| In this report, the Secretariat of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) recommends that North American leaders make green building a foundational driver for environmental, social, and economic improvement in Canada, Mexico, and the United States.
What is green building and how can it become such an important instrument for change?
Green building refers to the use of environmentally preferable practices and materials in the design, location, construction, operation and disposal of buildings. It applies to both renovation and retrofitting of existing buildings and construction of new buildings, whether residential or commercial public or private.
By continually improving how we locate, design, build, operate, and retrofit buildings, North American leaders can significantly improve the well-being of North America. Advanced energy-saving technologies applied in buildings can result in enormous reductions in demand for fossil fuels and emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). Better design and building practices can also help address environmental challenges such as natural resource depletion, waste disposal, and air, water, and soil pollution. Green building can also help achieve gains in human health and prosperity.
Despite this potential for transformation, green building represents only a small percentage of building in North America. By some estimates, green building currently accounts for about two percent of the new non-residential building market in the United States and 0.3 percent of the residential market. In Canada, green building trends are generally thought to be similar to those in the United States. In Mexico, there are no reliable figures showing the extent to which green building exists in the marketplace. Although the green building market is expected to grow rapidly in all three countries in the coming years, a substantial shift from the status quo is needed to make these high-performance buildings the norm in North America. |
