Vince Capogna: Where are we now, where are we headed and where are the opportunities?

After only 10 years in use, the US Green Building Council LEED rating system has become the de facto standard for guiding the design, construction and operation of green building. With over 1.4 billion square feet of LEED certified commercial space, over 10,000 LEED certified residential units and 170,000 individual LEED professional credential holders we are off to a great start towards achieving market transformation. However, these early years have seen the greatest movement on certifying new construction projects, the low hanging fruit. It's been said that if you took all the new construction in 2007 when building was buzzing, about a billion gross square feet, and reduced energy consumption by 100%-making it all net-zero-all that building gross s/f is the same, roughly, as taking the existing building stock and reducing energy consumption by 1%. The greatest opportunity may be all around us. Vince Capogna, LEED AP ID+C is the executive director of the Long Island Chapter of the USGBC, Hauppauge, NY.