David Gottfried: 0:00

The bulk of the buildings on earth are old and they're leaky and inefficient. The newer ones are in most countries are rising up with new standards and green building rating systems. So we gotta get to those older buildings.

Tom Raftery: 0:27

That raises an investment question, how do we reward progress in the worst performing buildings, not just excellence in the ? best, Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, where ever you are in the world, this is Climate Confident Stories and Strategies that cut Emissions Episode 302, and I'm your host, Tom Raftery. My guest today is David Gottfried, who helped establish the US Green Building Council and later the World Green Building Council. He's seen what green building standards have achieved and which buildings they've struggled to reach. In this episode, we explore how to bring those neglected buildings into the effort and how policy and commercial incentives could translate better building performance into meaningful emissions reductions. David, welcome to the podcast. Would you like to introduce yourself?

David Gottfried: 1:21

Great and nice to be here. Tom. I'm David Gottfried and I'm a green building guy, and been here almost since day one of the movement. And just finishing up my fourth book.

Tom Raftery: 1:34

Fantastic. And David, for listeners who don't know your story, what problem were you trying to solve when green building was still a fringe idea? Because you're a bit modest when you're saying you're loosely connected with green buildings. You kicked it off right?

David Gottfried: 1:48

I didn't kick it off. I was introduced to it, but almost at the start here in the US and maybe third in the world in terms of introduction, third country. It started, it appears in England around 1991 and a rating system called BREAM, and then Canada had one that didn't work. And I got to study those very early on and see how we could play with that in the US. And I, I met a guy named Bill McDonough and he introduced me to Green Building. And he was one of the first, or the first in the US but very, very early.

Tom Raftery: 2:30

David, what did the mainstream industry miss at the time that you were trying to solve with the Green Building Council?

David Gottfried: 2:36

Yeah, so we got involved to define green building for the US. That was our first mission. And what was missing was a common standard for commercial green building in the US. We had some early residential rating systems. City of Austin was the first. Our first job of the US Green Building Council was to define green building, and that became the LEED green building rating system, LEED. We moved into residential after commercial, but, and even went deeper into commercial interiors and neighbourhood developments and, the core and shell of buildings and LEED retail, they kept expanding quite a bit, but it, it, it was a, could just say, I'm LEED platinum or silver. And those two words meant something in performance across about seven categories from energy efficiency, water, renewable energy materials, health, indoor environmental quality, transportation, defined categories..

Tom Raftery: 3:55

And when did you then realise that transforming buildings might still not be enough?

David Gottfried: 4:01

Much later. Our slope looked like that innovation curve where the first few years are flat, you're working hard, and if it's gonna work at some point you hit an inflexion and it starts going up like crazy. That took quite a while. Our first five years were slow. And then once LEED came out, it started to get market adoption and attention. Our members went from zero at the high point to 25,000 organisational members. And then all those different varieties of LEED came out. And then we started to run around the world. And LEED is in most of the world, about 180 countries. So that's very exciting and much to celebrate. It's beyond a dream in a personal life to see that happen from ideas in the brain. But as you study, the slope of climate change, it's slope is almost steady despite all of our incredible work, which is fabulous and huge. It's like 30 billion square feet. It's, it's a trillion dollars. But so far we're not enough to tip the slope of all of civilization, of climate change, aquifers draining, of oceans rising and heating up of glaciers, melting, of species going extinct. There's a lot going on here on earth. And buildings are turning the ship greatly. But still countries are missing their Paris agreement commitments. And, of course our country, my country, which if I don't say it, it's the elephant in the room. Our president withdrew the Paris Agreement commitment. But most of this country's working at it. And the states have leadership and the corporations care, but still, even the best countries, there's a couple on earth are getting close through renewable power. They have hydro, great wind power, a lot in the Scandinavian areas and, and Europe. But still most of us are missing our commitments. And even those commitments are to get to net zero by 2050. Not restore, not, not go into the positive, just limit the less bad to zero, but the bad is still here. And the CO2 and the methane gas is up there. And so I realised there's a lot to celebrate and I'm very proud. It's bigger than we dreamed, but still it's not enough. And we're not hitting all industries. We're just buildings. And we could go further everywhere, everywhere in society, in all industries, and in all manufacturing, in all economies. And the valuation of value and wealth and the alignment of value and wealth to life and life sustaining.

Tom Raftery: 7:08

Yeah. Yeah. And so if LEED did help change the industry, why didn't it bend the planetary curve?

David Gottfried: 7:17

Because of the growth. The growth is huge and, and we're dealing with buildings, but we don't have all buildings on earth. We're, we're making a good impact on new buildings, certainly flagship buildings. And I should mention, LEED is all over the world, but there's BREAM from UKs all over the world and Green Star and KASBY, and Three Star in China, Green Mark in Singapore. So we're all working all these rating tools. And we're getting towards the new buildings, some of the older buildings, but the majority of these three star, not five star older, tertiary buildings that are smaller, a lot of them are inherited by kids. They're energy hogs, a lot of 'em, they're not all these flagships going at it hard and changing everything. They're not investing the money. They have single pane windows. They have poor insulation, dark roofs, old mechanical systems. Maybe they don't even have building control and they're just, they're conditioning the homes for heat or cool. And it's going right out the windows and the envelope. You can, even measure that and see that happening. It's significant. So the bulk of the buildings on earth are old and they're leaky and inefficient. The newer ones are in most countries are rising up with new standards and green building rating systems. So we gotta get to those older buildings. And then beyond buildings, there's cars, there's roads, there's manufacturers, everything we make on earth. And it's not all sustainable and certainly not into the positive regenerative.

Tom Raftery: 9:11

Sure. And speaking of new buildings though, what about things like very topical data centres, where does the data centre build out break the current carbon maths?

David Gottfried: 9:23

Well, that train has left the station globally. It's, it's going fast and it's accelerating every day. The numbers are staggering. And I love AI probably more than most. And it's, it's a brilliant, brilliant human invention. But there's a cost. And the cost are these data centres and the energy they draw down. And that energy's going from some two or 3% of global energy to, to as much as eight, even 10 I've seen as future projections. And those data centres beyond operational energy, they're sitting on massive concrete slabs and concrete, because of Portland cement is 8% of global warming. A lot of steel. Steel is 8% of global warming. And that equipment and big impact. And they use a lot of water though they're using better with new methods on water. But the train has left. The big hyperscalers have incredible green building staff and teams and goals. But are they the caboose chasing the LEED engine of the train? Maybe. Does the caboose get out in front? I don't know. But number one at all of 'em is speed, not environmental impact. They're not gonna slow down a month or two to get it to net zero into positive. They need that speed and, can they integrate it in before day one so that they can have speed and lower the embodied carbon of the steel and the concrete, lower the operational energy through whatever means from fuel cells to hydro, to solar. All methods. But they are in the sustainability game. Those folks are smart. They're at the table. They have their own groups either through US Green Building Council and also I, masons has a climate accord. I sat with them in intensive meetings talking about these issues, but I've also seen the data centres go fast and some of the bids not demanding certain things that I would like to have seen.

Tom Raftery: 11:53

The important distinction is between efficiency and total impact. A data centre can become more efficient per unit of compute while the buildout increases overall electricity demand and embodied emissions. The climate test has to account for both. Yeah, so I mean, it's not just about cleaner buildings. It's also whether governance can keep up with this acceleration, this speed that you referred to?

David Gottfried: 12:21

Hundred percent. It's all about governance. Corporate governance, state, city, federal, global governance. And getting through governance, those required standards of performance and then going much broader. These hyperscalers are, are hitting it. Microsoft is one of the first to buy offsets at very high prices, including direct air capture, a thousand dollars plus per tonne. Trying very hard. They have their own concrete lab pouring different slabs of low embodied carbon concrete options. But still they're moving so fast we, technology is slower to catch up. And the problem is the funding for these new steels and concretes and low embodied products. They need massive money to build new manufacturing plants, and we need advanced market commitments. We need all of them to come together and say, if you make it, we'll buy it. Here's our contract. And that's starting to happen. But it, in my opinion, it's way too slow. It's a global crisis, and we need to look at it like we did COVID. And solving that problem fast with huge amount of capital and commitments and mandatory standards.

Tom Raftery: 13:48

So is a lack of funding the only reason why embodied carbon is still so hard to manage?

David Gottfried: 13:55

No, they're still proving their products work. Some of 'em. They haven't done it at scale. They have to meet the standards, either national or global performance standards, if it's in the concrete realm. The compressive strengths, the pourability, the freezing conditions. If you put a robot on it like this, that Amazon has, does it hold up? So there's a lot of standards that need to be met. And even if they meet 'em in a lab or a pilot factory, can they meet'em at scale and can they deliver? And then there's issues of transportation'cause the concrete is heavy. And if you put it on a truck and send it too far, you create that carbon energy. And, so there's a whole strategy of where is it manufactured and is it have to be the physical product that has a sequestered CO2 in it into the negative, or even to sell the carbon credits and make it somewhere else, how does that game play?

Tom Raftery: 15:09

And what about the idea of advanced procurement commitments? You know, Do they risk becoming another layer of climate theatre or are they potentially helpful?

David Gottfried: 15:19

They're hugely helpful, and this can drive innovation faster. Money speaks. If the advanced commitments are not just for money, but from AAA rated corporation, or governments need to get into this game much bigger and come together. They build roads, they build bridges, airports, they have light rail and huge amounts of concrete and steel. They drove the recycled paper industry. It was local governments demanding that. They can accelerate this hugely as well as the transportation departments. But it's slow. It's very slow. And every time we build a new data centre, a new huge hospital or building or airport, it could have been better. And that technology exists today and there's no reason we can't do it. We have the COP meetings and we try, but still we come out of it. And a lot of it isn't results. It's words and effort, but not results in the metrics of earth that change that slope.

Tom Raftery: 17:03

And talking about the World Green Building Council, what did the US and the World Green Building Councils get right that climate movements should copy or could copy?

David Gottfried: 17:16

Thank you. I first started, started the US and then later the world one. And again, we have 85 countries of GBCs. First they're coming together as a country forming a council becoming members. Those councils are working on their own rating tool or adopting one from another country, whether it's LEED or BREAM or Green Star. So they're coming together across all instruments in the orchestra of the industry. So it's the architects, engineers, the contractors, the manufacturers, the cleaning company, the universities. It takes all of 'em to come together to define the standard or adopt the standard. Then it rolls into industry for use, either voluntarily or through regulation. I believe in carrots and sticks. We need both. The sticks are building codes coming up, or legal requirements for performance. We've got the standards whether it's ISO or ASTM in the US. Those are important. And then the carrots are great. Tax credits, faster building permits greater density you could build. If you go higher level green. All developers love that 'cause that's worth huge amount of money. In San Francisco they said LEED Gold go to the front of the building permit line. If your site was a hundred million dollars and you save six months, that's great. In Nevada, the casinos, if they went LEED Silver, they had abatement on property taxes. City centres like a, I don't know, $15 billion project. Gazillion hotels. They went LEED Silver. Did they care about the environment? I don't know. They, they, they wanted to make their money in the casinos and have smoking. Although we pushed it, into negative pressurisation. But they soaked up every LEED consultant in California, in the whole region. So, carrots can work and money speaks.

Tom Raftery: 19:39

And then I guess on the flip side, what didn't work or what failure usually gets left out of the green building success story?

David Gottfried: 19:48

The buildings we missed. The buildings not in the game. A lot of those older existing buildings, If you look at LEED, it stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. In theory, the lowest certification for LEED, LEED Certified is the top 25%. If you're below the 25%, in theory, you can't make it. So you're not green. And that built the market. It's worked great. But we all need to expand our thinking. And so I studied Weight Watchers quite a bit, and Girl Scouts. I wasn't a member of either. But in Weight Watchers, when you're 500 pounds and you walk in, you know what they say, welcome, please step on the scale. And when you lose 5% of body mass, they give you a medal and then another medal the next 5%. And in Girl Scouts they have badges. So you could win the water badge, the energy badge. In the green building Girl Scouts. And so if you glue the two together, we want all buildings in. And David wants the clunker buildings, give me the 500 pound buildings, welcome, weigh in, let's celebrate improvement. And so if I had more time, I'd probably hunt for the worst buildings on earth, the biggest and wor worse, and welcome them to Green Weight Watchers and incentivise them with medals and carrots to come, join us, weigh in, and let's go on the weight improvement the carbon weight, the water weight, and celebrate you. And support you and give you accountability.

Tom Raftery: 21:59

A rating system can recognise buildings that are already excellent, but for climate policy, I think there's another question. How much has each building improved against its own starting point? That could bring far more of the existing stock into play. And where have you changed your mind most over the last 35 years? What would younger David have resisted hearing?

David Gottfried: 22:24

Be more patient. Although maybe my impatience is good 'cause this is urgent I could learn to listen better. I could learn to be less reactive. There were some tables I should have stayed at, and the younger David was a little more hotheaded and I wi wish I had stayed. And we need to be at some of those tables with the biggest polluters. We need to embrace them. They don't want to pollute, they want to make money. And moving certain things into the commons as an externality makes them more profit. So we need to change the equations. And there were some situations, not just the meeting or the table, but I quit as CEO of USGBC too early. I was uncomfortable that it was a nonprofit and I was funding it personally, and I was ha happy it was a nonprofit, but I had the investor risk with no stock. And so my mind kind of short circuit and said, dude, you, you got all the risk of a startup and none of the gain. My return has been enormous, but it isn't shareholder stock and it is in a way. But my ROI are hugs and gratitude and things like that. The dividends is different, which I've learned through age. That that's good. That's fine. The earlier years I wanted more material monetary return, but later years I realised, so what you, you put the money in the bank, when you die, you don't take it with you. It's more about legacy and impact. but the ear earlier years, I didn't know that. I, I didn't know that.

Tom Raftery: 24:39

Okay, and talk to me about the book Regen 360. In one, let's say plain sentence, what does a regenerative operating system actually do?

David Gottfried: 24:50

It gives earth a new OS, a new version. Put solar on the house, but that house has leaky windows, bad insulation, a bad roof inefficient fixtures, sitting on a poor foundation, sitting on ground in a neighbourhood, in a community, in a society that doesn't always value life as the bullseye. And then life sustaining the air, the water, the soil next. And I'm trying to reboot the base OS under the house, on the ground, on the society, on the civilization, so that when you do the solar and the battery, all these other things get in alignment so we can address that slope.

Tom Raftery: 25:45

Okay. And how does your full equation change the way leaders should judge a project, for example?

David Gottfried: 25:53

Yeah, the full equation is the simple numbers to me as an engineer, but it's R = P minus I minus W. And the R is the resultant of what you wanna make. A good house, a good kid, a good car, a good snowboard. It equals P well that's the product. And you'd say, well, the product equals R. No, the product is reduced by I's and W's impacts I and W's waste. And we want I and W to go to zero. So R does equal P when I and W equals zero. And the green building rating systems are getting at the I's and the W's mostly, but there's some I's and W's not in there. Time, money. There's a big W. It's in our brains. It's intellectual waste. There's another one is spirit waste. When you hire that brilliant architect, engineer for the project, let them fly, man. Let that thoroughbred horse run to go into the positive. They know how to do it. Well, it'll costs more money. It'll be riskier. It'll take longer. That's the developer fears. Fine. Put a put 'em on the whiteboard. Put 'em on the table. Let's address that. But let's not kill greatness out of fear. And in turn, I've tried to show, and so have the green building councils, you can make more money through green. Maybe the first cost is higher, but the operational costs are lower. Maybe it's just a better building. It's not a B building, it's an A+. And rents are higher, vacancies lower, market capitalization's, higher. Maybe it's a company and the price earning ratio is better'cause it's a green company. And the market cap is better because the PE ratio's better because we reduced risk, climate risk, other risks. We reduced energy, water, waste. We improved health and productivity. Let's think on a 30, 50 year basis and wake up as a species.

Tom Raftery: 28:20

There are two scorecards here. A building can deliver higher rents, lower bills, and healthier workplaces without having proved it has reduced lifetime emissions. The strongest business case should connect those commercial benefits with measurable climate performance. And so what do most leaders still get wrong about sustainability?

David Gottfried: 28:45

They don't even like that word. They hear sustainability and they shut down like power down. It's like, oh, and what does that even mean? Less bad? As Bill McDonough says, what we need is more good. And you don't go to less bad to get to zero bad. You need to go into infinite good. Let's put points on the scoreboard of earth. And the more points the better. And those points make water fresher, precious, save the water, recharge the aquifers. Stop that good water from going into the ocean. Capture the rain water, the grey water, the black water, as an example. I can do that in every sector. But let's, then if you capture the water, you're purified, you make it available. Let's make you wealthy'cause you did good.

Tom Raftery: 29:45

Okay, so for people who are listening who want to implement something from this conversation, for example, where should they start?

David Gottfried: 29:54

Where you should start is analysing yourself. And the first chapter in my book's called The False Game, and I have equations, 15 equations. And the first code that goes with that chapter in the Earth Code says if it destroys life, then it is false. So where in your life are you False. Sit down with a journal. What did you do? Your products and your services. Did they improve life? Did they improve your life? Others' lives? And start looking at it and making your own inventory. And then you could rate yourself one to 10 if you like. And then you could highlight the reds. You could highlight the greens too, and celebrate. The reds you can make an improvement plan. Okay, what're you gonna do about it for real?

Tom Raftery: 31:00

A left field question for you now, David, if you could have any person or character, alive or dead, real or fictional as a champion for rewriting the climate scoreboard, who would it be and why?

David Gottfried: 31:19

Probably be Buckminster Fuller. He was in the fifties, sixties, seventies, brilliant invention architect. He had a book called An Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. And I discovered that mid writing my operating system for regenerative earth. He was in my DNA. But in the fifties and sixties he gave global speeches everywhere and he would dance on the stage because he felt technology had arrived at the point where all on Earth could have. And it didn't happen. But he was brilliant and we need that energy and spirit now. I'd love to do this together with him. Love him to read my book and we could have a good dialogue, a good conversation.

Tom Raftery: 32:16

Fantastic. We're coming towards the end of the podcast now David, is there any question that I didn't ask that you wish I had or any aspect of this we haven't covered that you think it's important for people to be aware of?

David Gottfried: 32:29

Well, this has been great. You've hit it in a way, but it's worth concluding with is why. Why David, do you do this? I wanted this life to, to make a difference, and I wanted it to be bigger than self. I wanted to feel like a good gardener that I planted lots of seeds and occasionally came around and watered them. And if they did grow into the beautiful park with the rose gardens and trees that are shading people in a hot summer day, I could sit on the bench quietly with a hat like you, Tom, and not be known, but watch the dogs chasing the frisbee and the kids chasing the dog. And the parents getting a moment to rediscover each other and the beautiful colours of those roses and flowers and those trees giving their fruit to us. And quietly see that and just take it in. The seeds you planted, the trees you nurtured. You know what you did. You don't need anyone in that park to know and just, just see that, I'm a parent and I've loved that. I haven't been a grandparent, but this is a further tier beyond grandparent. It's a, a steward. It's a caretaker. It's a gardener.

Tom Raftery: 34:17

Great. David, if people would like to know more about yourself or any of the things we talked about on the podcast today, where would you have me direct them?

David Gottfried: 34:25

Yeah, thanks. Go to my website, www.regenthreesixty.net, R-E-G-E-N three six zero.net, and you'll see the four books I've written.

Tom Raftery: 34:39

Fantastic. David, that's been fascinating. Thanks a million for coming on the podcast today.

David Gottfried: 34:44

Thank you, Tom, for what you do for caring about your listeners, for being the gardener curating the listeners and planting seeds through the podcast, and your questions and the hosts, the guests that you bring. Appreciate it.