The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), co-founded by Mike Italiano, David Gottfried and Rick Fedrizzi in 1993, is a non-profit trade organization that promotes sustainability in how buildings are designed, built, and operated. USGBC is best known for the development of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating systems and Greenbuild, a green building conference and expo that promotes the green building industry, including environmentally responsible materials, sustainable architecture techniques and public policy. USGBC was one of eight national councils which helped found the World Green Building Council in 1999.
Because of its name, USGBC is sometimes confused for a government agency or entity, but it is not; it is a private 501(c)(3), membership based non-profit organization. At the end of February 2010, USGBC had more than 18,500 member organizations from every sector of the building industry. USGBC works to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work. To achieve this it has developed a variety of programs and services, and works closely with key industry and research organizations and federal, state and local government agencies.
USGBC also offers a host of educational opportunities, including workshops and Web-based seminars to educate the public and industry professionals on different elements of the green building industry, from the basics to more technical information. Through its partnership with the Green Building Certification Institute, USGBC offers industry professionals the chance to develop expertise in the field of green building and to receive accreditation as LEED Green Associates or LEED APs with specialty.
Read more about U.S. Green Building Council: Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)
Famous quotes containing the words green, building and/or council:
“At twelve, the disintegration of afternoon
Began, the return to phantomerei, if not
To phantoms. Till then, it had been the other way:
One imagined the violet trees but the trees stood green,
At twelve, as green as ever they would be.
The sky was blue beyond the vaultiest phrase.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“The legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, ... thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)
“Daughter to that good Earl, once President
Of England’s Council and her Treasury,
Who lived in both, unstain’d with gold or fee,
And left them both, more in himself content.
Till the sad breaking of that Parliament
Broke him, as that dishonest victory
At Chaeronea, fatal to liberty,
Kill’d with report that old man eloquent;—”
—John Milton (1608–1674)