The Somerset County Business Partnership, in late 2006, set up the Green Building Task Force, aimed at encouraging adoption of green building design concepts for county, municipal and educational facilities. "The motivation was to provide long-term energy savings for county taxpayers while creating a more productive working environment for employees," says a spokesman.

The process has resulted, to date, in publication of the Somerset County High Performance Building Program, a public policy document defining standards for the implementation of green design and construction. It consists of three documents that will be made available to both the public and private sector in the county:

• The Policy and Implementation Model will guide public officials toward adoption of a green building program.
• The Building Program Toolkit will provide guidelines for implementation for building code officials, municipal engineers and administrators.
• Program Requirements is the summary of performance goals.The "toolkit," said to be the first of its kind in New Jersey, focuses on specific policy—how to create new high-performance public buildings through the application of green design standards developed and defined by the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED program.Overall, the program establishes two primary goals:
• Create public buildings that generate taxpayer savings by reducing building operating costs and increasing user productivity.
• To "demystify" the process of reviewing the design of a high-performance building to provide the county and municipalities with a tool for planning and building departments.