California Environmental Protection Agency headquarters in Sacramento. In 2003, the 25-story tower was given a “Platinum” rating by the U.S. Green Building Council in 2003.

Governor Jerry Brown decreed yesterday that state-owned buildings across California must go green.

The executive order stipulates that state agencies must reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 20% using 2010 as a baseline, and half of all new and renovated buildings must be Net Zero Energy by 2020. The order, B-18-12, also continues a previous policy requiring state-owned buildings larger than 10,000 square feet to meet the guidelines of the U.S. Green Building Council’s “Silver” rating.

“This shows that the state is very focused on meeting very ambitious yet achievable goals,” said Evan Westrup, a spokesperson for the governor’s office.

The move is a step toward compliance with AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act, which requires that statewide greenhouse gas emissions brought down to 1990 levels by 2020.

According to a release from the governor’s office, the statewide initiative will also save one billion gallons of water and an estimated $45 million in tax dollars each year. Westrup did not have figures on projected job creation, but he pointed out that similar initiatives geared toward efficiency have created 1.5 million jobs across the state since 1978.

Electricity generation for buildings was the second-largest single source of greenhouse emissions in the state, putting an estimated 113 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere in 2009. The bulk of emissions do not originate at buildings themselves, but at fossil fuel burning power plants that supply electricity to them through the power grid. In California, the only source that generates more greenhouse emissions than buildings are the state’s 31 million registered cars, trucks and buses.

A similar initiative, signed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004, was rescinded with yesterday’s order. That mandate required state-owned buildings to cut energy use in state buildings from 2003 levels by 20% by the year 2015.  Westrup said that the latest order does not negate but “dramatically expands” the provisions of the 2004 order, including directives to develop on-site energy generation capacity as well as for agencies to buy more “environmentally friendly” products and install charging stations for electric cars in employee parking facilities.

According to the Department of General Services — the agency that oversees most of the state’s buildings — there are currently about 50 buildings across the state that have gained certification or are in the process of being certified through the Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, program.

“All of these efforts are certainly important to the taxpayers as we green the state’s real estate portfolio,” said Eric Lamoureux, deputy director of the Department of General Services. “There are upfront costs, but those costs pay for themselves over the life of the building.”

Several Bay Area communities have already introduced green building mandates. In 1998, Oakland implemented its “Sustainable Community Development Initiative” and, in 2008, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom introduced energy efficiency measures into the city’s building code for new and existing structures. The new rules are supposed to be fully implemented by this year and are projected to reduce carbon emissions by 60,000 tons and conserve a hundred million gallons of water annually.

Ana Tintocalis

West Village features sleek lines and cutting-edge energy-efficient design concepts.

The typical American master-planned community sill features cookie-cutter houses, cement driveways and green lawns. But UC Davis is putting a new spin on the concept with the unveiling of West Village, a $300 million student and faculty housing community designed to be “zero-net energy.” Developers say it’s the nation’s largest to employ this kind of green construction.

And although “zero-net” [PDF] may sound complicated, the concept is actually quite simple: All the buildings in West Village will take in as much energy as they put back into the power grid — not on a daily basis but at the end of each year, the total consumption of the entire housing development should “net out” to zero.

The modern, colorful development taps into a four-megawatt photovoltaic system driven by 15,000 solar panels. The panels are mounted on rooftops, parking canopies, sides of buildings and even the village clock tower.

“It’s a sizable amount of solar,” Bob Segar, UC Davis director of campus planning told me on a recent walking tour (slide show below). Roughly 3,000 students and faculty in 662 apartments and 332 single-family homes will call the West Village home once it’s fully completed in 2013. For now, 800 students and faculty live in two residential halls.

But the development’s energy efficiency goes beyond solar panels. Segar said the entire complex was strategically built on 200 acres of university land to reduce residents’ need to tap into solar in the first place.

For example, mixed-use residential halls featuring retail space are situated along streets that run east-west in order to maximize the “solar gain” or breeze on any given day. All the buildings are equipped with energy efficient appliances, as well as customized window awnings with moveable wooden slats that allow residents to control the amount of sun that enters their rooms. And a smart phone app lets residents turn off lamps and plugged-in electronics remotely.

“First you reduce the energy demand through the layout of the community and investing in energy efficiency,” said Segar. “And then you produce green power on site.”

Another way West Village plans to produce its own green power is with a waste-to-energy bio-digester – an invention patented by UC Davis engineer that will be in full use next year. It will convert the village’s garbage and waste, also referred to as “feed stock,” into energy.

“The technology will allow us to put all those ‘feed stocks’ into the bio-digester, which will decompose at different rates that will then make methane and hydrogen to be burned for electricity,” Segar said.

The bio-digester underscores the influence UC Davis researchers have had on the overall development of West Village. Campus planners relied heavily on faculty from several engineering departments to make this development among the most energy-efficient in the nation.

The project is a collaboration between UC Davis and West Village Community Partnership, LLC (a joint venture of Carmel Partners of San Francisco, and Urban Villages of Denver. The developer has a 65-year lease with the university.

Other West Village features include:

• Sacramento City College’s Davis Center at UC Davis West Village, the first community college center to be housed on a University of California campus. The center will open to an estimated 2,400 students in January.
• UC Davis’ first “uHub,” a prototype for future campus innovation hubs and an incubator for innovation in sustainability. Located in commercial space surrounding the village square, the uHub will be home to the campus’s energy research centers, serving as a living laboratory and fostering interactions with the private sector in the area of energy research.
• A recreation center featuring a game room, gym, pool and study areas.
• Energy-efficient exterior lighting fixtures, indoor occupancy sensors and “daylighting” techniques, to help the community use about 60% less energy than if standard lighting had been used.