Lots of people want to know what will happen to the green building movement during the current recession, the housing falloff and the retrenchment in commercial building. Here’s my take: the market situation may prove to be the catalyst for more rapid transformation, not less.

It’s hard not to forecast a recession when the U.S. economy has just taken this huge hit to the housing, fuel, auto and finance sectors. Yet much of the economy is blissfully unaware. People have savings, people move to where the jobs are, the New Economy continues to flourish, people hang onto their homes, there so many ways to respond.

What about green buildings and green homes? There is a continuing growth in this sub-market. In fact, green commercial buildings are no longer much of a sub-market, surging toward 20 percent of the U.S. new construction market this year.

Through the end of May 2008, there were more than 1,500 LEED-certified projects, more than 11,000 LEED-registered projects and more than 53,000 LEED Accredited Professionals, according to the latest U.S. Green Building Council statistics. In the first five months of 2008, new LEED projects (for the four major rating systems) increased by nearly 3,000 — a 35 percent increase on a cumulative basis. Projecting this five-month total to year-end 2008 yields something like an 80 percent increase in new projects, on top of a 75 percent increase in 2007 and a 50 percent increase in 2006.

In my new book, Choosing Green: The Home Buyer’s Guide to Good Green Homes (New Society Publishers), I systematically review what’s happening in the new home market in the U.S. and Canada. Fundamentally, what many builders are now doing, in the teeth of a housing recession unprecedented in nearly three decades, is putting green features into their homes and getting them certified by one of the more than 60 national, regional and local green home rating programs.

What’s going on here? Green buildings have a superb business case.

In recent months, many of you have seen the studies from CoStar that demonstrate the LEED-certified buildings and ENERGY STAR-rated buildings have higher rents, higher occupancies and greater resale values. As far as I’m concerned, the business case for commercial green buildings has been conclusively demonstrated.

Higher fuel costs are driving many people to invest in energy-efficient homes and offices. Not just today’s high prices matter, it’s the prospect of the low-energy-cost world finally disappearing. In my opinion, the country has no explicit national energy policy and no consensus on direction, an issue that the next president and next Congress are unlikely to deal with effectively, because any reduction in demand will likely require politically unpalatable higher fuel prices. So, individuals may have to devise their own strategies for the world they can foresee.

As a practical matter, I advise all my developer clients to build green, not only as a hedge against future fuel and electricity price increase, but also as a risk reduction measure. After all, if the future is so uncertain, why not build greater-valued buildings and more salable homes right now? If building green costs more, but offers far better returns, then let’s call the problem of higher cost a financing opportunity, not an economic reason not to build. For this reason, the Building Owners and Managers Association published its Model Green Lease, to encourage owners of existing buildings to pursue shared-savings programs with financial partners.

As for individual green building consultants, I don’t know of anyone who isn’t super busy this year, much more so than last year. After all, who’s going to assist with the more than 6,000 new LEED project registrations this year — more than 600 million new square feet of project area?

Bottom line: there’s no reason to back off on green buildings and energy-efficiency investments during the recession. In fact, I fully expect the current economic difficulties to lead to more, rather than less green buildings. Let’s see if I’m right!