As it turns out, the choice of this week's newsletter title is not ironic.

In the run-up to a new administration public leadership is on everyone's mind, so in honor of our year-end preoccupation, we highlight several articles having to do with public sector leadership.

On GreenBiz TV, a panel of professional pundits profoundly prognosticate presidential prospects pertaining to protecting our planet's precious people and possessions.

The U.K.'s The Guardian highlights the grossly skewed impact developed world countries have on the global environment when compared with developing countries in its findings that the 18,000 public buildings in the U.K. emit roughly 11 million tonnes of CO2 each year — more than the entire country of Kenya (population of 32 million).

Of course, people in glass public buildings…U.S. federal buildings, representing 3 percent of nonresidential floor area (two-thirds of it in the Department of Defense's portfolio), consume 650 trillion Btus per year, emitting close to 40 million tonnes of CO2 annually. However, based on a string of executive orders dating from the Nixon Administration, energy intensity of government buildings in 2010 is expected to be 70 percent of the national nonresidential average. All of these cool statistics by the way can be found in the Buildings Energy Databook published by the National Energy Technology Laboratory, with funding from the Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Speaking of DOE and federal building energy consumption, read about the $80 billion funding available to 16 qualified firms to implement performance contracts to reduce government building energy intensity (Btus/square foot) by 30 percent and water consumption by 16 percent as mandated by President Bush's executive order.

Finally, Owens Corning's innovative community energy master planning program is being implemented in Urumqi, China, (at 2.3 million people, the biggest city no one has ever heard of) with the objective to reduce energy-related emissions by up to 80 percent. If you can do it in Urumqi, you can do it anywhere.

Rob Watson
Executive Editor

Building Design+Construction offers free downloads of its series of white papers on sustainability. The nine-chapter 2008 series "Green Buildings + Climate Change" can be downloaded in its entirety or by chapter.

This exclusive one-day event will be held on February 2, 2009 at the PG&E Auditorium in San Francisco, California. The Forum will coincide with the release of GreenBiz.com’s State of Green Business 2009, our highly-acclaimed annual report on the status of corporate environmental trends and progress.