GreenBuild Blog
Monday, March 09, 2009
The Business Case for Green Buildings: Chapter 3 of The Green Building Revolution
The business case for commercial green buildings is simply stated: if your next project is not a green building, one that’s certified by a national third-party rating system, it will be functionally outdated the day it’s completed and very likely to under perform the market as time passes. That bold statement has been echoed by a well-known real-estate expert, who bluntly claimed that trillions of dollars of commercial property around the world would soon drop in value because green buildings are going mainstream and would render those properties obsolete. In a meeting in Sydney, Australia, in 2007, the head of Australia’s Property Council, representing the entire development industry, claimed that no large developer in that country would ever start another project that wasn’t going to be at least LEED Silver (Australia Four Green Stars) certified. Within two years, the business case for green buildings is going to be part of “business as usual.” Jerry Lea of Houston-based Hines, a strong proponent and developer of ENERGY STAR and LEED buildings, says,“I think sustainable is here to stay. I think the definition of ‘Class A’ buildings very soon will include sustainable design and probably LEED certification.” Richard Cook, a prominent architect in New York City, says, “In five years, it will be clear that buildings not reaching the highest standard of sustainability will become obsolete.”
This is an excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s book, The Green Building Revolution.
To read the entire chapter, click here to download the PDF version.
Posted by Sky on 03/09/2009 at 03:00 AM
This entry has been viewed 321 times.
Company News • PermalinkThursday, March 05, 2009
Is Going Green Worth The Trouble?
I’m only pointing this out because the biggest challenge for green buildings, whether new or existing, is to build green on a conventional budget, a process I’ve dubbed “frugal green.” Most teams are not willing to change their approach to projects to get this done, using the process of integrated design that’s the basis for my latest book, Green Building through Integrated Design. Check out my press release on Frugal Green to see what I recommend for Building Teams. The key issue is the building professionals have got to become advocates for high-performance building or we’ll never start reducing the growth of carbon dioxide in the upper atmosphere. For example, US carbon dioxide emissions increased 1.3 percent last year, even as the economic slowdown was worsening, on top of a 1.4 percent increase in 2007.
Posted by Jerry on 03/05/2009 at 07:00 PM
This entry has been viewed 272 times.
PermalinkWednesday, March 04, 2009
Is the Severe Economic Slowdown Beginning to Bite into Green Building’s Shining Apple?
I took a look at official stats from the US Green Building Council, detailing the first two months data for all LEED project registrations and certifications in 2009. Looking at 140 new commercial project certifications and 1,600 new registrations and comparing them to year-end 2008 data seem to indicate about a 50 percent growth still in 2009, with a projected annual total of nearly 10,000 new project registrations (up 60 percent from year-end 2008) and slightly less than 1,000 new project certifications, up about 50 percent from year-end 2008. This is slower than the rates of 75 percent or more in 2007 and 2008, but still represents a growing market share for LEED projects in the commercial arena (including government and institutional buildings). In terms of homes, new LEED for Homes registrations grew by 34 percent in 2008 (over year-end 2007), but only by 6.6 percent so far in 2009. Project certifications grew by 16.6 percent in the first two months 2009, projecting out to a near doubling of LEED certified homes by year end 2009. Again, LEED market share in new home construction is growing, even in a terrible housing market (new starts down nearly 40 percent in 2008).
Posted by Jerry on 03/04/2009 at 10:56 AM
This entry has been viewed 212 times.
PermalinkWorld’s Leading Green Building Rating Systems Agree on Common Standards
Since buildings generate between 40 percent and 50 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, the first step in controlling then reducing such emissions is to agree on common standards for measurement. In the US, we tend to focus on “site” energy (a building’s use of electricity), but the real key is acknowledging “source” energy (the carbon generated at the power plant), because nature doesn’t care what we call it, it just cares about overall carbon dioxide levels in the upper atmosphere. We’re currently adding about 3 ppm each year to the atmosphere (30 ppm in the next 10 years, against a current level of 386 ppm), which can take a hundred years to disappear. Knowing what we’re doing is the first step toward beginning to reduce the concentration to more manageable levels (which some now advocate as 350 ppm, a reduction of 10 percent from current levels.) The Memorandum of Understanding is the first step toward having LEED, BREEAM and Green Star use the same measurement tools for assessing the energy performance of new buildings and homes.
Posted by Jerry on 03/04/2009 at 10:08 AM
This entry has been viewed 226 times.
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