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A Green Building Corps Mentor Spotlight: Exclusive interview with Nurit Katz (PhD student in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at University of California, Los Angeles, first Chief Sustainability Officer appointed at UCLA and 2023 GBC mentor at US Green Building Council Los Angeles) USGBC-LA Green Building Corps (GBC) mentor Nurit Katz recently connected with 2023 GBC […]

Hello there! I know it feels like this year has yet to figure out who it really is and that summer sort of came in one door and headed right out the other, but all is not lost! We still have plenty of 2023 left to make some good ol’ fashioned green building community noise […]

Los Angeles-based CIM employee painted murals at NAVA College Preparatory Academy in partnership with City Year Los Angeles. Community involvement is woven into the very fabric of real estate. After all, the housing, schools and offices that companies plan and develop are done so in service of the people who inhabit and utilize those spaces. […]

Image credit: fig.

To accelerate the transition to clean transportation, the Biden administration recently proposed the most stringent-ever air pollution standards for automobiles. That should be welcome news for Los Angeles, which consistently ranks among the most polluted cities in the nation and currently sits atop the American Lung Association State of the Air rankings. Combined with California’s […]

This is the second in a series of two blog posts where Clean Power Alliance highlights the impact of local leadership in addressing equity, climate change, and increasing energy resiliency. The first blog focused on local leadership in bringing clean energy to local communities and this blog highlights how local jurisdictions are decarbonizing buildings through […]

Did you know sunlight can provide infinite returns on investment? From providing healthy environments, comfortable illumination level and aesthetic quality to improving occupant productivity and building energy efficiency; below we’ll explore some of the many benefits daylight offers in adaptive reuse architecture projects.  What is adaptive reuse? “Adaptive reuse” (also called building reuse) offers a […]

Banks play a significant role in financing the climate crisis, but you have options: ethical banks can choose to finance solutions to address the problems we face. How banking contributes to climate catastrophes (or climate solutions) We can transform the systems that finance the systems that cause climate change. According to the Rainforest Action Network’s […]

Extending lives of existing buildings cuts our carbon footprint ——— Many building professionals and professional organizations, including the U.S. Green Building Council, have come to believe that building reuse and adaptive reuse are positive steps toward achieving LEED certification for a building.[i] These beliefs are based on numerous studies and ample evidence that reuse, renovation, […]

Through previous blog posts, we’ve learned about activating the circular economy in building construction and operations and how the TRUE waste certification framework  can help facilitate this transition. Here follows Part 2 in my series.  Architecture tells a story, of who we were and who we are.Preservation helps us keep these stories close to our […]

The best approach to chipping away at real estate’s 40% share of global carbon emissions is more uptake of net zero strategies. But what strategies are most effective and, more importantly, how do we get to the elusive Scope 3? At the property scale, net zero Scope 1 encompasses a building’s direct emissions. This may […]

This is the first in a series of two blog posts where Clean Power Alliance highlights the impact of local leadership in addressing equity, climate change, and increasing energy resiliency. The first blog focuses on local leadership in bringing clean energy to local communities and the second on how local jurisdictions are decarbonizing buildings through […]