This year, the US Green Building Council hosted the 2nd Annual Legal Forum at Greenbuild 2011. The fact that lawyers are now allowed to congregate and make presentations at the Greenbuild conference is an achievement. The green building community seems to understand that green buildings do present new risks that must be managed and attorneys can help.
Attorney Dan Sheridan provided a thorough recap of the Legal Forum on his blog, Legally Green. There were two presentations that I found most interesting:
- Stephen Del Percio, of Green Real Estate Law Journal, reviewed the Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides, which regulate environmental claims. Del Percio’s presentation left me wondering how the Green Guides might apply to LEED plaques.
- The always entertaining Stuart Kaplow provided a list of ways to generate work as a green building attorney. We will be discussing both of these presentations in future posts.
It may surprise you to learn that I attended many non-legal presentations at Greenbuild as well. If you would like to read more about some of these presentations and topics, please head over to Sustainable Cities Collective, where I published the following posts:
- Finally, a Private Funding Solution for Green Buildings
- Building Metrics Take Center Stage
- Public Support for Green Declining
The last post highlights a CBRE study, Dollars and Sense 2011, that will soon be released. The report discloses that support for “green” waned among CBRE customers in 2011. How will companies like CBRE shift gears if demand for green buildings decreases? It should be an interesting topic for next year’s Greenbuild in San Francisco.
During his Greenbuild opening plenary, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman stated that we would know a green revolution had occurred when the word “green” went away. But I don’t think that’s what we are seeing with the CBRE study.
What is happening to “green”?