Up until last week, the size of their carbon footprint has probably been the last question on the minds of most real estate developers in Massachusetts. Not for long. On Monday, the environmentally conscious administration of newly minted Democratic governor Deval Patrick quietly announced sweeping new regulations requiring real estate developers to view their proposed projects from an new perspective - through the prism of Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG's) .
While it has only just begun readying the new rules, the commonwealth's Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs (EOEEA) has already announced that it will focus onthe six GHG's identified by the Kyoto Protocol which has been largely shrugged off to date by the Bush White House. The EOEEA promises to hold developers responsible for both direct and indirect emissions attributable to a project. Examples of indirect emissions cited by EOEEA include "emissions from vehicles driven by employees and generating plants supplying electricity to the proposed operation."
You can almost hear the groan from the development community. Commercial real estate development project budgets have long included direct, on-site environmental costs such as remediating contamination and recharging groundwater. Over the past decade even small projects have routinely been required to fund off-site improvements for roads, traffic signals, landscaping and even playgrounds. In encompassing indirect emissions, Massachusetts is telling its real estate developers that they are accountable for auto exhaust from employees and customers cars as well as the belching smokestack of that coal-fired power plant 100 miles distant. Oh, by the way, the new rules (or lack thereof) are effective immediately.
Greener building materials and methods are a laudable - and attainable - public policy. Directly or indirectly, buildings represent the bulk of America's well-documented appetite for fossil fuels. As EOEEA promulgates specific rules to quantify, reduce and mitigate GHG's this summer it can prove to be a thoughtful agent of change, a drag on the economy or a combination of both. One thing is certain: environmental engineering consultants in Massachusetts will be scouring colleges for additioanl recruits this year.
A consistent national policy would be preferable to a patchwork of state rules. After all, Massachusetts doesn't need to make it any easier for North Carolina to woo its corporate citizens to the sunny south. But Washington is unlikely to act in the near term. Stay tuned all you developers. And get ready to dig deeper.
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