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Monday, October 15, 2007
Ecoefficiency and Ecoeffectiveness: An Excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s “Green Building A to Z”
Architect and sustainable design expert William McDonough exhorts green building designers not to be content with just “doing less-bad” designs that put off the day of reckoning for excessive energy and water use, but to design buildings and cities that are “positively good.” When our focus is primarily on “eco-efficiency,” that is, reducing our negative impacts, we are not likely to achieve design breakthroughs. For example, saving 20% of the energy of a standard building is a virtue, but energy use still creates lots of carbon dioxide emissions and pollution from electric power production. If we save 30% of the water use of a standard building, we are still using far more water than the building receives as rainfall.
Some experts tell us that our environmental impacts have to be reduced 90% or more to begin to reverse the decline in the Earth’s supportive ecosystems and to relieve the stress on energy and water resources. Such a “Factor 10” building is a long way from our current focus on “Factor 1.5” buildings that might reduce impacts of building construction and operations by 33% on average. (At this time, a good LEED-certified building reduces water use by about 30% and energy use by 30% to 50%, compared with the average of all buildings.)
Economists have long analyzed the “externalities” of modern life, wherein a factory, for example, is more profitable when it is able to unload its pollution and resource depletion on the environment, without having to pay for all the consequences. One can think of the past 30 years of pollution control regulations as an attempt to make business and government “internalize” the full external costs of their pollution, so that they would decide not to create it in the first place.
In an “eco-effective” analysis, one would “internalize the externalities,” for example, by performing a life-cycle analysis of all materials produced, including their upstream (cost of materials, cost of transportation, type of labor) and downstream (recyclability, reusability) environmental and social costs. The figure above shows how this approach might look conceptually. Sustainability implies that, together, we have to agree to live primarily on “natural capital” (renewable resources and biodiversity) for a long period of time, using non-renewable resources at a much slower rate, perhaps eventually not at all.
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Tuesday, October 02, 2007
Commissioning: An Excerpt from Jerry Yudelson’s “Green Building A to Z”
Building commissioning is a high-value-added activity that is unknown outside the building industry. Think of a ship; when construction is finished, it’s time for sea trials. Long before a vessel sets out on a mission or voyage, all key systems are tested in calmer waters to make sure everything is working as designed. This includes propulsion, navigation and safety equipment.
Now consider a modern high-rise building, which is every bit as complex as a ship. It’s expected to perform well for decades, supporting all types of occupancy and enduring both normal and extreme weather events, including torrential rains, high winds, tornadoes, floods and hurricanes, and to be safe for its occupants in the event of fire or earthquake. Shouldn’t this building be commissioned just as a ship would be?
Posed this way, the answer is obvious. In the past decade, the practice of commissioning for larger buildings has become an accepted practice. The LEED system requires that every project be commissioned according to certain standard procedures.The goal is to test all energy-using and life safety systems in actual building operation and to work out all the kinks before occupancy. More than 120 research studies have shown that energy savings increase 10% to 15% when a building is commissioned. In energy savings alone, commissioning pays for itself in less than flve years; when other non-monetary (but real) benefits are included, the return is typically less than one year.
The cost of commissioning is relatively minor compared with the benefits. In larger projects, the cost might range from $0.40 to $1.00 per square foot, less than 1% of building costs. The key to the process is to get experienced commissioning agents on board during the design phase so that they can understand and help clarify the owner’s project requirements and the engineer’s basis of design. In this way the commissioning agent understands the project’s goals, systems and performance requirements before testing begins.
A typical commissioning activity involves creating a plan; writing commissioning requirements into the project specifications; engaging the subcontractors during construction — especially mechanical, electrical and controls contractors — to assist with testing; fixing any problems encountered with system operations; and confirming that operators have been trained to keep the building running optimally.
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Thursday, March 08, 2007
My Green Crystal Ball: $30 billion in ‘07
My 2007 predictions include 1700 new LEED registered projects and 15,000 new green home certifications (not counting Energy Star homes, which may top 175,000 this year - 2006’s totals). Total construction value is about $30 billion. Add in the Energy Star homes and you’re above $50 billion. Total of all products in green buildings and green homes is then between $10 and $20 billion. Check out the full text of my predictions.
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Sunday, January 07, 2007
I’m releasing my 2007 green building predictions! What are yours?
Here are my predictions:
1. The U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) new “LEED for Homes” standard will debut with more than 5,000 homes registered in the program within the first six months, representing the commitment of 50 builders at an average of 100 homes.
2. Green homebuilding will soar, even before LEED for Homes is released, owning to the pent-up demand by buyers looking to save energy and builders looking for an edge in the marketplace among the so-called “Eco-Elite” buyers. There is strong evidence of builders’ interest in energy-efficient home design, as a way to respond to the public’s concern for saving money and doing something for the planet. Also, the availability of a Federal $2000 per home tax credit for energy-efficient homebuilding through the end of 2009 should work as a strong incentive for many.
3. Cumulative LEED certifications under all systems will top 1,000 for the first time. This will be a long way from 350 certifications at year-end 2005 and about 670 certifications as of December 2006. The advent of USGBC’s “portfolio” program for “volume-build” organizations such as banks, national retailers and similar organizations should swell the numbers of LEED-certified buildings quickly.
4. Cumulative LEED project registrations under all systems (excluding single-family homes) will approach 10,000. This will put us well on track to achieve USGBC CEO Rick Fedrizzi’s late-2006 prediction of 100,000 LEED-registered commercial building projects by the end of 2010.
5. More than 50 additional cities will adopt some form of green building ordinance or mandate, as more cities start to implement their commitment to the “U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement” and as the political agenda in Washington DC changes, to put more emphasis energy efficiency and climate change issues.
6. More than 10 additional states will adopt incentive programs or mandates for their own buildings. There are now more than 15 states now with specific green building programs. Because of the Democratic takeover of several governorships and state legislatures, these actions will likely occur in the first half of 2007. Look for additional strong actions in California, Oregon and other states where “pro-green building” governors were returned to office.
7. More than 30 additional LEED Platinum projects will be certified, effectively tripling the number of such landmark buildings. People are beginning to figure out that LEED Platinum is achievable, with a little luck and good planning, as well as some budget tolerance for renewable energy systems.
8. Attendance at Greenbuild 2007 in Los Angeles this fall will top 20,000 for the first time. (As a long-time conference participant, even I was surprised that more than 13,000 paid registrants turned out for Greenbuild 2006 in Denver.) The far greater population in Southern California and the growth of the green building industry in general will play a role in growing the total attendance for Los Angeles this fall more than 50%.
9. LEED will register more than 100 non-US and non-Canadian projects for certification for the first time. We see a general interest in LEED from office developers in China, India and other countries, wanting to appeal to multinational tenants, as well as government programs that want to green their projects in the absence of clear national standards.
10. The number of LEED Accredited Professionals (LEED APs) will grow by 15% or more, to a total exceeding 40,000 by the end of 2007. As a LEED national faculty trainer, I am amazed at how we continue to sell out each workshop, with most attendees wanting to take the LEED AP exam. Considering that there are more than 100,000 real estate agents in the U.S., I see no end anytime soon to the growth in the number of LEED APs.
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