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Friday, January 06, 2012
Jerry Discusses Net Zero Energy Greenbuilding at 2011 Greenbuild Toronto
In this video clip, Jerry discusses the business case for net zero buildings, something he presented first in March 2011, in an article for the annual White Paper of Building Design & Construction magazine. The key point is that the business case varies dramatically by the type of user and purpose of the building. Secondarily, the key elements of the business case include tangible and intangible aspects of a project, for example energy savings (tangible) and marketing/PR benefits (largely intangible). The third point is that some benefits are not obvious at first glance, for example, creating a net zero building may enhance investor interest in a for-profit project, or for a college may increase interest by potential students. The key issue here is that the extra cost of such a project can be offset by a variety of real and potential benefits, all of which merit careful consideration and often require further study of the impact of the project on its many stakeholders.
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Monday, December 12, 2011
Ten Green Building MegaTrends for 2012
Green building will continue its rebound globally in 2012 in spite of ongoing economic difficulties in most developed economies. What we’re seeing is that more people are building green each year, and there is nothing on the horizon that will stop this MegaTrend or its constituent elements. However, in 2010 and 2011, the continuing slowdown in commercial real estate and the end of federal recovery funding put a crimp in new green building projects. In putting together my Top Ten trends for 2012, I’m taking advantage of conversations I’ve had with green building industry leaders in the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia during the past year.
Yudelson Associates’ Top Ten Green Building MegaTrends include:
- Green building in North America will rebound in 2012, using new LEED project registrations as a proxy for this growth. The reduction in commercial real estate construction has not been offset by other sectors such as government construction, which continued to falter, and so the growth rate of new green building projects fell dramatically in 2010 and 2011. Even so, in 2011, LEED in new construction accounted for about 20% of all put-in-place space, with domestic LEED project registrations up almost 40% vs. depressed 2010 levels. However, we see faster growth in green retrofits, and notice that ongoing college and university projects and NGO activity are serving to backstop the fall in commercial and governmental construction. In addition, LEED growth has been and will be rapid in China and other fast-growing economies.
- Green building will continue to benefit from the Obama Administration’s strengthened focus on greening the executive branch, with its commitment to a minimum of LEED Gold for all federal projects and focus on major energy-efficiency renovations.
- The focus of the green building industry will continue its switch from new building design and construction to greening existing buildings. One fast-growing LEED rating system the past two years has been LEED for Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance (LEED-EBOM), with cumulative floor area in certified projects now greater than in new construction, and I expect this trend to pick up in 2012. My book, Greening Existing Buildings, documents the strategic and tactical components of this trend. One driver of this MegaTrend is that “‘green’ buildings have rents and asset prices that are significantly higher than those documented for conventional office space,” according to a recent major academic research study on commercial buildings in the U.S. and Europe.
- Awareness of the coming global crisis in fresh water supply will increase, leading building designers, owners and managers to take further steps to reduce water consumption in buildings by using more conserving fixtures, rainwater recovery systems and innovative new onsite water technologies. My recent book, Dry Run: Preventing the Next Urban Water Crisis, shows how this is being done in green buildings all over the world.
The global green building movement will continue to accelerate, as more countries begin to create their own green building incentives and developing their own Green Building Councils. More than 90 countries with incipient or established green building organizations, on all continents, will drive considerable green building growth in 2012. We’re seeing strong growth in China, other places in Asia (e.g., Singapore), Brazil, Eastern Europe, South Africa and the Arabian Peninsula countries. In 2011, for the first time, nearly as many LEED-registered projects were in progress outside the U.S. as in the U.S., up more than 50% compared to 2010 levels and representing 44% of all new LEED project certifications.1 In fact, as one expert noted, LEED has registered or certified projects in 131 of the world’s 196 countries, with a total floor area of almost 3-billion sq.ft. When combined with the nearly 1.5-billion sq.ft. registered under LEED India and LEED Canada, it is clear that LEED is the dominant global green building certification brand.2
- Zero-net-energy buildings will become increasingly commonplace, in both residential and commercial sectors, as LEED and ENERGY STAR certifications and labels have become too commonplace to confer competitive advantage among building owners. Developers of speculative commercial buildings will also begin to showcase Zero Net Energy designs.
- Performance Disclosure will be the fastest emerging trend, highlighted by new requirements in California, Seattle and other locations. Commercial building owners will have to disclose actual building performance to all new tenants and buyers and in some places, to the public at large. This trend is already established in Australia, for example, and will spread rapidly as the easiest way to monitor reductions in carbon emissions from commercial and governmental buildings.
- Green Buildings will increasingly be managed in the “Cloud”, as witnessed by the large number of new entrants and new products in fields of building automation, facility management, wireless controls and information management in 2011.
- Local and state governments will step up their mandates for green buildings for both themselves and the private sector. We’ll see at least 20 new cities with commercial sector green building mandates, mostly in the “Blue” states. The desire to reduce carbon emissions by going green will lead more government agencies, universities, hospitals and corporate owners to require green buildings from design and construction teams.
- Solar power use in buildings will continue to grow with the prospect of increasing utility focus on aggressive state-level renewable power standards (RPS) for 2020. As before, third-party financing partnerships will continue to grow and provide capital for large rooftop systems such as on warehouses and big box retail stores. However, we will see fewer very large solar and wind systems, as federal grant and loan guarantee support begins to be phased out.
Download the 2012 MegaTrends PDF
1LEED Statistics from Green Building Market and Impact Report 2011, by Rob Watson.
2Watson, at p. 20.
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Monday, November 28, 2011
Singapore Leads the Way in Greening Existing Buildings
In October 2009, Singapore’s Building and Construction Authority (BCA) opened of the Zero Energy Building (ZEB) located on BCA’s Waddell Road campus. Formerly a workshop, the renovated 4,500-square-meter (48,438-sq. ft.) structure now houses corporate offices and academic classrooms and is a true zero net energy building. Jerry visited this building in 2010 and saw first-hand not only the measures taken to reduce energy use, but the continuous readout of energy supply/demand in the main lobby, making this one of the more transparently ZEB’s in the world.
An agency under the Singapore Government’s Ministry of National Development, BCA is tasked with developing green technologies to meet the goal of making 80 percent of all Singapore’s buildings green by 2030. ZEB is BCA’s flagship project and the first net-zero energy building in Singapore.
ZEB was conceived with two primary objectives:
- To serve as a laboratory for the integration of green building technologies in existing buildings.
- To be a hub for the study of energy efficiency and green buildings.
The technologies currently being testing at ZEB will have potential applications for many of the existing buildings that will be retrofitted over the next two decades to meet the national goal.
Strategically placed photovoltaic panels serve the dual purposes of energy generation and sun shading.
Download the Singapore Case Study
Courtesy of the Building and Construction Authority of Singapore
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Tuesday, September 27, 2011
Western Australia’s Greenest Building Sets High Design Standards
Located in Perth’s central business district, 2 Victoria Avenue is a 7,185-square-meter (77,000-sq.ft.), four-story Class-A office building. Designed by Woodhead Architects, the contemporary and innovative glass and burnt orange metal facade represent the building’s most prominent design features.
The western facade is fully shaded by automatic operable louvers that respond to the movement of the sun throughout the day. Individual bays of louvers respond independently depending on shade created by adjacent trees and buildings, providing movement and visual interest across the building front facade.
Owned and managed by Australia’s major property developer Stockland, 2 Victoria Avenue was designed to be a benchmark for new sustainable office developments. Located adjacent to the company’s 13-story Durack Center, 2 Victoria Avenue is Stockland’s highest rated certified green building. The project was the first in Western Australia to receive a 6-Star Green Star Office Design V2 rating from the Green Building Council of Australia. The building was also the first in Western Australia to commit to a 5-star energy rating from the National Australian Built Environment Rating System (NABERS), a rating equivalent to a high-level Energy Star score in the U.S.
Download the 2 Victoria Avenue, Perth, Western Australia Case Study
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