Austin Green Builder Program

The Center’s conceptual framework that sparked Austin’s groundbreaking initiative

In the 1980’s, Austin had a nationally recognized market-based energy conservation program. A call in 1989 to The Center from the City’s Environmental Conservation Services Department opened the door for The Center to introduce the idea to expand the successful energy conservation program to other resource areas—water, materials, and waste—reflecting The Center’s life cycle, systems-based resource flow model. The resulting public-private partnership between The Center and the City of Austin, funded by Public Technology Inc’s. Energy Task Force, created the Austin Green Builder Program—to our knowledge, the first green building program in the world.

The world, it seems in retrospect, was ready for this more systems-based, albeit simplified, market-ready approach. At the 1992 UN Earth Summit, the Austin Green Builder Program was recognized as one of twelve exemplary local environmental initiatives—the only recipient from the United States. The following year, David Gottfried, Rick Fedrizzi, and Mike Italiano founded the U.S. Green Building Council, acknowledging Austin’s Green Builder Program as one of the inspirations to establish a nationally-based organization to advance green building.

In just a few short years, green building had entered the public lexicon. USGBC’s work on LEED™ (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) began in 1995, inspired by The Center’s conceptual framework that sparked Austin’s groundbreaking initiative. And, as they say, the rest is history.