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Federal Initiatives Supporting Green Building Executive Order (EO) 13123: Greening the Government through Efficient Energy Management encourages government agencies to promote energy efficiency, water conservation and the use of renewable energy products by mandating the reduction of federal facility energy consumption per gross square foot by 35% by the year 2010 compared to the 1985 base year. EO 13123 also mandates federal agencies obtain 2.5% of electricity equivalent through purchasing renewable power and installing renewable technologies. Executive Order (EO) 13148: Greening the Government through Leadership in Environmental Management makes the head of each federal agency responsible for ensuring that actions are taken to integrate environmental accountability into agency day-to-day decision making and the long-term planning processes. Goals include:
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) ENERGY STAR® is a government/industry partnership that offers businesses and consumers energy efficient solutions. Introduced in 1992 as a voluntary labeling program to identify and promote energy efficient products, ENERGY STAR works with more than 7,000 public and private sector organizations to improve the energy performance of homes, businesses, appliances, office equipment, lighting, consumer electronics and residential heating and cooling equipment. Organizations have committed to improve the energy performance of approximately 12% of U.S. commercial building space through ENERGY STAR. U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP) works to reduce the cost and environmental impact of the federal government by advancing energy efficiency and water conservation, promoting the use of distributed and renewable energy, and improving utility management decisions at federal sites. FEMP provides analytical software tools that perform complex energy consumption analyses and modeling, as well as comparative life cycle costing analyses. For example, the Building Life Cycle Cost Program provides computational support for the analysis of capital investments in buildings. U.S. Department of Energy's Zero Energy Home (ZEH) is part of a national initiative funded by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The Zero Energy Home initiative aims to launch the concept into the mainstream home building industry, especially into the single-family home market. Building America℠ is a U.S. DOE partnership that provides energy solutions for production housing. The program aims to produce homes on a community scale that use 30% - 50% less energy, implement innovative energy and material saving technologies, and help home builders reduce construction time and waste by as much as 50%. Rebuild America focuses on accelerating energy efficiency improvements in existing commercial, institutional, and multifamily residential buildings through public/private partnerships created at the community level. Today this DOE program helps communities across the country sort though an often overwhelming array of options for building improvements and develop and implement an action plan. Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH) is a national effort launched in 1994 to improve the quality, durability, environmental impact, energy efficiency and affordability and decrease the disaster risk of America's homes. U.S. Department of Education's Healthy and High-Performance Schools Program, enacted by Congress in 2007 and advised by EPA and DOE, helps states develop information and grant incentives for green design and engineering of school renovations.
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