Mayor Gavin Newsom: SF Takes On Climate Change

San Francisco is ramping up its efforts to tackle the climate crisis. We're collecting food scraps and converting them to organic compost, eliminating unnecessary plastic bags and water bottles, exploring tidal power under the Golden Gate Bridge, and communicating the solar energy potential of rooftops to homeowners over the Internet.

The City continues to lead the way in pursuing carbon reduction strategies that work. Buildings, in their construction and operation, produce up to 48 percent of the nation's carbon footprint, so one key carbon reduction strategy is to establish meaningful green building standards for all construction projects in San Francisco. We've already put this in place for municipal buildings, which must meet the LEED silver standard.

"Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design." (LEED) is the nationally accepted green building standard administered by the U.S. Green Building Council. Earlier this year, I convened a task force to figure out how to take green building to the private sector. I populated it with members of San Francisco's building ownership, developer, financial, architectural, engineering and construction communities, and supported it with staff from the city's environment, planning, and building inspection departments.

The task force recently issued its findings, and recommends an aggressive phased approach for large commercial buildings and high-rise residential buildings, with an immediate target of LEED Certified, increasing to LEED Gold by 2012. Requirements for smaller residential buildings would also be phased in, using the GreenPoint Rated system.

Developed by Build It Green, a non-profit organization whose mission is to promote green residential buildings in California, GreenPoint Rated is tailored for single-family, multifamily/mixed-use projects and existing homes, and offers a trusted label supported by third-party verification.

The task force also recommends incentives, including development bonuses and fee reductions that would be introduced over the next five years. The task force recommendations create the foundation for new green building legislation that would result in the most comprehensive set of green building requirements and incentives of any major city in the United States.

I look forward to working with architects, engineers, green building professionals and all interested parties to craft mandatory green building standards that will serve the highest interests of San Francisco. Designing, constructing and operating buildings that conserve energy and resources, minimize waste, and are healthier and more comfortable for occupants obviously makes a lot of sense. But it's just one piece of the climate puzzle - albeit an important one - that we need to start addressing.

Businesses, residents, industry and city government will all need to chip in if we are to meet the City's overall carbon emissions reduction targets. San Francisco's building community is now poised to make its contribution to this critical effort.

For more information on the city's greening effort and events, as well as more information on the task force report (see "Quick Links" section), please visit SFEnvironment.org.

Gavin Newsom is the mayor of San Francisco.