The U.S. Green Building Council California (USGBC California or USGBC-CA) announced its 23rd annual California Green Building Conference, an impact-oriented event that is the largest and longest-running gathering of leading advocates across California's public and private sectors. The event, Thursday, May 23, 2024, at The Beehive, a SoLa Impact Company in South Los Angeles, has evolved into the West Coast's premier green building conference, featuring over 90 exhibitors and community partners, with speakers from across the industry spectrum. The Conference is a dynamic platform for sharing expertise and knowledge in sustainability, fostering a collaborative environment for all to engage in the pressing topics driving climate change and the innovative solutions at the forefront of addressing it.
 
The USGBC California team looks forward to welcoming sustainability leaders from across California and beyond to gather, learn from one another, and find ways to take collaborative action to create forward progress on green building policy, workforce development, and decarbonization. Registration for the Conference is open; please click here.
 
 The Conference design offers a rich learning and networking experience for all attendees. It features 16 Workshop sessions, 30 lunch Table Talks, and 20 Collective Impact™ Case Studies (ten minutes each) throughout the day. This diverse format ensures a comprehensive exploration of the conference themes and ample time for interactive discussions and knowledge sharing, fostering a dynamic and engaging environment for all participants.
 

 “The underlying theme of this year’s conference is unification, and we are at an important moment in an election year where we can bring together green building leaders from across the state to strengthen our connections and learn from one another,” states Ben Stapleton, Executive Director, USGBC California. “There is no place quite like California that offers an unparalleled opportunity for technology innovation, diverse collaboration and, ultimately, acceleration of policy and action in the fight against climate change.”
 
 Session Highlights include efforts to address hot topics across sustainability: 

• Addressing the ongoing wildfire crisis, “Nature-Based Approaches to Wildfire Mitigation in the Built Environment” will explore innovative strategies and solutions for mitigating wildfires in our built environment. This session is part of the Nature-Based Solutions track of sessions.
• Material waste discussions are on the rise, and “Advancing Deconstruction and Materials Reuse in the Built Environment” will explore all facets of mitigating waste in the built environment, from residential to commercial.
• “Zero Emission Equipment: Technicalities, Use Case, and Benefits” is a key part of the increasingly important focus on Clean Construction for the benefit of workers and the surrounding community
• Equity is at the center of two sessions: “Workshop Multifamily E.V. Charging – Where are we Headed: Collaborating with Local Government, Incentives, and Private Finance,” addressing strategies and inclusivity in infrastructure design inclusive of the marginalized communities often most impacted by the drivers of climate change; and “2% for Impact”, which introduces an innovative standard where dedicating just 2%—1% design and 1% construction—of total project costs to community impact initiatives, yields a 100% impact return for both public and private sector developments.
• Addressing the TV/Film & Live Event world, “Bringing together Film, TV, Music, and Sports to address the Entertainment Industry's Green Workforce” focuses on the current state of sustainability, building educational capacity, best environmental practices, and unifying entertainment workers around new sustainable education for any person in the industry.
• On health and wellness in the campus sector, two Workshops showcase the great work local sustainability leaders have achieved on educational campuses throughout Los Angeles to attain net-zero through design for rapid decarbonization and the opportunity for others to replicate the work through data-driven innovations, respectively, “The Living Laboratory: Sustainable Performance through Modern Computation” and “Achieving Net-zero Energy through LACCD's Digital Twin”.
• Especially as the heat of summer approaches and manufacturers and operations grapple with strained energy grids, “Grid Resilience: Electrifying the Inland Empire” reviews a new paradigm in energy management.