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DC-1-Role of Govt to foster innovation, Certification - Situation Room
NOTE: all comments are from group members. Not to be taken as fact.
Session called by Mary Lynn Wilhere with DC Government.
(Notetaking started a few minutes in.)
The event started with general introductions.
About 25 people in attendance.
http://www.pharoslens.net/-- an attempt to harmonize a number of ecological factors into one set. (Bill Grayson is working with this.)
Question to address -- if you move away from paper, but you have to use more electricity, is it a net gain?
<> DC is struggling with these things around certification. If we are using tax dollars to give a business a competitive edge over another business.
We won't be able to look at everybody, so we are then benefiting those that we could get to. Is this fair? e.g. You certify 100 programs, lose funding, what happens to the other couple of hundred of businesses that you couldn't get around to certify.
<> There are a lot of standards out there. Don't reinvent the wheel. you can use public input.
<> A concern with public input (using Yelp as the example) is that sustainability has many definitions, and is not often visible to consumer.
<> At US EPA for us to define a green business is not something we're not going to do on our own. And we've got a lot of resources. But what we might do is set standards for standards. We put out broad definitions of standards, so standards themselves can get approval.
<> you've got groups likehttp://www.isealalliance.org/that are already doing this. What is the credible standard. Somebody needs to create public space for some rationality and discussion about it.
<> One thing we see in health IT is what we call magical thinking, that a set of standards will change the way health works, which isn't how it works. Government often uses a single certifier, that stiffles things.
<>http://www.powershift09.org/-- college kids brought enviro groups together to work.
<> Like the idea of EPA and/or other federal agencies serving as a convening / accrediting standard setting agencies. Transparency is totally key. As is figuring out the funding. If it is federally funded, what happens when the the budget disappears. What happens when certifiers get paid by clients. I only like certeralized model if it simplifies model rather than complicates.
<> Discussion of "does the government pick the winners" -- DC government has selected 2 companies to provide audits to all customers for free. Which limits the marketplace. Gives you the lowest common denominator of the market. A subsidy to all qualified contractor would give you a wider range.
<> The Market evolved LEED, GreenGlobes, and other things. LEED doesn't always provide the answers that folks want. Every company that has gone through green business certification in DC has not yet done a full corporate sustainable report. This helps them along.
<> Two of the best certification programs out there in terms of visibility are LEED (http://www.usgbc.org/)and Energystarhttp://www.energystar.gov/.
<> LEED is flexible, and market focused. EnergyStar is simple, and government backed.
<> One challenge is that auditing is expensive. With LEED, once you have your checkmark is static. (USGBC person says you have to renew every five years.)
<> Small business is bigger than big business in aggregate, so you want broadest usage.
<> Looking at cost of certifying and measuring doesn't make sense. Particularly in the short term.
<> There are a lot of online tools that make this easier for small business.
<> Underwriter Labs -- just created UL Environment. (http://www.ul.com/global/eng/pages/) -- 100 year old company.
<> EcoQuickbooks
<> Transparency if you haveadequateauditing. It has to be enough of a problem if you fail the audit that the consenquences matter.
<> Involve the IRS -- it's an existing audit that everybody deals with every year anyway.
<> We need a regulatory regime around True cost accounting.
<> how do you add the true cost to the market cost? -- by pricing Carbon.
<> We can come up with all the regulations you want, 99% won't get passed.
<> Cap and Trade would be great, but the existing legislation is really just a carbon tax.
<> Measuring Carbon regardless of outcome of legislation isw necessary -- so we need a system to report and verify it.
How should certification programs be organized, funded, and what happens if funding drops to zero? What do residents want w/regard to standards?
Creating standards is an ongoing process.
Government and the marketplace should rate the standards.
The “Yelp Model” has concerns associated with it b/c with many participants, too many ideas, how do you streamline these comments and make the rating system actually work?
- Need “standards for standards”
- Have groups like ISEAL that do this- There is a role for government to lay out the framework for standards. - Might EPA be able to provide a “rallying power” to develop ideas and goals for accrediting standards?
- What is missing is the ability for someone to go in and say that there is a recognizable standard – needs to be a public
space for people to be able to rate the pros and cons of a given system.
- Transparency and funding questions – hurdles to overcoming clients paying verifiers for certification.- Does the government pick the winners?
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| gsteen | Metrics - Keep it simple | 0 | Jun 15 2009, 11:00 PM EDT by gsteen | ||
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Thread started: Jun 15 2009, 11:00 PM EDT
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I thought that this session was a good example of the complexity of all the subjects that were discussed during the day in the various sessions. Certainly, the whole day could have been spent on metrics.
My own feeling is that there are an abundance of metrics players in the game. Business, government and nonprofits compete with each other in this arena as in others which is good, but ultimately the question is, will one or two dominant systems emerge, how long will it take, at what cost and will the results get us to where we need to be in the time allotted. Another question that I have about this competitive process is whether it produces a valuable product or whether the system with the most funds wins. Since there seems to be very little profit attached to metrics, will the best system win and will it get us where we need to be? Certainly, the financial services and the auto industries are good examples of where the profit motive can lead. So the second question is: do social entrepreneurs have enough wind at their backs to come up with more workable solutions?
Do you find this valuable?
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competition
Metrics
solutions
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