West Coast Green, the conference and tradeshow for eco-friendly building, opened with a program that emphasizes the breadth of environmentally conscious construction, the technology that fosters it, and the innovations and enterprises it has inspired.
For the first time in its three years, the conference that had focused exclusively on residential construction incorporates commercial building elements into its program. About 25 percent of its sessions are devoted to a broader examination of green building, the market forces affecting it, and the technology that is applied across the building spectrum and forms the basis for many of its efficiency systems.
The gathering also features panel discussions and presentations about creating green environments that look beyond the elements of construction and seek to build communities that support the long-term social, economic and environmental well-being of its inhabitants.
West Coast Green, which bills itself as the largest event of its kind, opened Thursday and runs through tomorrow at the San Jose Convention Center. Nobel Laureate and former vice president Al Gore, cofounder of Generation Investment Management, is the featured speaker Saturday morning. The conference is expected to draw 14,000 people before its doors close Saturday afternoon.
The keynote presentations Thursday and the sessions that followed it combined in equal parts celebration, affirmation, inspiration and sobering reality checks for the true believers of the green building movement.
Opening ceremony anchors Donald Simon, the Wendel, Rosen, Black and Dean attorney who is president of Build It Green and cofounder of U.S. Green Building Council's Northern California Chapter, West Coast Green President and founder Christi Graham, and bestselling author and architect Sarah Susanka urged attendees to "dare greatly" — the theme for this year's conference.
Graham also invoked Gandhi in her opening remarks saying that proponents of green building and green living should "be the change you want to be."
"West Coast Green inspires the transformation of people" said Simon. "We chose the heart of Silicon Valley for this conference because it is the cradle of innovation and change."
In his welcome, San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed likened the challenges faced by the green building industry to those his city seeks to address with its ambitious 10-point environmental initiative. San Jose's Green Vision, adopted last year, calls for sweeping change in energy consumption, eco-friendly building and retrofitting, and economic growth of 25,000 jobs that Reed hopes will establish his city as "the cleantech capital of the world."
"They're tough goals, but not impossible," said Reed, the architect of the Green Vision plan. "But it's not enough to set the goals and it's not hard to have the vision, it's implementing it that's hard." In a variation of the phrase that has become a mantra in his town, Reed told the audience at West Coast Green that their goals, too, are "difficult but not impossible."
Reed also sounded the call to cleantech and other green businesses to come to San Jose. A key part of implementing a vision is to ensure that others who share it are brought aboard, he said. "We have to be sure that your companies be here, stay here and grow here," said Reed, whose wooing of luxury electric carmaker Tesla Motors led the San Carlos firm to announce last week that it will move its headquarters about 20 miles south to San Jose, where the company will also build a $250 million factory. "When your company is ready to grow, to relocate, call me."
John Knott, a third-generation builder who is hailed as a community development visionary, encouraged the audience to adopt the philosophy that has guided his family's work. "Every action we take is for life," Knott said, referring to the longevity of buildings, that of the people who live and work in them and the legacy both leave with their community. "We are in the human habitat business, not the building business."
As President, CEO and cofounder of the Noisette Company LLC, Knott leads the team that is working with North Charleston, S.C., to restore 3,000 acres of the city's historic urban core to create a community that is socially, economically and environmentally sound. His firm plans to publish its report on the project at West Coast Green. "We believe green buildings are no longer good enough," said Knott. "To green structures with no context is an inadequate answer for where we need to go."
Photographer Chris Jordan provided stark visual reference points to the opening session with his portraits and photo illustrations of mass consumption from his projects, "Intolerable Beauty" and "Running the Numbers." His images evoked gasps, other sounds of distress and occasional snickers as he rolled through frames that first portrayed excess in splashes of color then moved to grimly ironic photo representations of the magnitude of waste generated daily.
At a largely upbeat presentation later in the day by market research firm MindClick on studies of consumer behavior, green purchasing and their relationship to eco-friendly construction, representatives from the company and building groups reminded the audience not to lose sight of common sense principles in their drive to green their businesses.
"It's not all happy fun time in green building," said Aaron Adelstein, the executive director of the Built Green Association of King and Snohomish Counties, a certifier of environmentally friendly residential construction in Washington state. "You have to address basic expectations before addressing green expectations."
Adelstein was speaking of the folly of loading homes with more environmental elements that the market desires or can afford. Speaking in terms that have application across the building industry and green business, Adelstein said, "It's important to know the difference between what can be merely a feature and what's a true benefit. You have to know your market. Don't throw your business model out the window to go green."