Green building makes up a larger — and more dynamic — portion of the U.S. economy than you might imagine.
New LEED-certified construction is expected to create more than $303 billion of GDP over the next three years — and 2.3 million jobs this year, according to an article in Energy Manager Today by Ellen Bell, the Midwest Clean Energy Manager for the Environmental Defense Fund.
Bell points out that those estimates don’t include retrofits of existing buildings, which would swell the figures further.
Bell writes that by 2018, new green construction is expected to save more than $1 billion in energy usage and more than $100 million in water use.
You can find Bell’s piece at http://www.energymanagertoday.com/green-building-boom-pumping-billions-us-economy-retrofits-fueling-trend-0120264/ The article draws on a Booz-Allen report for the U.S. Green Building Council — read about it here: http://www.usgbc.org/articles/new-study-finds-green-construction-major-us-economic-driver
