ST 2007 ND Pushing the Limits of Green Building

ADVANCES IN ENERGY-EFFICIENT ARCHITECTURE

Pushing the Limits of Green Building

Seven trends are introducing new efficacy into the practice of sustainable building.

By Kacia Brockman and Clark Brockman, AIA

To many green building professionals it feels as if a “tipping point” has been reached during the last 12 to 18 months.

Social responsibility concerns are driving many businesses to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels. It was one reason that natural snack food company Kettle Foods, Salem, Ore., installed a 114- kilowatt photovoltaic system. Photo courtesy of Energy Trust of Oregon Inc.

Recognizing the considerable climate change effects of buildings, the architectural community has taken strong steps to assess and minimize the energy requirements of this sector. The result is that green building is rapidly gaining national traction. We see evidence of this transition in examples including the Architecture 2030 movement, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System and a proposed national green building code. This article highlights seven distinct trends in the commercial green building sector.

Trend 1: Buildings Reduce Fossil Fuel Consumption
Architect Ed Mazria’s Architecture 2030 Challenge (www. architecture2030.org) has created a sense of urgency among architects and engineers to reduce the amount of fossil fuel needed to operate buildings. This proposal to cut fossil fuel use by 50 percent immediately, with 100 percent elimination by 2030, has become a dominant force in the green building movement. Influential groups have signed on to support the 2030 Challenge, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; American Institute of Architects; American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers Inc. (ASHRAE); U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC); and the American Solar Energy Society.

The reasons behind the 2030 Challenge are simple. According to statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, buildings account for 48 percent of U.S. total energy consumption, significantly greater than either the transportation sector (at 27 percent) or the industrial sector (25 percent), and buildings consume a stunning 76 percent of U.S. electricity. That presents a huge margin for positive change by way of today’s energy inefficient building standards.

In addition to the 2030 Challenge, Mazria also spearheaded the 2010 Imperative last year to make ecological literacy a central tenet of architectural design schools. The Imperative calls for all student design work to “engage the environment in a way that dramatically reduces or eliminates the need for fossil fuel.” It also challenges design schools to achieve the 100 percent of the 2030 goal in their own buildings by 2010.

The 2030 Challenge and the 2010 Imperative are changing how designers think about their buildings, how students think about their careers and how building codes and energy policies will be developed in the near term.

Trend 2: Green Building Moves to the Mainstream
With the regular appearance of global warming and “green” solutions in the mainstream press, it is no surprise that the green building movement has been growing very rapidly. In less than 10 years, the USGBC’s (www.usgbc.org) voluntary LEED certification program has become the foundation of green building design. Organizational membership in USGBC grew to 7,600 by 2006, and in 2007 it has escalated to over 10,000. Those members include government agencies at all levels, building-related nonprofit organizations, major vendors of construction materials and, of course, many design, engineering and contracting firms.

But even with exploding membership, is LEED changing how we build? The answer is yes, but even more importantly, LEED is changing how we evaluate what we’ve built. More and more owners, designers and contractors are seeing the benefit of a system that enables them, through an independent third party, to credibly determine how “green” their buildings are. In a world where everything from soap to steel is now being branded as “green,” LEED is providing a roadmap and an independent benchmark for the building construction industry. Its popularity is evidenced by the tenfold increase in the construction value of registered LEED projects, from $792 million in 2000 to $10 billion in 2006.

What is driving this increased demand? On one hand, many cities, counties, states and federal government agencies have adopted LEED mandates for public buildings. On the other hand, private developers are finding that they can achieve distinction by building green and, in certain markets, that they need a LEED certification to be competitive. The green building movement is real, and it’s here to stay.

Trend 3: Building Industry Emphasizes Energy Efficiency
In June the USGBC modified the LEED rating system to more closely align it with the 2030 Challenge. Now all LEED programs that require energy-efficiency calculations must obtain a minimum of two energy points, eliminating the possibility that a building could achieve LEED certification without implementing any energy-efficiency improvements. Under the new rule, all LEED-NC (new construction) buildings will perform at least 14 percent better than required by ASHRAE 90.1 energy standards. This increase does not yet rise to the 2030 Challenge’s goal of an immediate 50 percent fossil fuel reduction (according to ASHRAE, performance 30 percent better than 90.1 is required), but it is an important step that is readily attainable nationwide.

The USGBC LEED Steering Committee has committed, “As the market continues to increase its engagement in green building activities, LEED will continue to increase the stringency of the rating system.” As energy modeling, prescriptive standards and building codes evolve, we can expect LEED to remain ahead of the industry standards. It is up to the green building community to innovate and implement climate-responsive solutions necessary to stay apace with the 2030 Challenge, and ultimately with our world’s climate crisis.

Trend 4: LEED Places Higher Value on Renewable Energy
In the most recent update to LEED (LEED-NC version 2.2), the USGBC increased the value it places on renewable energy systems. Prior to that change, renewable energy advocates complained that (for example) a $2,000 bicycle rack might net the same value toward a building’s LEED certification (one point) as a large $500,000 solar electric system.

The USGBC made two significant changes to the LEED point structure:
1. The entry-level threshold for one “On-site Renewable Energy” point was lowered to 2.5 percent of the building’s annual energy cost (down from 5 percent).

2. The energy generated by the on-site renewable energy system can now also be included as a component of the “Optimize Energy Performance” energy-efficiency calculations. That, in effect, allows the renewable energy system to be double-counted within the LEED point structure.

So, when a project achieves the maximum three points for onsite renewable energy (supplying 12.5 percent of total energy) it is likely to receive two to three additional energy-efficiency points. That means a project’s addition of a large solar energy system could now be worth five to six points, making it possible for that investment in solar to help a project jump to a higher LEED-certification level. This phenomenon is generating favorable publicity for both the renewable energy industries and for LEED.

A new national standard to provide minimum guidelines for green building practices is expected to be finalized early in 2008.

Trend 5: Third-Party Funding Mechanisms Emerge
More and more states are offering financial incentives for renewable energy systems that, combined with current federal tax incentives, can dramatically improve the economics of a solar investment. To leverage those tax incentives, a third-party ownership model has emerged that allows an independent, private investment group to capitalize a renewable energy system installed on a host property. The investor can typically receive all of the financial incentives available for the system, including utility rebates, federal and state tax credits and accelerated depreciation, and sell the pollution-free, fixed-price electricity to the host, earning a favorable return on investment after six to seven years. The host is often a public or nonprofit entity without tax liability and therefore unable to claim state and federal tax benefits, or may be a commercial business that prefers not to own and maintain a system or that lacks the financial capital to invest in solar.

This third-party structure is already being implemented in a number of states with strong incentive programs. Some property developers are even considering retaining a long-term interest in their projects as a third-party owner as a way to recover, and therefore justify, the capital cost of a renewable energy system on a new building.

As early adopters look beyond LEED Platinum, the Living Building Challenge moves green building certification toward true sustainability. Shown, Sokol Blosser’s wine barrel-aging facility in Dundee, Ore., which has LEED Silver certification. Photo by Charlie Johnson

Trend 6: National Green Building Code Ahead
A new national standard to provide minimum guidelines for green building practices has been drafted, received public comment and is expected to be finalized early in 2008. ASHRAE (www.ashrae.org), in conjunction with the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America and the USGBC, is developing ASHRAE 189 – Standard for the Design of High-Performance Green Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. Said to be the first such green building standard proposed in the United States, ASHRAE 189 will be an ANSI-accredited standard that can be incorporated into state and local building codes.

Standard 189 will apply to new commercial buildings and major renovation projects and will provide a baseline for energy efficiency, a building’s impact on the atmosphere, site development, water efficiency, materials and indoor air quality. Energy efficiency will be a large part of the standard. Its goal is to reduce a building’s energy cost (and the carbon dioxide equivalent) at least 30 percent over levels specified in the ASHRAE 90.1-2007, which provides minimum energy-efficiency design requirements and is the basis for many building codes worldwide.

Renewable energy will also be a focus, according to ASHRAE. The standard’s committee wants building projects to produce a percentage of their peak electrical load through on-site renewable generation such as solar electric or solar thermal systems.

Trend 7: Architects Look Beyond Platinum
As noted, LEED is becoming the de facto green building standard and is credited with starting the market transformation. As the green building movement begins to enter the mainstream, early adopters are looking beyond LEED Platinum. Will the next target be net-zero-energy buildings or an even more aggressive goal?

The Living Building Challenge was unveiled at USGBC’s Greenbuild 2006 conference by the Cascadia Region Green Building Council (www.cascadiagbc.org), the USGBC chapter for the Pacific Northwest region including British Columbia. The Living Building Challenge moves green building certification toward true sustainability and frames a dialogue about what actually makes up a sustainable building.

The framework is straightforward. A building must meet 16 prerequisites to achieve Living Building certification. Cascadia states that submission for certification occurs one year after building occupancy, measuring “not what you are going to do, but what you did.”

Living Building prerequisites include net-zero annual energy production from on-site renewables, net-zero water consumption from rainwater collection and reuse, carbon offset for embodied energy in the building’s construction, set-aside of land for habitat equal to the area of the project site, maximum distance materials may travel to site by weight and others.

The response to Living Building has been enthusiastic. Designers of more than 40 projects worldwide have registered with Cascadia to pursue the challenge in the first year. USGBC is sponsoring the first national Living Building Competition this year, which will be awarded in November at Greenbuild 2007 (www.greenbuildexpo.org) in Chicago.

We recognize that green building is still a small segment of the national market, and that we have much work to do to unify incentives and standards nationwide. But the market is strong and growing, and the locations where it has taken a firm hold are creating and refining systems that are gaining national currency. Clearly we in the design and construction industry have an important and growing part to play in our race to mitigate climate change.

About the authors: Kacia and Clark Brockman live in a small, solar-powered house in Portland, Ore. Kacia works as the solar program manager at the Energy Trust of Oregon (www.energytrust.org), and Clark is an associate principal at SERA Architects (www.serapdx.com) and the vicechair of the Cascadia Region Green Building Council.

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