LEED Exposed; Pyke Resigns

The “GUID-gate” scandal that has rocked the green building world and brought the construction industry to a virtual standstill may be winding down.

April 1, 2014

In an emotional interview with Barbara Walters, Pyke maintained he had done nothing wrong and was only teary-eyed because he would “deeply, deeply miss USGBC’s database server capacity.”

Source: Screen capture

Research kingpin Chris Pyke, Ph.D., of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) finally resigned yesterday evening in the wake of an ongoing controversy dubbed “GUID-gate” by the New York Times, which has called it “the largest data-standardization scandal in the history of the Existing Commercial Buildings Working Group.”

“So big it’s GBIG”

“We’ve never seen anything like this before—a private nonprofit colluding with government officials to standardize the way multiple software applications keep track of building locations,“ said green building attorney Stuart Kaplow, also a commentator at Green Building Law Update. Alluding to USGBC’s “Green Building Information Gateway” website, he quipped, “This is so big, it’s GBIG.”

At the center of the scandal are emails between Pyke and various members of the U.S. Department of Energy, which EBN uncovered earlier this year through a Freedom of Information Act request. Littered with apparent code-names like “BUID,” “GUID,” and “SEED,” these emails involve the secret development of a building mapping system. The exchanges focus primarily on what Pyke refers to as “assigning identifiers to spaces and buildings.”

The pivotal “map” statement

The earliest messages between Pyke and his key DOE contact, Cody Taylor, energy technology and policy specialist in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), appear to be seeking ways to help local officials.

“I was looking at the new NYC benchmarking report today,” wrote Pyke to Taylor on September 6, 2012. “The tables of data are labeled: Borough, Block, Lot, Bin, and Building… Fantastic information, painfully hard to use in this form. I’m going to go off and work really hard on the ‘GUID’ project now.” (According to expert analysts we consulted, “GUID” is an obscure code for “globally unique identifier.”)

Several months later, things had spiraled out of control.

“In thinking specifically about the needs of cities with these building energy disclosure ordinances,” Taylor frantically typed to Pyke on March 5, 2013, “they also have the challenge of needing a way to automate almost the whole process to [sic] that hundreds of building owners in their cities don’t have to spend time finding their buildings on a map.”

Pyke’s ominous March 6 reply is the centerpiece of a class-action lawsuit led by the Green Building Initiative (GBI), developer of LEED’s rival, the Green Globes tool, and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance: “This issue of unique ID continues to be the most fundamental and ubiquitous problem that we face.”

PowerPoint shocker

Although Taylor denies responsibility for the sordid chain of events, saying he is “100% in favor of finding buildings on maps, actually” and claiming that “by the end, I don’t think even Chris could see clearly through the haze of acronyms,” some have argued that the nature of the project should have been obvious to DOE officials well before that explosive email was written.

The explosive wording of this PowerPoint slide should have alerted federal officials to questionable activities, claim anti-LEED advocates.

Source: Screen capture

In a shockingly revealing November 2012 PowerPoint presentation to the State and Local Energy Efficiency Action Network, a national group facilitated by DOE, one of Pyke’s slides said, “We propose defining buildings as spatial and temporal volumes associated with many aliases.” On the same slide, an image from the 1985 comedy film Fletch stares coldly at the viewer.

President Obama has reportedly requested the resignation of Taylor and several of Taylor’s colleagues at EERE.

Yet some commentators are more forgiving. “Indications are that the project failed to attain its ambitious yet sinister goals—or at least that no one has been able to figure out whether it succeeded,” said Kaplow. “Anyone who’s ever tried to use GBIG can tell you that.”

Green Globes response

In a statement made on behalf of GBI, Calvin M. Dooley, president of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), vehemently denied that any member of the GBI staff or board has ever exchanged technically focused, data-related emails with anyone in any federal agency—“Not that I would know,” he added, explaining that the two organizations “don’t really know each other that well.”

Dooley declined to answer questions about the lawsuit, offering instead a statement from the ACC. “ANSI true consensus process science-based life-cycle assessment stakeholders risk assessment ANSI,” noted the statement. “Risk assessment ANSI true consensus process life-cycle assessment science-based ANSI stakeholders.”

Pyke, meanwhile, continues to deny any wrongdoing and says his resignation had no connection with the scandal. “I am stepping down so I can spend more time with my data,” he said.

Editor’s Note: The above email exchange between Pyke and Taylor was quoted verbatim from actual documents obtained by EBN through Freedom of Information Act requests. See “Our FOIA Requests.”