The Yudelson Associates Blog: What's New

Sunday, December 02, 2007

German Green Building Council Advances with Life-Cycle Assessment Tools for Rating Green Buildings

In meetings with founders of the German Sustainable Building Council (Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer nachhaltiges Bauen) in Frankfurt and Stuttgart in late November, I learned that the group is moving ahead with a technically-based approach to developing a green building rating system, as yet unnamed. While still small in numbers (less than 100 members) and very much in a start-up mode, it is my assessment that the German Council has the potential to become a large and influential player on the world green building stage, owing to a strong focus on energy conservation (including many examples of “zero net energy buildings) and a number of existing examples of outstanding sustainably designed buildings already in that country.

Under current plans, the “German LEED” will feature two elements unique to the current LEED system: a manufacturer-supplied life-cycle assessment of all building products based on Environmental Product Declarations, EPD (ISO 14025 and ISO 21930) and a “transparency” feature that will require certified buildings to estimate all life-cycle costs for building operations, including energy, water and cleaning costs. This moves beyond the “snapshot” requirements of the LEED system, to more of a “movie” of long-term building operations. This approach could take building design beyond merely estimating energy use, to requiring life-cycle operating costs as a standard reporting feature. In this way, reviewers would have a sounder basis for evaluating various buildings’ claims to ‘greenness.’

The group hopes that both of these measures, however difficult to implement at the beginning, will lead to better design decisions by building and construction teams and to more willingness by building owners to use technologies and systems that perform better over the long haul, but may have higher initial costs. (Both of these considerations are clearly directions in which the USGBC’s LEED system is also headed.) In the case of Germany, they also expect to secure manufacturers’ cooperation, because the larger 400-million-strong European Union is also heading rapidly in this direction. For more details, contact the group’s executive director, Anna Braune. The German Green Building Council expects to hold its first annual conference in June 2008 in Stuttgart.

Posted by Jerry on 12/02/2007 at 03:10 PM

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Saturday, December 01, 2007

Restoration of Sites:  An Excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s “Green Building A to Z”

A goal of many green building projects is to leave the land a better place than it was before. Achieving this goal requires site restoration activities, such as rehabilitating natural drainage systems, replacing wide swaths of green lawns with plants that provide wildlife habitat and replanting ornamental plants with native and adapted species that need far less water and intensive maintenance. As we complete the switch from a predominantly manufacturing economy to one based primarily on services, developers are finding attractive options in paved-over older parts of cities that once supported manufacturing, warehouses and similar industrial uses. Many of these sites were polluted with petroleum products, heavy metals, PCBs and other toxic substances that require remediation before reuse. Even paved-over but unpolluted sites can be converted to offices, retail, hospitality and housing, with considerably more wildlife habitat.

Often the task of the architect and builder is to find a way to place buildings so they don’t disturb what’s already working on a site. Several years ago, I visited the National Conservation Training Center of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in Shepardstown, West Virginia. Located on an upper tributary of the Potomac River, this site is very hilly, like most of the state. The project designers placed 17 buildings on the site, only on the hilltops, leaving the hollows alone. Because of a number of changes of site elevation, the design required many wooden bridges between buildings, sometimes with entrances on upper floors. However, this approach allowed the project to avoid extensive grading and degradation of wildlife habitat, while promoting the very values inherent in the Center’s mission. This is a good example of a smart and wise approach to site planning.

Another interesting project is Tanner Springs Park in Portland, Oregon. Completed in 2005, this park sits on top of about 40 feet of historic fill of the original Tanner Creek. To honor its origins and to provide city residents with a natural park, the landscape architects designed a reconstructed wetlands with a boardwalk over it. This park is now habitat for many creatures including various waterfowl. It is mainly used for passive recreation and helps incorporate sustainability into the fabric of the city.

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 12/01/2007 at 05:18 PM

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