After decades of environmentalists, energy experts, concerned designers and hippies urging the public to “reduce, reuse, recycle,” the green building movement is successfully penetrating the mainstream building industry.

We are all familiar with the annoyance of buzzwords. And “green building” and “sustainable design” are all the buzzword rage.

But the built environment has a profound impact on our natural environment, economy, health and productivity. And widespread concern about energy conservation, global warming and the depletion of Earth’s nonrenewable resources allow that the meaning of these buzzwords is important.

Simply put, green building and sustainable design both represent design and construction that are sensitive to the environment now and in the future. This can include a range of factors: from energy efficiency and indoor air quality to recycled materials and land-use planning.

Consider that in the United States, buildings account for the following: 36 percent of total energy use and 65 percent of electricity consumption; 30 percent of greenhouse gas emissions; 30 percent of raw materials use; 30 percent of waste output and 136 million tons annually; and 12 percent of potable water consumption. (Source: U.S. Green Building Council)

Yet breakthroughs in building science, technology and operations are available to designers, builders and owners who want to build green and maximize both economic and environmental performance.

As such, and because of the significant effects that green methods can have on cleaning up our act, the mainstream business is embracing many of the building techniques, designs and materials advocated by greens. Businesses and the building industry itself (as well as homebuyers) are all taking note and thus moving forward, significantly incorporating “green” ideas into their development of facilities and offices.

Manufacturers, financiers, insurance companies, builders, utilities and designers nationwide form a coalition that encourages both huge industries and small builders that choose environmentally friendly building and landscaping techniques, noted a recent Register-Guard article. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), which includes more than 4,000 volunteer member organizations nationwide, developed a checklist of dozens of ways buildings can be constructed to save resources, reduce energy consumption and provide better working and living environments for their inhabitants.

Since 2002, the USGBC’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Existing Buildings (LEED-EB) program has offered organizations valuable guidance in improving the performance of their facilities, as well as minimizing their buildings’ impact on the environment. Meeting the program’s criteria presents different challenges for different types of facilities.

Following are the LEED-EB experiences of two very different facilities, experiences that may help managers gain insight into the challenges their organizations might face while pursuing certification. These insights come via FacilitiesNet.com’s Maintenance Solutions.

1) Los Angeles’ Getty Center, which houses priceless works of art, presented managers with unusual challenges in meeting LEED-EB’s energy-related criteria, as art museums use more energy than office buildings due to art inside that requires a steady temperature and humidity levels. “It’s not like an office building,” says Jim Bullock, the center’s director of facilities. “If we go away for two weeks, we can’t shut down the entire building or set a minimal temperature.”

The 1.6-million-square-foot center, built in 1997, was the first facility to receive LEED-EB certification in the program’s post-pilot stage. The site includes seven buildings, two underground parking structures, and 10 acres of highly maintained grounds, which sits on 800 acres. Like all art museums, the Getty Center has strict air-quality standards. Because of this, the center was low on obtaining points in the area of energy efficiency. Yet achieving LEED-EB certification was pretty much administrative. “It was just a matter of documenting what we were doing and how we were doing it,” according to Bullock.

A sophisticated historical tracking system for the HVAC system already existed. “We need to have historical data that we can show to lenders to prove that we maintain temperature and humidity,” says Bullock.

The facility director’s staff had access to most of the data required for LEED-EB certification. It took Bullock, his staff and an outside consultant only three months to fulfill all of the program’s criteria.

During a six-week period, they pulled all the information together; 15-20 people worked half of their time on LEED-EB. Although they had all of the information, it had to be in a certain format and had to be documented properly.

Bullock advises managers seeking LEED-EB certification to set a schedule and hire a LEED-accredited professional for assistance.

2) Portland’s Oregon Convention Center, which already received LEED-EB certification for its 2003-built, 401,000-square-foot expansion, now aims for certification for the facility’s 1990-built section.

The older portion needs equipment upgrades. Although today it is more common for organizations to incorporate technology that meets LEED-EB criteria, not so long ago the technology was unavailable and designing sustainable, environmentally friendly buildings wasn’t much considered. So the center’s older portion now must undergo major renovations.

The majority of variable speed drives, air handlers and chillers at the convention center are being changed, and all lighting controls for the storage units and restrooms are being updated. Further, the organization plans to upgrade plumbing fixtures, which presents a major challenge: coordinating the retrofits with the facility’s schedule that includes almost 600 events a year. As a result, the convention center’s director of operations Mike Brown and his department have created a specific strategy for restroom renovation projects: work around events so that building occupants are not inconvenienced with a single available bathroom per week.

“It is not an 8-to-5, Monday-to-Friday job,” says Brown. “It’s a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week job.”

Of course, the USGBC has developed programs not only for major construction projects but also for homes. And green building is near a tipping point for residentual building, according to the National Association of Home Builders. The Environmental Home Center in Seattle, for instance, has been growing steadily since it opened in 1992. For the past five years, the business has boasted growth of 20 percent to 30 percent a year.

And there are many options, large and small. Reports Deseret News:

At the far end of the spectrum, you can build a home with special materials and techniques, such as straw-bale construction. You can choose to use only renewable resources and generate your own power with such methods as photovoltaic panels or ground-source heat pumps. Enough homes have been built with methods like these that they are no longer considered experimental; however, they are still a very small percentage of our nation’s housing stock.

Green materials in general have become a major part of mainstream building. In addition to green designs and green building methods, according to Matt Belcher, who runs Belcher Homes and who chaired the Green Home Building Conference in St. Louis, “green materials have become so ubiquitous that even traditional home builders are, sometimes inadvertently, using them regularly.” And their prices have dropped, he notes.

Today, green building has left the margins of hippydom and has achieved dramatic gains in mainstream appeal. As a result, products are increasingly well made. Whether building green facilities or homes, the benefits are threefold: environment, economic and health related.

References/Sources

U.S. Green Building Council

Growing Green: Building industry coalesces around environmental techniques
by Randi Bjornstad
The Register-Guard, April 30, 2006

LEED Lessons
FacilitiesNet.com Maintenance Solutions, January 2006

Consider ‘green’ building ideas
by Ann Robinson and Annie Vernon
Deseret News, April 21, 2006