James Scott Brew, FCSI, AIA, LEED AP is a Principal Architect with Rocky Mountain Institute and focuses on sustainable communities, campuses and cities. James has nearly 3 decades of experience in historic preservation (the oldest form of sustainable design), high-performance/low-energy buildings, and sustainable campus and city planning.

Some of his relevant work includes leading the RMI team on the city of Cambridge energy innovation workshop; serving on the lead panel and workshop for “Sustainable Mega-city: Jakarta, Indonesia”; co-leading the sustainability makeover of Deutsche Bank’s twin-tower headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany; leading the Urban Re:Vision “Framework for a Sustainable City Block” workshop; and more recently, participating in the RMI Campus Climate Initiative work, which involves uncovering the barriers to carbon neutrality on 12 campuses across the US, conducting workshops to identify solutions, and writing a guide to help all campuses find a pathway to improving their climate initiatives. James’ current research includes uncovering how community place-making and urban agriculture help create the low-carbon, livable communities we all seek in a post-carbon world.

Before joining Rocky Mountain Institute, James spent 18 years as a principal owner, vice-president and leader of sustainable design, growing his own Minnesota-based architecture and engineering firm from a small, single-focused firm, to over 165 people in 7 client-focused teams. While there, he developed and led 7 different market focus teams, and spent 6 years leading the transfer of a resource-efficient affordable housing technology from Japan to the US.

James is a frequent speaker at regional, national and international conferences on many aspects of sustainable design issues--leading us toward regenerative buildings and communities. He has been a presenter at USGBC’s greenbuild conference, the Healthcare Summit on Sustainability, and the World Conference on Sustainability in Canada, Norway, and Japan, the First International Conference on Building Energy & the Environment in Dalian, China, CROSSTALKS, the interdisciplinary exchange dialogue at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium, the 2nd International Conference on Climate Change (Hong Kong). He recently delivered the keynote at the Czech Green Building Council's founders ceremony and lectured at Czech Technical University.

As a regular contributor for broadcast and print media, James provides insight on topics of energy, housing, healthy building design, and sustainable communities. He has been a contributor to Business Week, CNBC Europe, TreeHugger, Grist, Popular Science, Builder and Plenty magazines.