Kresge Foundation Announces New Green Building Standards for Higher Education Challenge Grants
Kresge Foundation Announces New Green Building Standards for Higher Education Challenge Grants
The Kresge Foundation has announced that as of next year it will only award capital challenge grants to colleges and universities building environmentally sustainable facilities.
As of June 2010, Kresge will only consider proposals for capital grants from institutions that plan to use the funding for projects — new construction, renovations, and expansions — that meet the "silver" or higher-level certification standards established by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Engineering and Environmental Design (LEED) program or an equivalent rating agency.
In addition, the foundation announced it would provide special assistance to financially strapped and underresourced institutions to enhance their knowledge of green building practices. To that end, Kresge recently awarded a three-year, $1.2 million grant to Second Nature to help historically black colleges and universities, Hispanic-serving institutions, tribal colleges and universities, and the U.S. Department of Education's Title III and V institutions develop green building projects on their campuses.
"The Kresge Foundation is very concerned about the long-term impact of global climate change and deeply committed to environmental conservation, which is one of our nine core values," said Kresge education program director William F.L. Moses. "We believe it is important that the nation's colleges and universities, which have been among the leaders in building green facilities, attain high environmental standards in their building projects."
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