This week, I (and a packed crowd at Seattle City Hall) heard Svend Auken, Denmark’s former minister for energy and the environment, speak about everything from energy to economics to the U.S.’s responsibility in a climate-conscious world (sign a post Kyoto agreement, lead the way).

Then, I sat down with him in a one-on-one interview to focus his attention a little bit more on buildings. What should we do, I asked? How should the construction industry attack the problem of a changing world?

His answer?  Government.

Government, he said, needs to make very, very strict rules and make it clear to people what they want out of a building. A good way to encourage that, he said, is by requiring an energy goal per square foot of a building rather than a whole-building goal. Once the goal is set, the industry will follow.

Of course government in Denmark is managed differently than government in Seattle and Washington. On multiple occasions, for example, Diane Sugimura, DPD’s director, has expressed exasperation at creating a balance between energy codes and letting untested technologies be used.  As a city government, she’s said, you don’t want to just start using something that might be more efficient but hasn’t been adequately tested. In Denmark, you can be fairly creative as long as you achieve the end energy goal.

But Auken said government has to be very strong on this. Yes, people will moan for a while, he said, but in the end it will make them more creative and will be more profitable (especially in an age of rising oil costs where energy bills are sure to “skyrocket”).

“Once you let architects think in terms of energy efficiency, they get more creative,” he said. “Architects love to do low energy, it’s so much more fun.”

How about it architects? Are energy efficient buildings (like London’s BedZED project above) more fun or a pain in the bum?

For more on Denmark, read my post from last week (click tag ‘Scandinavia’ below). For more on Auken’s talk, what Denmark did and how we could do it, check out my story here.

Face it: everyone who’s anyone in green design says the U.S. is way behind Europe. And one of the areas outpacing us further and further… is Scandinavia. 

Scandinavia’s sustainable strengths are no new feat in Seattle. Local group International Sustainable Solutions has been taking local building and city professionals there for years on a whirlwind eco-tourist trip. It is just about getting ready to kick of a Portland version of the trip,  more here.

Scandinavian speakers have also graced the Seattle scene every couple of months to teach us what we don’t know. One of them, Svend Auken, is going to be in Seattle again on Monday from noon to 1 p.m. He will be speaking at Seattle City Hall in the Bertha Landes room.

Scandinavia also reared its green head when I attended a forum at the UW a couple of weeks ago. At that forum, Jayson Antonoff of Seattle’s green building team (formerly with ISUSTAIN) spoke about how Scandinavia has focused on energy efficiency by looking at different energy producers, varying it’s idea of energy, and requiring buildings to meet an energy requirement per square foot.

For more on that story, and to learn what other sustainability leaders in the Pacific Northwest think about green solutions, check out the story in the DJC here. (more…)

I’m about to head out to Reality Check 2008, along with 250 of my closest business, environment, political and civic leader friends.

Held at the University of Washington and presented by the Urban Land Institute, it’s a high profile day-long event where leaders in their field come together to play with Legos. Yes, I’m serious. After a series of welcome speeches, the 250 leaders will do a planning exercise that uses Legos to represent people, transit and other things. They will physically plan for where a whole lot of people projected to come to this area by 2040 - 1.7 million people and 1.2 million jobs, to be exact - will go.

Perhaps the most impressive thing is the guest list, and the group of people ULI has been able to get it one place. Attendees should include Gov. Chris Gregoire, U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, the mayors of Auburn, Redmond, Bothell, Sumner, Lynnwood (and other cities), and an impressive list of council members from different city and civic councils.

On the business front, there’s going to be representatives from Mithun, CamWest Development, Vulcan Inc., Microsoft, Opus Northwest, Wright Runstad and Co., Boeing, and Uwajimaya. Most of the attendees are high level executives, if not presidents. Basically, anybody who is anybody in planning and development is going to be there (or at least is sending a representative). The event is by invitation only.

The exercise has already been done in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento. For more information on it, press here. I’ll keep you updated as it moves along.

I must say, I have never been to a presentation where the first thing the speaker does is take his shirt off. I know I shouldn’t focus on this, but it’s true and definitely leaves an impression, especially when that speaker is Sim Van der Ryn, a leading pioneer in ecological design. 

Ryn took his shirt, a very nice red checked dress one, off to don the new t-shirt of the Living Future Conference, here in Vancouver, B.C. The shirt is charcoal and has a simple message on its front that says ‘living.’ 

Jason McLennan, CEO of Cascadia, introduced Ryn as the “father and grandfather of the green design movement.” To learn about the many things Ryn has done in his career, press here.

Ryn spoke about beauty, inspiration and design. Being a conference largely focused on sustainability, you’d expect him to address that topic. He did at the end of his talk in a way that might have shocked some in the audience as he announced that he did not like the term one bit.

“It’s there, we’re going to keep using it, but I don’t like it,” he said. “Part of it is wound up in the metrics… the reality is we don’t have the metrics to measure this stuff.”

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Paul Hawken spoke last night at Living Future in Vancouver. He covered a wealth of topics from the future of buildings (self sustaining) to the purpose of nonprofits (to join together) to cities being the best birth control available. He also said he reeallly likes engineers.

But at its core, Hawken’s talk offered a central warning for those in the green building movement: get ready because things are going to change so quickly it will shock the world.

Hawken said we’re heading for a world where the price of everything will keep rising in a seemingly endless cycle. To get at oil and natural minerals, drills will dig deeper, which will use more energy, which will spread to cost hikes in basically everything including food. He calls it the “red queen dilemma.” It’s this price rise, he said, that will be the catalyst for the world changing the way it does things.

“I believe we have shifted from one regime to another. One that subsidized us and our lifestyle… to one that is going to radically change our relations to ourselves, sustainability, mini-mansions….”

That change will put designers, architects and developers that are already at the forefront of green building through practices like the living building (in its base definition a building that is self sustaining) in the spotlight, as all the world turns to them for advice and leadership.

But before you, green building professional, throw your hat in the air at all the new business you will retain, Hawken’s next sentence offered a warning. “I just want to caution you. I think your star may rise faster than you’d want it to… I’m not saying this to flatter you. I’m saying this to warn you.”

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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?