FreedomTalks

Slate’s got a smart article on green building certifications, which Washington D.C. now requires for all major city buildings, public and private. Guess what? Turns out the certification doesn’t really guarantee that the building is anything close to eco-friendly, and in some cases may even encourage buildings to be less so.  The major problem, however, isn’t that the ratings system isn’t perfect — competition between private certifications will help remove flaws in the ratings system.

No, the real issue is that the certification, which DC requires, is tremendously expensive: According to the article, it costs about $100,000 extra per project. For private projects, that’s a hundred grand wasted that could be used to bring lower prices or more jobs (and may make small and medium-sized companies think twice about investing in the region).  For public projects, that’s $100,000 of taxpayer money blown just so that DC officials can show off their green cred — which, as the article reminds us, is hardly as green as they claim.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 28th, 2007 at 11:08 am and is filed under Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.