CleanBeta

America’s Greenest Skylines

Despite the deepening crisis in financial and real-estate markets, green building in America is booming like never before, especially in big cities.

New green building projects started in 2008 have an estimated value of $12 billion and will rise to $60 billion by 2010, according to McGraw-Hill Construction Analytics. The environment isn’t the only green in green building. Soaring energy prices combined with growing anxiety about climate change and unprecedented strains on natural resources have made conservation more economically compelling than ever.

Buildings account for 39% of total energy consumption, 71% of total electricity consumption and 12% of all water used in the United States, according to the U.S. Green Building Council. The USGBC created the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEEDs rating system for commercial buildings in 2000. Today, the system has become the standard benchmark for measuring a building’s efficiency and environmental-impact. LEED buildings are rated for sustainability in two stages – registered and certified, respectively.

All buildings are registered but only about one of every ten registered buildings takes the second step by getting certified. Because the USGBC only awards formal LEED ratings – which include from lowest to highest certification, silver, gold and platinum level ratings – to certified buildings, only a small percentage of LEED buildings have received formal LEED ratings, which are from low to high silver, gold, platinum levels ranging from silver to platinum.

To identify America’s greenest skylines, CleanBeta assigned each of the top 50  most populated cities – the cities with skylines – a score according to the number of certified and registered LEED buildings they had built. Cities received two points for every certified building and one point for every registered building. In other circumstances, the methodology’s bias in favor of big cities might have unfairly skewed the results, but since skylines also favor big over small the bias seems appropriate in this instance.

More than any other U.S. city, New York exemplifies the significance of size for green building. New York has over 20 million square feet of green building projects, an area larger than Portland’s entire central business district, according to Clean Edge. The higher energy prices climb, the more New York City stands to gain from making new and old buildings more energy efficient. LEEDs buildings use roughly a third less energy than their non-green counterparts, which can save nearly 10% in operating costs.

Anyone who has seen Manhattan’s skyline light up as the sun sinks over the Hudson in the evening should appreciate the magnitude of money potentially saved. Indeed, this is why some New York construction firms started building green before LEED existed. In 2000, the Durst Organization completed the world’s first sustainable skyscraper in Times Square for the Conde Nast corporation. Now, Durst is building a 54-story building at One Bryant Park for the Bank of America, which it claims will be the most energy-efficient skyscraper in the world.

In addition to energy, LEED buildings use water far more efficiently than non-LEED buildings. In places like Atlanta, this matters more than ever. The severe drought in the southeastern United States has gotten so bad that Georgia has sued neighboring state Tennessee for control of the Tennessee River. Because LEED buildings reduce water use by as much as half, it isn’t likely that Atlanta’s green building boom will end anytime soon.

Although compelling economics have increased green building’s appeal in mainstream markets, other green building cities are simply doing what they’ve done all along. In particular, no green cities list would be complete if the eco-trifecta of Seattle, Portland and San Francisco weren’t included. Green building is no exception.

Cities Listed by # of LEED Certified Projects

1. Chicago, IL
2. Seattle, WA
3. Portland, OR
4. Grand Rapids, MI
5. Washington, DC
6. Atlanta, GA
7. Pittsburgh, PA
8. San Francisco, CA
9. Denver, CO
10. San Diego, CA
11. Austin, TX
12. New York, NY
13. Sacramento, CA
14. Cambridge, MA
15. St. Louis, MO