California's new standards to spur green design

PALM SPRINGS, Calif (Reuters) - The nation's first statewide mandatory green building code set by environmental trendsetter California will spur sustainable design, the chief executive of Autodesk Inc said on Wednesday.

"I think it's actually good that government agencies get into the policy or the habit of setting environmental policy. For years, there have been building codes related to fire and safety and everything else. That's how it gets enforced," Autodesk's chief executive Carl Bass said in a phone interview with Reuters.

Bass said that Autodesk also hopes to supply emerging clean technology companies with software to design and simulate their projects and has ramped up a program to grant free software to start-up clean tech firms. He declined to say how big that market could be for Autodesk.

California last week adopted a mandatory green building code -- dubbed "CalGreen" -- which sets out specific constraints for newly constructed buildings and is the first such state-wide green mandate in the United States.

Among its measures, it requires water consumption to be cut by 20 percent, half of construction waste diverted from landfills and installation of low-pollutant emitting materials.

The code's adoption sparked some controversy among parts of the building sector, which argued the new mandate would clash with the existing voluntary green building label called "LEED" and effectively create a confusing two-tier rating system.

The executive of Autodesk called LEED a good first step.

Autodesk makes the design software AutoCAD used by architects, engineers and other in the construction, manufacturing and engineering sectors to model two-dimensional and three-dimensional graphics.

"Building codes are mandatory and I think they can be more specific to local areas and I think it will force every building to actually do it," Bass said.

Building construction and operation account for some 47 percent of the United States' carbon footprint, nearly double that of the transportation industry.

California's new green code is estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 3 million metric tons by 2020 and help it reach its environmental targest.

Autodesk's competitors include Adobe Systems Inc, and Parametric Technology Corp.

(Reporting by Laura Isensee; editing by Carol Bishopric)