What makes a game-changer? This question has been on my mind as I've been finishing the Green Building Market and Impact Report, now available on GreenerBuildings.com.

When I was first organizing meetings for the "Green Building Rating System" of the U.S. Green Building Council (a system that a couple of years later morphed into LEED) and three or four people showed up on the phone or in the conference room at the Natural Resources Defense Council's Washington, D.C., office, I can tell you that "changing the game" for buildings might have been lurking far off in the recesses of my fantasy world, but I never imagined it would get this far. But LEED has become a game-changer, thanks to the thousands of "fathers and mothers" in the green building village that has raised the standard to where it is.

SeriousWindows, with their line of R5+ whole frame window products is poised as such a game-changer in the realm of energy efficient windows. This is becoming recognized in the market as reflected by their selection as the window of choice by the Community and Economic Development Association of Cook County, which is the country's largest weatherization organization. (Disclosure: I'm an unpaid advisor to the Serious Materials company.)

Shari Shapiro writes about another potential game-changer following the SEC's change of guidelines that could make it substantially easier for shareholders to demand that publicly traded companies disclose financial risks posed by climate change. According to research by Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, some companies might be carrying carbon risk of up to a quarter of their gross earnings!

Game-changers start by looking beyond the obvious. When people start to complain about indoor conditions, there are a whole host of obvious things to do. But, in true "the cause of problems is solutions" fashion, most of these ad hoc reactions will end up costing more money than they save as discovered by Johnson Controls, whose work in that area includes an extensive literature review drawing on dozens of studies, including work done by Carnegie Mellon and European researchers.

This week's Look-Grandpa-I-picked-up-the-$20-bill-you-said-was-fake-but-it's-real! award goes to Diversey, sponsor of today's webinar "Building a Sustainable Future: Progress and Trends Toward Improving the Environmental Footprint of Commercial Buildings."  Why? Check out the article about the Diversey's accomplishments and the archived webinar. You can get the webinar for the next 90 days at TinyURL.com/GreenBizGBMIRWebcast.

Rob Watson
Executive Editor, GreenerBuildings.com
You can reach Rob at rob.watson@greenerworldmedia.com or follow him on Twitter @KilrWat.

This second annual report, by Rob Watson and the GreenBiz.com editorial team, explores the impacts that LEED-certified buildings have already had on energy, water, waste and employee productivity -- and projects those impacts for the next 20 years.

Moderated by Don Bray, President of AltaTerra Research, this web conference will feature findings from AltaTerra’s Carbon Management Series research reports, and an in-depth implementation case study presented by Karl Van Orsdol, Sustainability Leader and Energy Risk Manager for the City of Palo Alto, California.