THE GREEN BUILDING SUMMIT
AIA 150 Workshop "Blueprint for a Sustainable Future for the New Mexico Built Community"
APRIL 11 -12, 2008

The Green Building Summit – a Workshop to Create a Blueprint for a Sustainable Future for New Mexico’s Built Environment – was held in Albuquerque on April 11-12, 2008. The event was attended by over 60 people from a wide cross section of areas; architects, engineers, builders, developers, government, public schools and many others.

Friday evening’s reception featured a keynote address by Lt. Governor Diane Denish who addressed some of the significant efforts being made by the state government to promote sustainability. She described her work to create “green” mortgages for low and middle income New Mexicans to make sustainable building affordable to a wide range of home owners. She challenged the attendees to make next year’s Green Building Summit double in size to assure even greater efforts toward New Mexico’s sustainable future.

Saturday’s workshop opened with short presentations covering Santa Fe’s green building code, the City of Albuquerque’s energy conservation code and other City initiatives, and a brief overview of Forrest City – Covington’s development of Mesa del Sol as a new 20 square mile sustainable urban community just south of Albuquerque’s airport.

The morning session used the methodology of “Open Space Technology” to address the question: What are the issues and opportunities to create a sustainable future in New Mexico? The group broke out into six discussion sessions covering the following topics developed by the group as a whole:

• Clean energy from source
• Waste as a resource
• Water supplies for new homes
• How to keep existing buildings and make them appropriately sustainable
• Metrics and tracking - Building on success
• Education and Culture – Creating a new priority

In the afternoon, the group broke out into five discussion sessions to focus on next steps and desired outcomes, after which the entire group reviewed the work of each break out session and voted for their top choices of priorities for action in the next year.

1. Building Codes - Revise makeup of the CIC/CID to broaden participation and include public members. (15 votes)

2. Education for a Sustainable Future – network of educational resources – collaboration of:

Strategic planning – like-minded organizations
Endorsement from prominent groups/individuals
Dissemination of best available information & sources
Public presentations at all schools (11 votes)

2.4.1 Create resource center for sustainable information at local public sites such as senior centers, schools, libraries (11 votes)

2.4.2 Define an integrated ecology, sustainability curriculum and get it adopted (10 votes).

3. Making Green Building the Norm in New Mexico – Develop the language and vehicles that create higher levels of awareness; media packages, PR kits, etc. (14 votes).

4. State Legislative Action -

4.1 Legislate into statute (codify) the Executive Orders on Climate/Energy (8 votes).

4.2 HERS ratings on all built structures (7 votes).

5. Engaging and Motivating the Building Community –

5.1 Create a clear rating system in order for owners to judge best ways to spend limited funds (1 vote).

5.2 Measure current state of existing building performance and uses (1 vote).

5.3 Create a group of people dedicated to activating, engaging public and building community – emissaries (1 vote).

This first annual Green Building Summit was organized by leaders from three organizations with additional financial support of sponsors.

CASA – A Center Advancing Sustainable Architecture – Phyllis Kaplan
USGBC New Mexico – Chris Kerlin, Executive Director
AIA New Mexico with funding from AIA-150 – Jean Gibson, Executive Director

Thanks to our additional sponsors:
Mesa del Sol,
NAIOP New Mexico
GreenBuild New Mexico