Yesterday, I attended the CAL-SMACNA conference
in Napa, Calif. The annual conference allowed members of the California Sheet
Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors National Association to discuss the
state of the industry and attend some educational
sessions.
There were two major educational sessions planned.
The longest session on April 16 was called “Incentives for Building Sustainable
Communities.” Are you surprised? I’m not.
This is the second
association event I’ve attended over the last month that focused heavily on
green building and sustainability. No matter what you do, you won’t be able to
escape the topic. Nor should you try to escape the
topic.
The session presented a panel of sustainability
experts working for cities in California. This included building department
officials from San Francisco, Fresno and Napa. Each building official had the
opportunity to brag about what their city is doing in the area of sustainable
building. I was proud to see how much has been accomplished in my home of San
Francisco. The city has several municipal buildings that meet or exceed the
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design silver certification. San
Francisco also finished construction on the EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park. It
is the first off-the-grid building in San Francisco.
So why
are all of these association spending so much time discussing green building
and sustainable design? It’s not just to brag. The federal stimulus money that
is currently funneling into cities across the country for building projects is
mostly being rewarded to projects with a sustainable design. State and federal
building officials want to make sure that new buildings are energy efficient.
They also want to make sure that any retrofit projects on buildings such as
schools include energy-efficiency upgrades.
So if you want a
piece of the stimulus pie, you’re company is going to want to find the green
building projects proposed in your state.