Green Building Law Blog : Green Building Lawyer & Attorney : Shari Shapiro: Calliope Communications, LLC

The wild west is alive and well, and in New Jersey. 

I have a client there who consults with farmers who own wide swaths of land and with renewable energy companies that are looking to develop solar farms on that land.  He describes the phenomenon as a "land grab," where the renewable energy companies are trying to tie up the land available for large scale renewable projects, and landowners are trying to find the best deal for their land.  The land grab is fueled, in part, by the favorable incentives New Jersey provides for solar projects, and a renewable energy portfolio standard of 22.5% by compliance year 2020-2021.

California--the site of the original gold rush--is primed to see another one.  On September 24, California regulators raised the state's renewable energy portfolio standard, the requirement that power companies obtain a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources,  to 33 percent by 2020.  California's renewable energy portfolio standard was already 20%. 

The fever for gold in them there hills (and valleys and rooftops) could soon spread nationwide.  Sens. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Tom Udall (D-N.M.), and Mark Udall (D-Colo.) introduced the Renewable Electricity Promotion Act on September 23, which would: 

install a renewable portfolio standard (or renewable electricity standard, in D.C. parlance) requiring states to generate at least 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2021

 DSIRE has a nice map with all the portfolio standards for states nationwide.

What does this mean? 

Where green buildings are concerned, higher renewable energy portfolio standards will mean that utilities are looking for additional sources of reneable energy, so it will pay for large scale projects like big box stores, hospitals and manufacturing facilities to incorporate solar into their designs.

Also, because the real estate market has been largely dead for big projects, open space that might have once been yet another shopping mall or housing development may be more likely to go to solar farms and other large scale renewable energy projects. 

But, optioning land for renewable energy projects does not mean that all the renewable energy potential will be realized.  For example, Goldman Sachs, no stranger to the speculation business, has tied up land in Nevada for solar farming:

A Goldman Sachs & Co. subsidiary with no solar background has claims with the BLM on nearly half the land for which applications have been filed, but no firm plan for any of the sites.
 

For the policy makers, the key will be to incentivize projects coming to fruition, not to facilitate  pyramid scheme of tying up land with the hopes of flipping it to later developers of power projects. The task is to balance spurring the growth of the renewables market without creating a solar bubble in the process.  

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Guest Post by Stuart Kaplow.  Stuart Kaplow is an attorney, based in Baltimore, with a real estate practice concentrating in green building and sustainable business. His law firm website is www.stuartkaplow.com

Building green is the law in Baltimore City. And while the mandatory requirement for all to build green has been in effect since July 1, 2009, the City has just announced the regulations (that were, arguably, to have been effective July 1, 2009) were promulgated last week, effective September 16, 2010.

Make no mistake, Baltimore City is not green washing. To the contrary, it was an early adopter when it enacted a green building law in 2007 that, today, remains among the most sweeping of that in any major American city.

Baltimore City Building Code, Chapter 37 mandates that all newly constructed, extensively modified non-residential, and specific multi-family residential buildings, that have or will have at least 10,000 square feet of gross floor area, “for which a building permit application is filed on or after July 1, 2009 must achieve a silver-level rating in the appropriate LEED rating system, as certified by the Green Building Council”. (Mandating that privately owned buildings be constructed to a LEED standard is no less controversial than religion or politics.)

”Extensively modified” is a modification that alters more than 50% of the building’s gross floor area (such that many major renovations will have to be LEED silver certified is a big deal).

The City Code further requires that “the Building Official must issue regulations to administer .. [this law and that] those regulations must specify: 1. The LEED rating system, and any equivalent energy and environmental design standard, that applies to each type of covered building.”

As the key component of those regulations, the City has developed its own “equivalent” green building standard, based largely upon the LEED 2009 rating standards, layered with fast, flexible new approaches to sustainability taking advantage of the powerful opportunities and challenges of building in an older urban area. A City checklist of 150 credits (versus 110 credits on a LEED checklist) has been released for new construction.

The game changing regulations create the “Baltimore City Green Building Standards” enabling an applicant to satisfy the law with either at a minimum LEED silver certification or obtain a “2 Star” (on a 5 star scale) City approval under those City Green Building Standards.

Building permit applications are, today, being accepted utilizing the Baltimore City Green Building Standards even in advance of the regulations being final.

There are opportunities to prosper and thrive in the greening of Baltimore. All are welcome.
 

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Several stories recently have highlighted the other side of the regulatory coin--regulations are onlyeffective if they are enforced. 

On Monday, the Department of Energy issued 27 penalty notices to companies for failure to meet energy efficiency and water conservation standards.

According to Green Wombat:

For the first time in 35 years, the United States Department of Energy is moving to enforce decades-old energy efficiency and water conservation standards for products like refrigerators, light bulbs and shower heads.

Baltidome challenged Baltimore's enforcement of the city's green building code with respect to a new development being considered for the city center. 

Whether these enforcement actions are legitimate (Baltimore lawyer Stuart Kaplow did a little digging and reported to me that the senior policy making public official reviewing the project  assured him that the project, as designed, complies with the law), it is worth discussing what impact enforcement of energy efficiency codes, building codes, tree planting regulations and open space requirements THAT ARE ALREADY ON THE BOOKS could have on greening the United States. 

Part of the problem is that putting laws on the books is cheap, and enforcement is expensive.  It requires expertise, personnel, lawyers, inspectors and so forth to make it work.  In this era of contrained resources, it is nice to see that the DOE is enforcing some of its regulations.  Let us hope that other regulatory bodies follow suit, like the Federal Trade Commission, which is in charge of false green advertising claims, but has only filed a handful of enforcement actions over the years.   

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I am speaking today and the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC at a forum on green jobs for women.  Although policymakers assert that government investments in green initiatives can produce 20% more jobs than traditional economic stimulus measures, women are not finding as much employment in the green sector as men.  I wrote about this issue for the first time last year, my original post is here.

The issue that I am presenting on today is the low representation of women in white-collar green jobs.  When polticians talk aboout green jobs, the focus is most often on blue-collar work--workers insulating homes or installing solar panels.  There is no doubt that women are historically underrepresented in manual labor contruction work--women account for just 3% of building trade workers.  This gender disparity is no different when electricians turn from hooking up HVAC units to hooking up solar arrays. 

But what about white collar green jobs? There are no practical barriers to entry for women to become construction or energy lawyers, to finance green projects or to create businesses that develop or market innovative green products.  Gender equity is only one of the issues here--it is new efforts in these areas which will create demand for blue-collar and white-collar workers alike, and create new revenue to reinvigorate the American economy. 

And yet women are underrepesented in these areas as well.  Women make up just 16% of the leadership of the ABA Construction Law Committee, and a lower percentage of scientists, researchers, engineers and financiers.

What to do? 

• Qualify white collar green jobs for economic incentives--this will benefit the green economy as a whole.  If there are no new businesses creating demand for people to caulk houses or build solar arrays, all the green job training in the world will be wasted. This will benefit men and women alike.
• Create targeted green training (and RE-training) programs for women in law, business, engineering and finance. Alumni groups from higher education institutions could take on this effort, and make the training available not only for their alumni, but to professionals within their geographical area.
• Create set-asides in green purchasing programs for women-owned green buisnesses, particularly in government programs and large companies going green,.
• Take on the issue--USGBC and other high profile green organizations and government entities need to make women's participation in the green economy a priority.

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