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Property Mogul Turned Green Activist

David Gottfried is the founder of the World Green Building Council (WGBC). He comes from a wealthy background, and is a multi-millionaire property tycoon, running some of the biggest development contracts in the world. He is the owner of World Build Technologies Inc, a real estate contractor and developer. In 1991 he had an epiphany which led to his forming the World Green Building Council and the US Green Building Council. He is the driving force behind the Green Building Council movement.

The council has put itself at the head of the GBC movement and is slowly bringing more and more nations into its fold. But this presents practical problems which the World GBC has dealt with by forming a governing board which Gottfried chairs. The countries which belong to the council form a congress, and the board sits over the congress as a managing committee.           

The ethos of the green building council movement is clear. In their 2004 newsletter the World GBC says that ‘The WorldGBC requires that our members be consensus-based, nonprofit, national coalitions, with transparent processes and diverse and integrated representation. We require that they represent a diverse and open membership of industry and government organisations, and no private interests.’¹  In other words members must be free of private interests, offer and disseminate new information to from the council, and only permits one council per country. But does the World GBC offer the world the solutions to energy and resource problems in the building industry? Can it inspire the entire industry to go green? Only with co-operation at an enormous level would bring such a thing into being. But as Sue Roaf, writer and academic at Oxford Brookes University, said to me, if all building adhered to high environmental standards the resulting savings in energy use would reduce carbon emissions to below 1990 levels.

Gottfried is confident he can bring about a revolutionary change. But I’m skeptical about this claim. It would take some of the worlds biggest governments to legislate building regulations to take all the recommendations of programs like LEED and BREEAM, and Australia’s Green Star system, and insert them into building regulations. This can only be done at increased costs to the developer, and decreased energy costs to the home owner. This imbalance, will be one the developers will inevitably pass to the consumer. It would still take global government commitment to make these things happen.

Gottfried is certainly taking a leading role in the green building movement. He is someone who has the connections and the know how to bring other leading property developers to green building methods and support their enormous benefits to big business. For this reason Gottfried coming over to the green building cause, is a great coup. As more countries form their own councils information is being passed to many key players and even if government cannot be persuaded to add green building practices to statute books, the enthusiasm of David Gottfried and others, might do much of the necessary work. Let’s hope it does, as the potential for a comprehensive solution to emissions problems and climate change, potentially lies in the hands of property developers, architects and builders all over a rapidly developing world. With huge growth in eastern economies, it is the right time to bring this information to a general audience, instead of being limited to smaller activists and campaigners.

Ben Bamber

Gottfried has written a book about his conversion to green practice in building; From Greed to Green. You can get copies of his book at www.greedtogreen.com.

1. Volume 1; /1st quarter 2004; Worldview; The International Newsletter of the World Green Building Council; (www.worldgbc.org/docs/Worldview0403.pdf).

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