Episode 136: The “Recovering Real Estate Broker” Making Greener Buildings

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Welcome to Everybody in the Pool, the podcast where we dive deep into the innovative solutions and the brilliant minds who are tackling the climate crisis head on. I'm Molly Wood.

This week, let's talk about buildings, not data centers specifically, just plain old buildings, you know, the infrastructure of our lives and businesses that accounts for roughly 42% of global emissions. And let's combine it with the local action theme we've been exploring in recent episodes.

My guest this week spent more than two decades working in sustainability, innovation, and commercial real estate. He helped drive climate solutions work at LACI, the Los Angeles Clean Tech Incubator, and now he's trying to harness as much of California as possible toward green building standards, and ultimately, policy that can help the spaces we spend almost all our time in healthier, safer, cleaner, and more resilient.

Ben Stapleton: So my name is Ben Stapleton and I'm the CEO at the US Green Building Council of California. Uh, and, uh, our mission here is pretty simple. It's to help make California a more sustainable, resilient and equitable place for all. Um, I myself have been working at sort of the odd but fun intersection I would say of, uh, sustainability real estate and innovation now for, uh, over 20 years. I feel like I'm starting to get old. I'm definitely middle aged, but starting to get older and, uh, so I've been doing this work for a long time and at the end of the day we really kind of coordinate an ecosystem, uh, really to help improve our communities across the state. And, uh, buildings are really the, the tool we use to, to do that.

And, uh, what I like to say is everything that comes home in a building somewhere, whether that's energy, water, waste, health, and if you're lucky, even you will come home in a building at some point. So it's an opportunity to really impact, uh, lots of people in a positive way.

Molly Wood: USGBC California is relatively new, but this organization itself is not, right? It's been around at the national level for 30 years. Like what does the organization do? What are the goals, and then how does that translate into the statewide work that you talked about?

Ben Stapleton: Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. So the, the national organization is really well known for the LEED credential and certificate, so leadership around environmental engineering design. It's really the globally leading benchmark for, for green buildings. Um, this year, uh, actually they're really ramping up what's called LEED version five, which is really creating a, a, a newer, I think, improved approach to, to the, the LEED certification on, on buildings.

Uh, but LEED is a standard, you know, any state building that's built, most of 'em have to be built to a silver level of lead at this point. Uh, and most of our code has really followed a lot of what LEAD has has done, uh, so that that national organization really focuses on running that certification. They also have other certifications in their portfolio globally.

Um, we're an independent organization, independent financially, very different mission, independent board, and we're really focused on that direct community engagement, that education. Um, you know, I always sort of say we're certification agnostic, whether it's LEED or, or well, or living, living, building challenges. There's tons of different certifications out there for buildings, they all play a role. How do we really support the market acceleration? How do we help connect dots so that projects are happening faster? How do we help lift people up with education? And, and one of my personal goals is I want to help give, um, you know, everyone really more agency around the spaces that they're in, that they can have control over, over them.

And that that's our opportunity to positively influence health and, and reduce our costs for energy and water and all these things that, you know, I have this crazy idea that like if we, if our spaces, uh, cost us less to maintain and made us healthier, which also would reduce our costs, uh, and we had like, had a lot of jobs to help to, for people to do that work, it would actually like, really help us long term. And so that's kind of my, my mission.

Molly Wood: What a concept. [Laughs]

Ben Stapleton: Yeah. I know. It's crazy. Uh…

Molly Wood: And actually, that gets to kind of nicely, like in, I think in the, in year two of this podcast, we did a ton on built environment, but I think it's still always worth restating, you know, sort of what the climate impact of the built environment is and why this is such a specific and important sector to target.

Ben Stapleton: You know, one of the things that I think is really underrepresented is that buildings account globally for 42% of our emissions. Um, I feel like transportation gets a lot more focus, uh, but buildings account for such a, such a big load.

Um, and you know, some of that is, is operating in, in those buildings, which, which is what we call kinda operating carbon. And then a lot of that is embodied carbon, which goes with the manufacturing materials for buildings. And that's concrete, that's steel, it's glass, aluminum insulation, all the stuff that goes into the building. And, and you know, for the most part, you know that that embodied carbon, the stuff that's made for that building accounts for 65 to 85% of the lifetime carbon emissions of that building. Uh, and the balance is kind of that operating emissions and then also the end of life when it gets broken down.

So, you know, buildings are by far the largest, in fact, um, we've been working recently with the city of LA to update their, um, their climate, uh, plan for the city. And in LA specifically, buildings account for 65% of the emissions in LA. So the number of changes kind of based on your city, based on the density based on, you know, the, the housing stock, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so, um, yeah, I can't understate enough the importance of that. The other thing I would say is I feel like part of the reason I focus on the space is that, as I said at the beginning, everything comes home in a building.

So if you wanna deal with issues on energy, so you wanna dive into EV charging or energy storage, the thing is you need a building to do that. You need the site to do that.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Ben Stapleton: It's kinda the same thing around conserving water. Like yes, infrastructure plays important roles in this, but I, I look at infrastructure also as that built environment. Even landscape and site, we do a lot of work around native plants. We do a lot of work around, uh, home hardening and dealing with landscape to reduce fire risk. That's all part of the built environment, you know, that's around our, our, our, our homes or our buildings.

Molly Wood: When we talk about making, building greener though, you know, there's sort of everything from like light bulbs to I, you know, I don't know, concrete made out of mycelium, um, like what are the, the specific takes? You know, maybe, maybe an example of like a simple change that an architect could make in the building process. Maybe we’ll get into retrofits later.

Ben Stapleton: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so there's a couple things I think are just important principles.

Molly Wood: Yep.

Ben Stapleton: You know, one. Really looking at the beginning when you're designing a project, like what are the passive design elements? You know, how are you positioning this building and how it's gonna take advantage of, um, you know, the right, the right type of solar intensity during right parts of the day? How is it taking advantage of natural air flow, uh, and light, you know, so what does that site look like and what does the passive things you can do? Passive cooling, passive heating, ventilation, all these things for the building. That's just a great principle to embrace that reduces costs long term.

Secondly, from a design perspective, you know, big trend we've seen over the last years has really been around materials and having increasing transparency around what goes into those materials. Some of that is, is health related and around chemicals. You know, we wanna make sure there's no hazardous chemicals. Um, there's a list we call the, the red list that you wanna make sure that things are red list free doesn't have any of the bad stuff in it.

Uh, and then, um, the embodied carbon, which is really the emissions that went into producing those materials. We're getting more and more transparency around that and we're seeing more policy that's driving that. Uh, and that necessitates having data and, and tools like AI and others are better able to kind of estimate that, that environmental impact. And so I think as we see more transparency there. People will choose different materials to have in their spaces more and more over time, but at the same time, we're also improving their, their health and reducing their costs.

Molly Wood: Right. Um, okay. So a major priority of USGBC California is building performance standards, so transparency, but then also standards in terms of ongoing and future building. What does that, what does that look like and, and what does it mean for building owners who I know, I know any developer is like, we don't wanna talk about regulation or standards or, you know.

Ben Stapleton: Yeah.

Molly Wood: Ideally, maybe not any developer, but the… let’s just say the cartoon pic villain picture of the developer is, ‘I don't wanna have to care about this.’ [Laughs]

Ben Stapleton: [Laughs] Arrgh, you know…

Molly Wood: Yeah, that.

Ben Stapleton: Smoking their cigars. They, as they tee off at their, at their golf, golf bowl. Uh, I've done those things. It's totally, totally fine.

Molly Wood: You know…

Ben Stapleton: Yeah, so…

Molly Wood: It’s a good Halloween outfit.

Ben Stapleton: You know, building performance standards is one of these funny things. I feel like in the sustainability world, we sort of like glob on to acronyms and these terms that are wonky, that we're like, why doesn't everyone understand this? Doesn't this make sense?

Um, but so building performance standards is kind of what it says it is, to be honest with you. It's like, you know, setting the standard for how a building performs. We tend to look at energy use intensity. So how much energy is that building based on the type of use? So if it's office or industrial or a lab. Um, and, and per per square foot, right? So based on the size of that building and its purpose, how much energy is it using? And so we set a standard for that.

And then there's another term called carbon use intensity, which really just relates back to what is the, the carbon intensity of that energy that is used. So if we're using, um, and you know, if we have an all electric building that's on a renewable grid, well that carbon use intensity is gonna be very, very low. Uh, and potentially you could use more energy on site because it's not, it's not. You know, creating emissions. Uh, and at the same time, if, if we're using a building that's, you know, powered by gas or it's got other things in it that are, that are, uh, or it's on a grid that's not using renewable energy, then that's gonna have a higher carbon use intensity, right, of that building.

So, you know, as an organization, we're really advocating for having these, these sort of two standards. And the good news is, um, when we benchmark our buildings, a lot of the back end of that, that data, now it's got the carbon use intensity built in. It's getting that use intensity from the grid. It knows what that mix is. So, uh, the tools are there to support that process.

And actually the state of California started requiring that buildings over 50,000 square feet are benchmarked across the state. We can debate how accurate the data is and, and the reporting and all that, but, but that is a requirement. And a lot of bigger cities have also had their own benchmarking requirements for many years. They may go down to 20,000 feet and go down to lower, uh, square footage thresholds. And so really the, the evolution is then taking those benchmarking standards and then establishing a baseline and then at pushing buildings to im, improve.

So I always like to say that like we talk a lot about new design of new buildings, but the reality is, yeah, the buildings we have today are gonna be 98% of the buildings we have for the next 50 years.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Ben Stapleton: We need to focus on how we're reducing those impacts. And that's where building performance standards play a really critical role, 'cause it's basically looking at our buildings and saying, okay, this is where they're at. How do we make sure they improve by their, by their energy, use intensity by 5% in five years or 10 years, or 10% in 10 years. And we gotta be driving them to a place where they're getting better.

And when you think about electrification in general, which is I think really critical for us to meet our climate goals, that requires that we look at energy efficiency. It looks, it requires that we look at this energy intensity 'cause we can't just keep adding more and more to the grid. You know, we're seeing all that pushback right now with data centers. And so we need to be mindful of like, how are we being efficient? Then how we deploy that energy now into new, new uses. Whether that's, you know, EV charging or, or storage. You know, how are we replacing those gas appliances with heat pumps and stuff like that.

Molly Wood: Right. Talk to me about, you mentioned, um, one part of this that is actually state policy. Talk to me about the, the relationship between the standards and policy, and the levers for kind of getting those standards enforced.

Ben Stapleton: Yeah, it's a, it's a great question. So the, the good news is, I guess if, is that the standards will become policy eventually. There was a law passed in 2023 that essentially requires the state to have a building performance standard in place or study what that would look like, but by 2030.

Molly Wood: Okay.

Ben Stapleton: And so we've been working with the California Energy Commission or the CEC, uh, to help work with them to figure out what's the best approach. So the CEC has their goal, which is they have to create this reports and get that back to the states so they can make a determination.

Uh, we started working with just a couple of cities in early 2024 who approached us asking for help on building performance standards, 'cause it's kind of a wonky thing. And we now have over 50 cities and counties across the state. We convene once a month to talk about policy in this space. It's really created a great kind of peer collaborative of, of folks really helping each other. So whether they already have a policy, or maybe they're just thinking about a policy, they can feel comfortable in the safe space.

Um, and we're creating alignment and avoiding this sort of patchwork of different policy, where if I have a building here and I have one across the street, we don't wanna have very different policy. It makes it hard for the people who wanna do the good work to comply.

So we're making progress there, and, and that that peer collaborative you put together, we work with the California Energy Commission, we work with legislators and others. So the, the hope is that we're building out this sort of like local government policy, the city policy, and that the state will nest into that by 2030.

So some cities are being more aggressive. San Francisco, LA. City of West Hollywood just passed, uh, building performance standards in December of last year. We're gonna be helping to support the rollout there. And so the cities that are being more aggressive, that all should match up with state policy by the time the state gets there. So we're not dealing with a bunch of different stuff.

Molly Wood: Right.

Ben Stapleton: And so, uh, we actually, we created a building per, uh, a Building Resource Hub that we launched late last year where you can type in your address and get information on what is compliance for my building, how do I improve it? We built a special AI agent that's tailored to code and tailored to development guides, and we're gonna be adding a bunch of financing stuff in soon. So that's a pretty cool, pretty cool tool, and we're trying to simplify stuff that really is probably more complicated than it should be.

Molly Wood: Right, and, and certainly it just feels like it's worth saying no building has to wait until 2030. Like, the standards already exist, so they don't necessarily have to wait for it to become state law…

Ben Stapleton: That's right.

Molly Wood: Or policy in some way. It's like, feel free, feel free to align to these standards now, I assume.

Ben Stapleton: Yeah. Um, well, you know, it's funny, so I've been doing this work for a long time. I'm a recovering commercial real estate broker. I think I mentioned that.

Molly Wood: Yes. Mm-hmm.

Ben Stapleton: Uh, part of the reason I'm in this work is because I just fundamentally believe the business model we use for real estate valuation is flawed. It's not taken into account, uh, the impacts on the environment. It's not taking into account, um, the impacts of that building over time when we're dealing with issues around resilience and, and, and rise in energy costs and extreme heat and less available water.

So the smart investors who are investing in real estate, they're already looking at these things far out. They're requiring that buildings have LEED certifications or have, uh, gre- gre- because we have another acronym. GRESB, is a, is a standard that's used for investors and when they invest in real estate and, um, there's reporting that they have to do around sustainability metrics across the portfolio. A lot of real estate investors require that now. So you hear about this GRESB reporting that folks have to do every year.

And coming back to like, again, why people should do this now.

Molly Wood: Yeah

Ben Stapleton: So the reality is when you're reducing your energy costs and you're future proofing your building, you're creating higher red return and the higher ROI in that building. When I talk to people who run real estate portfolios over the last few years, their biggest increases in cost have been energy and insurance due to climate risk.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Ben Stapleton: So their biggest two increases in cost and, and insurance is actually listed number one. So increases in, in insurance due to climate risk and energy. Green buildings address both those things in very significant ways. And so, uh, smart investors should lean into that.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: Time for a quick break. When we come back, Ben and his family were among the thousands of people evacuated during the Palisades and Eaton fires in January 2025. We'll talk about rebuilding and resilience, as well as the organization's net zero accelerator for new building tech.

Welcome back to Everybody in the Pool. We're talking with Ben Stapleton of the US Green Building Council of California.

Molly Wood: So I wanna ask you about resilience and rebuilding because, you know, we are of course, in a time of, uh, extreme weather events and natural disasters. And you experienced the LA fires firsthand. Um, I believe you were evacuated, is that right? During the fires?

Ben Stapleton: Yeah, my family and I were evacuated for, uh, about five, six days from the heat and Fire. I, I live in Pasadena and fire stopped probably about a mile and a little bit of change from, from my house.

Molly Wood: Wow.

Ben Stapleton: And just know so many families and, and that have been impacted in, in a really big way, as I'm sure a lot of people do now with, with fires

Molly Wood: I mean, it's a, it, it feels like a collective California tragedy. I don't know anybody who doesn’t know someone.

Ben Stapleton: Yeah. It's kind of a collective global tragedy now.

Molly Wood: It is.

Ben Stapleton: Like honestly, I used, I used to go speak at events and I would ask, who here has a, has a friend or a relative who's been impacted by wildfire? And I would see like a couple hands in the room. This is going back probably six, seven years now.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Ben Stapleton: And, and now when I ask that question, it's like 90% of the room right, raises their hand. So…

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Ben Stapleton: It's, it's very much a global issue. And, and we started doing work post the Thomas and Woolsey Fires in the Ventura area to help folks look at rebuilding. And this was in 2019 when I first got here as a young green executive director, you know, um, way handsomer than I was now. I mean, it was really a, it was fabulous, fabulous time. But, uh…

Molly Wood: [Laughs] We’ll put a before and after pictures of, of you in the newsletter.

Ben Stapleton: [Laughs] Yeah, but we really, we learned how ill prepared we were for trauma and how long mistakes. I mean, we would get calls from people four or five years after those workshops who were looking for help.

And so that led us on a journey, like personally myself, I was blown away by how much you could do that was low cost, no cost to reduce fire risk. A lot is design principles around designing things so that they don't catch, um, you know, they don't, they don't catch ashes. They don't catch embers on, on the homes when there's wind blowing. Using materials like grates and other things that, that cover openings in your home so those embers can't find a place to, to lodge.

And then, uh, so much of it is around landscape and maintenance and how you don't create ladders of vegetation and making sure that, um, you're, you're, we wanna really preserve plants close to the home, but also you gotta make sure that they're, they're trimmed and they're well hydrated and you maybe just have mature trees and things aren't gonna burn. So there's a lot we've done around that.

So we started doing workshops and tours of hardened properties, and we released a wildfire defense toolkit. And then we launched training a few years ago now where we trained contractors and landscapers. We have this in the English and Spanish on how to reduce fire risk. We've had almost 3000 people go through that training now.

Um, so when these fires hit, several of my team members lost their homes. I was really impacted. I'm on the Blue Ribbon Commission for the, the county helping with rebuilding. So we quickly turned and we were kinda like, how can we use this content to help figure out how to rebuild the right way?

And you know, I was contacted by people all over the state in our community who'd lost homes. I think it was just a great moment of our California community coming together and saying, how can we help each other? We've tried to rebuild here. Like we had a lot of folks who had gone through the fires in Sonoma. And they were like, Hey, we tried to rebuild green and this is why it did not work and this is where we got shot down. And so they helped us think through how to go about it the right way.

And I told our team, like, if we could have 20% of these homes rebuild all electric using resilient materials, they won't burn again. Like that would be a major coup.

Molly Wood: Mm-hmm.

Ben Stapleton: I talked to folks who went through the Colorado, like the Marshall Fire in Colorado, and they said that over 80% of their homes rebuilt all electric and using, um, materials that are, are wildfire resistance because they provide the education. And got the information out there.

And so that's what we focused on. We launched a rebuilding guide. We have a training for contractors we do in English and Spanish once a month on rebuilding. And we're out in the community and it's blown me away, like just people's questions.

I did a presentation for over 600 senior citizens who had lost their homes in the Eaton fire, over 90% people of color. And they were all there because this was generational wealth for them. They weren't there for themselves. They were there for their kids and their grandkids and they wanted to build the right way so that they had a home that was, you know, not gonna burn again. And that was gonna have lower energy costs and, and not expose their kids to potentially hazardous chemicals and, and gas. And, and, um, and what a beautiful thing, right? To see those people be committed to that kind of work.

And, and so that gives me a lot of hope. And, and this process is gonna be so long to rebuild. And if anyone's gone and sat in the scale, the devastation, we lost 19,000 structures. And you kind of have to go, you can say that, and then when you see it, you're like, oh, that's what that means.

And uh, so it's gonna take a long time, but you know, it's happening and we're connecting with people and, um, you know, we're gonna do everything we can to help make sure it's done the right way.

Molly Wood: One thing that did happen is that the mayor of LA did waive the all electric building requirement around rebuilding in the, in the interest of kind of speed and affordability. You were somewhat outspoken about that.

Ben Stapleton: Mm-hmm.

Molly Wood: You know, it's, it, it feels like an example of when climate impacts resilience and, you know, and it's a, it's a difficult situation. You didn't wanna add cost and time. Um, and also there was a real opportunity to build back a hundred percent electric. Like where, where does that sit with you now?

Ben Stapleton: Yeah, I, um, I do think it was ill informed in that it's, the message it sent, I think was really bad, really poor in that, um, we know that building all electric can be done at par for cost for building with gas. When you build all electric, some of these things cost more money like heat, pump out, water heater, heat pump, HVAC, uh, induction cooktop, they may cost more money, uh, upfront, but you're not putting in all the pipes that you have to put in for gas. You're saving on that infrastructure.

Molly Wood: Right.

Ben Stapleton: Actually one of the things that's not very public right now is that you actually have to pay a hookup fee to get gas ran to your home when you rebuild. And that's not factored into your re, a lot of your rebuilding cost. And a lot of people don't aware of that.

Molly Wood: Hmm.

Ben Stapleton: And so building an electric home should be equal cost, could be even a little bit less. We've seen it be less and is gonna perform much better long term and have higher resale value. So if you're building for the future, California code already requires that homes are all electric ready and have solar, you know, in single family homes.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Ben Stapleton: Um, the code, you know, we look at what air quality management districts are doing in Southern California, the Bay Area, we're gonna start to have policy that requires when you sell a home that you're pulling out your gas appliances. When do I think that's gonna happen? I think that's gonna start happening phased in, in 2030, and we'll probably see it in full effect by 2035.

That may seem like a long way out, but if you're building a new home, it certainly doesn't make a lot of sense to invest in an old technology.

Molly Wood: Right.

Ben Stapleton: And I think the signal that was sent was that, oh, this is gonna be more expensive, or we wanna give people that choice. Why are we gonna rebuild in the communities where those homes are, it's, it's gonna have to, work has to be done anyway in the next 10 to 15 years…

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Ben Stapleton: You could maybe argue 20 years, but no longer than that. And why are we gonna continue to have potentially infrastructure that if we have an earthquake or a fire bears other risks? And so really seems sort of not well thought out to, to me.

Uh, and I think there's a lot of great arguments for building all electric that we just kinda said. So, but the question is really getting the education out there and getting more contractors educated on how to install the stuff the, the right way.

Molly Wood: Right. Especially as we know, to your point, this is already much more widespread and will continue to be widespread fire impacts.

Ben Stapleton: That's right. That's right.

Molly Wood: Yeah. Um, let's talk about a future, the future of Green Buildings because one of the other things that you do is run the Net Zero Accelerator…

Ben Stapleton: Mm-hmm.

Molly Wood: Which you describe as the fir, the World's first accelerator exclusively focused on net zero innovation for buildings. What, um, what can you tell us about that and maybe some of the technologies that are coming, coming through there?

Ben Stapleton: Yeah, so we started the Net Zero Accelerator in 2019, um, for a couple reasons. Uh, we really were hearing from folks who own, manage, design, develop buildings that there was all this policy really pushing for, um, them to have more energy efficient net zero assets, but they didn't have the solutions or they weren't cost effective.

And we really felt like, no, the solutions are there. They're just not being positioned properly. They don't maybe have the right connections. We need to really work on those business models and helping to accelerate the things that we have today to help solve these challenges.

And so, we have a great green building community here across California. And so what we did is we went out and built a group of, uh, folks who own, manage, develop design buildings, uh, build buildings, and who were fo- who cared about innovation and were focused on that. Um, and that group really advises our companies. They worked to help us pick the companies that we select every year to, to come into the accelerator.

Um, you know, we've had 120 companies in the program over the last six years and, uh, probably well over 60 or 80 pilots now. Um, that's, that's one area that as they get out to the world, it's sometimes hard for us to track all of them. Um, but we do a lot of connections and, and matchmaking and pilot management.

And every year the flavor of the companies changes a little bit, which I find sort of fascinating. I'm kind of like, what's the, what's the thing this year, you know. Some years we'll have a lot of material companies. Some years we've had a lot of occupant health companies that are focusing on HVAC. Um, we've had a lot of building automation companies.

Um, and so yeah, there's great solutions there and we just really try to get 'em on a pedestal into our community, create those authentic connections, and then we help, we put them through a core curriculum. We advise 'em on brand and storytelling. Um, you know, companies in the space really struggle to tell effective stories around, uh, solutions for buildings. And so we really try to humanize what that experience is. Uh, and then we focus on financing and project placement and stuff like that. Yeah.

Molly Wood: What is the, what has the accelerator been telling you? I mean, you mentioned that you suspect that this year we'll be heavily focused on electrification. Like what, what has the accelerator told you over the years about sort of where the industry is headed? You know, people, startups tend to happen in clusters.

Ben Stapleton: Yeah.

Molly Wood: Um, yeah. What’s the, what the hotness?

Ben Stapleton: What's the hotness? What’s the hotness? I like that.

Um, so I think that the trends we'll see, we continue to see really interesting, um, approaches, especially around like a trend I'm seeing right now is just definitely around material reuse.

Molly Wood: Cool

Ben Stapleton: And how we create solutions that can help us deconstruct. Materials in the right way, um, so they can be sold or reused properly.

And I think that trend will continue. And, and one of the projects I wanna try to work on the next couple years is doing some more workforce development training around how to deconstruct for building something new, 'cause when we demo a building, it's not being demoed the right way necessarily to salvage that stuff and, and prepare it for the next way.

There's a way to do that. I think that's a great workforce development opportunity for a lot of our cities. So I think that's a trend.

Molly Wood: Yeah.

Ben Stapleton: Um, I still think we're gonna see a lot of, you know, it's funny, so many years, there's all this stuff around automating buildings and then I think we kind of crested that sort of rise where everyone was like, okay, now I've got like, sort of like the information because a lot of it was trying to get data to automate.

And then it was like, then we hit it this wave of like, help me make sense of all this data. Now that I have it. Like I have all this data, I need to figure out how do I make sense of this data? And I hope we're now in this next phase, which is like, great, I have the data, you told me what to do, can you actually just help me do it instead of uh, uh, just telling me what it is.

And so I think that's kind where we’re heading. And I think that's, that's kind of where AI's helping too. It's like it can take all this data input now and, and help us, uh, come up with actual projects, but then hopefully we'll have more time and money to do those projects, 'cause we've simplified the data collection insight process.

Molly Wood: Um, and then I guess finally, you know, like you're on the, you're, you're seeing a lot of things. You see a lot of cool technologies come through. You see a lot of maybe policy behavior that we don't see. We know we're at a time when, of course, the federal government is pulling back on climate, and so local and state action is more important than ever. What, like, where's your hope? You know, what are you most, what keeps you most hopeful these days?

Ben Stapleton: Wait, Molly is the federal government pulling back on climate? Did something happen? Did something…?

Molly Wood: I hate to be the bearer of the bad news here…

Ben Stapleton: Do I need to check my phone right now? [Laughs]

Molly Wood: [Laughs] There's been a, there's been a tch of a retreat.

Ben Stapleton: Oh, oh. Um.

Molly Wood: A tiptoeing away, if you will.

Ben Stapleton: Yes, yes, there has been. You know, it's, it's sort of, it's fascinating having lived through like the first Trump administration and being, working in this space and then seeing the Biden administration come in and living through it again, you know, being in a different place, but still in the sector.

Like the first time when Trump was elected, I mean, I, I was running the Clean Tech Incubator and like, I'll never forget that next day we came in and people were crying in the hallways. It was like, you know, terrible, you know.

Then we had the Biden administration came in. I think we got comfortable for four years of like, oh, someone actually cares and believes in what we're doing, and is putting money into it. And that's so great. Uh, what, how nice is this to have this kind of…

Molly Wood: Right.

Ben Stapleton: Infrastructure and support? And then now we're back with, you know, I'm gonna need to unpack the Trump administration, but obviously much more organized and deliberate, uh, administration in terms of what they're doing.

And, you know, I wrote a letter after Trump was elected that really was this sent out to our community, which was like, look, the the truth is it was always gonna be us, right? You know, we got, we got comfortable for a while that we were getting help. Um, and the work really happens between people like you and me. It happens on specific projects. It happens on a local government level.

Um, so the importance is to not get caught up in the noise. Um, to focus on how do we create a positive return for people and how do we continue to elevate how we're helping to address health issues? We're helping to address climate resilience issues, reducing the risk of things like heat and fire and, and drought and flood, things that people really care about and how do we support people in their communities? And the more we focus on that, the more the work will happen.

And, and we really try to bring together people here in positivity amongst our community and have a focus on action and on real projects, 'cause people need real things that I think are tangible they can work on in their communities that they feel positive about right now. Because it's hard to get that in in other places. And we really try to offer that.

And you know, for me it's great. Like we have these projects. We do, um, we call 'em environmental justice projects. We're doing four right now across California, we're actually gonna open up an RFP to do five more, uh, for next year where people submit. And we, right now we're doing a shade structure in Fresno. We're doing a green, uh, parkway in San Diego. We're doing a mobile home park in Orange County for elect- electrification in efficiency. And we're doing a community garden in the Bay Area. And there's all different projects, but. We got people coming out from the community and sometimes people are putting a shovel on the ground and just digging holes. Sometimes they're designing things, sometimes they're bringing in free product they were able to get to help build something, right? And, and people need that kind of outlet right now.

And so what gives me positivity to directly answer your question is, is the people. Like when you talk to people one-on-one, when you give people that kind of outlet, um, it gives you so much hope. And when you spend more time talking to people, I find you have more hope. And when you spend more time drowning in kinda the news and, and the other things that are out there and not being out in, in the world, I think you, you can be overwhelming and you can have less hope.

So I think it's this fine balance we have to strike. I, I kind of like to think about it. Like I zoom in and I zoom out. You know, some days I zoom out. And I get that overwhelming feeling right, of all this stuff happening and, and the craziness. And sometimes you need to do that so you're not oblivious and you know what's going on and you're aware. And then you also need to focus on zooming in on what's around you and to find that positivity and to do the work, um, and not be distracted. And I think the challenge for us is to really mind the, the two.

Molly Wood: Ben Stapleton is the CEO of USGBC California. Thanks so much for the time.

Ben Stapleton: Thank you for having me today. Yeah. Appreciate it.

Molly Wood Voice-Over: That's it for this episode of Everybody in the Pool. Thank you so much for listening.

If you're listening to this in real time and you're in the San Francisco Bay Area, next week is the California Green Building Conference on May 27th and 28th in Berkeley. It's not too late to attend. I will be there. I'll be leading a roundtable discussion and, of course, listening and learning.

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