GreenBuild Blog
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Isn’t it Time for a Slow (Green) Building Revolution?
Just like the slow food movement, the “slow building” revolution focuses on creating designs that are appropriate for a given bioregion, taking into account climate, natural resources, local economies, indigenous building styles and cultural values. It is opposed to the widespread internationalization of buildings, in the post-modern era, to the point where you can’t tell what climate or country a building is from, because all office buildings look (and function) more or less alike. The slow building revolution looks to slow down the design process so that there is time to consider a sustainble design approach that takes more into account than just budget and schedule.
Check out the full article at IGreenbuild.com.
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Sunday, April 15, 2007
Green Buildings are Geostrategic, says NY Times’ Tom Friedman
According to Tom Friedman, author of The World is Flat, “I think that living, working, designing, manufacturing and projecting America in a green way can be the basis of a new unifying political movement for the 21st century. A redefined, broader and more muscular green ideology is not meant to trump the traditional Republican and Democratic agendas but rather to bridge them when it comes to addressing the three major issues facing every American today: jobs, temperature and terrorism.” Green building consultants and designers should wake up to the importance of the need to advocate on every project for high-performance buildings. See the entire article in the New York Times magazine for Sunday, April 15th. And don’t forget to file those tax returns by April 17th!
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Thursday, March 29, 2007
Home, Sweet Green Home
The NAHB annual green home conference in St. Louis, with about 300 in attendance, showed me that green homes are ready to hit the mainstream home building and home buying market. Consulting with a small custom home builder, we discussed how to market green homes to the consumer. Lots of good product activity, including solar panels, structural insulated panels and all types of energy conservation systems. Harvey Bernstein of McGraw-Hill presented the results of a recently concluded survey of green homebuyers. Bottom line: green home buyers are better educated, wealthier, 25-44 and tend to cluster in the South and West. Satisfaction with their homes is very high. More on this survey later.
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Saturday, March 24, 2007
Green buildings can stop global warming. Marketers, pay attention!
The McKinsey Quarterly, Number 1 issue in 2007, shows the potential for abatement of carbon emissions beyond the “business as usual” case, to be both cost-effective and effective in reducing a large amount of carbon emissions. That’s a “win-win” scenario for both green building advocates and for the planet! The study examined all technologies with a potential to reduce carbon emissions for less than about $50 (40 Euros) per ton. Such measures as wind power have a real cost, while building energy efficiency measures such as added insulation are the MOST cost-effective way to reduce carbon emissions. Other measures that are effective are so mundane that you wonder why we’re not doing them as standard practice: more efficient water heating and HVAC systems, more efficient lighting and better glazing. The business case for green buildings get more compelling each year! Green building marketers and green building consultants should take notice and start being more aggressive in their promotion of such building efficiency measures.
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