NEWS
San Diego Daily Transcript
February 27, 2003
CHALLENGES TO BUILDING GREEN
Beth Brummitt
Employee productivity is as much as 15% higher. Retail sales increase
by as much as 30%. Student test scores rise as high as 25%. Energy
and maintenance costs are lower. Healthier indoor and outdoor environments
reduce risk and support our quality of life. First costs are competitive.
Why doesn’t this describe the expected outcome when we move
into a new building? Because most of our buildings today are fundamentally
designed and constructed in the way they were a year or a decade
ago.
If you wanted a “high performance” or an environmentally
friendly “green” building, how would you know when you
had one? The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) designed
the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™)
Rating System to answer this question. It provides design tools
and encourages the use of environmentally friendly strategies. It
also seeks to avoid “greenwashing” by providing both
an objective standard and a third-party review.
The Rating System awards credits for documented green features
in five main categories: Sustainable Sites, Water Efficiency, Energy
and Atmosphere, Materials and Resources, and Indoor Environmental
Quality. Buildings achieve Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum
Ratings depending on how many credits are awarded.
What stands between last year’s “building as usual”
and today’s high performance building? The main issues are
our habits of thinking and the learning curve.
Habits of Thinking – “There isn’t
a Problem”
One habit of thinking that discourages the design of green buildings
is the feeling that there is not a problem that needs fixing. In
many places, our built and unbuilt environments have a very nice
appearance. The waste of resources and poor indoor environments
are not so obvious.
Yet, there is also a groundswell of professionals quietly working
to include environmental consciousness in their designs, looking
for projects and owners who are educated enough to value it in their
buildings.
For example, the City of San Diego now requires that new City projects
achieve a LEED™ Silver Rating. The City deserves huge credit
for being willing to take the initiative and demand higher performance
from the buildings they will be occupying tomorrow. And this highlights
the first step: simply making the commitment.
Habits of Thinking - Piece by Piece
Once the commitment is made, the second habit of thinking which
gets in the way is of achieving high performance buildings is “component
thinking.” One often used way of managing a complex project
is the split the team into pieces or components, each separately
addressing issues such as site management, building features, and
structural, plumbing, mechanical and lighting systems. The intention
is less to integrate them than to stay out of each other’s
way. This works very well for many purposes: unfortunately, it also
tends to produce low-performance buildings.
The Learning Curve - Integration
“Integration” is a nice buzzword, but what does it
really mean? Achieving higher energy efficiency is the area I am
most familiar with, and it provides some good examples.
If a typical building has a good lighting system and some improvements
in mechanical efficiency, then no extra integration between the
architect, lighting or mechanical designers is necessary to achieve
10% to 15% better than the current Title 24 minimum energy code.
However, creating a high performance building, with efficiencies
20% to 40% better than code, requires the integration of features.
For example, consider how to design the effective use of natural
daylighting. Glazing orientation, height and width, shading strategies,
specifications, interior layouts, ceiling heights, and toplighting
options all contribute to how much useable daylight enters the space.
The lighting designer would choose fixture layouts and fixture types
to coordinate with the daylighting zones, and with automatic controls.
These goals should be identified in the Basis of Design so that
all of the design elements support the outcome. When the broad use
of daylighting is introduced later in design, it is not only too
late to make adjustments in the other related systems without adding
to their costs, but savings in related systems may actually be lost.
Many LEED™ credits directly interact with energy efficiency
features. For example, by incorporating natural daylighting, the
project will probably also qualify for Daylighting and Views Credits.
Cool Roofs reduce energy use, and also gain a Reducing Heat Island
Credit in the Sustainable Sites category. Appropriate ventilation
and occupant control of windows and lights provide other credits
in the Indoor Environmental Quality category.
While about one third of the available credits are in some way
related to the energy features of the project, other issues are
important as well. Like energy features, they carry many opportunities
to integrate and synergize. Landscaping choices can reduce both
the heat island effect and irrigation needs. Materials can be chosen
which support several credits simultaneously: low Volatile Organic
Compounds (VOC), recycled content, and being manufactured within
500 miles of the project.
The Learning Curve: LEED™ processes and Credit
Content
With over 30 types of credits, there is definitely some learning
necessary to apply the concepts of green design and to understand
the details of LEED™ credit content and documentation. The
commitment of the owner and the design team is critical in moving
up the learning curve. Many teams have found that designating someone
as the “green champion” assists the integration process
and keep the team focused on the green goals of the overall project.
Starting with a simpler project and lower certification goals is
a good way to begin learning about the LEED™ process and credit
content. As designers, builders, and teams gain experience, a higher
bar can be reached at a lower cost.
What’s Next?
Today, buildings consume 65% of our country’s electricity,
represent 30% of our greenhouse gas emissions, drink 12% of our
potable water, and use up 40% of the world’s raw materials.
San Diego’s population is projected to have a million more
people by the year 2020, and worldwide population also continues
rising. What is sustainable? You do the math.
Aspects of green design are increasingly moving into the mainstream.
LEED™ is based on the use of existing standards and technologies.
At the same time, it recognizes and expects that technologies and
strategies will continue to get better. Eventually, we may enjoy
buildings that have very low environmental impacts, or even provide
a net benefit of regenerating resources. For now, whether buildings
become Certified or not, we have the information and tools to make
them healthier and more efficient.
Brummitt is owner of Brummitt Energy Associates, Inc., consulting
for highly energy efficient buildings. She is a LEED™ Accredited
Professional, and a founding member of the San Diego Chapter of
the US Green Building Council.
Read
the article on the San Diego Daily Transcript web site. |
