Valentine's Day for the green building movement came early this year with several "gifts" presented to advocates, owners and operators of green, energy-efficient buildings.

A box of chocolates arrived in the form of President Obama's Better Buildings Initiative, which provides a Whitman's sampler of market incentives for buildings that exceed the 2005 Energy Policy Act's strict 40 percent energy savings compared with ASHRAE 90.1-2004 target. The Better Buildings program also includes a revolving loan fund that will support larger credit lines for green building retrofits that are difficult for small businesses to access. The BBI also contains hortatory challenges to local governments and businesses to make their buildings better. Given that the construction sector currently struggles with 20 percent unemployment and that commercial buildings use 20 percent of all U.S. energy, Better Buildings seems like the right effort at the right time. But with the current Congress, like Forrest Gump's proverbial "box of chawklits," we have no idea what we're actually going to get out of President Obama's proposal.

Next, a lovely bouquet comes courtesy of NRDC (disclosure: I was a senior scientist with NRDC for 21 years) and Earthjustice, which supported Washington state in defense of its innovative energy-saving building code. Last month, construction consultant Chris Cheatham wrote about the injunctive lawsuit brought by a group of local builders and HVAC contractors, which sought to suspend the code. As NRDC Senior Attorney Kit Kennedy points out: "Congress explicitly allows states to adopt energy codes that include compliance pathways with the option of using high efficiency equipment, as long as these options are not required and there are other options that don't involve use of this equipment." The judge agreed and the Washington State Energy Code still stands.

The movement also received a nice card from the city of San Francisco, which joined a growing number of cities worldwide -- New York and Tokyo immediately come to mind -- that require energy benchmarking, reporting and energy audits for existing buildings. It would be nice to see San Francisco resuscitate the lapsed Commercial Energy Conservation Ordinance (CECO), which required owners to bring their buildings up to the California Title 24 energy code upon sale or substantial renovation.

Cheatham, who's also a legal eagle, updates us this week on the revised lawsuit against USGBC brought by some disgruntled engineers now claiming that the organization is simply guilty of false advertising and deceptive trade practices. Gone are the class-action suit, the racketeering and the antitrust claims, as are the claims against individuals -- myself included. Rest assured, you'll be hearing more from me on these claims in the near future.

The market continues to vote with its feet against the LEED nonperformance assertions of the USGBC plaintiffs as exemplified by the 88 percent of respondents to the new CoreNet Global/Jones Lang LaSalle Sustainability Survey, who indicated that they consider green building certifications in administering their portfolio.