In the green building trenches

Developing ideas on development

Posted by Kif Scheuer (Guest Contributor) at 7:43 AM on 09 May 2007

Read more about: placemaking | green building | Nevada | politics

Hats off to GreenbuildingsNYC, who beat me to the punch on a couple of items that seem important to future green development.

First, there's a piece by Professor Charles Kibert that critiques a recent report on the benefits of green schools. It is notable for a couple of reasons. First, his analysis asks some important questions about this particular report's benefit claims. Second, through this analysis he critiques the lack of critical review and high research standards in the green building field. There's a response after the post by one of the report's authors. Worth checking out.

Second, the Nevada legislature may be backpedaling on its green building tax breaks:

Nevada lawmakers moved swiftly Wednesday to suspend tax breaks for "green" building projects to help shrink a projected revenue shortfall that is complicating efforts to wrap up work on a nearly $7 billion state budget ... "The analysis we are doing now is, 'Are you providing an incentive or are you providing a windfall.' If it's going to hurt the rest of our tax base, we need to take a closer look at it."

Now there's a reason these are lumped together in my mind. They both point out that green building is moving forward at a rapid pace, but we may need to slow things down a bit to think through outcomes at the community or building level.

We need more critical analysis of and research on green buildings so that the excitement of seeing individual green buildings go up doesn't cause problems down the road with poorly thought out code changes or unsubstantiated claims of benefits. While it may seem like green building is an unstoppable tide of change, we have a long way to go before we start to see the kinds of aggregate benefits that are necessary for green building to make its contribution to mitigating climate change and other environmental impacts.

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for NYC residents?

Thanks, Kif, for referring to the greenbuildsNYC.com site, which I had not known about. It looks designed for LEED-oriented architects and engineers, not for us layfolk. But nevertheless it is a good resource, as I try to put together a proposal for the board of our eight-floor co-op apartment building.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

by caniscandida at 8:38 AM on 09 May 2007

check the fine print

Prof. Kibert wrote:

Note that a school can be LEED certified even with zero energy savings depending on the project team's strategy for getting points.

This is an important point for all jurisdictions to consider. If the goal is energy efficiency first and foremost, then LEED certification may or may not deliver what you are seeking.

This highlights an important difference between LEED and other green building initiatives such as Architecture 2030. Architecture 2030 calls for a 50% reduction of fossil fuel use in buildings right now, and a carbon-neutral building standard by 2030.

Similarly, the Passivhaus standard gives specific performance targets: the total energy demand for space heating and cooling is less than 15 kWh/m2/yr treated floor area; the total primary energy use for all appliances, domestic hot water and space heating and cooling is less than 120 kWh/m2/yr.

Ped Shed Blog

by Laurence Aurbach at 9:33 AM on 09 May 2007

Now that

was a thorough critique. A lot of crap is being painted green.

In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world

by biodiversivist at 10:08 AM on 09 May 2007

Chiming in

Thanks Kif. I think you're exactly on point here- we need far more objective, critical research and analysis of green buildings, as Professor Kibert suggests, in order to assist states and municipalities as they weigh the pros and cons of either mandating or providing incentives for sustainable construction.

by StephenDP at 9:54 AM on 10 May 2007

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