Green Energy Scam in DC

By Tom Rhodes, 3/4/2014

In another “Who’d a thunk???” moment we learn that when politician in the most corrupt city in America, Washington D.C., start talking Green this, Green that, Certified Green Technology, and enforcing “standards”, it’s all a scam. Consider research by Environmental Policy Alliance, the free-market group analyzed the first round of energy usage data released by the city of Washington D. C. Friday and found that large, privately-owned buildings that received the green energy certification Leadership in Energy Design (LEED) use more energy than buildings that didn’t receive this green stamp of approval. (LINK).

The brainchild of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), a private environmental group, created Leadership in Energy Design (LEED) certification for new buildings. It figures that Washington D.C. is the first city to require LEED certification for new buildings, and that the actual results show that new buildings with LEED certification for being green actually use more power than non-LEED certified buildings.

When the Green Building Council’s Washington headquarters which has the group’s top green-energy accolade, the platinum LEED certification, uses 18% more energy than the average non certified building in Washington, you can pretty much know that LEED is a designed as a front for payola and not any actual improvements to energy use.

The fact is that for profit businesses have a huge incentive to build cost effective buildings that use less energy. It adds to the bottom line. If your office complex is run for less dollars than your competitors, you make more money; it’s not like using more energy than necessary is a business goal. TCO, Total Cost of Ownership, is the driving factor for building energy efficient buildings. You give payola, I mean “incentives” to make a building meet certain “standards” whether the work or not, those incentives will lower the TCO and businesses will pay to certify their building is green. Actually being more efficient isn’t as important as the dollars.

All you need to know about Washington D.C.’s Department of Environment’s “green stamp of approval” called LEED is the simple fact that the city has collected $5.2 million in permit fees from the program since 2010. That “green” is a not so hidden reference to more money for the government; money it uses to reward cronies who offer up payment for their “green stamp of approval.”