Up first this morning was Kevin Hydes, past president of USGBC, founder of the Canadian GBC, and current chair of the World GBC. If that weren't enough, he says he's not an expert in green building, and suggests you throw anyone who is an expert out of your office immediately. At best, we're all engaged in a "lifelong apprenticeship". To my mind, humility is convincing.

Anyways, too much information in too little time, but Hydes promises to make his slides available to attendees for future study and reference. After I get a chance to do that, I'm sure I'll have lots to say, but some key points that stood out:

• The current pace of construction in China is equivalent to building "one America every three years"
• China actually has pretty good (green) building standards -- the problem is enforcement with construction at such a pace. They're attempting to address this by training 100,000 new building inspectors.
• Disciplinary fragmentation is a problem in design and construction, just like in academe.
• California has just implemented regulations that all new commercial (private or public) buildings over 10,000 square feet must meet LEED Silver standards!
• In Europe, not only do commercial buildings get energy ratings (like refrigerators), but those ratings are public information (so you can choose what hotel to stay in, in part, based on how energy efficient it is). This makes green valuable in the marketplace. Canada is set to pilot a similar initiative next year.
• The US Capitol building has a target of 50% carbon reduction by 2017.
• British Columbia has set a target of having its 6500 provincial buildings carbon neutral by 2010. (The Premier of BC is a former developer, so no BS will likely b e tolerated.)

Out of time. More later.