FROM THE EDITOR

This week, more than 30,000 green building professionals will descend upon Philadelphia for Greenbuild 2013. It’s always a great week for reconnecting with sustainability enthusiasts and learning a ton — from exhibitors, presenters, and chance meetings with old friends.

I’ve gone to the show every year since 2005, and the one hallmark of the show each year is the enthusiasm among the attendees. I go to about half a dozen various other industry trade shows per year, and Greenbuild is one of the few (NFMT is another, of course!) where it’s clear attendees are genuinely happy to be there. And it’s a passion that’s infectious — I always leave after three days utterly exhausted, but totally re-invigorated.

What’s also neat about the show is that over the last several years, the focus has shifted from almost exclusively on new construction to a mix of how to build new high-performance buildings and how to operate existing buildings efficiently. According to the USGBC attendance statistics, only about 5 percent of attendees fit into the “real estate (commercial)” category, while more than 21 percent are “architecture” and another 14 percent are “construction.” (There's no separate category for "facility manager.") But at the show in Atlanta in 2005, I’d be willing more than three in every four attendees were architecture or construction. And what’s more, the attendance at the show overall has increased more than six times since the first one in Austin in 2003. People are excited about green building!

This year, of course, the big news will be the official release of the new versions of the LEED rating systems — dubbed LEEDv4. Several years in the making, LEEDv4 will ramp up the requirements for LEED certification in several key areas for both new and existing buildings.

Are you headed to the show? What are you looking most forward to? 

Cheers,

Greg Zimmerman, editor  

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