• San Francisco's just-opened headquarters building for the city Public Utilities Commission incorporates designs that go beyond current LEED standards, aiming for what might be in LEED in the future, according to green-building professionals who held a meeting there to talk about it.
• The building is expected to use 32% less energy and 60% less water than a conventional building, and it has a system called the Living Machine that treats its 5,000 gallons a day of wastewater on-site.
• The Public Utilities building planners were able to justify upfront costs by building for a 100-year useful life over which to amortize them rather than the 30- or 40-year life spans often used for budgeting buildings.

From the article:

Government agencies and public utilities often get a bad rap when it comes to innovation: They are seen as cautious, bureaucratic and lumbering. ...