Sure, but bear in mind Seattle's mentioned in the list not as "woo hoo, City Hall thought up this great thing", because as McGinn would admit, the City didn't start it.

Seattle is mentioned for "Seattle 2030 District", a private/public partnership which started before McGinn was mayor, when an ad hoc group of local sustainability professionals, downtown building owners, and a few interested City Light folks would meet off the clock to find ways to creatively meet the requirements of an energy-conservation bill Conlin introduced in 2009.

The real genesis goes even further back, to the 2006 adoption by the U.S. Conference of Mayors of the "2030 Challenge" setting out milestones to increase urban energy efficiency. By 2009 Gregoire was able to sign the "Efficiency First" bill, sponsored by Senate Dems including Phil Rockefeller, Jeanne Kohl-Welles and Ed Murray, to tighten urban commercial energy use and reporting. Soon afterward then-mayor Nickels proposed further strengthening and adapting the state law locally along the lines of recommendations developed since 2008 under what had become his federal-stimulus-funded Green Building Capital Initiative. That led Richard Conlin to introduce a bill for it that same year. Happily for McGinn, by the time the Council passed it he had taken office, so it was among the first bills the Council sent him to sign.

Also deserving applause for this is King County, which formalized its membership in Seattle 2030 District in January.

It's good to see federal stimulus money Nickels won in 2009 seeded the furtherance of the Seattle 2030 District to the point where now it's won further federal support.

But the true hero here is Brian Geller, the Seattle-based sustainability specialist at architects ZGF, who had the brainstorm to adapt to our downtown a similar effort he'd seen in Chicago. Without his countless hours of effort to gather and grow (and cultivate eventual formal government support for) his group of downtown building owners, a few friends at City Light, and some of his colleagues, all volunteering their time, our city would have missed a mention in today's announcement. It's nice to see McGinn mentions Geller on his blog; I hope he also invited Geller to stand beside him in Chicago to accept the recognition his effort truly deserves.