Santa Fe architect Edward Mazria’s challenge to the building industry — to achieve carbon neutrality in construction by the year 2030 — has caught the attention of Business Week magazine, which is running a full-length story on Mazria’s 2030 Blueprint message in its current issue.

The article, "Building a Greener America," says the "bold" challenge Mazria’s nonprofit Architecture 2030 issued to the building industry in 2006 "now seems prescient."

 

"A survey published by McGraw-Hill Construction Research & Analytics with the U.S. Green Building Council in July stated that green building is expected to represent 6% of American residential construction this year, up from 2% in 2005. Given the battered state of U.S. housing, that kind of growth is promising."

 

The article describes Mazria as "part eco-evangelist, part architectural tactician" and says the U.S. Energy Information Administration backs up Mazria’s claim that buildings are responsible for almost half of all annual greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., consuming more than three-quarters of all the electricity produced by American power plants.

 

"New Mexico architect Edward Mazria has been publicizing this fact and preaching the gospel of good green buildings for more than a decade. At the helm of nonpartisan, nonprofit Architecture 2030, Mazria—part eco-evangelist, part architectural tactician—is a public advocate, speaking broadly about climate change, and a design strategist, developing intricately detailed plans for builders and architects."

 

The story is accompanied by photographs of nine stunning buildings from around the nation, which were chosen by Architecture 2030 as examples of the dramatic ways such buildings can achieve radical gains in efficiency over similarly sized, conventionally constructed buildings. Most of these "Common Sense Green Buildings", whose green attributes are described in some detail, are LEED-certified (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) because of their use of sustainable design principles.

Mazria’s ideas on energy efficiency and construction also got a full airing in the Washington Post last month in an article entitled "To Reduce Greenhouse Gases, Start by Shrinking Buildings."