It's always hazardous to look for bellwethers on a weekly basis, but some of this week's articles jumped out at me as possibly signaling important changes in the market.

Acquisition of TerraChoice by UL indicates a couple of truisms about life that I've noticed. One is that Markets Imitate Nature:

Not long after a major conflagration in a fire-driven ecosystem, there is a frenzy of new growth. Many seeds won't open or germinate, unless there is fire, so mature forests with stately, spread-apart trees are now nearly impassable thickets with 10 to 20 sprouts and saplings occupying where one tree was before. Then, over decades as the forest moves through its various phases, through competition and survival of the fittest, one tree from that original profusion will eventually crowd out its neighbors and the forest will return to its climax state.

So, without commenting on the relative merits of either standard, I think to begin reducing the Tower of Babel that is green product labeling and certification is a good thing. To be paralyzed by too many choices is to make no choice at all.

The other truism is that it's way easier to create a green standard than it is to maintain one! With LEED, I think USGBC did a pretty good job setting up the ongoing infrastructure to support the technical elements of the standard. Of course there are hiccups along the way, such as the decision to sunset precedent-setting CIRs (credit interpretation requests/rulings). We originally established CIRs so that project teams would not have to continually reinvent the wheel when they encountered situations that didn't fall exactly in the written guidelines. But, because every building is different and there are so many possibilities for meeting the many LEED requirements, CIRs started to get a bit unwieldy and even contradictory. So I think the new proposed strategy of having some CIRs be project specific and others be precedent-setting is a brilliant compromise.

"First response in the wrong direction" is a well-known indicator of fundamental system change: If things go south when you make a change, odds are it's a real one, but if things get marginally better immediately when something changes, odds are you haven't really done anything. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae's negative response to PACE indicates that it may be the game changer it's hoped to be. Unfortunately with PACE, the "Effies" are merely continuing their decade long streak of causing problems with solutions -- this time in the other direction -- and tarnishing what had been a long and sterling record of boosting that most American of dreams: home ownership. GreenOrder's Pete Atkin and Corey Glick update us on the latest in this sorry saga and offer some hope that adjustments to the program might assuage lenders still hungover from their easy credit binge.

Indications are that the green badge of honor is changing. Although it's a huge accomplishment, getting a LEED new design rating principally is an indicator of green potential. And as has been extensively reported, sometimes that potential is not realized. However the LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations and Maintenance standard (LEED-EBOM) is different in that it is based on actual green performance, not estimated.

As reported here earlier, preliminary indications are that LEED-EBOM is becoming the dominant standard in the LEED system, representing roughly half of all the floor area registered and certified in LEED. Alex Spilger provides an excellent primer on the LEED-EBOM standard and dispels some myths surrounding how LEED-CI interfaces with other LEED standards and how some simple heads-up thinking on the part of building owners can make their properties more marketable and help avoid headaches for their eco-conscious (potential) tenants.

Continuing the trend of solar carports, Kikkoman just put up a 106 KW facility in its California Central Valley plant in Folsom. For some reason, I have Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi lyrics "pave paradise, put up a parking lot" going through my head, but I feel compelled to somehow update them with this PV carport trend -- "hum paradise, hum hum a hum-hum hum" (it's 5 a.m. here in Shanghai…). Anyone care to help me? Winner gets a shout-out in an upcoming newsletter.

Johnson Controls is putting the German Army through energy boot camp with the goal of creating a lean, mean energy-saving machine with 55 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions and comparable energy bill savings.

This week's Look-Grandpa-I-picked-up-the-$20-bill-you said-was-fake-but-it's-real! goes to LED technology. I'm a little strange when it comes to building technology. Normally, I love new products and services that represent a step-change in the way things are done in buildings and LED is one such technology that produces light in a completely different way from its predecessors. But I also tend to be pretty skeptical when it comes to claims that often accompany new products. With LEDs, in many cases, I felt that the claims of life and efficiency were overblown . . . mainly because they, well, were.

So I've been a measured booster of LEDs, as you can hear on the GreenerBuildings.com June webinar "Bringing Efficiency to Light" sponsored by Philips. However, this week, Gap Inc.'s Claudia Girrbach has written an excellent piece on LEDs that has moved me one step closer to being and unabashed supporter of the technology because of all of the new advances and user experience. It seems as though Moore's Law is applying to this semiconductor technology in spades!

Rob Watson is the executive editor of GreenerBuildings.com. You can reach him at rob.watson@greenerworldmedia.com and follow him on Twitter @Kilrwat.

Here are 10 ways you can reduce your energy usage and costs without sacrificing comfort or building functionality.

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