Convo: Greg Kats on Improving Urban Livability
In this Convo of Flanigan’s Eco-Logic, Ted speaks with Greg Kats, Founder and CEO of the Smart Surfaces Coalition, a non-profit organization promoting the adoption of urban “smart surfaces” to improve urban livability. He is also a businessman, environmentalist, played substantial roles in developing the clean energy and green building industries, and is a long-time thought leader and investor in the transition to a low carbon economy.
Ted and Greg discuss his background, born in Paris, grew up in Connecticut. He attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for his BA, and received a joint graduate degree from Princeton in Public Administration, and Stanford in Business Administration, and is a Certified Energy Manager. They mention their time at Rocky Mountain Institute together, then focus on Greg’s career and current works.
Greg served as Managing Director of Good Energies, a several billion-dollar global clean energy fund investing in low carbon companies, and served for six years as the Director of Financing for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy at the US Department of Energy. Greg also played a large role in designing and developing LEED, the green building standard. He was hired by the World Bank to guide the creation of a new World Bank green building design standard. He was later hired by the Enterprise community partners to guide development of the first and still leading green design standard focused on low income housing, called Green Communities. Ted highlights Greg being the Founding Chairman of the International Performance Measurement and Verification Protocol (IPMVP), who built the Protocol into the global energy and water efficiency design and verification standard used in over $100 billion in building upgrades.
He founded the Smart Surfaces Coalition in 2019 to slow global warming, redress social inequity, and build urban resilience. It is a powerful collection of 40 leading organizations in urban health, sustainability, equity, architecture, energy, water, and urban policy dedicated to the adoption of “smart surfaces,” a set of technologies that allow cities to better manage sun and rain, save money, and create more livable communities. Smart surface solutions include a strategic combination of reflective roofs and pavements, porous pavements, green roofs, solar photovoltaics (PV), and trees, enabling cities to lower their temperatures despite global warming, as well as create increasingly resilient and livable infrastructure.