Green Building in EUROPE

Here is an article about sustainable architecture across the pond. Especially relevant to Wes might be the bit about LEED standards...

"The LEED guidelines, which were drawn up by the U.S. Green Building Council, a nonprofit group founded in 1993, are a voluntary program that is now more than a decade old...In most cases, the decision to make an efficient building still rests with the client.
What’s more, the guidelines often lead to a constricted idea of what sustainability means. 'In Europe the guidelines tend to have to do with broader organizational ideas,' Thom Mayne, the founder of the Los Angeles-based architectural firm Morphosis, told me. 'Energy consumption, the organization of the workplace, urbanism — they’re all seen as interlinked. Here, the whole focus is on how to get these points. You just check them off: bike racks, high-efficiency air-conditioning units — it’s very narrow.'