xxviii Introduction

• Educate our fellow professionals, the building industry, clients, students,

and the general public about the critical importance and substantial
opportunities of sustainable design
• Establish policies, regulations, and practices in government and business
that ensure sustainable design becomes normal practice
• Bring all existing and future elements of the built environment – in their
design, production, use, and eventual reuse – up to sustainable design
standards.”
The election of Bill Clinton to the presidency in November of 1992
encouraged a number of sustainability proponents to start circulating a gran-
diose idea of “greening” the White House itself. And on Earth Day April 21,
1993 President Bill Clinton launched his ambitious plans to “greening the
White House” and to make the presidential mansion “a model for efficiency
and waste reduction.” To put this plan into effect, the President’s Council
on Environmental Quality assembled a team of experts that included mem-
bers of the AIA, the U.S. DOE’s Federal Energy Management Program
(FEMP), the U.S. EPA, the General Services Administration, the National
Park Service, the White House Office of Administration, and the Potomac
Electric Power Company.
The “Greening the White House” initiative created substantial savings
(more than $1.4 million in its first 6 years), primarily from improvements
made to the lighting, heating, air conditioning, water sprinklers, insula-
tion, and energy and water consumption reduction. Moreover, the initia-
tive also included a 600,000 sq. ft. Old Executive Office Building that was
located across from the White House. There was also an energy audit by
the DOE, an environmental audit led by the EPA, and a series of well-
attended design charettes consisting of design professionals, engineers,
government officials, and environmentalists, with the aim of formulat-
ing sustainable energy-conservation strategies using available technolo-
gies. Within the first 3 years, these energy-conservation strategies resulted
in significant improvements to the nearly 200-year-old mansion such as
reducing its annual atmospheric emissions by an estimated 845 metric tons
of carbon in addition to an estimated $300,000 in annual energy and
water savings.
Bill Browning, Hon. AIA says, “The process pioneered by the Greening
of the White House charrette has become an integral part of the green
building movement.” However, the deluge of Federal greening projects was
among several forces that drove the sustainability movement in the 1990s.
To accelerate this process, President Clinton issued a number of executive