The Yudelson Associates Blog: What's New

Monday, August 04, 2008

Is Toyota the future of green homes?

In July, the Wall Street Journal carried an amazing story about a small division of Toyota building homes with 60-year warranties. According to the article, “Toyota’s aspirations as a home builder are also gaining new importance with the planned launch by 2010 of its plug-in vehicles, gas-electric hybrid cars with powerful lithium-ion batteries that drivers will need to recharge at home. The car maker is testing an electricity-monitoring system in its homes that would charge the vehicle during off-peak hours to keep utility bills low, while the car’s battery can serve as an electrical backup, powering the home during blackouts.” Toyota has been building modular, factory homes for years, while the U.S. continues to rely on outmoded systems of site-built housing that meet no real goals for sustainability. The great housing “correction” (read crash) of 2007 and 2008 is likely to persist as we work off millions of unoccupied homes from inventory and foreclosure. Maybe the time has come for home builders to embrace the off-site factory, but with a green building twist. At this point, they’ve little to lose.

Posted by Jerry on 08/04/2008 at 05:57 PM

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Green Weenies: Will Green Hotels Ever Come of Age?

Most European hotels now have card keys that turn off the power in the room when you leave. Most Americans won’t accept them, because the A/C might take a few minutes to kick in, so the hotel leaves on the A/C all day for an empty room for fear of losing a guest. This might be a problem during the few summer months, but what about rest of the year? What will it take for hotels to put blue recycling containers in every room and compost their food waste, among a few mildly responsible measures? Other than the obvious ploy of not washing the sheets (at your option) for a multi-day stay (which saves water but also a lot of money for the hotel), what will it take to get the hotel industry to adopt green construction and operations standards? Consumer demand and economics are the obvious answers. If green hotels start showing higher occupancies and the cost of energy keeps going higher, we may start to see this nascent trend accelerate. But for right now, I wouldn’t bet on it happening very fast, because of the lack of vision and any sense of social or environmental responsibility in the lodging industry. The only thing that might accelerate change is if corporate travel departments and meeting planners start demanding LEED or Energy Star certification for hotels they patronize; that will be a message much harder to ignore.

Posted by Jerry on 08/04/2008 at 10:21 AM

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Thursday, July 17, 2008

Can Green Building Help Lifestyle Centers Succeed?

With so many major retailers building green (Kohl’s, Office Depot, Home Depot, Best Buy, Coldwater Creek, to name a few), wouldn’t it make sense for shopping center developers of these large lifestyle centers to build to LEED standards and offer prospective tenants the prospect of an easier certification, by supplying 8 to 10 “LEED points” for retailers? Just yesterday, I was in on a project meeting for a national retail chain that is specifically aiming at a green building certification for a new store located in such a “green” shopping center. The interest is clearly in marrying the two concepts: green retail and green development. Wouldn’t it make sense for developers to use this market slowdown as an opportunity to explore green building concepts and the value of using those as marketing tools for major tenants?

Posted by Jerry on 07/17/2008 at 12:54 PM

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Sunday, July 13, 2008

Jones Lang LaSalle acquires Green Globes developer; strategic move or desperation?

According to the story in the CoStar Green Report, Green Globes for Existing Buildings was adopted in 2004 by the Building Owners and Managers Association of Canada (BOMA Canada) and renamed “Go Green Plus.” JLL plays the acquisition of Green Globes as a way to quickly assess its real estate portfolio in sustainability terms and then to determine whether to pursue LEED certification for individual properties. JLL also talks about linking Green Globes to the ENERGY STAR rating system. However, if one really wants to benchmark sustainable operations, and particularly to consider other issues than just energy use, there is no better tool than LEED. I don’t think that the marketplace is going to see this as a credible move, particularly large corporate real estate departments who are seeking green office space. What I do think the acquisition demonstrates is that green building operations are the next frontier in the green building movement. This is seen also in the rapid growth of LEED for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) registrations in 2007 and 2008. From a 2006 year-end total of 244 project registrations, by the end of May 2008, LEED-EB projects underway numbered 1,277, a fivefold increase in less than 18 months! As part of this growth, CBRE has itself submitted more than 200 LEED-EB project registrations, according to company sources.

Posted by Jerry on 07/13/2008 at 07:46 AM

This entry has been viewed 111 times.