Here are 10 Green Megatrends for 2013 from Sustainable Industries courtesy of Yudelson Associates:
1. Green building in North America will rebound strongly in 2013, using LEED project registrations as a proxy for this growth.
2. The focus of the green building industry will continue to switch from new building design and construction to greening existing buildings
3. Green Buildings will increasingly be managed in the “Cloud,” represented by the large number of new entrants and new products in fields of building automation, facility management, wireless controls and building services information management in 2011 and 2012.
4. Awareness of the coming crisis in fresh water supply, both globally and in the U.S., will increase, leading building designers, owners and managers to take further steps to reduce water consumption in buildings by using more conserving fixtures, rainwater recovery systems and innovative onsite water technologies.
5.The global green building movement will continue to accelerate, as more countries begin to create their own green building incentives and develop their own Green Building Councils.
6. Zero-net-energy buildings will become increasingly commonplace, in both residential and commercial sectors, as LEED and ENERGY STAR certifications have become too commonplace to confer competitive advantage among building owners.
7. Performance disclosure will be the fastest emerging trend, highlighted by new requirements in California (AB32), the City of Seattle and many other jurisdictions. Commercial building owners will have to disclose actual building performance to all new tenants and buyers and in some places, to the public at large.
8. Transparency and “Red List” chemicals will become a subject of contention, as manifested through such tools as the new Health Product Declaration and the inclusion of points for avoiding certain chemicals contained in LEEDv4, scheduled for release in June 2013.
9. Local and state governments will step up their mandates for green buildings for both themselves and the private sector. We’ll see at least 20 new cities of significant size with commercial sector green building mandates, mostly in the “Blue” states.
10. Solar power use in buildings will continue to grow given the prospect of aggressive state-level renewable power standards for 2020 and the move toward zero-net-energy buildings.
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