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Political “buy-in” to mandate “Green” Buildings

admin — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 11:00:52 +0000

BUILDING GREEN: The California Academy of Sciences’ new facility–opened last year–joins a growing list of newly constructed, or renovated, sustainable buildings.

The National Association of Governors is the latest legislative group to support the American Institute of Architects’ goal of zeroing out new and renovated buildings’ greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

The NGA — which is convening in Biloxi, Miss., for its annual meeting — endorsed the AIA goal as part of a resolution on energy efficiency and conservation. The U.S. Conference of Mayors and the National Association of Counties have also endorsed the AIA goal by vowing to integrate provisions related to the built environment in their energy policies.

“Governors believe that the federal government should maintain its central role in promoting funding and developing a wide-ranging program of energy conservation and improved energy efficiency that considers all sectors of the economy,” NGA’s resolution noted. “Such a program should be cooperatively developed and implemented by the states and the federal government working together as full partners.”

NGA’s resolution opens the door for the AIA to promote in every state a “green” construction code that the International Code Council is developing. The code — which will be compatible with the AIA’s 2030 carbon-neutrality target — will include water, energy, air-quality and safety benchmarks that states and cities may adopt starting in late 2011.

The House passed legislation last month that would force laggards to boost their energy efficiency.

H.R. 2454, sponsored by Democratic Reps. Henry Waxman of California and Edward Markey of Massachusetts, would require residential and commercial buildings to be 30 percent more efficient than the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code. The efficiency target would ramp up to 50 percent for residential and commercial buildings by 2014 and 2015, respectively, and would increase 5 percent every three years through 2030 (Greenwire, June 30).

Senate Environment and Public Works Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said she plans to introduce legislation next month that integrates the House bill’s provisions.

“The Waxman-Markey bill is the mark we’re working off to write our bill,” Boxer said. “I would say tweaks are more of what you’re going to see than major changes.”

Source: Environment & Energy Publishing, LLC.

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Greencon

American Institute of Architects vote for top 10 buildings

admin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:05:33 +0000

1. WORLD HEADQUARTERS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL FUND FOR ANIMAL WELFARE–YARMOUTH PORT, MASS.

Building green can often mean breaking the bank. But the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) was able to build their world headquarters in Cape Cod for about $220 per square foot. Resting on what used to be a brownfield site, the new building restored green space to the area and filled it with native plants. In order to cut down on operating costs, Boston-based designLAB Architects situated the nonprofit’s buildings so as to increase ventilation and natural daylight. The organization’s 200 employees helped to design the workspace plans to improve efficiency while also cutting down on square footage per person by about half.

2. THE TERRY THOMAS–SEATTLE, WASH.

When surveyed about what they hoped to get in a new office space, workers of the architecture firm that was one of the building’s first tenants asked for more natural light, improved ventilation and better open spaces. So the Weber Thompson firm in Seattle set out to bring all of these wishes to fruition, along with assuring that the building would stay in good financial standing to attract future rentals. (The total project cost came out to about $9.7 million.) The building also sits along a new streetcar line and includes showers for workers who opt to bike to work.

3. SYNERGY AT DOCKSIDE GREEN–VICTORIA, BRITISH COLUMBIA

Residents of Synergy, the first of a four-phase development project in Victoria, British Columbia, live in a carbon-neutral building. They water their rooftop veggie gardens and flush their toilets with rainwater and can control rolling canopies to cut down on unwanted solar heat. An on-site heat and power plant hooks up with hydropower to supply electricity to the building, and it buys renewable offset credits to make up for the rest of the power. Vancouver-based Busby Perkins+Will Architects selected quick-to-regrow materials, including bamboo and cork, to finish off interiors.

4. SHANGRI LA BOTANICAL GARDENS AND NATURE CENTER–ORANGE, TEX.

Rather than draw attention to themselves, the structures at the Shangri La Botanical Gardens are there to bring visitors out into the 252-acre (100-hectare) preserve to showcase the surroundings—without disturbing them. Just as construction began in 2005, Hurricane Rita swept through the area, felling trees in the swamp and forests. Lake|Flato Architects in San Antonio were able to use many of the fallen tress in the new buildings. The center, which reopened the area to the public for the first time since the 1950s, was the first LEED Platinum–certified new construction in Texas.

5. PORTOLA VALLEY TOWN CENTER–PORTOLA VALLEY, CALIF.

Perched on the San Andreas Fault, Portola Valley wanted to replace its old town hall, community hall and library with buildings that would be safer, hold improved meeting space and be more environmentally friendly. Town residents and a special task force worked with Emeryville, Calif., architectural firms Siegel & Strain and Goring & Straja to build a town center for about $15 million that reused beams, paneling and fill from the old buildings as well as local eucalyptus flooring. A solar electricity system can crank out 40 percent of the center’s power needs, and they’re in the process of turning a nearby abandoned culvert into a cistern that will be able to store 40,000 gallons (150,000 liters) of rainwater.

6. JEWISH RECONSTRUCTIONIST CONGREGATION–EVANSTON, ILL.

This eco-sensitive synagogue was built to honor the Hebrew principle of tikkun olam, which means “repairing the world”. To achieve that end Chicago’s Ross Barney Architects firm began by considering storm water. They optimized usable space inside to decrease runoff, allowing for a smaller building footprint and more open green space to collect storm water.

The multipurpose religious, educational and community center also boasts green building materials, including reclaimed cypress wood, gabion walls filled with waste masonry (which help regulate temperature) and paints and finishes with low VOCs (volatile organic compounds).

7. GREAT RIVER ENERGY HQ–MAPLE GROVE, MINN.

It might be fitting for a nonprofit energy cooperative to be hyperconscious of its power consumption. With its new building, Great River Energy (GRE) became the most electrically energy-efficient building in Minnesota. GRE aims to be a model for its consumers to reduce energy use. The structure, whose total project cost came in at about $57 million, sits at the end of a main road in suburban Maple Grove and uses sunlight—from atria—to light work spaces for most all of its 425 workers. A nearby urban wind turbine helps in the headquarters’s 75 percent decrease in fossil fuel use.

8. GISH APARTMENTS–SAN JOSE, CALIF.

A building’s environmental impact doesn’t have to stop at its threshold. That’s why the Gish Apartments are steps from a local light rail and have a convenience store downstairs, so residents don’t have to jump in their cars to pick up that gallon of milk or get to work.

To turn a San Jose brownfield into mixed housing for low-income and special-needs families, First Community Housing, a local affordable housing organization, turned to locally based OJK Architecture and Planning to create the 35-unit structure. Although some of the building materials—such as double-glazed windows and rooftop solar panels—were pricier to purchase at the outset, they’re already being offset by cheaper operational costs.

9. CHARTWELL SCHOOL–SEASIDE, CALIF.

Massive windows help to provide learning disabled students at the LEED (leadership in energy and environmental design)–certified Chartwell with a healthy, soothing and airy learning environment. The windows, along with strategic solar panel placement and radiant heat, are moving the school—designed by San Francisco–based EHDD Architecture—toward its goal of zero net energy use. The school hopes that the model of sustainability will also be a life lesson for students. “Improved academic outcomes and responsible resource stewardship build on each other,” Chartwell’s executive director, Douglas Atkins, said in a statement.

10. CHARLES W. HOSTLER STUDENT CENTER–BEIRUT, LEBANON

Rather than creating a single massive building to hold athletic and meeting facilities for the American University of Beirut, the Minneapolis-based VJAA firm developed this diverse complex on the shore of the Mediterranean. The construction kept original trees to provide shade for buildings and outdoor spaces, and is oriented on an east-west axis to reduce the amount of hot southern exposure. The student center also makes use of the landscape, gently bringing pedestrians—and the eye—down the slope to the sea, which it capitalizes on for cool nighttime ventilation breezes.

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Greencon

Greenbuildings and there design challenges

admin — Fri, 29 May 2009 12:17:35 +0000

Designing green buildings sounds like a great idea. But the reality is that energy-efficient buildings often sound downright crummy to the people inside them.

Surveys of occupants generally find that buildings meeting the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards, the benchmarks for greenness, score higher on all measures except one: acoustics. “It’s not a happy story,” Kevin Powell, research director for the U.S. General Services Administration, told the audience on the opening day of the meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Portland, Oregon.

The GSA houses more than one million government workers in about 8,500 buildings across the nation. In post-occupancy surveys, acoustics often received poor marks. And while federal LEED-rated buildings scored a bit better than non-LEED buildings, on a separate survey commercial LEED-rated buildings scored worse than non-LEED buildings when it comes to noise, he said.

Some design elements that score well on LEED checklists, such as bare concrete ceilings that improve heating and cooling efficiency or low cubicle walls that reduce lighting needs, also allow sound to travel farther. A paradoxical problem: High-efficiency heating and cooling systems in LEED-rated buildings tend to be much quieter than wasteful ones, lowering inoffensive background noise that can mask distracting sounds.

Until recently, advocates of green building have neglected acoustical criteria. The ASA meeting marks the first time acoustical scientists and engineers have put the problems of green building design on its program. “There’s a need for the profession to understand what’s going on in the LEED world and a need for the LEED world to understand what’s going on in acoustics,” said session co-chair David Sykes, a consultant with Remington Advisors in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Acoustical measures are becoming part of LEED-standards and building codes for hospitals and schools, but noise is often an afterthought for less specialized structures. Powell made a plea to the acoustical experts. “We need you to help us with best practices and enforceable standards that are achievable,” he said, because only when there is a clear and simple check box for acoustics will the indoor environment of green buildings ring true.

That might be tough to pull off because much of sound perception is subjective. As Powell pointed out, “There is no agreed-upon consensus of what good acoustics are.”

Source: Scientific American

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Greencon

Publish Bad Science and people will still believe

admin — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:59:14 +0000

I was wondering when it would happen, a building sector disinformation campaign launched by vested interests, we have to be careful of thisb here in South Africa. The most dangerous advocate is the spec builder. We at Greencon seems to have the best interaction with the institutional Investor or long term investor in the property market, who not only looks at the building costs now but also the long term building opperating costs, and there effect on profit. Here is a great article from an online blogger about the actions of the American Developemnt Community..

“The campaign hit The New York Times on Saturday, and it comes from NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association.

It appears just as the country has come to grips with the fact that buildings are responsible for more than 50 percent (50.1 percent to be exact*) of all the energy consumed in the United States. It comes at a time when Americans are trying to reshape their energy policy and wean themselves from dependence on foreign oil, dwindling natural gas reserves and dirty conventional coal.

This disinformation campaign is obviously meant to stall, confuse and distort. The first salvo, a spurious study and press release, was issued two days before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee held a hearing on improving building energy code standards.

It is clear from a simple analysis of the study that NAIOP commissioned a building energy efficiency analysis to support predetermined results. They contracted with ConSol, an energy modeling firm, and asked them to analyze five (yes, only five) efficiency measures for an imaginary, square-shaped, four-story office building with completely sealed windows and an equal amount of un-shaded glass on all four sides of the building.

In other words, they analyzed an energy hog.

They conducted the analysis for different cities and climates — Newport Beach, Chicago and Baltimore — without changing the design to respond to these very different climates.

They did not study changing the shape of the building, its orientation or form, or redistributing windows or using different windows to take advantage of natural light for day lighting or sunlight for heating (office buildings are day-use facilities).

They did not study shading the glass in summertime to reduce the need for air-conditioning, using operable windows for ventilation (not even in Newport Beach with its beautiful year-round climate), using landscaping to reduce micro-climatic impacts, employing cost-effective solar hot water heating systems, employing an energy management control system or even study the impact of using inexpensive energy saving occupancy sensors in rooms to turn off lights.

NAIOP intentionally kept out of the analysis all the readily available low-cost, no-cost and cost-saving options to reduce a building’s energy consumption.

This deliberate omission is glaringly apparent in their press release and in the Times article. In fact, they take so many inexpensive, energy-saving options off the table that it is impossible for the imaginary building to reach commonly achievable energy-consumption-reduction targets. They then add an inflammatory headline to their press release, “Results show efficiencies unable to reach 30 percent mandates”, and state that, “The study provides an unbiased insight into the energy targets practical to commercial development today.”

Using this pseudo-analysis as their baseline, NAIOP goes on to report, without any objective basis, that “reaching a 30 percent reduction above the ASHRAE standard (a commercial building energy code standard) is not feasible using common design approaches and would exceed a 10-year payback.” They conclude, “achieving a 50 percent reduction above the standard is not currently reachable.”

Clearly, this study is meant to confuse the public and stall meaningful legislation, insuring that America remains dependent on foreign oil, natural gas and dirty conventional coal.

The U.S. peaked in oil production in 1970 and natural gas in 1973. Our reserves are in steep decline and 70 percent of the remaining world oil and gas reserves are located in the Middle East, an area stretching from Saudi Arabia and Iran to the Islamic republics of the former Soviet Union. This type of activity by NAIOP not only hurts our country, it is also a disservice to their membership and all those in the building sector who work hard to deliver a high-quality, energy-efficient building product.

NAIOP touts itself as advancing responsible commercial real estate development and advocating for effective public policy. This pseudo-study and misleading campaign accomplishes none of these goals. ”

Always consider the benifit of having a accedited profeesional on your planning and development team.

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Greencon