November 28th, 2007
- Chicago is one of the largest consumers of green energy in the country, with the goal of eventually drawing one-fourth of its energy from renewable sources.
- Chicago has planted half a million trees since Daley entered office in ‘89.
- Crews have cleaned up or are in the process of cleaning up the 60,000 vacant lots that existed when Daley became mayor.
- The Chicago Center for Green Technology offers more than 400 programs on getting green for residents, business owners and developers.
According to Malec-McKenna — who gamely agreed to select five outstanding examples of green building for our sidebar — there is much more on the agenda.
“We have retrofitted 15 million square feet (of municipal buildings), because we recognized it’s smart, not just for the environment, but for our tax dollars. We have something called the “Chicago Standard” (instituted in 2004), a requirement to any public building or publicly funded building has to meet LEED’s silver rating if they want to get public money,” the commissioner told us. “And we have something we launched, which is voluntary at this point because we think the incentive is there, called the Chicago Green Homes program.”
The Green Homes plan allows approved builders, those who follow Chicago’s specs to a “T”, to expedite their building-permit process, which in a city the size of Chicago can be quite a process.
“What we’re finding,” Malec-McKenna says, “is that people can feel overwhelmed by building green. They wonder, ‘How am I going to afford this, where do I get the information?’ And we found that early in the planning stages, it’s really easy to implement. People just need to know what resources are out there and what they can do. So we’re doing a lot of outreach and education (via the Green Technology center and the City DOE’s equally overwhelming webpage). By complying with these requirements, they can step to the front of the line to receive building permits. …
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