U.S. Green Building Council Launches Real-Time Green Building Data Resource

WASHINGTON (April 23, 2014) — The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) launched its new online data visualization resource that highlights real-time green building data for each state in the U.S. and Washington, D.C. The enhanced state market briefs—highlighting LEED projects, LEED-credentialed professionals and USGBC membership in each state—provide green building advocates and the general public a look into LEED’s impact within any state.

“Our state-level market briefs demonstrate USGBC’s commitment to data and information transparency at an important level of granularity. You can’t find this data anywhere else in the market,” said Mahesh Ramanujam, chief operating officer, USGBC. “The choice to build green buildings is simple. These state-level data visualizations make it even simpler.”

The market briefs for each state were created to supply green building advocates with on-the-ground information to tell stories about the benefits of LEED green buildings. Each market brief acts as a state-level barometer of economic activity taking place in an industry that McGraw-Hill projects could be worth up to $248 billion and represent more than half of all commercial and institutional construction in the U.S. by 2016.

Market briefs for countries outside the U.S. are available upon request, and LEED for Homes and LEED for Neighborhood Development data and projects will be added later this year. The market briefs highlight data on cumulative LEED-registered and LEED-certified projects, gross square footage of LEED-registered and -certified space, project totals broken out by owner type and space type, USGBC member organizations by type, LEED professional credential holders, links to chapter(s) serving that state, as well as a project profile scorecard.

“The ability to tune in to what the green building marketplace looks like in real time is remarkably impactful, no matter what your connection to the industry is,” said Ari Kobb, director of sustainability and green building solutions at Siemens Industry Inc. “The state market briefs are clean and simple snapshots for each state. As someone who loves to dig into data, especially LEED data, I find this a useful tool for analysis.”

USGBC chapters and Platinum-level members were given an exclusive first look at the tool before it came online. “Working at the state level, I see story after story of LEED success in North Carolina,” said Emily Scofield, executive director of USGBC North Carolina Chapter. “The state market briefs are really useful to us in the way that they aggregate individual successes into crisp numbers that have a real impact on our conversations with businesses and policymakers.”

USGBC prioritizes data transparency and access through its data access policy campaign, its Green Building Information Gateway (gbig.org) and as a joint organizer of the Data Access and Transparency Alliance. No other green building organization provides access to this level of data and information.

“Providing the green building market with this detailed level of information is critical to the success of USGBC’s mission of market transformation,” added Ramanujam.

The state market briefs can be downloaded either as a visualization or as a raw data file and are accessible at USGBC.org/advocacy/market-brief.