...Workforce development and the [Building Trades Union] are leaders in those grants. And as I mentioned we just received a half-million dollar grant to train incumbent workers. A lot of the trades are sitting on the bench since the work is not there. Green training will give them a competitive edge.

NYC: How important is the retrofitting of existing buildings from an economic and environmental standpoint? Is this an area of focus for your chapter?

RU: It is the most important issue and it is the most important issue for us. Our perspective for many years has been that it is essential to green new buildings to show what can be done when you have a blank slate. But in any dense urban area, which includes all of NYC and many of the towns and cities in Rockland and Westchester counties, you have an existing infrastructure and an existing set of buildings that are not going anywhere. So if you want to have a net reduction in the environmental impact of those cities and towns, and in buildings in general, you need to deal with the existing buildings.

If every new building is carbon neutral that will not reduce current carbon emissions. We have to get those numbers down for existing buildings. That is, from a policy and educational point of view, the most important thing. The sole focus of the conference we had at the end of September, the Urban Green Expo (urbangreenexpo.com), was retrofitting existing buildings.

TR: Absolutely, retrofitting of existing buildings is a very important area. I think it will become more prevalent. As owners do renovations to their properties they are going to go through and do energy analyses. Have we seen any of this yet, no, but I can see it coming.

FB: It is very important. Existing buildings and operation management is one of the four pillars of LEED education. Existing buildings is the largest growing sector of activity that is taking place and it is the most important.

Building new buildings, no matter how efficient, is adding to the carbon footprint. But going back and retrofitting what is creating problems to begin with - that is where you are going to have the most impact. It is extremely important.

NYC: How has the recession impacted LEED and sustainable building?

RU: Understand that most of the activity on sustainability was on the high end. Where building is being done on the high end it is still being done green. But there is less construction. That is obvious, so there is less green building.

I am not aware of any major projects that were going to be LEED and because of budget restrictions are not going to be LEED anymore. Everyone is trying to take a closer look and trying to save money on the margin. But the smart money continues to say that cutting investments in sustainability is a very poor business strategy. So we do not see that happening.

TR: Green building is at a tipping point but what is probably affecting that negatively is the economy. Right now I think if anyone is doing anything they are very concerned about costs. If they can’t justify it they are not necessarily looking at it from the long term. Some owners are more inclined to look at the long term but unfortunately everyone is trained to look at first cost and not looking at the operating and life cycle analysis at what the costs are over a decade.

FB: Due to the recession new construction is clearly down and the real estate market is down. We have been there before and we will cycle back as it always has done historically. I think the focus right now is the performance of...