Alliance Launches Bid to Make W. Pennsylvania a Green Powerhouse
PITTSBURGH – Assisted by $1.25 million in seed money from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and The Heinz Endowments, the Green Building Alliance has launched the Green Building Products Initiative, an economic development program created to position Western Pennsylvania as the national center for green building innovation, production and utilization.
The initiative will support the green building industry through direct assistance, applied research grants, and networking to assist with education, labor training and product innovation to reduce the incubation time of marketable green products.
The Green Building Alliance, founded in 1993 as a non-profit organization, cites several factors that support its decision to push to make the state’s western region become a green movement powerhouse:
The building products industry in Western Pennsylvania encompasses 1,800 firms with more than 68,000 employees.
Of the region’s largest companies, 20.7 percent are related to building products. The sheer volume of these companies and their representation across a wide variety of building sectors leaves the region well-positioned to capitalize on the coming boom in green building.
Pittsburgh has an international reputation for green building.
Among U.S. cities, Pittsburgh ranks third in both the number of buildings and total square feet of certified green building space. The city also is home to the first green-certified historic building, convention center, warehouse, banking facility and university residence hall. Currently almost 100 green building projects are completed or underway in the area, including the new PNC Bank Tower, which is slated to be the tallest green-certified building in the world.
An existing network of collaborative resources.
The rapid adoption of green building practices has been helped by the visionary collaboration of local architects, corporations, product manufacturers and environmental organizations, including charitable trusts such as The Heinz Endowments and the Richard King Mellon Foundation
The innovation pipeline is already in place.
More than $119 million in federally funded research in green building has been directed to local universities, including Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University. All three universities have internationally recognized programs devoted to green building research and are collaborating with the Green Building Alliance to form a statewide green building research and education consortium called INSPIRE (INvestment in Sustainable Practice and Industry via Research and Education). On the business side, Pennsylvania firms received more than 2,700 patents in green building-related products between 1990 and 2004.
The region is centrally located.
Western Pennsylvania and its green building product manufacturers are located within 500 miles of several of the country’s most active green building real estate markets. This is critical because specifying regionally sourced building products (within 500 miles of a project’s construction site) represents a key green building project criterion.
A new web site will provide designated areas to foster collaboration among industry members, investors, researchers, academics, and potential customers.