from March 31st
by Lucia Athens
Rovereto, Italy (near Verona)
The headquarters of the Italian GBC and Distretto Technologico are located in the upper floors of a modern building in this northern Italian city. My host Alberto Ballardini is with Distretto Technologico, a consortium of 30 businesses all focused on green issues. Their themes relate to Renewable Energy, Sustainable Materials, and Smart Technology. The “C” in GBC is pronounced with a “ch” sound. I just love saying G-B-CHee. Everything always sounds better in Italian.
I grabbed a hoteling office spot to catch up on some email, and found myself right in the heart of their business operations. They are in the process of creating an Italian version of LEED, and at the same time providing technical assistance to projects that desire to pilot the tool. Everywhere I went, at every desk, there were LEED reference guides, a familiar reminder of home. As I sat surfing the net, I overheard two of the staff discussing in Italian some of the LEED Site credits, trying to interpret what the requirements mean. They were chatting animatedly about some of the Site credits, which I had written years ago when I chaired the LEED Site and Water TAG (Technical Assistance Group). It was a profound moment for me, realizing how broad-reaching LEED now is as a green building benchmark. It was now almost ten years after the early days of LEED and my first involvement with it, and I was half way around the world. Nice to see how far things have come.
