Jerry's presentation to 300 delegates at the African Green Building Summit on 24 March 2017, held at the United Nations regional headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya. Introduction to "Project Leapfrog," using technology as the means to prepare a new pathway toward green building in Africa.

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Green Building –
Pathway to a Better Future

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• Defined a “green” building via rating systems
• Revitalized architectural education & practice
• Changed building engineering practice, esp. to reduce
energy use:
– E.g., 200 kWh/sq.m./year was the norm for offices
– <100 kwh/sq.m./year commonly achieved
– Net zero energy now achievable in many projects
• Improved construction quality
• Educated 100,000’s of building professionals,
businesses & government agencies

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We Started with Simple Systems…

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Vs.
Consider: 10,500 LEED interpretations!
“A Camel is a Horse Designed by a Committee”

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US Nonresidential LEED Projects

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US Nonresidential Market Uptake

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US Nonresidential Market Uptake

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• Existing certification systems won’t get us
anywhere near needed carbon reductions
• Better building codes offer some benefits in
“raising the floor” for all, but change overall
carbon footprint only very slowly
• Green building rating systems have failed to
deliver enough business benefits at current
costs to gain widespread adoption

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• Radically cut carbon emissions – primary goal
– 2030 goals: zero net energy for ALL new bldgs.
• Redesign green ratings as management tools
for continuous improvement & sustainability
reporting
• Set Big Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAGs) for
the green building movement!
– Increase uptake 20x by 2030, to 25% of all
buildings

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• Technology megatrends push every tool and
system to be smaller, faster, lighter, cheaper,
denser, with more user engagement, etc.
• Green building can piggyback on these
megatrends
• What we need are tech-enabled “smart”
green buildings, with equally “smart” rating
and assessment systems

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Source: www.Memoori.com, “The Transformation of the Building
Performance Software Business,” March 2017
358Established
Companies!

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• Use Big Data analytics to streamline evaluations
• Leverage algorithms to assess sustainability
– Self-driving cars
• Cloud computing offers the chance to start anew
• It’s important to have a unified, low-cost
approach that makes sense to building owners
and developers, as well as government
• Technology is your friend, moving fast is the
method, and ingenuity is the means

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The Edge, Amsterdam, 98%+ BREEAM rating, 27,000 sensors

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• You can’t afford to take 5 - 10 – 15 more years to
get where developed economies are today:
– It takes a long time to build a green building
user/designer/consultant base, one project at a time
– It’s no longer even really necessary; leverage what’s
already been done elsewhere
• Tech systems can help you directly to create green
buildings, via best practices software
• Aim for rapid prototyping a new approach
• The solution: PROJECT LEAPFROG!

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• There are clear African precedents/opportunities:
– Mobile phones (instead of copper land lines)
– Mobile payments (instead of banking infrastructure)
– Distributed power with PV and wind (instead of
massive dams & coal-fired central plants)
• Can you use a technology leapfrog to put green
building measures into every new building?
– Crowdsourcing can create new rating systems in a few
weeks & then find projects via social media
– Algorithms can design building retrofits with “best
practices” menus

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• The “old way” won’t scale in any short time frame
• Green finance tools need scale to work
• Create scale in 5 years like these two companies:
– Airbnb: the world’s largest & most valuable hotel
company with zero capital investment in hotels
– Uber: the world’s largest & most valuable car & driver
company with zero capital investment in cars
• The lesson: If you’re short of money, you have to
be long on ingenuity!

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• Why use old INCREMENTAL “improvement”
pathways that don’t get BHAG results?
• Create your own African pathway with a steady
focus on absolute performance measures:
– Energy use: net zero for new projects; 50% reduction
or “near net zero” for renovations & retrofits
– Water use: meet global best results (Germany)
– Waste generation: zero net waste to positive reuse
• Focus obsessively on lowering the costs of green
building & creating an awesome user experience!

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So I ask:
Isn’t It Time For
a Discussion about
REINVENTING GREEN
BUILDING
For African Use?