Prospects for so-called green building business endeavors in the Hudson Valley and the New York metropolitan area have already blossomed into a multibillion-dollar industry, with abundant opportunity for new businesses to develop and thrive so long as they approach the market place with solid business plans, said a consultant specializing in eco-business.
But don”™t dawdle; the starter”™s pistol has already sounded.
Donald Perry, a self-described “eco-capitalist” addressing a room full of interested entrepreneurs, said locales as diverse as Pittsburgh and Syracuse are aggressively moving to become the East Coast center of green business. Thus, businesses hereabouts need to begin capitalizing on existing opportunities to secure the valley”™s place as a future home of green business initiatives, changing an existing ethos into opportunity.
Perry is founder and CEO of Shiva”™s Karma L.L.C., a Warwick-based strategic management consulting firm “dedicated to organizational transformation and regeneration,” according to its Web site. Perry also works with the Sullivan County Partnership for Economic Development on a project he developed to generate businesses in the green building and sustainable development markets.
He addressed the May 28 monthly entrepreneurs breakfast at the Hudson Valley Center for Innovation about opportunity in the green building field. Perry”™s past work was as a specialist in putting troubled firms back on track, and said he recently discovered burgeoning opportunity in green business. “This is the process of a turnaround guy re-inventing himself as an eco-capitalist,” he said, seeking to ride “a very exciting new wave that is taking over our economy.”
He cited the LEED standard (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council as an emerging benchmark for energy efficiency and environmental sensitivity in building projects. Perry cited a long roster of projects receiving LEED certification from Boston to Washington, D.C, and said the trend is clear.
In New York City there were 45 LEED-registered projects in 2004 and 107 in 2006. Halfway through 2007, the latest figures he cited, there were 86 LEED- registered projects. “These things are not going to go away,” Perry said. citing an estimated $8 billion worth of green building material needed in the tri-state area now, with continued growth assured by consumer and government concern about rising energy prices and the need to use less power to reduce carbon emissions.
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Perry identified “green” products such as bamboo hardwood floors, which is considered a green product since bamboo ”“ a member of the grass family ”“ grows much faster than traditional hardwoods. Solar fixtures are considered green, of course, but so are traditional lighting fixtures with LEED lighting, and energy efficient appliances.
Buildings can be made “green” with such techniques as using raised floors to enhance the flow of heating and cooling devices, he said, or using cotton insulation and low-volume toilets. These are not just feel good amenities, Perry said, but practical measures to lower the cost of home ownership over time as energy costs rise.
Additionally, he said, green building involves using materials that don”™t emit volatile organic compounds into the air. Such products mean a green building has better indoor quality, an increasingly attractive selling point as respiratory ailments such as asthma afflict ever-growing numbers.
All these materials are in short supply and offer abundant opportunity. But Perry said his experience has shown that many of the companies created in recent years to supply such needs are, in effect, mom-and-pop shops short on capital and with little expertise in marketing and little of the management savvy sought by venture capitalists. Thus, he said, there is literally hundreds of millions of dollars of potential investment capital awaiting a home.
Noting that the Hudson Valley and Ulster County in particular have a reputation as “not interested” in business development, he said the “change in paradigm” toward green building and sustainable development is a perfect chance for the region to marry its green ethos with economic development. But, he said, “You have a lot of work to do.”
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