Schwarzenegger’s green building ... lite
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Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration made slight amendments this afternoon to a draft state building code that environmentalists charged would have compromised California’s plan to ratchet down its global warming emissions.
Schwarzenegger staffers joined Rosario Marin, Secretary of State and Consumer Affairs who also oversees the Building Standards Commission, to hammer out a compromise with opponents. It ‘fixed the major flaws,’ according to one participant, but the new code, to be adopted Thursday, would fall far short of the groundbreaking regulation that renewable energy advocates had sought.
Environmentalists had claimed that the draft would have undermined stricter green building codes in 75 California cities and counties. Now, it would be amended to explicitly state that it would ‘in no way preempt local authorities.’
San Francisco and Los Angeles recently enacted laws forcing builders to cut energy and water use in new structures, encourage eco-friendly materials and recycle construction waste.
Despite today’s compromise, however, the proposed state code would be far less stringent. It would not require private developers to meet the equivalent of nationally-recognized LEED standards--the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design benchmark established by the U.S. Green Building Council, which the state uses for its own public construction. Moreover, the new code, while mandatory for residential structures, would be only voluntary for commercial buildings.
Nick Zigelbaum, a San Francisco-based energy analyst with the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote green building advocates today that NRDC, which has 250,000 California members, would suspend its opposition to the new code but ‘we will be thoroughly involved in future revisions.’
Under the compromise, the new code would clarify that a residential green building should achieve more than a 15% reduction in energy use beyond current code. It also revises a section which gave equal weight to wood certified by industry groups, as it did to wood certified as sustainably harvested by the Forest Stewardship Council, an environmental non-profit.
The building industry has fiercely opposed restrictions on lumber and environmentalists were unable to persuade the Schwarzenegger administration to include FSC standards in the code.
Schwarzenegger press aide Rachel Cameron declined to comment on whether Schwarzenegger or his staff thought the original code too weak. The chairman of the green building advisory council is the technical director of the California Building Industry Association, the principal trade group.
The governor, she said in an email, ‘has directed the commission to enact a strong green building code and encouraged them to work with a wide variety of stakeholders including environmental groups, building industry groups and other state agencies.’
--Margot Roosevelt