WASHINGTON – The U.S. Green Building Council Research Committee announced its National Green Building Research Agenda at the Greenbuild International Conference & Expo in Chicago. The agenda identifies key research areas for advancing building performance and market transformation. It also explains the scale of funding and capacity-building that is needed to support all steps from research through deployment.

According to the agenda, research on green building constituted only about 0.2% of all federally-funded research between 2002 and 2004. The research also showed that building operation accounts for 39% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions and nearly 40% of U.S. energy consumption. The USGBC Research Agenda focuses on the applied research most needed by green building practitioners in the design, engineering, construction and development communities.