The U.S. Green Building Council is hard at work every day enabling more buildings to become green buildings. The Mass. Chapter fosters a sense of community among practitioners and helps connect people so it's easier to build the right team to tackle the challenge of making a building green. At the end of August, we had 931 LEED certified homes & buildings in the State. The most recent to earn LEED Platinum is the Mass. Green High Performance Computing Center in Holyoke - congratulations to the consortium of partners who made it happen: MIT, BU, Harvard, UMass, Northeastern, Cisco, EMC, and the State of Massachusetts. Boston was recently named the "Most Energy Efficient City" in the US by the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). By encouraging citizens to be more energy conscious, and by implementing policies to require greener buildings in the city, Boston is making life healthier and better for its residents. "We couldn't be more proud of our progress in creating a greener, healthier city," said mayor Thomas Menino. "Boston is a world-class city, and we know that our economic prosperity is tied to its 'greenovation,' which has helped create jobs and improve our bottom-line." Thank you to the new national members of the USGBC: Urban Meritage, LLC; Arborjet, Inc.; American Engineered Fabrics, Inc.; Brait Builders; L/R Construction and Green Footprints Commissioning, Inc. ...and to the over 100 renewing members in the past two months! What's coming up? The LEED Project Showcase in Cambridge, October 17 - Contact the USGBC-MA for information on how you can show off your LEED success story at the Showcase:usgbcma.org Ecodistricts Conference in Boston, November 12-14 - Connect with urban planners, real estate developers, and community proponents at the world's largest sustainable urban development gathering. Ecodistricts are an innovative way of coordinating design, operation and utilization of buildings in cities. Learn more at ecodistricts.org Grey Lee, MSc, LEED AP, is the executive director of the USGBC Mass. Chapter, Boston and is a monthly contributing author for the New England Real Estate Journal's Green Building section.