Washington’s Many Embassies Pledge to “Go Green”

Washington, D.C., Mayor Vincent Gray and Dutch Ambassador Renée Jones-Bos with the LEED Silver Certificate awarded to the Dutch Embassy by the U.S. Green Building Council.

Washington — In the elegant mansions that house many of the foreign embassies in Washington, even ambassadors must consider mundane questions, such as: How should these places get cleaned?

Answer: With eco-friendly cleaning supplies, of course.

And it’s not just the small things embassies will be doing to go green. They will be embarking on larger projects such as updating their heating and cooling facilities and treating stormwater.

To make it official, 51 embassies and international institutes joined with Washington Mayor Vincent Gray and State Department Under Secretary Patrick Kennedy to pledge to make their buildings and operations more environmentally sustainable. As part of a January 31 ceremony hosted by the Royal Netherlands Embassy, ambassadors and other high-ranking diplomatic officials signed the “District of Columbia Diplomatic Missions and International Institutions Environmental Performance, Climate, and Sustainability Pledge.”

The pledge, which is coordinated by the U.S. Department of State’s D.C. Greening Embassies Forum, is the first collaborative initiative of its kind to help make Washington the greenest city in the country.

“We believe that embassies are change leaders,” said Keith Curtis, senior energy adviser at the U.S. Department of Commerce. “Every government really wants to show the world it cares about climate change issues, that it has leading-edge technologies and that it is not just talking, but has programs that are really making a difference.”

“Solutions to global problems must find roots in local actions,” Kennedy said. “Small changes can yield big rewards.”

Kennedy cited as an example that the State Department not only is buying “green” computer equipment, it is making sure the equipment is run in a green way.

“We’ve discovered that by managing our computers better, by turning them off at night when personnel are not in the office, we can literally save millions of dollars, which not only helps us to be green, but lets us save that money and use it for meaningful projects in other ways,” Kennedy said.

The pledge signing was part of an ongoing D.C. Greening Embassies Forum officially launched by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2010. The forum meets on a quarterly basis to provide Washington-based foreign missions the opportunity to share best practices, challenges and experiences on green facility renovations and sustainable business operations.

With more than 175 embassies representing nations from around the world, the District of Columbia has one of the highest densities of foreign missions within a jurisdiction, making them significant entities in the city’s efforts to deal with environmental challenges.

“Cities are responsible for two-thirds of energy consumption, 60 percent of water consumption and 70 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions,” Gray said. “We need to make cities sustainable. We stand together to improve the health and livability of the District of Columbia. We are going to turn green practices into saved dollars.”

The text of the embassy environmental pledge (PDF, 317KB) is available on a D.C. government website. More information also is available on the State Department’s Climate Conversations website.