Being Green: It’s Easy (and Profitable) After All!
by Helen Kessler
Real Estate/Construction Advisor, Summer 2007 Issue
While being green is becoming increasingly challenging for Planet Earth, green building is a different story. Helen J. Kessler, FAIA and president of HJKessler Associates, which specializes in energy efficiency and sustainable design consulting, has been involved in the evolution of green building for 30 years. She’s seen it evolve from an emphasis on solar energy and energy efficiency to its current state, which approaches construction from a more holistic point of view.
Kessler recently provided us with a thorough overview of the industry issues as she sees them: the facts about green/sustainable building, why we’ve come to hear more and more about it in the news, and what trends we ought to be aware of going forward.
What is sustainable/green building design? How does it differ from conventional building practices?
Sustainable, or green, building design takes an integrated approach to construction early on — in the design stage. It involves analyzing how all of the different components work together to make the best use of a site and its conditions, including solar energy, wind, and the land. The goal is to minimize the use of resources, including energy, water, and materials, improve indoor environmental quality, and maximize energy efficiency. When using an integrated approach to design, the whole design team, including the owner, contractor (if available), architect, engineers, and other design consultants, work together from the beginning of the project, and the design results from that collaboration.
Conventional building, on the other hand, has traditionally been much more segmented, where the architects design the buildings and then, later, the engineers align the systems with the architects’ design. They’ve traditionally ignored some of the aspects and benefits that green building addresses. This process also doesn’t allow the design team to take full advantage of the synergies among systems, causing costs for green design to increase.
How does global warming relate to sustainable building?
Global warming has resulted from an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels, coal, and oil. This is also known as the Greenhouse Effect.
Buildings account for nearly 50 percent of global warming. According to U.S. Green Building Council statistics, building energy use is responsible for emission of 30 percent of the greenhouse gases and buildings contribute 65 percent to waste output and use 70 percent of the nation’s electricity (which is primarily generated by coal-fired power plants, the largest emitters of greenhouse gases).
So you can see how reducing energy consumption in buildings can have a dramatic effect. The average energy savings attributed to green buildings is about 30 percent; carbon savings is around 35 percent; and the resource savings due to refraining from using landfills as well as using recycled content materials is anywhere from 50 to 90 percent. The compounding effect at each stage can be significant.
When did the movement toward green building begin?
Components of it began in the 1970s after the oil crisis; there was a lot of interest in and funding for solar energy and energy efficiency. However, it wasn’t until the inception of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Green Building Rating System in 1999 that the focus expanded to include not only energy efficiency but water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, site design, and materials. continued on page 2continued from cover
But energy efficiency is still a significant component of green building?
Absolutely. Energy efficiency is a critical aspect of green building. It’s important to take an integrated approach, looking at how systems work together: reducing loads through design of an efficient building envelope with good insulation and glazing, reducing internal building loads such as lighting, and using daylight to minimize the amount of energy that a building requires. Reducing building loads helps minimize the size of HVAC systems for heating and cooling and can free up capital to spend more on efficient systems. All of that results in a more efficient building.
What about global warming? Isn’t that a big driver of the green movement?
Global warming should have begun influencing more people years ago, but it really didn’t. I believe that it was the inception of LEED that has had the largest impact on market transformation regarding green building.
As various government entities, especially federal and some local, began adopting the LEED green building system, it garnered more interest. Architects and contractors have become more interested in it because their clients are asking for it. That interest didn’t exist 10 years ago. What LEED has done is give us a way to think about green building from a holistic point of view, allowing people with relatively little green design background to take a look at a checklist and be able to say, “Yep, yep, yep, my project is meeting those goals.”
In addition, I think that Al Gore’s recent documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, has helped bring the issue home for many people. So have rising gas prices and news reports that global warming is a significant concern. The studies surrounding global warming are unequivocal, and interest has increased dramatically. People are finally beginning to recognize that this is real — and that green building is one way to mitigate the effects of global warming and resource consumption.
Is green building only relevant for new construction?
No, not at all. If you live or work in an existing building, there’s still a lot that can be done to reduce resource consumption. Existing buildings can become more energy efficient and operate more effectively — for instance, through improvements to the lighting and the air quality. If you’re planning to do renovations, you can make sure the paints you use are low emitting, so they won’t emit a lot of volatile organic compounds (VOC). In an office setting, you can make sure you’re buying recycled content paper, that waste is recycled, and that cleaning substances are non-toxic.
Depending upon the building, you could see anywhere from a 10 to 50 percent reduction in energy costs. And that doesn’t include using renewable energy. That’s also a big part of sustainability; you can use solar energy or wind energy — either on site or by purchasing renewable energy certificates.
What impact can sustainable buildings have on the people who work or live there?
One of the goals of sustainable building is to improve indoor environmental quality; a higher quality indoor environment may increase staff productivity, or at least make them feel more comfortable. For people in the building, working in a more comfortable environment has obvious benefits. From an employer’s point of view, if people are more productive and healthy, that also has benefits for the bottom line.
What do you say to people who say it’s too expensive to build green?
It all depends on the project and the scope of what you want to do. If it’s a smaller-scale project, say 5,000 square feet and it’s too expensive to get LEED certified, it still makes sense to do what you can to make it efficient. If it’s a larger project — maybe 50,000 square feet or more — building green tends to be fairly insignificant. It could be in the range of 0 to 2 percent, compared to the overall cost of the project.
I’ve also seen green projects that were well-thought-out and considered all aspects that actually saved money and had a lower cost. The point is to choose the most cost-effective options and understand that, if you’re going to be a longer-term owner of a building, these costs can pay for themselves in a relatively short period of time.
Can you quantify the different alleged benefits of sustainable building, particularly for an increase in asset value?
Increase in asset value depends upon how you calculate it. If calculated based on net income and if the cost of energy is lower, those savings go right to the bottom line. Let’s say you save $100,000 in utility bills, increasing net income by that amount, and apply a cap rate of 10 percent, you increase value of the building by $1 million.
What types of buildings have you been involved in? How have you incorporated sustainable design into them successfully?
I’ve been involved in a variety of projects, ranging from corporate headquarters and police headquarters to schools, universities, religious institutions, and many others. I’ve incorporated green designs into all of them, and we’ve seen energy efficiency of around 30 percent. LEED certification levels range from certified to silver, gold, and platinum levels. My projects have run the gamut; it really depends upon the level of interest of the owner.
It seems like this is just the beginning for green.
I believe that in five years or less, every building of significant scale will be built to meet LEED criteria if not be LEED certified. You can already see it happening. Many large construction firms have green teams; to a large extent, that’s due to client demand.
In addition, cities such as Chicago, Boston, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. are requiring green building. Chicago also recently created the green building permit, which allows building owners to get a permit much more quickly than they could otherwise and offset certification fees that are associated with getting the permit. This is just the beginning.
Is there anything else you’d like to add?
We’ve talked a lot about the benefits of green in terms of costs, which is fine. But there’s a very human component of it as well that shouldn’t be lost amidst all of the talk of bottom lines. Right now, the world is using anywhere from 20 to 50 percent more resources than the Earth can replenish; the United States is using five times what it can replenish. Put another way, if everyone in the world used resources the way we do in the United States, we’d need five additional Earths. We have an obligation to protect and preserve our planet so that generations to come can continue to enjoy its benefits. Green building is a step in the right direction.
Want to learn more about green? Attend the 2007 Greenbuild Conference and Expo, held November 7–9 in Chicago. Learn more at http://www.greenbuildexpo.org.
