The Yudelson Associates Blog: What's New
Green Building News
Monday, November 06, 2006
Stern Medicine
The Stern report to the Prime Minister by the former chief economist of the World Bank, Sir Nicholas Stern, predicts a 20 percent drop in world GDP by the end of the 21st century, from expected levels, if immediate actions are not taken to reduce the expected rapid rise of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning. The report concludes that “strong, deliberate policy choices by governments are essential to motivate change.” The Stern report underscores the need for governments at all levels to be positive participants in promoting green buildings, including requiring major energy-efficiency upgrades in all buildings, from current norms, both commercial and residential. There’s a good review on iNSnet.
Posted by Jerry Yudelson on 11/06/2006 at 09:51 AM
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Thursday, November 02, 2006
Green Real Estate Rocks!
I chaired a panel on “The Emerging Business Case for Green Development” at the NAIOP national real estate conference in San Francisco on November 1st. Two major developers, Vulcan in Seattle, and Corporate Office Properties Trust (COPT) in Columbia, Maryland, presented their approach to green development. A private company, Vulcan Real Estate is essentially doing urban infill in the South Lake Union district of Seattle, while Corporate Office Properties Trust, a public company, is doing suburban office buildings in Maryland, Virginia, Colorado Springs and San Antonio. Both are doing LEED Silver on their projects, and both report capital cost increases of 0.5%. This is exciting news, as it indicates that costs for developing green buildings are going down, as developers get more individual experience with green projects.
Posted by Jerry Yudelson on 11/02/2006 at 04:33 PM
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Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Sitting by the Dock of the Bay
The federal landlord, General Services Administration, has been a leader in sustainable design for the past ten years, through its design excellence program. As a newly appointed national Peer Professional, I was invited to San Francisco to learn about this amazing federal initiative. Every building has been a LEED building since 2000, according to GSA. The new 600,000 sq.ft. Federal building in San Francisco, designed by Thom Mayne of Morphosis in Santa Monica, CA, will have unprecedented amounts of daylighting and natural ventilation and will be perhaps the largest building in the U.S. with operable windows. Under construction now, this building will soon be recognized as one of the most innovative in North America.
Posted by Jerry Yudelson on 10/31/2006 at 11:30 PM
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Friday, October 27, 2006
Greening the Mormon Empire
I taught two workshops for AIA and SMPS yesterday in Salt Lake City. Found out that the first LEED Gold building in Utah has just been completed. Talked with one leading architect about his experience with green building projects. The first three buildings, he said, cost 5% to 7% more. He expects the next three projects to have a 3% to 5% price premium. After that, costs of green buildings should fall back into the “noise” level. Part of this expected price drop is growth of a supply chain for green materials and technologies among established building materials suppliers and vendors, as well as the effect of competition for new business. This experience is typical for many architects and developers. There is a “learning curve,” after all, for most new technologies and new approaches. In manufacturing, this learning curve phenomenon is well known: the price per unit produced falls by a predictable amount, say 15%, for each doubling of cumulative production. A IPod that costs $60 to make (hypothetically) for the first five million units, will cost $51 for the next 5 million, about $44 for the next 10 million, etc.
Posted by Jerry Yudelson on 10/27/2006 at 07:31 AM
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