Chicago leapfrogs Clean Edge ranking of leading green building - Smart Energy Decisions

Commercial, Energy Efficiency, Solar, Wind  -  May 17, 2016

Chicago leapfrogs Clean Edge ranking of leading green building cities

Clean Edge on May 17 released its latest rankings of states and metro areas by their clean tech activities, including a breakdown of green building leaders by city, where Chicago moved up five places from last year to rank fourth in the nation. 

Washington, D.C., led in the green buildings category, which evaluates metros on their achievements in creating a more efficient building stock.  The nation's capitol lead second-place San Francisco by 14 points, while Boston ranked third. Seattle;Portland, Ore.; Minneapolis; Austin, Texas; Denver, Colo.; and San Jose, Calif. rounded out the top 10. 

The green building rankings were just a portion of  the results of 2016 edition of the U.S. Clean Tech Leadership Index, which tracks and ranks the clean-energy and clean-tech activities of all 50 states and the 50 largest metro areas in the U.S., including electric vehicle and renewable energy adoption as well as policy and investment activity. 

This year's top 10 states overall were California, Massachusetts, Vermont, Oregon, New York, Colorado, Illinois, Connecticut, Washington and Hawaii. The top 10 metros were San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Portland, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, Austin and Chicago.

Another notable finding of the report: 14 states now exceed 10% renewable energy generation, and the top three states — Iowa, South Dakota and Kansas — are at 31%, 25%, and 24% respectively.  Additionally, California became the first state to generate 10% of its in-state electricity from utility-scale and distributed solar, with Hawaii not far behind at 7%. 


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