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Green Building’s Shining Moment

How Building Green Can Help Curb Global Warming

By Chariti Li Montez and Paul Horton

For three days in April, we joined architects, builders, engineers, designers, and planners in Seattle for the first regional Living Future green building conference, a joint effort between the American Institute of Architects (www.aia.org) and the Cascadia Region Green Building Council. http://www.cascadiagbc.org Like other green building conferences, this one highlighted many of the greenest designs and projects of the region. But Living Future was much more than simply an inspiring show-and-tell. For the first time, folks came together from around the Northwest to explore the special relationship between the built environment and global warming, and to learn about an audacious new plan to dramatically reduce the building sector’s share of global warming gases.

The plan is called Architecture 2030. http://www.architecture2030.org Its goal is to stabilize and reverse building-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the next ten years in order to cap global temperatures at only one degree centigrade above today’s temperatures — a level that a growing number of the world’s top climate scientists say is necessary if we are to avoid catastrophic climate shifts.

Architecture 2030 challenges the building and design community to cut the fossil-fuel energy consumption of all new buildings and major renovations in half, and then increase that percentage every 5 years. By the year 2030 all new buildings would be completely carbon neutral - meaning that they will not depend on any fossil-fuel GHG emitting energy to operate.

According to keynote speaker Ed Mazria, mastermind of Architecture 2030, the building and design industry is unknowingly responsible for roughly half of energy consumption and GHG emissions worldwide. This includes operation, heating, and cooling of residential, commercial, and industrial buildings, as well as all of the embodied energy it takes to produce common building materials like glass, carpet, tile, and concrete. Here in the US, buildings are responsible for 48% of annual GHG emissions, while 76% of all electricity generated in the US goes to supply the building sector. This is clearly a problem needing a solution. Architecture 2030 may be both bold enough and smart enough to get us there.

Making buildings carbon-neutral by 2030 is no small challenge. Fortunately, roughly 80% of a building’s energy needs can be readily met in low-tech ways, namely good design. The shape and size of a building, where the building sits on a site, how it orients towards the sun, how thick the walls are, what the walls and floors are made of, all of these factors can make a big difference. Natural heating, cooling, ventilation, and daylighting are all essential to reducing a building’s energy needs. Once you’ve designed out the need for excessive mechanical heating and cooling, the HVAC systems themselves can be designed smaller, and in some cases eliminated entirely. The money saved on oversized equipment and unnecessary kilowatts can be spent on higher-tech solutions such as advanced windows, solar electric (photovoltaic) systems, and solar water heaters. From there, any remaining GHG reductions can then be obtained through the relatively inexpensive purchase of renewable energy credits (green tags) and carbon offsets.

Furthermore, an aggressive effort to retrofit existing buildings and design and build new ones so that they use much less energy just so happens to be particularly good for the regional economy. Not only does efficient use of energy reduce the need for dirty and destructive fossil fuels, it also keeps our hard-earned dollars flowing in the local economy, where we need them most. Moreover, several studies point to increased employee productivity and reduced absenteeism in healthy, well-designed buildings.

Perhaps even more compelling is the fact that green building is rapidly emerging as a major economic sector here in the region. In Portland, Oregon alone, one developer currently has nearly 4 billion dollars of green building projects in other states such as California and Arizona. The vast majority of all of the jobs – architects, engineers, building contractors, subcontractors, etc. – are Oregon based. The Washington green building industry isn’t far behind. This is important because, as the design and construction industry becomes aware of its increasing economic clout, many of the policy changes and economic incentives necessary to permanently reduce the cost of building green will follow.

We have our work cut out for us. Considering that by 2035, three quarters of the US building stock will either be new or renovated, the building industry is clearly poised for a pivotal role in curbing climate change. However, the global warming crisis is not solely the responsibility of the building community. Instead, this crisis calls on each of us to become the architects and engineers of a safer, healthier, and more satisfying future. Together we can make it happen.

Chariti Li Montez is an architectural drafter and natural builder specializing in earth, lime and straw. Her experience ranges from building benches with kindergarteners to plastering custom homes, both in the PNW and Mexico. She can be reached at charitili@gmail.com.

Paul Horton has a background in resource efficient construction and is currently the Executive Director of the Olympia based non-profit, Climate Solutions. Info at http://www.climatesolutions.org


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Updated 2015/01/07 21:14:22