The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti

The Green Impact Report Quick take: LEED used to be the strategy. Now it's one of maybe 20 tools. Marianna Palmour went from reviewing LEED projects to building a corporate ESG program from scratch at a 5,000-person firm, and she explains why your biggest clients' Scope 3 targets are about to become your problem. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Marianna Palmour leads corporate sustainability at Salas O'Brien, an engineering and technical services firm with more than 5,000 people. She grew up on Lookout Mountain in northwest Georgia, studied architecture at Georgia Tech, and got into green building early. She took the LEED exam straight out of school and served as vice president and past president of USGBC's Emerging Green Builders. From there she worked at Sustainable Options and then Epstein Group, where she was a LEED third-party reviewer and built out a portfolio and ESG service line. She went back to Georgia Tech for an MBA in entrepreneurship, which made her a "double Jacket." While there she was a fellow with the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainability, focused on inclusive design. When Salas O'Brien acquired Epstein Group, she was asked to build the ESG program from the ground up. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Marianna Palmour shows how sustainability moves from the building to the boardroom: 💡 Key Insight #1: Double materiality beats copying the competition The Challenge: Companies often set sustainability goals by looking at what peers are doing, or by asking only the people at the top. The Solution: Run a materiality assessment that asks every stakeholder: communities, investors, the board, clients and suppliers. Then look at it in both directions ("double materiality"): how sustainability issues affect the business, and how the business affects the environment. ROI: The strategy fits your own values, your regulatory exposure (Local Law 97 in New York, California's ESG disclosure rules) and the people you actually answer to. You don't spend money chasing someone else's priorities. 💡 Key Insight #2: Your clients' Scope 3 is now your compliance problem The Challenge: Smaller firms and service providers assume EU rules and emissions reporting only apply to big multinationals. The Solution: Get ready now. Big global clients have to report Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, so they're pushing supplier codes of conduct and emissions reporting down the supply chain. That includes consultants. Marianna's simple test: Scope 1 is fuel you burn yourself, Scope 2 is energy someone else produces for you, and Scope 3 is everything upstream and downstream. ROI: A $20K job might not get noticed. Millions in work puts you in a client's Scope 3 footprint. Firms that can sign off on supplier standards and report their emissions keep those relationships and stay eligible for the work. 💡 Key Insight #3: Make the business case in two languages The Challenge: Green policies usually get written one building or one office at a time, and leadership sees them as a nice-to-have. The Solution: Early in her career, Marianna took the Georgia-Pacific tower in downtown Atlanta (over a million square feet) through one of the first big LEED EBOM v2009 certifications. It was the first time she had to convince a C-suite that operational changes were right on values and on economics. She now brings that approach to whole portfolios, turning energy, water and indoor air quality strategies into standards that work across cities, countries and regulations. ROI: Policies adopted across the whole organization save money and resources everywhere at once, not just in one showcase building. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite "It's amazing what you can do if you are not afraid and you lean on your community." – Marianna Palmour ⬇️ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Pull the supplier codes of conduct from your top three clients and compare them with your own policies. If you can't attest to them today, find out why. This Quarter: Run a light materiality assessment. Survey employees, key clients, suppliers and leadership about which sustainability issues matter most to them, and look at both sides of double materiality. This Year: Take one strategy that worked on a single building (an energy, water or IEQ policy) and write it up as a standard for your whole portfolio or company. Then start tracking the Scope 3 data your biggest clients will eventually ask for. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🗒️ Read the transcript: here 🌎 Connect with Marianna Palmour: Website: https://salasobrien.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marianna-palmour/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🔋 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧰 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

📝 The Green Impact Report Quick take: The future of high-performance buildings isn't necessarily about adding more technology — it's about making smarter decisions. Mechanical engineering leader Dale Garfield breaks down why fundamentals, heat pumps, renewable-ready infrastructure, and owner-focused design matter as buildings move toward a lower-energy future. 🤝 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Dale Garfield's path to building engineering started somewhere unexpected: the United States Marine Corps. After serving as a combat engineer — including a deployment to Iraq — Dale returned to Wisconsin and began studying civil engineering technology at Mid-State Technical College. An instructor encouraged him to take the next step, eventually leading him to Milwaukee School of Engineering's Architectural Engineering Program. Since graduating, Dale has built a career spanning engineering firms, mechanical contractors, design-build environments, and integrated architecture and engineering. Today, he is a Mechanical Engineering Leader at EUA, where his experience touches projects ranging from K-12 schools and manufacturing facilities to corporate headquarters and shipbuilding facilities. Along the way, Dale also earned an executive MBA to strengthen the business and leadership side of his technical career. His approach to buildings is refreshingly straightforward: understand what matters to the owner, remember the fundamentals, and don't make a system more complicated than it needs to be. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Dale shares a practical engineer's perspective on making buildings more efficient without losing sight of the people who have to own, operate, and maintain them. 📚 Key Insight #1: High-performance design starts with the owner—not the technology. The Challenge: Sustainability can become an exercise in adding technology without first asking what the owner actually wants, needs, or can support. Budgets, operational capabilities, energy goals, and long-term priorities vary significantly from project to project. The Solution: Dale starts with the owner's expectations and builds efficiency into the design from there. That can mean variable frequency drives, condensing boilers, high-efficiency chillers, heat pumps, and other proven strategies — without overengineering the building simply for the sake of complexity. ROI: Owners get efficient systems aligned with their real operational and financial needs. Just as importantly, they get buildings that work and systems their teams can maintain. 🚀MKey Insight #2: Heat pumps can push efficiency forward—but mechanical systems can't get buildings to net zero alone. The Challenge: Engineers can improve heat recovery, heat pumps, chillers, and HVAC performance, but there's a physical limit to how far mechanical efficiency can go. As Dale points out, engineers still have to work within the fundamentals of thermodynamics. The Solution: Combine increasingly efficient mechanical systems with onsite renewable energy. Dale is also seeing projects prepare for the future by designing structural and electrical infrastructure that can support photovoltaic arrays later — even when solar isn't part of the initial construction. ROI: Solar-ready and renewable-ready infrastructure gives owners flexibility. Instead of paying for every sustainability measure on day one, they can create a building capable of adapting as economics, technology, energy priorities, and requirements change. 🧠 Key Insight #3: The best engineering solution is often the simplest one that actually works. The Challenge: Engineers can be tempted to solve problems with increasingly complicated systems. Complexity can create its own problems when owners and facilities teams eventually have to operate, troubleshoot, and maintain those systems. The Solution: Dale returns to a lesson he learned early in his career: keep it simple and remember the fundamentals. He also believes engineers need to stick with problems when they occur instead of distancing themselves when a project gets difficult. ROI: Straightforward, maintainable systems can reduce operational headaches while giving owners something arguably even more valuable: confidence that their engineering team will remain engaged when challenges arise. 💬 Sustainable Soundbite Options "Keep it simple. Remember the fundamentals. You can make these systems as complicated as you want, but at the end of the day, the owner wants something that works, functions and is maintainable." — Dale Garfield 🗓️ Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Ask what sustainability and energy performance actually mean to the owner before recommending another technology. Start with their priorities, operating realities, and long-term goals. This Quarter: Review an upcoming project for opportunities to improve mechanical efficiency without unnecessary complexity. Look at proven strategies such as heat pumps, heat recovery, variable frequency drives, high-efficiency equipment, and practical controls. This Year: Start designing for what the building may need next—not just what gets installed today. Explore solar-ready structural and electrical infrastructure and other strategies that can create a pathway toward lower-energy or net-zero-capable buildings. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🎙️ **Read the transcript: here** 🔗 Connect with Dale Garfield: 🏢 Explore EUA: [https://eua.com/,](https://eua.com/) https://eua.com/eua-people/dale-garfield/ 🌎 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dale-garfield/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💚 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques: Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

🌎 The Green Impact Report Quick take: What happens when AI adoption runs headfirst into energy constraints? Josh Rainbow sees technology, infrastructure, power, and sustainability becoming increasingly interconnected — and believes the winners will be the people who can turn emerging technology into measurable business outcomes. From running an AI-native company with roughly 250 AI agents to bringing global leaders together through Future Summit, Josh offers a fascinating look at where technology, energy, investment, and sustainability are heading next. 🫡 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Josh Rainbow is an entrepreneur, technology leader, investor, and founder of Future Summit, an international platform focused on bringing leaders together to accelerate trade, technology adoption, investment, and meaningful business relationships. Born and raised in Edmonton, Alberta, Josh moved to Calgary in his late teens and studied quantitative sciences at the University of Calgary, building a foundation in advanced mathematics, statistics, economics, and computer science before moving into technology. Today, his work spans events and media, AI advisory, venture investing, and global business development. Through Future Summit, Josh and his team work across technology, energy, data centers, infrastructure, finance, and other emerging sectors. His company has also embraced an AI-native operating model, using roughly 250 AI agents across functions including financial reporting, operations, project management, administration, marketing, sales, and research. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Josh Rainbow connects AI, energy, infrastructure, and sustainability — and challenges leaders to think about technology through the lens of real business outcomes: 📚 Key Insight #1: AI can make a business leaner — but automation needs to solve real business problems. The Challenge: Companies can become fascinated with emerging technology without connecting it to revenue, cost reduction, scalability, or another measurable business outcome. Josh learned that traditional businesses don't necessarily care how impressive a technology is — they care what it does for the business. The Solution: Josh's company has become AI-native, deploying roughly 250 AI agents across financial reporting, operations, administration, project management, marketing, sales, funnel research, and other functions. His philosophy is to apply technology directly to business problems rather than adopt it simply because it's new. ROI: Josh says these initiatives helped reduce his company's operating expenses by approximately 4 –50% year over year, allowing that capital to go back into the business while supporting both sustainability and scalability. 🫶 Key Insight #2: The AI revolution is quickly becoming an energy and infrastructure challenge. The Challenge: The next wave of AI requires enormous amounts of compute — and that compute requires reliable power. Josh argues that access to energy is becoming one of the major constraints facing data center and AI expansion. The Solution: Josh is closely watching technologies such as small modular nuclear reactors as potential tools for increasing future energy supply. While he acknowledges that SMRs remain expensive and highly regulated today, he sees the underlying need for abundant energy as critical to supporting continued technology growth. ROI: More reliable and abundant power could help unlock additional data center capacity and AI infrastructure. For businesses, Josh sees energy availability and financing becoming increasingly important factors in determining where and how quickly new compute infrastructure can scale. 💡 Key Insight #3: Technology only matters when it creates measurable business value. The Challenge: Technology conversations often start with the tool: Look at this incredible technology. But established companies aren't necessarily interested in innovation for innovation's sake. The Solution: Start with the business objective. Josh combines his background in technology with experience in sales and business strategy to understand how an organization makes money first — and then determine where technology can solve a meaningful problem. ROI: Connecting technology investment directly to revenue, operating costs, productivity, scalability, or another business objective gives executives a much clearer reason to invest. For sustainability professionals, the same mindset creates a stronger bridge between innovation and the business case needed to get projects approved. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite Options "I believe in paying it forward because that's how I've gotten to this point." — Josh Rainbow 🧗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Pick one repetitive task inside your sustainability, engineering, or operations workflow and ask whether AI could reduce the manual work. Start with the business problem — not the AI tool. This Quarter: Quantify the outcome. Track whether your technology initiatives are actually reducing operating expenses, increasing productivity, generating revenue, or creating another measurable benefit. This Year: Look beyond individual building technologies and evaluate the bigger infrastructure picture. Consider how energy availability, data centers, AI, automation, and emerging power technologies could affect your organization's long-term sustainability and technology strategy. Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🎙️ Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with Josh Rainbow: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshuarainbow/ Website: https://joshrainbow.com/ Learn more about Future Summit: futuresummit.ai 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 🧲 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

💟 The Green Impact Report Quick take: Sustainability targets are easy to announce. Making buildings actually perform against them? That's where things get complicated. Etrit Demaj makes the case that the next phase of green building will be powered by real-time operational data, interoperable building systems, and AI — not another static report. 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Etrit Demaj is an entrepreneur and co-founder of KodeLabs, a technology company working to make building systems and data easier to integrate, understand, and act on. Etrit immigrated to the United States from Kosovo in 1999 at age 10 and grew up in Rochester Hills, Michigan. After beginning his career at JPMorgan Chase, he moved into entrepreneurship, technology, and real estate. In 2017, Etrit and his team started KodeLabs around a big idea: buildings need an operating layer capable of connecting difficult, fragmented systems while giving owners the flexibility to add new applications and technologies. Today, that mission increasingly intersects with sustainability, decarbonization, real-time data, and AI. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Etrit Demaj challenges Green Building professionals to move sustainability from reporting into operations: 🧲 Key Insight #1: Sustainability needs real-time building data — not another static report. The Challenge: Owners and sustainability teams can set ambitious ESG and decarbonization targets without having a clear, real-time picture of how individual buildings are actually operating. Fragmented systems and inaccessible data make closing that gap difficult. The Solution: Build an operational data layer that connects building systems and makes their information usable across the organization. Etrit argues that sustainability professionals need to move beyond simply producing reports and learn to work with real building data. ROI: Better operational visibility gives teams the ability to track actual outcomes, connect sustainability initiatives to building performance, and demonstrate ROI instead of relying on disconnected reporting exercises. 📚 Key Insight #2: Interoperability is the foundation for smarter — and more sustainable — buildings. The Challenge: Every existing building is different. Some properties contain sophisticated building systems, while others may have only one or two systems worth integrating. That makes portfolio-wide smart-building strategies difficult to scale. The Solution: KodeLabs is building what Etrit describes as an operating system that makes difficult systems easier to integrate in an open way, with additional solutions and applications layered on top. The goal is to meet each building where it is instead of requiring every asset to start from the same technology baseline. ROI: A flexible integration strategy can make it easier to deploy technology across diverse portfolios rather than repeatedly treating every building as an isolated project. It also creates the data foundation needed for future AI and automation applications. ✅ Key Insight #3: The next sustainability leader may look a lot more like an engineer + data strategist. The Challenge: Sustainability has sometimes become disconnected from the day-to-day operation of buildings. Reporting targets alone don't tell teams how equipment is performing or what operational changes will produce measurable results. The Solution: Etrit sees sustainability becoming increasingly operational. Professionals who understand data, technology, engineering, and measurable ROI will be positioned to connect sustainability goals directly to building performance. ROI: Combining sustainability strategy with engineering and operational intelligence can help organizations identify real interventions, validate results, and build a stronger business case for decarbonization investments. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite "The buildings that are going to meet their sustainability targets are the ones with a real-time operational layer." — Etrit Demaj 🧗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Identify one sustainability metric you currently report and ask where the underlying building data actually comes from. Is it real-time, accessible, and actionable — or are you still piecing it together manually? This Quarter: Map the major systems and data sources across one building or portfolio. Look for integration gaps that prevent operations, engineering, and sustainability teams from working from the same information. This Year: Develop an operational data strategy that can support sustainability initiatives today while creating a foundation for AI, automation, and smarter building operations tomorrow. 💻 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 🎙️ Read the transcript: Here 🔗 Connect with Etrit Demaj: Website: https://kodelabs.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/etrit-demaj-7b2364b/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💟 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.

✅ The Green Impact Report Quick take: What if the greenest building innovation isn't waiting around the corner — it's already here? New Energy Works founder Jonathan Orpin makes the case for building better now, using durable timber structures, wood-fiber insulation, off-site construction, and mass timber to tackle carbon without sacrificing craft or economics. 👨‍🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Jonathan Orpin is the founder of New Energy Works, a timber framing and sustainable construction company celebrating 40 years in business. Jonathan's environmental roots stretch back to college, when he became deeply interested in environmentalism. New Energy Works initially explored cellulose insulation and solar energy before pivoting toward timber framing in the mid-1980s. Four decades later, the company works across residential timber framing, off-site panelization, glulam, and mass timber construction. New Energy Works is also 100% employee owned through an ESOP and operates around a triple-bottom-line philosophy of People, Planet, and Profit. Now, Jonathan is preparing for another kind of sustainable design challenge: building a leadership transition that allows the company and its values to thrive beyond its founder. 🌱Breaking Ground on Better Building In this episode, Jonathan challenges Green Building professionals to stop waiting for the next breakthrough and start scaling solutions we already know work: 🧠 Key Insight #1: Build the enclosure like a blanket — and attack thermal bridging from the outside. The Challenge: Conventional assemblies can introduce thermal bridges through studs and other structural components, while some insulation products carry significant global warming impacts of their own. The Solution: New Energy Works wraps its timber structures with exterior insulation and has increasingly shifted toward wood-fiber insulation. The company uses dense-packed wood fiber in cavities and rigid wood fiber outside the structure to break thermal bridges. Jonathan points to domestically manufactured wood-fiber insulation made from lower-grade trees as an especially exciting evolution. ROI: Better thermal performance can reduce operational energy demand, while wood fiber provides a lower-carbon insulation strategy. Off-site panelization also helps move work into a controlled shop environment, reducing field labor and accelerating installation. 🚀 Key Insight #2: Stop treating mass timber as "next." It's ready now. The Challenge: Concrete and steel remain foundational materials for commercial construction, but Jonathan argues their carbon impacts create an opportunity for lower-carbon structural alternatives. The Solution: New Energy Works is expanding its glulam and mass timber work on commercial projects, bringing wood into structures that might otherwise have relied more heavily on concrete and steel. ROI: Mass timber gives project teams another lever for addressing embodied carbon while creating highly crafted buildings. For Jonathan, the bigger opportunity is implementation: Green Building professionals already know enough to make better material decisions today. 🫶 Key Insight #3: Sustainability includes building companies—and buildings—that can outlast their founders. The Challenge: A durable building means little if the knowledge, culture, and values behind it disappear. Jonathan sees the same longevity challenge in business ownership as he does in construction. The Solution: New Energy Works became 100% employee owned through an ESOP as part of a long-term succession strategy. Jonathan is now preparing to transition from CEO to executive chair while searching for a leader who will preserve the company's commitment to community, craft, and People, Planet, and Profit. His advice to that future CEO is simple: listen, learn, then lead. ROI: Employee ownership creates a pathway for workers to participate in the value they help create while giving the company a succession mechanism designed to preserve its culture and mission. For founders, succession planning can turn decades of work into an organization capable of continuing beyond them. 🎧 Sustainable Soundbite "My suggestion to the new CEO is, listen, learn and then lead." — Jonathan Orpin 🧗 Your Green Building Action Plan Transform your next project with these steps: This Week: Review one current wall or roof assembly for thermal bridges and investigate whether wood-fiber insulation or continuous exterior insulation could improve the enclosure. This Quarter: Identify where your project could reduce reliance on higher-carbon structural materials and evaluate timber, glulam, mass timber, and FSC-certified wood where appropriate. This Year: Start measuring instead of assuming. Establish a repeatable process for tracking the carbon impacts of your materials and projects so your sustainability claims can increasingly be backed by data. 🔗 Connect & Learn More 🌿 Access full episode resources: https://www.gbes.com/podcast 📄 Read the transcript: here 🔗 Connect with Jonathan Orpin: 🌲 Website: https://newenergyworks.com/, https://pioneermillworks.com/ 🌍 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-orpin-1017868/ 💚 Join the Green Building Movement: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 📚 Want More Green Building Insights? Get sustainability tips 2x a week. Subscribe to our FREE newsletter here: https://www.greenbuilding.news/subscribe 💡 Today's Episode Sponsored By: Building Plaques Building Plaques creates custom LEED recognition plaques that tell the story of your project's sustainability achievement, made from architectural-grade anodized aluminum so they last as long as the building itself. Their online plaque designer lets you build a fully customized plaque in under 10 minutes. Just enter your LEED project number and you're off. 🔍 Learn more: https://buildingplaques.com Green Building Matters, Inc © 2026 | Good Green Fun.