As 2008 wraps up, we can look back and say it has been the most defining year for green buildings to date. Everywhere you turn, a new LEED-certified building seems to be popping up. Thousands of professionals have become LEED accredited this year, hundreds of organizations have joined the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), and millions of people around the country are working, shopping and living in green buildings. It’s not just the USGBC loyalists who are on board, either. The main theme of the Business Owners and Managers Association (BOMA) conference in Denver this year was sustainability. There you go — the building owners are getting it, as well as the people who design them.

The Good

LEED continues to grow by leaps and bounds, with 17,000 buildings either registered or certified. LEED 2009 looks to continue the positive trend of updating and incorporating user feedback into the rating systems.

The Bad

But all is not well. While LEED’s growth represents a positive trend for new development—even more so as it becomes required by state and local governments—there are a lot of existing buildings out there; buildings that have no requirements to improve performance. From a LEED perspective, existing buildings only represent about 10 percent of all projects. That gives us a lot of aging facilities that are often being ignored.

The Ugly

According to Ed Mazria, creator of Architecture 2030 (www.architecture2030.org), there is roughly 300 billion square feet of building stock in this country. Each year, we demolish about 1.75 billion square feet, while renovating another 5 billion square feet, and build an additional 5 billion square feet of new construction. So in the next 16 years, roughly 75 percent of the built environment will be new or renovated — which is positive when you add on the trends towards greener buildings. However, that still leaves 75 billion square feet of existing building stock chugging away 60 hours a week or more, operating inefficiencies, poor air quality, leaking pipes and all.

The Hopeful…

Basic principles that look out for the occupants of our buildings as well as the Earth should be implemented immediately. Fortunately, many of these stepping-stone measures can be and with absolutely no cost premium while offering immediate benefits to owners and occupants. Without further adieux, here are four New Year’s resolutions for all our existing buildings, if you are not already doing them.

1. There is absolutely no reason why GreenSeal-approved cleaners are not the norm in every building across the country.

2. The basic concept of recycling is still absent in too many commercial buildings and even more multi-family residential buildings. It’s not always easy to find contractors for this, but the cut down in waste able to be recognized is tremendous. This also empowers occupants to make a positive change, and be part of the solution — a very powerful concept.

3. Change the aerators in the faucets. For $2 dollars you can cut faucet water use by more than 50 percent. Looking for practical stocking stuffer ideas this holiday season? Put a 0.5 of 1 GPM aerator in the stocking of everyone you know.

4. If there are still T12 lamps burning in your building, rip them out and put in T8s. Using close to 40 percent less electricity, you’ll attain payback in one or two years. Track down every single one of those T12s and send them to the bulb recycler. Do so with a vengeance!

You’ve got to crawl before you walk. Fundamental change of how we build and maintain our buildings is needed, and with the growing prevalence of LEED buildings in the market, you can see it coming. But there are still some basic opportunities in thousands and thousands of buildings across this country. So let’s get on it, and see where 2009 takes us.