Minnesota takes up NM architect's challenge
New Mexico architect and solar pioneer Edward Mazria has helped paint one more state "green."
Mazria's "green build" message has spread to the state of Minnesota, where on May 8, Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed the Minnesota Sustainable Building 2030 bill. The legislation requires that buildings receiving state funding meet energy efficiency targets outlined in Mazria's Architecture 2030 Challenge.
To that end, the new Minnesota law requires that all new state-funded buildings be designed to reduce use of fossil fuel energy 60 percent by 2010, 70 percent by 2015, 80 percent by 2020 and 90 percent by 2025.
Yvonne Prettner Solon, the bill's sponsor in the Minnesota Senate, said in announcing Senate passage of the measure that the law will result in new buildings being essentially carbon neutral by 2030 and will save Minnesotans $296 million by 2050.
The Architecture 2030 challenge, which Mazria issued in January 2006, has already been adopted in New Mexico and in a variety of sectors. Mazria's nonprofit Architecture 2030 in Santa Fe reports that Minnesota now joins California; Illinois, Dallas; Santa Barbara; Richmond, Va.; and the federal government in adopting the 2030 Challenge targets.
The challenge targets are required for all new and renovated federal buildings beginning in 2010 as part of the Energy Bill passed by Congress and signed by the president in January of this year.
In addition, a resolution for all buildings in all cities was adopted by the U.S. Conference of Mayors, sponsored by Albuquerque Mayor Martin Chavez, among others.
Mazria is on sabbatical from his architecture firm, Mazria, Inc., as he travels the world spreading the energy-efficiency message.
Last month, Mazria released another document, The 2030 Blueprint, which makes the case for turning off coal-fired power plants and eliminating the need for much of the energy those plants produce by properly designing and retrofitting buildings.
The Minnesota Senate and House versions of the Sustainable Building 2030 bill can be viewed online: SF 2706 and HF 3401.
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