Litigating green building standards?

NY Times:

Building green can open the door to plenty of legal pitfalls, a new study warns.

The study, by Harvard Law School’s Environmental Law & Policy Clinic and sponsored by Manko, Gold, Katcher & Fox, a Philadelphia law firm, says that green building raises a number of liability questions.

What if the building set out to meet LEED certification or other government green-building standards, but falls short, for example? What if it fails to garner expected tax breaks from the government for building green?

Already, according to Robert Fox, a managing partner with the Philadelphia firm, a number of legal disputes have arisen in the area of green building.

...
If you are building green for tax breaks, aren't you missing the point? These buildings are supposed to be energy efficient enough that operating costs are greatly reduced. Just paint your roof white and add insulation according to our energy secretary. For once someone is on to something. I put a white metal roof on my house when I built it over 10 years ago and also super insulated the walls and ceiling. The result was electric bulls that may exceed $200 about two or three times a year on a 2,500 square foot house.

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