In a move to strengthen its technical expertise and solidify its commitment to expanding the green building community, the U.S. Green Building Council has hired John Law as a director of technical development and Paul Mathew as a senior fellow, the organization announced June 12.
Law assumed his role on April 1, he said in an email. Law will develop updates to the LEED for Cities and Communities program and work to advance how USGBC measures sustainability beyond buildings, the nonprofit said in a news release Wednesday. The LEED for Cities and Communities program seeks to help local leaders develop and operationalize sustainable and specific plans for natural systems, energy, water, waste and other factors that impact the quality of life in areas like business improvement districts, economic development zones, campuses, universities and military installations. These include existing developments, redevelopments or in the planning and design phase, per the program webpage.
“Future updates to the LEED for Cities and Communities program could create longer-term benefits for building owners and operators impacted by regulatory requirements,” Law said. “Decarbonization targets and tracking requirements can vary greatly from city to city. As more municipalities enact local building decarbonization regulations, like NYC’s Local Law 97, LEED for Cities and Communities represents an opportunity to encourage alignment, allowing local governments to share lessons learned and create case studies around successful building decarbonization efforts, Law said.
“Our hope is this shared learning will support a regulatory landscape that allows municipalities to achieve their specific decarbonization goals while considering real-world market feedback in peer cities and communities,” Law said.
Law previously served as assistant commissioner at the Chicago Department of Planning and Development, where he led department and citywide planning initiatives focused on investment in underserved communities and reviewed new planned developments to enhance design quality and sustainable performance, according to his LinkedIn profile. Prior to working for the city of Chicago, Law was associate director of the city design practice at architecture and planning firm Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, where he led teams through projects spanning site design, campus planning and larger-scale master plans, his LinkedIn profile says.
Paul Mathew began his new role in March, a spokesperson for USGBC said. Mathew will contribute to building energy efficiency and decarbonization, advancing USGBC’s initiatives in sustainable finance and strategies to drive performance improvements across large portfolios of buildings, per the release. Mathew was earlier manager at Enron Energy Services in Houston and a research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Prior to joining USGBC, Mathew worked at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for 20 years, most recently serving as department head of the laboratory’s Whole Building Systems department, according to his LinkedIn profile. Earlier in his career, Mathew was a manager at Enron Energy Services in Houston, after a stint as a research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, per his LinkedIn profile.
“These appointments come at a pivotal time, as USGBC recently released its new three-year strategic plan aimed at addressing urgent challenges and opportunities within the green building industry,” the organization said in the release.
The strategic imperatives laid out in the 2024-2026 plan, released in January, include expanding the global green building community through measures such as continuing to grow the market for LEED; accelerating the role of buildings in decarbonizing economies and promoting equitable, healthy and resilient communities; and aligning green buildings with frameworks and technologies that can drive equitable systems change and market transformation at scale. This imperative would involve expediting the role of buildings in decarbonizing power grids and integrating green building into corporate ESG frameworks used by markets for compliance and risk assessments.
The USGBC also appointed Angelo Petrlllo to develop and execute growth strategies that will provide greater access to green building solutions, it said June 12.
These appointments align with the USGBC’s upcoming LEED v5 system, the fifth iteration of the green building rating system, expected to be released in early 2025. In this iteration, 50% of the points earned via the system, which are needed to achieve certification, would go toward decarbonizing the process of building design and construction as well as operations and maintenance, Corey Enck, vice president of LEED technical development at the USGBC, previously told Facilities Dive.
