Were you able to get to New York City for Greenbuild 2026? If so, I bet you agree that the first Greenbuild in NYC seemed pretty successful. If not, I am happy to share my impressions.
In sum, I felt like I materially benefited from meeting colleagues, learning about multiple topics, hearing what others were saying in the halls and sessions, and in walking the show floor. But most key, and also surprising for me, was a sense of optimism in the air. Speakers and people in the halls certainly talked about challenges, but I heard more, “Ok, this is what we achieved, here's what’s going on, and here’s what we know about getting through this obstacle.” And I quote, “We’re getting things done.”
In a time period that has felt kind of shockingly anti-science and anti-environment in significant ways, I felt somewhat reassured that many are still fully in - and haven’t stopped moving forward. Ok, it gets harder to believe things are really ok if people try too hard to convince me sometimes, but for me, optimism, evolution, and a real sense of community were my personal event themes and the words that occurred to me to describe the experience. It didn’t hurt to think of these things while looking at the Javits Center’s amazing and inspiring 6.75-acre green roof!
Greenbuild 2026: Show Highlights
I look forward to reading David Gottfried’s new book, ReGen360, which launched at the show and sounds like a real self-exploration and analysis of the past and present but in service of an even more impactful future. David clearly thinks we need a whole new “operating system,” and I already agree, at least in principle. I will read it!
There is just so much room for success measured with full accounting for people and planet, and not just how next quarter or next year looks on books that don’t show the full picture and often artificially reward short-term and unsustainable growth for growth’s sake. So I also appreciated this year’s official theme of “Invest for Impact.” Let’s change our time horizon and do just that. We’ve got some big goals to meet, for 2030, 2050, and well beyond, and it will take some drastic rethinking and restructuring.
I thought that Greenbuild 2026’s sessions were wide-ranging and current, and I especially appreciated the number of summits, workshops and panels that addressed leading edge or even not-fully-charted territory. For example, I attended a session on standalone batteries where panelists and attendees discussed completed projects, current challenges and what can be done to make further progress, and learned that a key ULI report was about to be released (and now has been!)on On-Site Energy Storage. Data centers were also a key topic with a dedicated half-day summit, a keynote, and additional technical sessions. The keynote I attended made me both concerned and hopeful. We likely need to do some rethinking about data centers and communities, and I can discuss that in more detail below and in the future. I should also share that more than once, I heard people debating which session to attend because there were several good choices at the same time.
Next, I really enjoyed the show floor, even though I know it was smaller than in some past years. I imagine bringing materials to New York City was pretty expensive, and honestly I had really good conversations with the exhibitors who were there, so I barely noticed. People seemed eager to connect and to share their company’s story and news, and I’ll be ready to keep reporting! I can share some pictures and brief words below, but more to come! I also saw several products that specifically answered queries I had gotten (some long ago) about when sustainable products were going to be available in certain categories, and I enjoyed these small proofs of evolution I know is taking place, but about specific items I knew people had already been looking for.
On the show floor, and really everywhere, I ran into a surprising number of people I knew from other events, and also (not surprisingly) online. Forgive me for whoever I am forgetting, but I was happy to see friendly faces of Rate It Green Members and also organizations we promote, including Built Environment Plus (BE+), BE-Ex, Green Building Alliance, Glavel, ROCKWOOL, SCS, Urban Green Council, USGBC CA, Wasted, and of course USGBC! A few times, I ran into and met people while talking to the same exhibitor, and we ended up forming some fun groups and planned to connect for future conversations.
I have to say that I thought that Billion Oyster Project was a great selection for Greenbuild’s legacy project donation this year. Apparently, New Yorkers ate oysters and built with lime from their shells from about 350 square miles of oyster reefs that existed in the harbor in the early 1600s (half the world’s oyster population, apparently). Due to eventual overfishing and pollution, the oyster population was effectively 0. Founded in 2014, Billion Oyster project aims to restore oyster populations and also educate and inspire a next generation of citizen scientists and environmentalists. To date, more than 150,000 students and volunteers have worked with restaurant kitchens to collect and divert over three million pounds of oyster shells from landfills, and have restored nearly 18 million acres with over 180 million oysters. Step by step (shell by shell), all of these people are making a difference.
Briefly, I wanted to put in a word to support Reuse Hubs and building materials exchanges. During a session on circular construction policy, reuse hubs, and Billion Oyster project, I learned about New York's Circular Construction Hub, launched in August 2026. Dave Bennink of Washington’s Reuse Innovation Center made the point that hubs and exchanges ideally need to stand on their own financially, but that they can then scale and have a far greater impact with support. A Massachusetts exchange to which I had given materials closed in recent years, and I was sorry to hear this and wish we had known and had been able to rally as a community to see if it could have remained open.
There’s much more to report on and I hope to return to other topics and companies I learned about in future coverage! I should also note that my observations represent just one window into this large event. While I may touch on some of these topics, AI and emerging technologies, sustainable building finance, and more technical discussions of decarbonization, resilience, and health were also significant parts of the conference, through dedicated summits and other sessions. I’d say the “Invest for Impact” theme held up across these topics; looking forward, what can we do today that will last, and how can we measure results and make sure our investments and decisions now deliver meaningful benefits in the future?
Greenbuild 2026: News and Announcements
EC3 2.0 Previewed at Greenbuild
Building Transparency introduced the beta version of EC3 2.0 (Embodied Carbon in Construction Calculator) at Greenbuild. EC3 is a free, open-access tool that helps building professionals and owners compare the embodied carbon of construction materials and select lower-carbon alternatives. The updated platform offers improved data quality, AI-assisted data processing, expanded international coverage, and new project-planning tools in development, and additional functionality planned for future phases. Building Transparency anticipates a full launch in early 2027. The organization also introduced a new membership program giving users a direct way to support the infrastructure behind the tool. Read more.
USGBC Launches TRUE v2
The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) launched TRUE v2, an updated version of its Total Resource Use and Efficiency zero-waste certification program, on October 20. TRUE v2 aims to make zero-waste certification more accessible, practical, and valuable for organizations seeking to reduce waste, conserve resources, and advance the circular economy. The updated rating system includes a more inclusive, streamlined credit structure, clearer language and requirements, and integration with USGBC’s Arc digital tracking and verification platform. To date, USGBC reports that TRUE has certified over 680 projects encompassing 272 million square feet and helped divert approximately 8.9 million tons of waste from landfills. Read more.
Center for Green Schools Indoor Air Quality Hub for Schools Launches
USGBC’s Center for Green Schools launched the Indoor Air Quality Hub brings resources together in one place, including guidance and planning templates to help schools address ventilation, mold, wildfire smoke, and other indoor air quality concerns. The Hub also contains communication tools to help build stakeholder buy-in, including why good IAQ practices matter for health, better learning environments, and school buildings that perform better and deliver lower operating costs. Visit the Hub.
LEED v5 - Updates Released
USGBC released new LEED guidance and compliance pathways, including provisions addressing California building codes, low-embodied-carbon steel, decarbonized electricity procurement, and regional adaptations. Measurement is not new, but green building is mature enough and has generated enough lived experience, particularly in the commercial sector, that we can now confidently predict the lifetime impact of decisions made today, and we can therefore more effectively reduce the impacts of the built environment, with decarbonization as the star of the show and including health and resilience, and ALSO ecosystem conservation and restoration. Read about LEED’s October Updates.
USGBC and NOMA Partner to Expand Access and Opportunity in Green Building
USGBC and the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) announced a collaboration designed to advance environmental equity, expand professional development opportunities and strengthen pathways into green building and related industries. The organizations plan to start with creating education and professional development activities and building connections and collaboration among member networks. A goal is to scale joint programming, broader participation by NOMA members in USGBC’s membership and volunteer networks, and increased representation throughout the green building movement. For more information, view the announcement, made just prior to NOMA’s annual conference and Greenbuild.
LEED v5 Cities Open for Member Ratification, October 19 - November 18
While LEED for Cities voting opened October 19, but the big news is that LEED for Cities is now a standalone framework from how municipal projects were treated under LEED v4., where cities and communities were combined. LEED v5 Cities provides a framework for local governments and municipalities to measure and manage sustainability performance at the jurisdictional scale, including decarbonization strategies, resilience and ecological health, and equity and human well-being across communities, with a real shift toward measurable climate action.
Additional Greenbuild Observations and Initiatives/News Worth Following:
LEED v5 reception: The reception to LEED v5 that I observed felt noteworthy. Outside of formal presentations, I heard specific conversations “in the halls” about how LEED v5 is a notable, meaningful step toward changing long-term building outcomes. It’s the time of measurement, but with a real heightened focus on outcomes. Attendees I heard talking seemed to recognize and appreciate the evolution.
As LEED continues to evolve, and as the impacts of LEED and other key certifications and standards can be compared and evaluated more consistently and over a building’s lifetime, USGBC and LEED will help continue to move stakeholders from focusing on efficiency and sustainability to including health and resilience and onwards towards regeneration.
Certification and Transparency Harmonization efforts continue
Representatives from BRE, the Green Building Council of Australia, mindful MATERIALS, Living Future, IWBI, and USGBC participated in a session titled Aligning Towards a Global Materials Strategy, which closed out the Accelerating the Adoption of Low Embodied Carbon Materials Summit on October 20. The organizations reviewed and reflected on the first year of a collaboration to harmonize material assessments, data, metrics, and sustainability goals across green building rating systems and to make sustainability information easier to share and use. Progress reported included a signed memorandum of understanding, governance structures, and monthly technical team meetings. Using Mindful Materials’ Common Materials Framework as a shared taxonomy, the organizations developed a crosswalk showing where five impact areas—climate health, human health, circularity, ecosystem health, and social health and equity—are already aligned.
Materials & Transparency: mindful MATERIALS and Partners Advance Common Materials Framework Data Sharing at Greenbuild
mindful MATERIALS convened six technology platforms—Sustainable Minds, ecomedes, BuildingEase, Acelab, Green Badger, and Material Bank—to discuss a newly developed mindful MATERIALS’ Common Materials Framework (CMF)-aligned data schema. The initiative’s goal is to connect product impact information across platforms instead of requiring project teams to interpret disconnected datasets, making building product sustainability information easier to exchange, compare, and use. The partners discussed their pilot work connecting individual data points across the Climate Health and Human Health categories, including progress made and remaining challenges. The effort builds on mindful MATERIALS' earlier and ongoing work to develop a consistent, shared language for evaluating building materials and its CMF Implementation Toolkit, introduced at Greenbuild 2025.
AIA (American Institute of Architects) Materials Pledge results:
AIA released its third annual Materials Pledge By the Numbers report just after Greenbuild, presenting 2025 results. The report documents how the design community is advancing the specification of healthier, more sustainable building products. In 2025, participation grew to 148 signatory firms, up from 121 firms in 2024 and 92 firms in 2023. TFirms also reported increased knowledge across all five Materials Pledge impact areas: human health, climate health, ecosystem health, social health and equity, and circular economy.
Contractor's Commitment 3.0 - Updates Expected
USGBC California planned to release a draft of Contractor's Commitment 3.0 for public comment during Greenbuild, and it’s likely that release is coming soon. The framework addresses the construction process itself, addressing carbon, water, waste, materials, and worker wellness. USBC California assumed stewardship of the program in 2025 from a contractor-led Sustainable Construction Leaders (SCL) network. The program retains its “by contractors, for contractors” character. What is changing is how the data connects to the broader certification and reporting landscape, including LEED V5 and other certification programs. View: USGBC California's Greenbuild announcement
Data Centers: How to Manage the Costs and Benfits?
I attended a keynote on data centers, but they were a present topic at the show, with a dedicated half summit day and two technical sessions in addition to the keynote. Data centers aren’t going anywhere to put it lightly, and I hope we can keep the emphasis—or turn it—toward who receives the benefits and how impacts can be managed fairly. I agree that AI, cloud computing, streaming, finance, communications, security and all the other benefits and needs I am not thinking of are important, and that centers need to be located “somewhere.” My top concerns at the moment are 1) We should do more thinking about the least impactful areas for siting, and also 2) We should not be trying to convince communities after the fact that they should be happy to receive something they might not have wanted and did not participate in “getting,” but to listen and partner and make sure the benefits are real and ideally that more receptive, even welcoming communities end up with centers over other locations. I’ll add 3) We should recognize that some communities with existing data centers may already have encountered related challenges, and positive adjustments should be made regarding something everyone benefits from. We can work harder to do right by all stakeholders. Clearly, this is an issue that I intend to continue exploring!
And those are my high-level notes from a great week in NYC! Please feel welcome to comment or share your Greenbuild experience and news on Rate It Green! I hope these notes and images are especially helpful in giving those who weren’t able to attend this year a sense of the event, though as I’ve noted this is just one person’s experience. As with other attendees, I definitely had to make tough decisions about where to be at times. I hope to see you next year in Chicago!
Greenbuild 2026 in Photos:
Javits Center Green Roof, and New York City. Enjoyable daylighting.
I enjoyed learning about Airzone, and I am intrigued that this system seems to be a great fit for retrofits - If 80% of the future’s buildings already exist, we have a lot of retrofitting to do.
I want to learn more about the Lavli plumbing-less washer and dryer!
I am intrigued about comparing heat pump window units with traditional window air conditioners. I look forward to reporting more! 
I am always happy to hang out with the folks from Rate It Green Member Wasted*. Urine mining is serious business - and the topic made for a popular exhibit. Also, they won the Attendees' Choice Exhibit Award - Congratulations to the Wasted team!
Mallet Supply’s sustainable steel coatings - in cool colors. I have fielded inquiries about this product type before, and here it is.
More sustainable steel coatings, from GreenCoat. When it rains, it pours! (But the steel will be fine!)
I was intrigued by FODs as I’ve been asked before if this kind of a sustainable product exists for temporary road locations, and here it is.
Assa Abloy had one of the more impressive booths. This was at the very end of the show day, I promise there were many people!
I was happy to see Airframe’s pool and hot tub covers, as we see few products that can also be direct to consumer at industry events. I always like to think about who’s not in the room. Heck, I also want to buy one. I’ll be in touch!
Pennsylvania Hardwood had wins the award for an impressive booth with the least materials and construction. Everyone, and I mean everyone, loved this wood bike!
Nakamoto Forestry might be one of the prettiest products at Greenbuild.
Davies gets the clever exhibit award: (Actually, they won an award from the show, and I wrote that before I knew!)
Before…
…and after remanufacturing!
And...I was happy to see a federal program on site. NASA’s reporting on power usage is actually really cool.
Congratulations to David Gottfried for the launch of Regen360. I am inspired by someone who had such an impact recognizing we need even more change “or else,” and I will plan to read the book and report back.
See you next time, or any time online! Send your news! Share your expertise and projects - and products and services! Let us know what you've been up to, at Greenbuild, or another event, and when we can't be together in person, let's keep talking online!
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