A Green Foundation for Community Development
By Anne Li on 03/01/2011 @ 01:20 PM
Anne Li, CFED's Program Director of Innovation
‘Green’ development and ‘green’ jobs present exciting opportunities for innovation that will benefit lower-income people. Several ideas in CFED’s Innovation Portfolio explore the green economy. For example, check out Leonard McCollum’s and Chuck Shannon’s work with Green Business and Prisoner Re-entry and Ted Howard’s efforts with the Evergreen Cooperative Initiative in Cleveland, OH.
Coming up on March 10 – 11 in New Orleans is an interesting conference called Strengthening the Green Foundation: Research & Policy Directions for Development & Finance. It is co-sponsored by Tulane University's new Master of Sustainable Real Estate Development Program and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Center for Real Estate Analytics. The two sponsors invite researchers, industry practitioners, and policymakers to participate in a conference to advance the understanding and improve the practice of green development and finance.
The conference aims to influence the national dialogue on green building and will bring together top scholars and practitioners to investigate core issues surrounding green development and assess the tools, costs, benefits, and opportunities in financing green development. Discussions will focus on underwriting and valuation of green development projects, the role that real estate industry organizational structure plays in supporting green development, the application of green standards to real estate portfolio management, and green measurement criteria and certification issues.
Climate change is not the only concern driving the ‘green’ focus today. Rising energy costs, and the need to find long-term operational cost savings by consumers large and small – state and local governments who are feeling acute budget squeezes, companies and individual households like yours and mine – are another reason to explore and implement ‘green’ development approaches.
This conference looks like it should produce some interesting ideas and information. For more information, go to the conference website.
1200 G Street, NW
Comments
Leave a Comment