Lots of folks have focused on Mayor Mike McGinn's more controversial local fights, but—agree with him or not on the tunnel, bike lanes, banning cars—he's continuing to carry the civic torch to distinguish Seattle as a national leader on environmental policy. Today he's in Chicago with Bill Clinton and Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, who named Seattle, Atlanta, an Los Angeles as the three incubator cities on the Better Buildings Challenge. It's part of a national project to increase buildings' energy efficiency 20 percent by 2020.

Energy efficiency, McGinn says, is a potential industry for Seattle. "The sector can be as big for us in the long run as software and global health," he posits. "Every city and county in the world is trying to figure out how to get off of coal and oil, and the cities that figure it out first are going to be leaders in exporting ideas and products to the rest of the world."

Along with 11 NGOs, Seattle is up for the recognition, in part, because the city has been at the vanguard of environmental progress—LEED certification for buildings, goals for carbon neutrality, a green-jobs program, etc. The White House wants Seattle to have "23 million feet of downtown buildings will meet or exceed Better Building Challenge goals," according to its announcement today. What does this mean in the immediate future? In the short term, technical assistance from the feds, McGinn says, but after that "one hopes for federal grants and private investment."