High Performance Buildings to Climate Benefit Districts
How do we move away from community development as we know it today, which often occurs one building at a time, over several decades (if not longer) and with enormous competing interests, to incentivizing the development of high performance commercial and residential communities? It's an interesting question that Mithun Architects in Seattle, Washington, has been considering. Mithun's answer is for state lawmakers to create a Climate Benefit District (CBD). The CBD would provide communities with a strategy for participating in the impending carbon regulated future and in making their communities sustainable.
Here's how it would work. State law would allow a community to petition to become a CBD, or a local government could instigate the creation of a CBD in a certain area. The Washington Department of Commerce would provide the CBD with technical assistance and ensure that its work was compatible with statewide greehouse gas reductions goals. The CBD would have a governing community body that would indentify, implement and review climate-friendly actions within the CBD. The CBD area would implement a sustainability plan, work toward and ultimately achieve the desired sustainability level. The CBD governing body would - and here's the punchline - be capable of receiving and distributing carbon market revenues.
It seems to me that Mithun's proposal could go one step further and provide for the CBD to levy a "local benefit charge", which would be offset by a proportionate reduction in city of county taxes in the CBD, for the continuous improvement of the CBD's high performance community amenities. It's an idea worth debating in Olympia.
