The Yudelson Associates Blog: What's New

Friday, October 19, 2007

Campus Sustainability Rocks!

Started only in January, 2006, AASHE now has more than 420 members, including 320 colleges and universities, according to the AASHE Bulletin. In addition, 5 new institutions have joined more than 400 others in American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment , signing in the last month. In doing so, these campuses have committed to develop comprehensive plans for achieving climate neutrality. The new campuses include Rice Univeristy, Laney College (Oakland, CA), Merritt College (Oakland, CA), College of Alameda (CA) and Trinity University (TX). All told, 415 college and university presidents and chancellors have now signed the Commitment. The fast growing success of both AASHE and the Presidents Climate Commitment show the power of the sustainability message in higher education. Green buildings will be a key part of meeting this commitment, both new, renovated and remodeled.

Posted by Jerry on 10/19/2007 at 08:13 AM

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Monday, October 15, 2007

Ecoefficiency and Ecoeffectiveness:  An Excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s “Green Building A to Z”

Architect and sustainable design expert William McDonough exhorts green building designers not to be content with just “doing less-bad” designs that put off the day of reckoning for excessive energy and water use, but to design buildings and cities that are “positively good.” When our focus is primarily on “eco-efficiency,” that is, reducing our negative impacts, we are not likely to achieve design breakthroughs. For example, saving 20% of the energy of a standard building is a virtue, but energy use still creates lots of carbon dioxide emissions and pollution from electric power production. If we save 30% of the water use of a standard building, we are still using far more water than the building receives as rainfall.

Some experts tell us that our environmental impacts have to be reduced 90% or more to begin to reverse the decline in the Earth’s supportive ecosystems and to relieve the stress on energy and water resources. Such a “Factor 10” building is a long way from our current focus on “Factor 1.5” buildings that might reduce impacts of building construction and operations by 33% on average. (At this time, a good LEED-certified building reduces water use by about 30% and energy use by 30% to 50%, compared with the average of all buildings.)

Economists have long analyzed the “externalities” of modern life, wherein a factory, for example, is more profitable when it is able to unload its pollution and resource depletion on the environment, without having to pay for all the consequences. One can think of the past 30 years of pollution control regulations as an attempt to make business and government “internalize” the full external costs of their pollution, so that they would decide not to create it in the first place.

In an “eco-effective” analysis, one would “internalize the externalities,” for example, by performing a life-cycle analysis of all materials produced, including their upstream (cost of materials, cost of transportation, type of labor) and downstream (recyclability, reusability) environmental and social costs. The figure above shows how this approach might look conceptually. Sustainability implies that, together, we have to agree to live primarily on “natural capital” (renewable resources and biodiversity) for a long period of time, using non-renewable resources at a much slower rate, perhaps eventually not at all.

This is an excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s book, Green Building A to Z: Understanding the Language of Green Building.

Click here to download the PDF version.

Posted by Sky on 10/15/2007 at 03:54 PM

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Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Commissioning:  An Excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s “Green Building A to Z”

Building commissioning is a high-value-added activity that is unknown outside the building industry. Think of a ship; when construction is finished, it’s time for sea trials. Long before a vessel sets out on a mission or voyage, all key systems are tested in calmer waters to make sure everything is working as designed. This includes propulsion, navigation and safety equipment.

Now consider a modern high-rise building, which is every bit as complex as a ship. It’s expected to perform well for decades, supporting all types of occupancy and enduring both normal and extreme weather events, including torrential rains, high winds, tornadoes, floods and hurricanes, and to be safe for its occupants in the event of fire or earthquake. Shouldn’t this building be commissioned just as a ship would be?

Posed this way, the answer is obvious. In the past decade, the practice of commissioning for larger buildings has become an accepted practice. The LEED system requires that every project be commissioned according to certain standard procedures.The goal is to test all energy-using and life safety systems in actual building operation and to work out all the kinks before occupancy. More than 120 research studies have shown that energy savings increase 10% to 15% when a building is commissioned. In energy savings alone, commissioning pays for itself in less than flve years; when other non-monetary (but real) benefits are included, the return is typically less than one year.

The cost of commissioning is relatively minor compared with the benefits. In larger projects, the cost might range from $0.40 to $1.00 per square foot, less than 1% of building costs. The key to the process is to get experienced commissioning agents on board during the design phase so that they can understand and help clarify the owner’s project requirements and the engineer’s basis of design. In this way the commissioning agent understands the project’s goals, systems and performance requirements before testing begins.

A typical commissioning activity involves creating a plan; writing commissioning requirements into the project specifications; engaging the subcontractors during construction — especially mechanical, electrical and controls contractors — to assist with testing; fixing any problems encountered with system operations; and confirming that operators have been trained to keep the building running optimally.

This is an excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s book, Green Building A to Z: Understanding the Language of Green Building.

Click here to download the PDF version.

Posted by Sky on 10/02/2007 at 02:13 PM

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