Advice for President Elect Obama on Green Technology

Max grew up as the son of a man who knew 'ALL' the answers to the problems of the world. Max's father said so! Many times, his father let everyone know that anyone who didn't know that he had the answers was a turkey or a knucklehead.

The famous Ma Bell, the second most powerful force in the world (next to God of course), thought so much of Max's father's opinions, that the made him 'Supervisor of Troubles'. This is true!

The advice Max promised you Mr. President Elect.

Include LEED green technology in all new government buildings and upgrades.

Max believes that this is another one of the low hanging fruit where green technology would start paying back benefits in American jobs while reducing the impact on the environment.

The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System™ is a program that is a lot like the merit badge program in scouting. People who build new buildings and some who restore older ones (this can be prohibitively expensive) get basic LEED certification or the coveted metal versions of the certification.

All the developer (in your case the government) has to do is to build the buildings in ways that are considered green. Most of the cost in excess of normal building is normally recouped in a few short years through savings in energy, water use and cost of future renovations.

One example of this in the church Max attends is the carpeting. He goes to a UCC church where they are working with a partnering business on getting the restored building LEED certified.

When they put carpets down, they used recycled carpet squares that can easily be placed and removed. When the carpets get old and worn, they will just pull up the carpets and send them back to American manufacturer who will recycle them one more time. The new carpets will fit nicely where the dank old ones were.

Of course you don't have to have every building LEED certified to have an immensely successful green program using LEED concepts.

Whenever a government building is torn down it should have all the fixtures and reusable building components removed for reuse.

Any government building located in areas where the sunshine is available on most days should have solar panels installed on the roof. Since people work during the day in most cases and that happens to be when the sun shines, most days the building could be lighted without tapping the local grid.

There are lots of ways the government could become green nearly overnight. The nice thing about green activity is that it can be very cost effective, if you don't go overboard.

Having LEED certification requirements in most government contracts would be a way of moving the building industry toward greener approaches with little extra cost to the government.

Max wishes you well in all your efforts.

Max writes about greenways, rare diseases, timely topics, places to eat, travel and other issues of interest. He encourages you to add your comments.

Link one the home site for LEED a great source of information. This is where you can learn about the U.S. Green Builders (USGBS) LEED program attributes.

Link two how LEED is affecting electrical distributors.

Link three an example of the types of education and jobs LEED in government can lead to. (More skilled tradesmen will be needed to teach the courses)