Catch the Wave on free webinar

SERF and the Centre for Sustainability & Excellence (CSE) are co-hosting a free webinar 12:30-1:30 CST on Thursday, January 24.

CSE , a global leader in sustainability consulting and training, is partnering with SERF to train SERF Professionals (SPs).  SPs have the exclusive ability to act as third-party verifiers for SERF certification applications.

SERF president Joe Maguire and CSE president Nikos Avlonas will be on hand to discuss SERF as a streamlined, affordable alternative to LEED certification and the SP designation as opportunity to expand your professional practice.  Click here to register.

SPreading the word

As more and more properties Catch the Wave with SERF Certification, we’re beginning to fall behind in processing applications.   Maintaining our early decision to cede the lengthy process award to the other 4-letter certification, we are, instead, embarking on a fix.

Our new professional designation SERF Professional (SP) will enable real estate professionals to act as third party verifiers for SERF Certification applications.  SPs will be independent from SERF and will set their own fees and contract directly with certification applicants.

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Who really pays for LEED certification?

Obtaining LEED certification costs a lot of time and money.  The resources required are not limitless and are generally diverted from other uses, though that seems impolite to discuss when pursuing sustainability.

But LEED certification does not, of course, add to a property’s sustainability.  Rather it confirms, or certifies, that objective sustainable criteria have been met.   If anything, the high costs of LEED certification divert funds that may be otherwise be spent on sustainable materials or systems.

In the end, the high cost of LEED ultimately comes from somewhere….or someone. 

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The Greenest Building is the one that is already built

This elegant phrase by architect Carl Elefante is bolstered by an important new study, The Greenest Building:  Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse.

National Real Estate Investor opines that the study, commissioned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation Green Lab, empirically shows, “It is unequivocally greener to retrofit an old building than construct a new building, no matter how many high-tech bells and whistles are in the new construction.”

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Green parking, chicken houses and bankers

Beginning in 2011, parking structures were deemed unworthy of attaining LEED certification owing to the fact that they are, after all, chock full of those pesky cars.

So great the sin of enabling the proliferation of hydro-carbon fueled vehicles that no amount of energy efficient lighting, designated stalls for alternate fuel vehiclesreduction of heat island effect and countless other ways to make a parking structure more sustainable has lowered the upturned nose of the USGBC.

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Bridging the Political Divide on Sustainability

The gulf between conservatives and liberals on the merits of sustainability may be lessened with a little history lesson.  So says SERF Scholar Colin Maguire in his paper American Stewardship:   A Path Already Laid,  which he is presenting at next week’s 2012 Environmental Justice and Global Citizenship Conference at Oxford University in England.

The study traces the Founders’ philosophies on private property rights, a core American principle, with the corresponding responsibility for property owners to be good and proper stewards of their land.  Sustainability is, it seems, not such a new concept in America, and should be embraced as an essential element of our nation’s founding.

My kind of (green) town…

Given the warm reception SERF has received and our growing operations here, it comes as no surprise to us that Chicago recently won the Siemens and U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Sustainability Large Community award.  Leaders from business, real estate and, not least, the City government are clearly unified in making Chicago a global leader in sustainability.

There’s a beautiful symmetry in Chicago’s leadership in sustainable buildings given its preeminent role in the creation of an American architectural style and its endless contributions to the world’s built environment ever since.

How fitting, then, that Chicago’s Soldier Field is now the first NFL stadium to have attained LEED status.  Now that’s putting your money where your mouth is.

Can Governments Really Afford LEED?

There seems a refreshing change in the air questioning municipal, state and federal agency mandates to LEED certify new structures under their purview.

No one finding their way here will question the environmental and social good–even a social demand–for building green by our public sector.  But in the midst of budget crises resulting in spending cuts at every level of government, the high cost of obtaining LEED certification (some 10 times higher than SERF, often more) is beginning to raise fiscal eyebrows.

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Getting DIRTTy in Chicago

Last week’s SERF Chicago party celebrating our newest regional office was a raging success.

Some 300 guests gathered at the Green Learning Center of our hosts, DIRTT (that’s Doing It Right This Time for the uninitiated) on the Chicago River next to the Merchandise Mart.

We ate, drank and made merry while celebrating three new Windy City certifications including DIRTT’s space (the first of our new certification for office suites), Norcon Construction’s clever adaptive reuse of an old storage facility on the west side, and 330 N. Wabash—formerly the IBM Building and soon to be the AMA (American Medical Association) Plaza.

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Governments Distort Decision Making

We are often asked about government incentives or subsidies associated with SERF certification.  After all, it’s no secret that LEED and others go to great lengths to get written in to the code.

We see at least 3 problems with that, the first of which is hidden cost.  Municipal, county, state and national lobbying to secure favors comes at a stiff price  and is one  of the  many factors behind the  high cost of other certifications.

Moreover, the notion of artificial incentives–all government incentives are artificial,  lest why would they exist–runs counter to our aim of Practical Environmental Stewardship™.   Put another way, common sense solutions do not require subsidies–they work on their own! [Read more…]