NEW YORK CITY-Skanska USA has resigned from the US Chamber of Commerce as a protest against the chamber's support of an initiative to discredit a more stringent LEED standard. The chamber is backing the American High-Performance Building Coalition, a lobbying group that Skanska says is seeking to effectively ban the future use of LEED for government buildings.

Specifically, Skanska says in a release, the AHPBC opposes the more stringent new LEEDv4 standards and is advocating an amendment to S.761, the Shaheen-Portman Energy Efficiency Bill, that would disallow voluntary LEED certification by the federal government. The New York City-based builder says in the release that company officials met with US Chamber leadership last week in an attempt to persuade the chamber to reconsider its position. After talks broke down, Skanska pulled its name and funding from the chamber, the release states.

Noting that the US Green Building Council's LEED program has helped bolster the sustainable movement into making a $554-biillion contribution to the US economy, Skanska USA's president and CEO, Mike McNally, says the chamber is “on the wrong side of this issue, and its support of the AHPBC is misplaced as well as misguided.” He notes that the chamber was created “to advocate for pro-business policies that create jobs and support our economy. The numbers prove that LEED and green building do just that. Because a few companies don't like the current LEED program, they want to involve the government and create an entirely new system for government buildings. This is exactly the kind of redundancy and bureaucracy that we pay the chamber to fight.”

McNally says that rather than supporting members “who continually innovate to create new products that straddle the line between responsible and profitable,” the chamber instead is supporting “a group of businesses who care more about protecting the status quo. Skanska can no longer lend its support to the chamber when it does not do right by the community it purports to serve.”

Watch GlobeSt.com for additional reporting on Skanska's move as well as the AHPBC.

Instant Insights /

Skanska Quits US Chamber Over Stance on LEED

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