The Seattle 2030 District has been selected as one of the three nationwide Community Partners for the White House’s Better Buildings Challenge. This announcement came as part of Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) America’s closing plenary on June 30th, 2011 and directly followed the launch of the District’s website.

The press conference announcement is available to view on the District’s new webpage. The website features news and multimedia about the District, a member resources page, information for prospective members and upcoming events among other resources.   

The Seattle 2030 District Planning Committee is an interdisciplinary public-private partnership working to create a high-performance building district downtown. Using the 2030 Challenge for Planners, issued by Architecture 2030 in 2008, as the foundation, the committee has sought to develop realistic, measurable, and innovative strategies to assist district property owners, managers, and tenants in meeting aggressive goals that reduce environmental impacts of facility construction and operations.

The Seattle 2030 District’s goals are as follows:

Existing Buildings and Infrastructure Operations
• Energy use: a minimum 10 percent reduction below the national average by 2015, with incremental targets, reaching a 50 percent reduction by 2030.
• Water use: a minimum 10 percent reduction below the national average by 2015, with incremental targets, reaching a 50 percent reduction by 2030.
• CO2e of auto and freight: a minimum 10 percent reduction below the current district average by 2015, with incremental targets, reaching a 50 percent reduction by 2030.

New Buildings, Major Renovations and New Infrastructure
• Energy use: an immediate 60 percent reduction below the national average, with incremental targets, reaching carbon neutral by 2030.
• Water use: an immediate 50 percent reduction below the current national average.
• CO2e of auto and freight: an immediate 50 percent reduction below the current district average.

Rather than being required to achieve the goals of the District individually, or through legislative mandates, property owners will be provided a variety of innovative resource deployment tools and information sharing. This approach enables ongoing collaboration to make high-performance buildings the most profitable building type in Seattle.

Visit the Better Buildings Challenge webpage to learn more about the role of Community Partners.

View the White House Press Release

Learn more about the Seattle 2030 District