Washington, DC Wins the Green Building Category Champion in 2017 U.S. Clean Tech Leadership Index

Washington, DC, continues to be the Green Building category champion, winning the first place every year since the first release of Metro Index in 2012. It has 1797 LEED-certified projects, which means 293.05 LEED projects per 1 million people. It has 1,369 Energy Star-Certified projects in total, which is 223.26 Energy Star projects per 1 million people. Following Washington, DC, San Francisco is ranked second. Boston is ranked at #3. The #4 through #10 metros are Denver, Portland, Chicago, Seattle, Austin, Minneapolis, and Los Angeles. The Metro Green Buildings category, which is part of U.S. Clean Tech Leadership Index, tracks four key indicators that measure LEED- and Energy Star-certified building deployment. It also includes the ACEEE’s biannual City Energy Efficiency Score. Lastly, the city needs to passes two measurements to be credited to their Metro index: 1) requiring buildings to achieve LEED certification or meet specified energy savings goals; 2) requiring buildings to measure and disclose electricity usage per annum. Currently, 74 percent of the nation’s 50 largest U.S. metro areas now have a requirement that public buildings meet above-minimum building code standards, while among 50 metros, 11 set a similar requirement for private buildings. The majority of these standards require LEED certification, often at the Silver level. Cities that pass a green building ordinance set a model for their residents and corporations to follow. In 2016, 12 metro cities require buildings to benchmark and report their electricity usage per year. This number has risen 50 percent from 2015 to 2016, with six new members to the list: Denver, Los Angeles, Orlando, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City, and St. Louis. *What is U.S. Clean Tech Leadership Index? The U.S. Clean Tech Leadership Index tracks and ranks the clean-tech activities of all 50 states and the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S. from electric vehicles and renewables adoption to policy and investment activity.  To read more, please visit: https://cleanedge.com/reports/2017-US-Clean-Tech-Leadership-Index