Greenbuild to Hold Biobased/Certified Wood Forum

Washington, DC, October 26, 2007--In a continuing effort to improve the transparency of USGBC and LEED policy making and to allow USGBC members more opportunity to participate in LEED development, USGBC is pleased to announce an open forum on biobased and certified wood issues to be held in conjunction with USGBC Member Day at Greenbuild 2007.

The forum is scheduled for November 6, 2007, 2:00 PM - 5:00 PM, at Greenbuild International Conference and Trade Show in McCormick Place Room 193, Chicago, IL.

Following direction from the USGBC Board of Directors, the LEED Materials & Resources Technical Advisory Group (MR TAG), with contracted support from the Yale Program on Forest Policy and Governance (YPFPG) and Sylvatica are examining potential changes to the LEED Materials & Resources credits dealing with Rapidly Renewable Materials and Certified Wood within the LEED Green Building Rating System.

YPFPG has prepared a series of policy making tools to be employed by the MR TAG in making recommendations to be put forth to USGBC membership if the TAG feels that changes to the existing policy on rapidly renewable materials and certified wood are advisable. These documents are available for download from the YPFPG website.

The open forum during USGBC Member Day is intended to provide an opportunity for the MR TAG to bring USGBC members up to date on the status of their deliberations and to provide USGBC members and biobased/wood stakeholders an opportunity to share their views on the important issues being analyzed by the TAG.

The forum will be structured as follows*:

1. Introduction and Background (20 minutes)

2. Presentations by Key Stakeholders (30 minutes)

3. Break - collection of requests to address the forum participants (10 minutes)

4. Open Forum (1.5 hour)

5. Wrap-Up and Discussion of Next Steps (10 minutes)

*It is strongly recommended that USGBC members who wish to participate in this forum familiarize themselves with the LEED credits relating to rapidly renewable materials and certified wood and the YPFPG reports prior to November 6, 2007. In the interest of time and with a desire to allow as much interaction between members and the TAG as possible, this session will be conducted in a manner that assumes a base level of knowledge among the participants. No orientation for individuals not familiar with the YPFPG material and LEED credits relating to rapidly renewable materials and certified wood will be conducted.

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