Climate Co-Lab Contest is Open

By Javier Burgos

How can we empower the public and communities to build awareness and demand for green buildings?

Buildings remain one of the key producers of greenhouse gases, consuming up to 40% of the world’s energy and contributing up to 30% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Green buildings can mitigate the negatives of traditional buildings and climate change contribution, but stakeholders defining the green building conversation have largely been industry groups and governments. Here is YOUR chance - to help the green building conversation go mainstream!

World Green Building Contest (WGBC) Launches MIT Climate Colab Contest to Invite Ideas to Increase Demand for Green Buildings Worldwide.

Proposals are due July 20th, 2014

Through a partnership with the MIT Climate Colab contest, the WGBC seeks your ideas to create public demand for green buildings that can meet the values of the occupants and empower the public to enter the conversation of how buildings are designed and created for them.

The size of our current built environment will double in the next 30 years and most of those buildings will be in developing nations. There has never been a better time to get this right.

Two Key Issues

Building design decisions are generally made with little to no input from the actual people that inhabit these buildings.  We want to overcome the barriers to a greater demand for greener, efficient buildings -- by:

1)   improving awareness and

2)   empowering communities to create impact

-- on sustained public participation in the demand for better, more efficient healthier buildings.

Specifically, we seek proposals to build awareness in the following areas:

· How can we inspire the public to think about the spaces they inhabit, things they would like in these spaces and voice their suggestions?

· How can we empower communities to enter the conversation about the design of buildings that are being built and designed for them?

· How can we create a mainstream conversation that will ultimately lead to greater demand for green buildings by communities and the public?

•    How can we convert the values and desires of the public into real changes in the global building stock?

How can you and your community take a lead role on the green building conversation and increase your access to greener, healthier, more efficient buildings? Visit contest page