8 Handbook of Green Building Design and Construction

of urgency felt by green building proponents and represents a significant

accomplishment by the federal government through its collective effort
to define common strategies and guiding principles of green building. To
consolidate these goals, the signatory agencies will now need to coordi-
nate with complementary efforts in the private and public sectors. This
implies that the Federal government is making an unswerving commit-
ment to designing, maintaining, locating, in addition to constructing, and
operating its facilities in an energy efficient and sustainable manner. The
objective is to achieve a balance that will realize optimal standards of liv-
ing, more comprehensive sharing of life’s amenities, maximum attainable
reuse, and recycling of diminishing resources, in a manner that is consistent
with and meets the objectives of the Department and Agency missions.
According to the Whole Building Design Guide (WBDG), “The Federal
government owns approximately 445,000 buildings with total floor space
of over 3.0 billion square feet, in addition to leasing an additional 57,000
buildings comprising 374 million square feet of floor space. These struc-
tures and their sites affect our natural environment, our economy, and the
productivity and health of the workers and visitors that use these build-
ings.” (© 2016 National Institute of Building Sciences).
The above is a clear indication that the gap between green and
conventional construction is narrowing and is another sign that green
construction has come of age, especially when we learn that currently
there are more than 80 green building programs operating in the United
States alone, not including numerous other countries like Canada, Japan,
China, India, Australia, the U.A.E., and the United Kingdom. A measure
of the growth of green building programs and its success is reflected by
the number of cities that have established or adopted such programs.
For example, the American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported that
by 2008, there were 92 cities with populations greater than 50,000 that
had established green building programs, up from 22 in 2004, a 318%
increase. Many of the programs in the United States are either city,
county, or state programs; there are also three that are national in scope.
The three national green building programs in the United States are
the LEED program of the USGBC, the Green Globes program of the
Green Building Institute (this program was designed by the UK Building
Research Establishment), and the National Green Building Standard of
the National Association of Home Builders. In the United States, the
LEED program is the most widely recognized, but all of these programs
were developed and operate outside of government.