Page 382 - The Engineering Guide to LEED-New Construction Sustainable Construction for Engineers

CHAPTER 9

Department of Defense

(DoD) Sustainable

Construction and Indoor

Air Quality (IAQ)

onstruction spending in the United States as of December 2006 totaled
approximately $1200 billion annually. The federal government alone pumped
Cover $19 billion a year into the economy for the construction of new facilities,
and the U.S. government had an inventory of approximately 445,000 buildings
occupying nearly 3.1 billion ft of floor space. These facilities consumed approximately
2
0.4 percent of the nation’s total energy usage and spewed out about 2 percent of all
building-related greenhouse gases. The federal government is a major consumer of
construction materials and a significant user of energy and natural resources. To
minimize the impact that federal facilities have on the environment, the U.S. government
has become a leader in implementing policy and objectives for energy reduction and
green building.

9.1 Government Mandates
The President of the United States exercises authority over all the federal agencies within
the executive branch of the U.S. government. One of the ways the President provides
guidance is through written directives called Executive Orders (EOs). In the late 1990s,
President Clinton began issuing a series of EOs aimed at “Greening the Government.”
Among other objectives, these have served to set the baseline for energy reduction and
implementation of green building within all federal agencies. EO 13101, “Greening
the Government Through Waste Prevention, Recycling, and Federal Acquisition,”
was the first of this series of EOs and was signed in September 1998. Some of the
requirements of this order included promotion of waste prevention and recycling and
the use of environmentally preferable products. Federal agencies are required to establish
procurement programs and develop specifications to ensure all products meet or exceed
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines. This requires maximizing the use of
materials that are reused, recovered, or recycled and have reduced or eliminated toxicity.
Additionally, this order required each agency to establish goals for solid waste prevention

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