The role of green building policy within cities and building portfolios

Each day in the United States, 1.85 million square feet are certified as "green building." Growth projections suggest that more than 70 percent of the world's population will live in densely urbanized areas by 2050. While not the universal remedy for sustainable urbanization, the green building movement has emerged as an effective approach to addresses concerns associated with rapid urbanization. One aspect of the rapid rise in green buildings is the increase in specific and often highly technical green-building regulations. In the last five years alone, eleven new nationally recognized green building certification programs have been developed. As a result, local governments often mandate a particular certification as a prerequisite to building development. Yet, cities need to have a coherent set of regulations and construction industry professionals to deliver against these regulations. Similarly, as cities pass and develop new regulations, they need to consider how their new laws create potential unintended consequences. For instance, between the 1930s and '40s the Federal Housing Administration ("FHA") transformed the housing industry by implementing policies that increased home ownership. Intending to benefit the majority of American citizens, hindsight has taught today's policymakers that the FHA's actions ultimately created greater social divide between the "haves and have-nots, " increasing racial and socioeconomic segregation through urban sprawl and gentrification. (Ehrenreich, 1985). As green-building regulations become ubiquitous at the state and local levels, it is imperative that we understand how regulations impact the dynamics between local, state, and federal regulatory systems in order to fully consider the intended and unintended potential consequences of the recent green revolution (Abair, 2008). As a result, we should develop a deeper understanding of the intended and unintended benefits of the growth of green buildings. For instance, we should analyze how energy efficiency can be implemented as a proxy to identify which buildings in a portfolio need broader green building initiatives. The analysis will speed up the due diligence process in identifying buildings in need of initiatives. Growth in green buildings leaves a number of important and heretofore unanswered questions: How do we define green building regulations? How can we compare different regulatory guidances? What are the appropriate methodologies for comparing regulatory guidances? What are the potential unintended (and intended) unidentified consequences of green regulations? What is the dynamic between green building and gentrification? How can we use green building indicators, such as energy efficiency, as a proxy for implementing other green building initiatives? To complement the vast body of research on building energy efficiency and certification schemes, this dissertation analyzes three areas of green building: (1) standardization of green building guidance and the types of various green building systems; (2) the role of green buildings within cities and towns; and (3) a data-driven approach to better understand how energy efficiency can be implemented as a proxy for identifying a need for broader green building initiatives. To accomplish this, my research builds on the interdisciplinary nature of green building and the holistic view of sustainability (United Nations, 2016) by applying different points of departure including building regulation, local government law, and energy efficiency. First the research identifies important differences between green building policy and provides a methodology to identify appropriate guidance based on project priorities and location. Second, the research identifies the potential for unintended consequences of green building and draws parallels between historical dynamics of local government law and green building regulation within local jurisdictions. Next, the research examines the potential unintended consequences of green buildings by investigating the socio-economic patterns of current Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified buildings in California cities and towns. Finally, the research uses an established statistical approach to cost-effectively and efficiently identify which buildings within a large-scale portfolio are most likely ripe for energy efficiency investment. This dissertation contributes to a better practical and theoretical understanding of green building policy and regulations within local, state and federal jurisdictions. Additionally, this research provides an approach to examining and identifying which buildings in a portfolio are ripe for broader green building initiatives. Policymakers and municipalities can use the contributions when evaluating green building options. Firms can use the contributions to cost-effectively and efficiently identify existing buildings in need of green building initiatives.

Advisor: Fischer Martin
Levitt Raymond E. 
Peterman Andrew