Center for Environmental Innovation in Roofing Addresses Green Building Advisory Committee

The Center for Environmental Innovation in Roofing, Washington, D.C., delivered comments yesterday before the Green Building Advisory Committee. The committee is responsible for advising the General Services Administration (GSA) about the rapid transformation of the federal building portfolio to sustainable technologies and practices.

In comments to the committee, Vice President of Public Policy Justin Koscher urged the committee “to consider guidelines for building components as a complement to whole building certification systems and standards,” and stressed that whole-building rating systems “can be expensive and difficult to apply to typical reroofing projects.”

The meeting included a discussion about the current Green Building Certification System Review, a multi-step review of whole-building certification systems that GSA is completing. A report released earlier this year from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory found three certification systems meet preliminary federal criteria. The systems include the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program, the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globes program and the International Living Building Institute’s Living Building Challenge.

In expressing the Center for Environmental Innovation in Roofing’s concern about several rating systems that now include material selection credits, Koscher reminded the committee that Red Lists eliminate “many modern building materials currently considered by building professionals to deliver critical performance and environmental benefits,” and approving such systems “would lend the credibility of the federal government to Red Lists that threaten U.S. manufacturers.”