Green gains: Where sustainable design stands now

Building Operating Management, Jul 2003 by Kozlowski, David

More than a decade after the term green buildings was introduced to the commercial and institutional building markets, the idea is still something of a mystery to many facility executives. Exactly what makes a green building green? Does it cost more to build? What's the pay off? Is the whole idea a fad?

Discussions with dozens of green building experts and end-users paint a picture of an industry in the early stages of a profound transformation. The sources interviewed - building owners and developers, architects and engineers, and product manufacturers - are not Pollyannas. Even though some are far more optimistic than others are, all recognize that change takes time. They see clearly that there are challenges, both physical and psychological. But there is a strong sense that a combination of economic and environmental benefits is slowly but surely bringing green principles into the main-stream of design and construction.

WHAT IS GREEN?

Most building professionals eight years ago or so defined green as they saw fit. As a result, the building landscape was a mixture of faux green buildings and building products and generally recognized green ones. This range still exists today, to a lesser extent, and causes confusion for end users, especially outside of the green proponents' circle.

Although there is still is not a simple definition of what a green building is, a consensus has developed about the indispensable elements of one: energy efficiency, indoor air quality and thermal comfort. Each must be far better than what is found in most conventional Class A buildings. But most experts believe these are only a foundation. They believe the bar for green building design and construction should be set higher.

And attempting to set that bar higher is LEED, a green building rating system that is quickly making its rounds through the commercial and institutional markets. Born in discussions among the founding members of the U.S. Green Building Council in 1993 and launched in 1999, LEED has become almost synonymous with green buildings. LEED stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. It forms the basis of a whole platform of rating systems that the Council is developing, including LEED for Existing Buildings, LEED for Commercial Interiors, and LEED for Core and Shell. The Council also is developing guidance documents for interpreting LEED for use in schools and retail buildings.

The rating system is based on earning credits for various green building attributes and includes four levels of certified buildings: Certified, Silver, Gold and Platinum. The more credits, the higher the recognition and certification.

LEED is significant for building owners because it established for the first time a set of green standards. Regardless of what one thinks of the current requirements for a LEED building - and there is controversy here - the rating system offers guidelines and direction in an otherwise rudderless world of green buildings. LEED has everyone thinking in more concrete terms about what a green building is and should be.

The success of LEED, however, is causing growing pains in the Council that are becoming more evident as the Council puts together an update to LEED 2.1 and a new LEED 3.0, due out in 2005.

One camp in this discussion thinks that if the Council makes LEED certification any more restrictive, LEED will become marginalized within the green building movement and the Council will lose the momentum it has helped establish.

"Various interest groups within the Council have become zealots on green issues and if they sway the direction of LEED they will make it damn difficult to certify a building," says one expert.

The other camp thinks it's incumbent upon the preeminent green building organization to raise the bar.

"We really should be thinking of buildings now as human habitats," says one expert. "It's a radically different world view, true. But most people take buildings for granted, and we're finding that a building's impact on people and the environment is too profound to allow that."

Council officials responsible for finding an acceptable middle ground are painfully aware of the push and pull taking place, and they are working on solutions. "We going to make the credits smarter not harder," one Council official says. "We want to do the 10 percent of things to achieve 90 percent of the impact." But exactly how that is going to happen is not clear.

As near as it is to being a national standard, LEED represents only a few percent of all new buildings and not even all green buildings. Numbers are hard to determine, but some experts say many more building owners use LEED or some other guideline to build their building without bothering to register them. Some say up to twice as many projects are based on LEED as those that are registered with the Council. These project owners are not only putting their own stamp on green buildings but also possibly doubling the size of the market.

So what is a green building? Today for most experts, it's a building that uses a careful integrated design strategy that minimizes energy use, maximizes daylight, has a high degree of indoor air quality and thermal comfort, conserves water, reuses materials and uses materials with recycled content, minimizes site disruptions, and generally provides a high degree of occupant comfort. A lot of what makes a building green happens in the design stage. Owners looking for a simple template solution will have to continue to do so. True green buildings do not fit a mold.