The US government is seeking green building technologies that have the potential to improve economic and environmental performance in federal buildings.
The General Services Administration’s (GSA) Green Proving Ground program uses the GSA’s own real estate portfolio as a test bed to evaluate the viability of emerging technologies and practices to save energy and water, and reduce operational costs.
The GSA’s request for information online asks industry, commercial organizations, educational institutions and nonprofits to submit information on building technologies to test as part of the Green Proving Ground’s 2014 program. It’s seeking information on building technologies that can be donated or provided via testing agreements. Submissions will be accepted until Dec. 9 at 5pm EST.
Technologies that are chosen for the program are tested in the GSA’s federally owned buildings. Results from these evaluations will help the GSA find ways to make buildings more efficient and assist industry in deploying new technologies and practices into the broader market.
The GSA owns and leases 9,200 buildings across the country and has the real estate portfolio needed to evaluate these technologies.
Last last month the GSA recommended the federal government use either the Green Globes or US Green Building Council’s LEED to gauge environmental performance in its construction and renovation projects.
The GSA previously required LEED for its own buildings and recommended LEED for other agencies’ buildings.
While the GSA will continue to use LEED for new construction, major modernization projects and existing buildings, spokesman Dan Cruz says, it recommends other federal agencies choose one of the two certification systems.
Also in late October the US Green Building Council-Northern California Chapter (USGBC-NCC) launched the Building Health Initiative, which aims to elevate green building as a public health benefit and accelerate the development of transparency standards in building materials. Adobe, CalPERS, Genentech, Google, Kaiser Permanente, Salesforce.com, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and 20 other corporations and institutions are founding partners.