USGBC Advocacy: 2020 year in review

In 2019, USGBC introduced a new vision for advocacy, coined Advocacy 2.0. USGBC’S advocacy work is helping to raise quality of life through green building practices by fostering better choices. Advocacy 2.0 involves a shift of USGBC’s advocacy efforts, transforming into a think tank with an advocacy approach, while continuing to strengthen and reimagine the current grassroots operation. This means we are leading with LEED and its 20+ year history of transforming our buildings, into a platform that has produced healthy people and spaces. USGBC is advocating for sound building policy and demonstrating its positive effects on building occupants. Our charge is to serve as the go-to organization for LEED and building sustainability policy, while simultaneously being active on key policy developments for LEED. LEED is our single most important advocacy tool to move the building industry forward. It symbolizes leadership and has singlehandedly defined green building.

While 2020 was a difficult year for everyone around the world, it was also a time to think about what is truly important. For all of us at USGBC, the importance of advancing our Advocacy 2.0 strategy came into sharp focus as the value of our indoor spaces became more important than ever. That hope for a better future is the driving force behind USGBC’s advocacy and outreach efforts. Every day, we are working on behalf of our members to advance a future that is greener, more resilient and more prosperous.

Federal leadership

We believe the federal government should demonstrate leadership in its own building portfolio. Today, because of USGBC’s ongoing advocacy efforts, dozens of federal departments and agencies are using LEED as their green building standard of choice. There are also more than 6,900 federal projects participating in LEED—driving both positive outcomes for the government and significant business opportunities for our membership. Highlights of USGBC’s federal work this year include:

• Introduction of a USGBC-authored act (for the first time ever!): The GSA Resource and Energy Efficiency and Net Zero (GREEN) Building Jobs Act, which will drive leadership in federal buildings, including LEED, and is a critical component of our healthy economy strategy and efforts. USGBC initiated this effort and helped Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin and other offices draft the legislation.
• A school construction funding bill that calls for the modernization of our schools and includes LEED.
• Three residential sector bills that directly tie into LEED for homes, our social equity efforts (USGBC All In) and resilience activities.
• Testimony to the U.S. House subcommittee on energy efficiency and LEED.
• Two climate plans and marker bills with a strong nexus with projects using LEED Zero.
• Private sector tax incentives including the commercial buildings energy efficiency tax deduction, through the GREEN Act, which will further enable LEED adoption.
• Strong appropriations for critical federal agency programs, including Energy Star and the Department of Energy–Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy office, and committee report language favorable to green building and LEED.
• An infrastructure bill that passed the House of Representatives this past summer for $100 billion in school building repairs and improvements, training funds, public buildings upgrades and expansion of the low-income housing tax credit.
• COVID-19 relief funding for measures that directly advance our members’ interests.

Our federal advocacy efforts also included relationship building and federal advancement. We worked with seven federal agencies to support mutual engagement and the inclusion of LEED in relevant policies affecting federal buildings, as well as private sector activities:

• Working with the General Services Administration, Department of Defense and Department of Energy (DOE) to address LEED v4.1 in the federal policy context.
• Submission of P100 Change Requests to highlight LEED Zero, update bird-safe buildings provisions and emphasize existing building performance.
• Four USGBC Federal Quarterly Roundtables: February (SITES); April (LEED Campus); July (LEED Safety First pilot credits, building safety discussion); November (federal legislation, COVID-19 updates).
• Outreach and education to the incoming Biden administration, which will continue in 2021.

State and local government

At the state level, 2020 saw several jurisdictions, like Washington, D.C., Denver and New York, adopting advanced green building policies with our help, as well as others like Detroit, Michigan, and St. Louis, Missouri, considering them for the first time, as well as continued attention to building energy codes. We conducted proactive outreach to introduce USGBC and our work to the three new governors taking office in early 2020 in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi. This fall, we reached out to the 42 gubernatorial candidates who ran in the November 2020 elections to ensure that we’re actively educating and engaging with future elected officials. Advocacy reviewed more than 3,000 bills this year at the state level, monitored more than 350 bills at the state and local levels, and has acted externally to affect 100 state and local bills.

Private sector

Through LEED promotion and adoption, more than 65,000 commercial and institutional projects have achieved LEED certification, and another 50,000 projects are under way. In addition, there are more than 673,000 residential units currently certified and many more registered. USGBC is helping to develop and advance policies that give private sector building owners and managers the tools to maximize the value of their facilities so that incentives for LEED are strong and both the public and private sector can serve as examples of leadership. LEED has bolstered the U.S. construction sector and created new industries that have converged into a multibillion-dollar high-performing building industry.

Residential

The advocacy team’s work on state QAPs (state affordable housing tax credit plans) in 2020 was also highly impactful in its efforts to ensure that LEED certification and supportive policies such as energy efficiency and performance tracking of energy, water and waste are implemented. We engaged with state housing finance agencies in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.

Thought leadership

We believe that green building policy is one of the most crucial ways to advance USGBC’s mission and drive LEED adoption. USGBC held many thought leadership events in 2020 in an effort to help drive policy and further establish USGBC as a thought leader. One such event was USGBC’s green building policy press briefing, held on Dec. 9, that was attended by nearly 30 media reporters, from publications including The Wall Street Journal, POLITICO and The New York Times. The briefing featured Don Anderson, operating partner and chief sustainability officer at Blackstone, Rep. Peter Welch, member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and Rep. Kathy Castor, Chair of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis. The discussion was led by USGBC and centered around Biden’s clean energy plan. Chair Castor emphasized that green buildings were the “unheralded hero” in our fight against climate change.

Health Economy Commitment

This past summer, USGBC launched a healthy economy commitment to recruit advocates or identify supporters for our healthy economy strategy. This work was coupled with the launch of a new Advocacy Working Group. Through the past several months of recruitment efforts, we now have more than 130 local Advocacy Working Group members. The team also launched a monthly advocacy spotlight to highlight our hardworking advocacy working group members.

Although our advocacy work is focused on the U.S., it doesn’t stop there, as we work to advance green building and highlight USGBC’s efforts on the global scale. We are an active participant of the annual global Conference of Parties (COP) United National Climate Change Conference and on the five-year anniversary of the Paris Agreement, USGBC signed the “America is All In” statement on climate action and recovery, joining 1,300 other institutions. Every day, we are putting our advocacy tools and resources into helping create an environmentally and socially responsible, healthy and prosperous world through more sustainable buildings, communities and cities. View our full advocacy year in review.

I look forward to the progress we will make building on the past 25 years of work and engaging on new opportunities like the new incoming administration, the Biden plan for a clean energy revolution and environmental justice, the European Green Deal, the EU Taxonomy and the strong emergence of city-driven climate action and resilience plans.