Green Building Pulse Check, with USGBC's Liz Beardsley

With the U.S. now out of the Paris Agreement once again, questions are swirling around the state of our industry's sustainability efforts. USGBC Senior Policy Counsel Elizabeth Beardsley returns to 'HPAC On The Air' to discuss all that, and to report back from the recent COP29 conference in Azerbaijan.

To listen to our new podcast, click below. 

For additional detail, read Beardsley's recent blog at bottom.

By Elizabeth Beardsley, Senior Policy Counsel, U.S. Green Building Council

January 2025

Throughout the past year, USGBC made progress on many fronts. Educating the green building community about the energy efficiency and clean energy tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act was a major focus, and we reached thousands of professionals through conferences, webinars, and our free posted resources.

We also continued to work proactively on several policy proposals in Congress, such as adding energy efficiency to the investment tax credit. USGBC also advanced important state legislation, for example the Resilient Building Tax Credit bill that was introduced in the Florida Senate this fall.

Of course, 2024 was punctuated by the U.S. Presidential election, which, along with Congressional contests, introduced great uncertainty into national policies. We shifted our Federal work to focusing on defending the tax breaks most important to the building sector.

In 2025, we are continuing efforts related to the Federal tax incentives, defending them from potential elimination as part of an anticipated tax bill, and promoting their use to enable better buildings. We’ll also continue to advance our proactive policy agenda in Congress and to support key Federal agency programs, such as ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager and the General Services Administration’s high performance building program.

Critically, we will be tracking potential changes in agency buildings- programs from the incoming Administration and protecting appropriations.

With extreme weather and increased impacts from storms and other disasters, we see governments, insurance, and the building industry investing more in resilience. These risks and losses are affecting all states and don’t care about political party. Businesses and residents want to be secure and safe, and we see state and local governments increasingly adopting policies and programs to facilitate and incentivize resilient buildings.

The proliferation of data centers and their energy use are also garnering attention from jurisdictions. USGBC is engaging to create positive policy opportunities.

Private sector steps up

Corporations have been an important driver for sustainable and low carbon buildings. While anti-ESG rhetoric and activities seem to be having some chilling effect, building portfolio decarbonization through efficiency, electrification, and use of renewable energy still makes financial business sense for many companies and we see these activities continuing, perhaps with less fanfare.

Moreover, large and global companies that fall under corporate climate reporting laws, like the EU Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) or California’s climate disclosure laws, will be motivated to accelerate their efforts to reduce emissions. Moreover, we expect efforts to collaborate up and down supply chains for building construction and operations will expand.

Globally, key initiatives on buildings made big strides in 2024, and will start to have greater impact in influencing national governments and corporations to develop buildings decarbonization and adaptation programs. These initiatives include several targeting national goverments: the Buildings Breakthrough, with key stakeholders developing tools and guidance and the Chaillot Declaration, a global policy framework launched in March 2024 in Paris and endorsed by over 60 countries and followed by establishment of the Intergovernmental Council for Buildings and Climate (ICBC).

In the private sector, sustainable finance related initiatives include CRREM and the Science-Based Target Initiative, with its new building sector guidance. The regional development banks are also increasingly using their levers to drive more sustainable, low carbon projects.

At USGBC, we take a long view in our policy work. We expect 2025 to perhaps feel like a roller coaster at times, at least in the U.S. national headlines. But the steady work to improve the resilience and efficiency of our buildings will continue in both the private and public sectors.

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