Echoing the words of US Green Building Council President Rick Fedrizzi who told the audience that they were changing minds by proving that green building does not cost more overall, Clinton said, "Operational savings more than pay for increases in construction costs, sometimes within a year."

"This has got to become a global movement," Clinton continued, calling a green economy, "the biggest opportunity to generate broad-based prosperity since World War II." The evidence, he said, is that "every place somebody's taken this seriously, there are more benefits than they'd thought previously."

And those benefits are more than merely financial.  Noting that many of the countries which signed the Kyoto Treaty will not meet their emissions goals, Clinton said that the challenge of moving from a carbon economy to a sustainable economy would not be easy, and that world is still plagued by
"persistent economic inequality – helped by inequality in healthcare and education."

Except, he said, in countries which are meeting their goals under the Kyoto treaty. Denmark, Clinton noted, has not increased their energy consumption, "not a single watt" and yet they have grown their economy by 50%. The UK, which suffered from unemployment rates similar to the US, has experienced rising wages, and created tens of thousands of new jobs by meeting their Kyoto goals.

Telling the crowd they were at the forefront of demonstrating to the world that sustainability is good economics, he said, "We won't get anyone to play ball until we've proved this."

Clinton then announced several groundbreaking partnerships to retrofit public and private buildings:

Partnering with the City of Chicago: The Clinton Climate Initiative will work with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley to retrofit Sears Tower, currently the tallest building in America, and the Merchandise Mart, the world's largest commercial building. CCI will help the buildings complete audits and overhauls to increase their energy efficiency and reduce their carbon footprints.  CCI will also help Chicago develop energy performance contracts for multi-tenant housing units, and use the resulting guarantee of future energy savings to finance the costs of retrofitting the buildings.

Partnering with GE Real Estate: Clinton told the crowd that by committing five billion dollars toward retrofitting buildings to be green, his program had "doubled the amount of money spent on retrofitting buildings in the entire world." In response to crowd applause, he said, "I felt like clapping too, until I realized that's only the worth of a few city blocks in any city in America." He then announced a partnership with GE Real Estate, one of the largest commercial real estate companies in the world, with $72 billion in assets, to retrofit their entire real estate portfolio to green standards. "This one company has the potential to remake an entire market," Clinton said, adding, "We have no idea what we can do, because we just got started!"

Green Schools Program: Building on the USGBC's goal of "green buildings for everyone within a generation," Clinton announced a partnership with the USGBC to work with K-12 schools throughout the nation to reduce energy consumption and improve the quality of school buildings.

Noting that 55 million students and 5 million faculty and staff spend their days in our nation's schools, Clinton said that over 25% of them are below standards, unhealthy, or dangerous. Describing how his daughter Chelsea's school in Washington DC was the first LEED Platinum school in the country, Clinton said the school had achieved energy savings of 60% as well as a 90% reduction in water use. By retrofitting our nation's schools with natural daylighting, greenroof vegetable gardens, on-site power generation, low-flow faucets, greywater recycling and more, "We can reduce costs by billions of dollars and reduce our footprint by millions of tons CO2," Clinton said.

Telling the crowd that Chicago requires all new schools to be LEED certified, and that the cities' schools currently receive 20% of their electricity from renewable sources, Clinton said, "Every other large school district in the country could do the same immediately."

USGBC President Rick Fedrizzi noted that "We have more LEED rated prisons than schools," and said, "We think every school should be green – public, private, and everything in between." He cited improvements of 20% in test scores, 28% in reading comprehension, as well as 40% reductions in respiratory illness."

Benefits of Green Schools Calculated at Twenty Times the Cost
A new report entitled, "Greening America's Schools: Costs and Benefits," was made available at Greenbuild. Sponsored by the American Federation of Teachers, AIA, the American Lung Association, Federation of American Scientists, and the USGBC, the report states that, "Lower energy and water costs, improved teacher retention, and lowered health costs save green schools directly about $12 a square foot, about four times the additional cost of going green, and enough to hire an additional full time teacher."

While these direct financial benefits are more than enough reason to go green, the indirect benefits are even greater. Improving indoor air quality reduces asthma, colds, and flus in schools, and improves learning and teacher retention rates. Natural daylighting, "improves test scores, reduces off-task behavior, and plays a significant role in the achievement of students."

These improvements yield faster learning times and improved test scores which are associated in studies across the country with higher earnings.  Assuming a modest increase of 3-5% improvement in test scores, green schools help their students earn 1.4% more money annually. As these tiny improvements are compounded over a lifetime of earning, the financial gains are considerable, amounting to as much as $49 a square foot. Overall, the report calculates the financial benefits to be around $70 a square foot, "more than twenty times as high as the cost of going green," which is merely $3 per ft².

The Solutions Business
Clinton ended his announcements by making the prediction that while we are currently trying to reduce the negative impacts of the built environment, "in 18 months we'll be racing to see who can make the most energy positive buildings."

"Within 5 years I predict this meeting will be about energy positive building technology. We're going to decentralize everything, buildings will be just like cellphones, and we'll be using oil just for things that are absolutely necessary."

"The hurdles we face aren't technological, they're organizational," Clinton said. In the past we were "unorganized, underfinanced, and uninformed." But today, "We have to figure out how to operationalize this stuff." And fast, he said, to avoid the biofeedback loops we're already starting to witness as a result of climate change.

The task is urgent, and the benefits are tangible. "The energy savings in one school can pay for two teachers, two computers, or 5000 textbooks," the president said. But to prove it to the world, "We have to keep score, and we've got to be honest."

"We're not so good at complaining, and being divided, our heart's not in it. But when Americans are in the solutions business, there's really nobody better. We have to prove to ourselves and the rest of the world that this is not only something we have to do to save the planet, and our kids, but a staggering economic opportunity as well."

In the end, said Clinton, "We've got to do this for the benefit of the American Dream."

Photo Courtesy of Starpulse.com