It’s appropriate that the New York Jets wear green — or at least it was. When New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced in 2002 a bold plan to transform Midtown Manhattan’s west side near the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center with a new stadium for the National Football League’s New York Jets (also part of the city’s Olympic bid), the proposed design represented what would have been easily the greenest facility of its kind in the world. Designed by New York’s Kohn Pederson Fox Architects (KPFA), with key assistance from London engineering firm Battle McCarthy, the stadium was to generate enough renewable energy to provide power not only for the 80,000 spectators gathering there, but even the surrounding neighborhood along the Hudson River.

Unfortunately for some green architecture enthusiasts, neighborhood opposition stalled the plan’s development. New York City lost the Olympics to London, and the Jets decided to remain beside the Meadowlands swamps in East Rutherford, N.J., where the team’s current shared venue, Giants Stadium, is located. In the five years since KPFA’s Manhattan stadium plan was first announced, there has not been another stadium to come along with a similar level of sustainability.

At the same time, each new stadium project brings a host of opportunities to save energy and, for all the millions of tons of concrete, steel and asphalt inevitably devoted to them, a chance to leave an ecologically sound impact upon the site and its surrounding environment. And while no other modern palace for pro football or baseball players will have a surplus of energy to give back to its neighborhood, many of today’s stadiums are utilizing next-generation materials and technologies to save money and reflect the values of the communities where they are located.

The first sports-team project to earn certification under the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) was not a stadium, but a $34 million training facility and administrative headquarters for the Detroit Lions in Allen Park, Mich., designed by Gensler, a San Francisco-based architecture firm. The building includes bamboo flooring, nontoxic building materials and daylighting; the training field is surfaced with FieldTurf, a synthetic turf with backing made from recycled tires and athletic shoes; and the project team made efforts to preserve surrounding wetlands.

Medlar Field at Lubrano Park, a $30 million, 5,400-seat baseball stadium on the Penn State campus in State College, Penn., has the distinction of being the first ballpark ever to earn LEED certification. Highlights include water-efficient landscaping, a 76 percent construction waste recycling rate and power provided in part by a wind turbine system.

A new baseball park planned for the Washington, D.C., Nationals may raise the bar for built American stadiums. The $311 million Nationals Park, designed by HOK Sport of Kansas City, Mo., and set for completion in 2008, will feature a host of measures designed to foster efficient use of energy, water and materials. The stadium includes a 6,300-square-foot green roof over the concession stands, a field lighting system that achieves an energy savings of 21 percent compared to standard code requirements, and water systems that reduce water use by 37 percent through low-flow fixtures and other means. Unlike the failed New York Jets stadium, which faced community opposition in part because of projected traffic increases and corresponding air quality impacts disclosed in the project’s environmental review, the 41,000-seat Nationals Park plan includes just 1,225 parking spaces, and the team is working with city planners to encourage fans to use the Metro subway system.