Florida's Not Winning The "Green" Race....

Source:
Orlando Sentinel

Two years ago there was an order. This order, given by Governor Charlie Crist, was that all new buildings built by the state would be L.E.E.D. certified. Here we stand and Florida still falls short of other states in the race to be "green'.

While it's not really a race Florida falls short of California, Illanois, and New York in the number of platinum certified buildings. How many does Florida have? One. That's right. One Platinum L.E.E.D. certified building. Don't feel bad. As I said before, Florida ranks with several other states and, remember, this isn't a race.

There are various factors in why Florida only has one platinum building. The economy is one of them. It costs more to build a "green" building than it does to build one that isn't "green". Gold certified alone costs 2.5 percent more to build. That's not much but it gets more expensive to gain platinum. Mr. McFadden, a managing partner for Taurus Investments, calims the Gold Certification added as much as five percent to the initial cost of the two-story buildings the company put up. Is that cheap? Not when you're talking $100,000. He claims that he would go for Gold again but Platinum is just not feasable.

Is it worth it in this economy to shoot for Platinum? We do have to consider what happens to the planet or things will keep getting worse. I hope someday we can all be environmentally friendly.