AGU Honored with the First Clean Energy DC Award

As the leader of an innovative, forward looking organization, I am proud to share that AGU received the very first Clean Energy DC Award to honor its commitment to sustainability through our newly renovated headquarters building, the first net-zero energy commercial renovation in Washington, D.C. This award was presented to AGU during the District Sustainability … Read more

100 Years of AGU: Our Building Legacy

By Janice Lachance, Executive Vice President of Strategic and Operational Excellence Editor’s Note: This blog post was originally shared on AGU’s building blog.  While AGU will formally kick off our Centennial in December of this year, we are building excitement this week by sharing information on the many programs Centennial will touch during our 2019 … Read more

The EPA – Secret Science and Transparency

Headshot of Chris McEntee

Today, AGU submitted a letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt in which we voiced a number of concerns about upcoming policy changes at the agency related to the transparency and accuracy of scientific information. (Read the full letter here.) Specifically, the letter calls out the problems with a proposed policy mandating that … Read more

Lessons from the Tohoku-Oki Earthquake

Seven years ago on 11 March 2011, the magnitude 9.0 Tohoku-Oki earthquake ripped hundreds kilometers of fault northeast of the island of Honshu, spawning a 38-meter-high tsunami that devastated a 1000 km-long stretch of coastline that had been described in the 1700s by Bashō as the most beautiful in all Japan (Ehrlich, 2013). The meltdown … Read more

Video: Renovating AGU’s Headquarters

“A building is a physical structure, but there’s no reason why a building as a physical structure can’t embody the vision of the organization.” – Chris McEntee, AGU Executive Director and CEO. Interior demolition of AGU’s headquarters has begun and AGU Executive Director and CEO Chris McEntee reflects on the reasons why the organization is … Read more

AGU Board of Directors Approves Groundbreaking Building Renovation to Start in Early 2017

Updated rendering of AGU headquarters building

Today, I am delighted to announce that our project team has reached the final stage and approval for the renovation of AGU’s headquarters building. This weekend, after a multiyear process, the project received final approval from AGU’s Board of Directors and is now ready to begin construction in March 2017. As I have shared previously, … Read more

AGU Receives City Zoning Approval to Move Forward with Final Project Planning Stages

The AGU building team presents at a BZA hearing

When AGU undertook the project to renovate our headquarters building nearly two years ago we had three goals in mind to ensure that the project would provide the highest level of benefit to our members: 1) to enhance visibility of and create a destination attraction for Earth and space science; 2) to advance the adoption … Read more

Major Milestone Achieved in Path to AGU Headquarters Renovation Approval

architectural rendering of the proposed renovations to AGU's headquarters building, including a new pv array on the roof

Earlier this Spring I shared a progress report on our plans to renovate AGU’s headquarters, with the goal of having the building become a living representation of our mission and the sciences we represent, celebrate and help to advance. I’m pleased to let you know that in late May we took a significant step forward … Read more