Efficiency Maine is raising Business Program incentives by 25% for all applications received between September 1 and December 31, 2009. This covers all prescriptive and approved custom incentives for energy-efficient equipment. In addition to the increased incentive levels, the cap on incentives a business can receive in one year has been raised from $100,000 to $300,000 for the foreseeable future.

Builders covet LEED certification — it stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design — as a way to gain tax credits, attract tenants, charge premium rents and project an image of environmental responsibility. But the gap between design and construction, which LEED certifies, and how some buildings actually perform led the program last week to announce that it would begin collecting information about energy use from all the buildings it certifies. (NYTimes, August 31, 2009)

Read the entire New York Times article here.

The Shocking (Old) Truth About LEED (read the Jetson Green article as well)