Building Energy Efficiency and Resilience in the United States, One Disaster at a Time: Fostering Green Building Principles through Disaster Assistance.

摘要

Green building offers substantial and significant benefits, by reducing the raw natural resources necessary for construction as well as reducing water and energy consumption during the long-term operation of the building. Green buildings complement larger sustainable land use initiatives. And green building principles complement disaster resiliency of infrastructure. The federal government has recognized the benefits of green building, as evidenced by the push towards ensuring federally-owned and occupied buildings meet green building certification standards.;Few opportunities exist for communities to implement green building initiatives on a grand scale. Major disasters that bring widespread devastation destruction also bring unparalleled opportunities to rebuild from the ground up with green building as a priority. As financier of much of the disaster recovery process, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is in a key position to foster green building principles during the response and recovery phases following a Presidentially-declared major disaster; however, FEMA's currently existing disaster assistance authorities largely fail to provide sufficient flexibility to finance green building projects. A new FEMA-administered grant program, a Green Building Hazard Mitigation Assistance program, could fill the gaps left within the existing disaster assistance programs, to not only assist in disaster recovery but foster and promote green building disaster recovery.