system. You tell the Internet what you want - it gets it for you without your worrying about the specifics. At an AeA dinner on smart energy last night, experts said your office or home is going to do the same thing.

Are there business opportunities here? Doug Moore, president of McKinstry, says only if you consider 250 billion square feet of buildings in the United States (most of which will need to be retrofitted) an opportunity. The way it works now, buildings represent about 40 percent of all energy and 68 percent of all electricity used in the U.S. and 38 percent of greenhouse gas emissions (for more info on that, check out the CEC report here). And a lot of that energy is wasted.

If business and utilities were incentivized to conserve energy on a grand scheme, they’d get you to save more energy in your building and those numbers would go down.

Don’t believe it? Pay attention to energy savings from the Kilowatt Crackdown contest in Seattle, sponsored by BOMA. The Vance Corp. has two Seattle buildings entered and will save at least a couple thousand dollars per year, thanks to efficiency information. To read my article about the crackdown, go here.

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Here at the DJC, this blog is going swimmingly. I’m having fun and I hope you are too, but to represent a larger audience, I’m seeking out some more green bloggers.

We’re looking for people that work in the industry in some shape or form and have news and events to contribute. You’d get a nifty little picture on the side of the page and have access to the site to post whatever green building-related events, ideas, or rants you desired (but no pay. This is purely informationally driven). You could post as often (or not) as you chose.

Interested? E-mail me at Katiez@djc.com with a couple ideas of things you’d want to post about. Remember the goal is to share information rather than advertise.

And don’t forget the Super Challenge below about green codes in Seattle. There’s some pretty interesting viewpoints represented in the comment section so far, I’m waiting for more!

When I’m out in the field at forums and talks, I hear over and over that the construction and design community wants to build sustainable projects, but Seattle’s code prevents them from really pushing the envelope. But rarely does a talk go into the specifics of what exactly needs to change.

So here’s my challenge for you: answer what exactly needs to change and how. I want to know what general issues are problematic, how code makes it difficult to build green or incorporate green features, and what you would change to make the process easier. I welcome personal experiences and third-party stories, comparisons working in other jurisdictions or just ideas. It can be about residential, office, mixed-use, etc. I’d also welcome comments from areas outside Seattle (or Washington for that matter).

What’s the biggest hurdle? It it soil issues, gray water or water rights? Is it related to density or materials?

Conversely, is there anything Seattle recently did to make life (and projects) a whole lot easier? 

Post your thoughts and experience. You never know who could be listening……

Humans aren’t perfect. Machinery is big. Despite our very best efforts, sometimes things spill.

King County knows that but it also knows a quick response to fuel, oil and lubricant spills will stop the problem from getting bigger and (more importantly?) more expensive.

So the county, together with DBM Contractors, is offering a one-time $10,000 grant to the organization that develops and implements the best job site spill response protocol for minor spills. There’s a catch though: only schools, special districts, tribes, local governments and private nonprofits are eligible to apply.

To all you bright private company professionals, would you apply for this grant if it were open to you? Would $10,000 be enough to illicit a response or is it not enough to make it worth your while? It seems to me like people that work near, about or around machines every day could have some pretty innovative ideas about how to fix this, so why leave them out of the running? Do you agree or am I way off the mark?

And another thing, one guideline says the protocol must primarily benefit King County. Nonprofits, local governments… would this help or hinder your interest in the project? For more info on the grant, go here.

And in Pioneer Square….. 

While we’re on the topic of hazardous sites, I discovered a really interesting tool today called MapHazards that conveniently showed me the 150 hazardous sites around the area I work in (Pioneer Square) ranging from an old brownfield 250 feet away to leaking underground storage tanks to hazardous waste generators… before it annoyingly informed me this was just a sample and I had to pay for other reports (don’t you hate that?!) See the report for my workspace here.

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Seattle’s Alcyone Apartments

It seems that spring is the universally recognized time for a sudden burst of green building conferences and trainings. Next week is no exception. Here’s a quick run down of some of the things going on around town:

Tuesday:  King County’s GreenTools program hosts a workshop called “Beyond Green Building: Where the Market is Going.” Dan Farrell of GreenTools will speak to contractors about net-zero buildings, the living building challenge, integrated design and discuss case studies. To register go here.

Tuesday: Ecology will host a workshop on lean and green manufacturing practices. For more information, visit here or check out the posting in the March 18 edition of the DJC.

Wednesday and Thursday: ASHRAE is hosting EngineeringVision 2030 at Seattle University. The conference has five session tracks including the carbon challenge, energy efficient design and industry innovation. Workshop topics include green healthcare and the business of green. Go here to register.

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If you think solar doesn’t work in Washington, a tour tomorrow is itching to prove you wrong.

The Cascade Chapter of the Sierra Club invites you to tour a home tomorrow that is heated by solar power.  It also happens to be owned and lived in by a politician - Steve Bernheim of the Edmonds City Council.

Eric Teegarden of Sunergy Systems, the engineer who designed the installation, will lead participants along the tour. Meet at 1:30 p.m. at 21221 Pioneer Way, Edmonds 98026, to attend the tour. Call (425) 771-7715 with any questions.

Hang onto your hats Seattle, our neighbor Vancouver, B.C., is gearing up to require all private developments in the city meet LEED silver.

Does this news make you go doe-eyed and giggly or does it stop your heart like a cold shower in January?

Either way, take a deep breath. It isn’t going to happen anytime soon in Seattle.

Diane Sugimura, director of the Seattle Department of Planning and Development, said Seattle is “looking at a wide range of things” to make buildings more efficient and will be watching Vancouver closely to see how it works with the planned LEED policy and developers. So it is a possibility, but not in the near future. Seattle also tends to take its time with these decisions, so there will most likely be a long lead time, should it ever come to be.

In Vancouver though, Brent Toderian, director of planning for the city, is instigating some major changes. To read Toderian’s blog, press here.

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