USGBC+ » 2014 November-December

Contributors

ephyra — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:57:50 +0000

Calvin Hennick has written feature stories for a number of national magazines and newspapers including the Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, New York Press, Men’s Health, Running Magazine, and Eating Well among others. He is a creative writing instructor at the University of Massachusetts.

Alison Gregor has been a journalist at newspapers and magazines for 20 years. After obtaining a master’s degree from the Columbia University School of Journalism in 2003, Gregor began her freelance career focusing on coverage of real estate and business in New York City. She has written for the Columbia Journalism Review, Glamour, The Real Deal, New Jersey and Company, NYinc, Haute Living, and other publications.

Kiley Jacques is a feature writer living on the North Shore of Massachusetts where she serves as managing editor of a regional lifestyle magazine. She has been published in New Old House, Energy of the City, Myopia Polo, and Ocean Home magazines, as well as various trade publications and media outlets.

Mary Grauerholz is a healthcare grant writer and feature writer who focuses on sustainability, architecture, health, and food. In her previous career as a journalist, Grauerholz won many awards for project management, editing, and writing. Since then, she has written for a variety of magazines, newspapers, and websites, including The Boston Globe, New Old House, Spirituality & Health, and Suffolk University Alumni Magazine. She lives on Cape Cod.

Jeff Harder is a journalist who has written for Triathlete Magazine, the Boston Globe Magazine, Cape Cod Life magazine, New Old House magazine, HowStuffWorks.com, and many other outlets. He lives in Massachusetts.

Playing the Scale: Redefining Community for a Resilient Future

ephyra — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:57:50 +0000

Harriet Tregoning

Director of HUD’s Office of Economic Resilience

Traditionally, the word “community” conjures the notion of a small geographic area: a city block or small neighborhood, where you might enjoy a potluck at the local recreation center or get together with your neighbors to do an alley cleanup.

More and more, however, changes in the way we interact with one another—as well as our recognition of common interests—are redefining the term community into something that morphs those geographic boundaries. These days, we are just as likely to think of our online communities the same as we are about our next door neighbors when we consider those who share common characteristics and have mutual interests. Likewise, when addressing the community-scale challenges of the 21st century, we are not bound by the solutions discovered in our own zip code.

To build resilient communities—to prepare for climate change, to make critical infrastructure decisions, and to establish new physical and business models—we must plan, develop, and invest at different scales and, often, outside our neighborhood or jurisdictional boundaries.

Not only do we have the ability to use the strengths and tools developed in communities to effect change at different scales, but we also have the obligation to do so. Many of the fundamental building blocks for a healthy and resilient community—reliable transportation, a clean and dependable energy supply, healthy schools, healthy and affordable housing, robust opportunities for employment and economic development—can’t be tackled by one zip code or census block at a time and operate at a regional scale.

At the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Economic Resilience, we are working with communities and regions around the country to find new ways to apply the criteria of sustainability, health, and resilience in public investments and apply those decisions across city, county, and even state lines. By replicating successes at scale, we will not only be able to leverage strategies to conserve resources, but also will better prepare ourselves for future challenges. HUD will also be a step closer to succeeding in its mission of creating strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all.

The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) continues to be a critical voice and resource for how green and healthy physical development is core to the concept of resilient communities. Their Center for Green Schools is transforming the places where we learn; and empowering children, scholars, and teachers to act as community and environmental stewards. Their Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system provides a toolkit and a blueprint for building and maintaining sustainable buildings, and LEED for Neighborhood Development program looks beyond individual buildings to green neighborhoods, measuring everything from walkability to green infrastructure.

USGBC’s solutions for healthy and resilient communities work at different scales—from a single shop at the town center to an entire neighborhood, which provides many entry points, tools, and resources for communities wherever they are along their journey to sustainability and resiliency.

It is harder to cross property, neighborhood, and jurisdictional boundaries to address the critical issues that confront us, but we find we must match our approach to the scale of the problem. Together, our collective efforts can transform our communities—whatever their scale—into more vibrant, diverse, economically competitive, and resilient places.

LEED ON,

Harriet Tregoning

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Taking the Challenge

ephyra — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:57:50 +0000

Since 2012, the city of Pittsburgh has committed 60 million square feet of real estate to meet the 2030 Challenge.

By Jeff Harder

Pittsburgh 2030 aims to reduce its energy consumption and transform the city as a leader in sustainability.

When the Pittsburgh 2030 District branched out this past August, its reputation preceded its expansion. After just two years, the initiative had already guided a disparate assortment of property and business owners down a path toward creating high-performance, energy-saving buildings in the city’s Downtown. But when Pittsburgh 2030 added a second district in the adjacent Oakland neighborhood, the early response to the voluntary program exceeded the sunniest expectations: 244 buildings comprising 24.5 million square feet of real estate came under the program’s umbrella right away.

“We launched with 81 percent of the total square footage committed to the program,” says Sean Luther, senior director of the Pittsburgh 2030 Districts at Green Building Alliance. “That was just a jaw-dropping stat once we added it all up.”

It’s not the only impressive number: Since launching in 2012, the Pittsburgh 2030 Districts have committed close to 60 million square feet of real estate to meet targets outlined in The 2030 Challenge, an aggressive approach to mitigating buildings’ energy usage. By 2013, the buildings in Downtown Pittsburgh surpassed the Challenge’s first-year energy reduction target. Through improving existing structures to reduce consumption of fossil fuels and water and improve indoor air quality, the Pittsburgh 2030 Districts aim to create properties that benefit the environment as well as the bottom line. And in taking a grassroots approach, the Pittsburgh 2030 Districts have mobilized the business community to make a profound impact.

We launched with 81 percent of the total square footage committed to the program… a jaw-dropping stat once we added it all up.

– Sean Luther, senior director of the Pittsburgh 2030 Districts at Green Building Alliance

In 2007, the nonprofit group Architecture 2030 issued The 2030 Challenge, a set of ambitious objectives for folks in the building sector to curb their energy use and emissions: New buildings, for example, aim to be carbon-neutral by 2030, while existing buildings seek to reduce energy consumption by half over the same span. The Challenge manifested in the 2030 Districts, a series of voluntary public-private partnerships in cities across North America that connect businesses, property owners, local governments, community groups, and other organizations to benchmark their performance and encourage solutions that meet the aims of The 2030 Challenge. Seattle 2030—the first 2030 Districts—launched in 2011, four others have come to fruition since, and at least 10 more are in development.

The Tower at PNC Plaza in downtown Pittsburgh is dedicated to the challenge. Photo: PNC Realty Services

Once an industrial mecca, Pittsburgh and western Pennsylvania have been reinventing themselves for the 21st century, Luther says. “It’s a region that understands that our next economic surge isn’t going to come from heavy industry, but from identifying the hardware and software that are going to help us achieve those 2030 goals.”

The Pittsburgh 2030 Districts began when Green Building Alliance (GBA), a Pittsburgh-based U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) chapter that’s been promoting green building practices in western Pennsylvania since 1993, instituted a strategic plan calling to effect change on structures already present in the city. “The reality is that most of the real estate in Pittsburgh—especially Downtown—is already here,” says Luther. “We were looking for a program that would move the needle on the existing real estate market.” After seeing the progress made in the Seattle 2030 District, GBA began gauging the interest of business and property owners in Downtown Pittsburgh. Large, forward-thinking organizations like PNC Financial Services, BNY Mellon, and the City of Pittsburgh signed on right away, and the district launched with more than 30 percent of Downtown’s square footage committed to the program. By the end of the year, Luther says, that number moved to 50 percent.

Today, there are more than 80 property, community, and resource partners spread between Downtown and Oakland, and the results have been emphatic and swift. By 2013, Downtown saw an 11.6 percent decrease in energy consumption. “That’s equivalent to taking almost 8,000 homes off the grid in western Pennsylvania,” Luther says.

The Pittsburgh 2030 Districts’ first step toward those reductions was simple: Help partners understand how much energy they were expending in the first place. “Big, big owners that signed on to the program weren’t tracking their energy usage. They viewed it simply as the cost of doing business,” Luther says. Using Energy Star’s Portfolio Manager software, the Pittsburgh 2030 Districts team provides data to its constituents on how their properties perform against national averages—as well as their peers in Pittsburgh—and formulate specific plans to reach 50 percent energy reductions, which could include HVAC overhauls, improvements to the building envelope, lighting retrofits, and so forth.

Six times a year, these partners meet in closed-door, confidential sessions to talk about improvements they’ve made and share stories of energy-saving initiatives that inspire their peers to make similar changes. One property owner, for example, made a presentation about a newly installed on-demand elevator system and escalator retrofit in front of an audience due for their own upgrades. Several others have spoken about having their cleaning crews work during the day instead of at night, which allows for earlier shutdown of lighting and HVAC systems, improves social equity for housekeeping staff, and requires no extra funds to put into action.

“This is a completely non-prescriptive program,” Luther says. “We don’t mandate that everyone needs to go into the parking garage and change their metal halide lighting to LED. Each property owner makes decisions on what and when to invest in their building on an individual basis. At its heart, we’re really cataloging and celebrating success in improving building performance in western Pennsylvania.”

Credit the widespread adoption to how the Pittsburgh 2030 Districts deliver the message. Western Pennsylvania is subject to the same effects of climate change afflicting the rest of the Northeast—hotter summers, warmer winters, more intense and frequent rainstorms—and the Keystone State produces 4 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions. But, Luther says, some of Pittsburgh 2030 partners do not list climate change as their top priority: Instead, they signed on because learning how to reduce operating expenses would make their buildings attractive to prospective tenants. “The end result [of the program] is moving the needle on climate change, but it’s important that that not be the only conversation piece,” he says.

Despite the success so far, Luther says plenty of work lies ahead, including developing benchmarks for water consumption and indoor air quality. Over time, the Pittsburgh 2030 Districts intend to merge Downtown and Oakland into a single program. GBA is also exploring how to adapt the 2030 Districts model to western Pennsylvania’s suburbs, office parks, and other settings beyond the confines of cities—and the organization is excited to see the results of the 2014 progress report, which will include metrics of Oakland’s performance for the first time.

In a broader sense, the concrete numbers behind the Pittsburgh 2030 Districts make the best case for Pittsburgh as a city undergoing a true transformation. “All cities—especially their downtowns—market themselves as green,” Luther says. “The 2030 Districts allow us to show what our energy performance looks like, that this is a long-term goal that our private and public sectors have committed to. We’ll be able to say, ‘We’re a high-performing city, we’re a healthy place to live, and here’s the number that indicates that. What’s yours?

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Community Health

ephyra — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:57:50 +0000

By Mary Grauerholz

Kaiser Permanente takes a holistic approach to healing its patients and the environment.

For places of healing, hospitals have emitted notoriously toxic substances—to say nothing of the noxious waste the structures discharge. Until the turn of this century, not much thought was given to the contradiction this posed.

Kaiser Permanente, the prominent healthcare provider based in Oakland, California, has been turning this notion on its head. Kaiser Permanente executives maintain that hospitals should be healing environments and that healing is done best in clean, “green” environments. The same environmental stewardship, the organization maintains, can transform communities for better health for residents overall. In 2013, Kaiser Permanente invested $1.9 billion in the environment, people, knowledge, and communities through sponsorships and partnerships with community health clinics and other nonprofits with similar social missions. Also in 2013, the organization made a commitment to seek a minimum of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification for new construction of its hospitals, large medical offices, and other major projects. The effort is expected to affect as many as 100 buildings and millions of square feet over the next 10 years.

Kathy Gerwig, Kaiser Permanente’s environmental stewardship officer. Photo: © Eric Millette

Kaiser Permanente has spent much of the last 50 years cultivating enlightened environmentalism far beyond LEED construction, as part of its mission to create healthy communities. This includes early involvement in the healthcare industry’s efforts to address the issue of medical waste; hospitals generate some 7,000 tons of waste per day, or more than 2.3 million tons a year. In 1963, before environmentalism was a household word, Kaiser Permanente invited Rachel Carson, author of the groundbreaking environmental treatise, Silent Spring, to speak to its staff physicians and scientists. It was Carson’s last public appearance before her death.

The same principles gathered new steam in 2001, when a Kaiser Permanente executive visited a neonatal intensive care unit in San Francisco and questioned the use of medical equipment that contained DEHP, a phthalate used to soften some plastics. Kathy Gerwig, Kaiser Permanente’s environmental stewardship officer, details that experience in her new book, Greening Health Care, How Hospitals Can Heal the Planet, along with the ensuing efforts she and others in the healthcare industry have made to embrace environmental stewardship as part of their commitment to improve the health of communities.

As part of their community outreach Kaiser Permanente holds farmer’s markets at many of its facilities. Photo: Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente thinks of its mission in terms of “total health,” and advocates for a healthcare system that treats the minds, bodies, and spirits of patients. “We invest significant resources in programs that improve the health of our communities because we know ensuring good health extends beyond our doors,” Gerwig says. “It begins with healthy environments, fresh fruits and vegetables in neighborhood stores, successful schools, clean air, accessible parks, and safe playgrounds. These are the vital signs of healthy communities, and Kaiser Permanente is committed to working with our many community partners to create them.”

The organization recently funded $90,000 to the Oakland-based Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) to support its ongoing initiatives to build climate-change solutions with youth in schools. ACE works with high school students, equipping them to be the next generation to lead lasting climate solutions for a healthy planet and thriving communities.

So far, ACE has educated 1.77 million high school students nationwide and mentored youth to lead energy and waste reduction projects, spread awareness about climate solutions, and explore green majors in college. ACE prioritizes reaching youth in urban public schools, providing underserved populations with quality climate science and hands-on experiential learning opportunities. Approximately 73 percent of the high schools with which ACE works are public schools; and 48 percent of those are designated as Title I or at-risk schools in low-income districts.

Healthful food is another part of Kaiser Permanente’s mission. The organization hosts more than 50 farmers, markets and farm stands at its hospitals, medical offices, and other buildings across the country, including a weekly market outside its corporate headquarters in Oakland, California. Kaiser Permanente also promotes sustainable food and agriculture by increasing sourcing of local and sustainably produced food in its hospitals, cafeterias, and vending machines. About 190 tons of the fruits and vegetables (nearly 50 percent of all fresh produce that Kaiser Permanente purchases each year) served on patient menus across the organization are sustainably produced. To meet this definition, the produce must be either grown within 250 miles of the Kaiser Permanente facility or certified as sustainably produced by a third-party eco-label.

Today, with the growing effects of climate change, Kaiser Permanente’s commitment to cleaner, greener medical settings is stronger than ever. The organization pledged in 2012 to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020, from a 2008 baseline.

Donald Orndoff, Kaiser Permanente senior vice president of National Facilities Services, announced the details of its Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) building goals. “By adopting the LEED standard for all new major construction, we are demonstrating our commitment to green building strategies and to the total health of our communities,” Orndoff says. “The LEED certification program provides an internationally recognized approach to building and operating well-designed buildings.”

“A LEED plaque is an internationally recognized symbol of good design,” Orndoff says. “We are always proud to put a LEED plaque on our buildings as a demonstration of our commitment to the environment, as an extension of our mission for total health. We hope that as more of our medical centers carry the plaque, we will build momentum for healthier buildings of all kinds, and encourage others to measure the value of a building not only by economics, but by its effect on people and the environment.”

While the first Kaiser Permanente hospital to earn LEED Gold status is in Hillsboro, Oregon, the organization has since opened the LEED-certified San Ramon Medical Offices near its home base in Oakland, California.

Photo: Kaiser Permanente

The 67,000-square-foot project, located in San Ramon, earned LEED Gold certification for sustainable, environmentally sound construction. Some of the project’s aspects exceeded the stringent LEED Gold standards; for example, 93 percent of the onsite-generated construction waste was diverted from landfill. LEED certification requires only 50 percent be diverted. Kaiser Permanente converted a foreclosed big box store in Portland, Oregon into a LEED Gold medical office building; and its Antelope Valley Medical Offices, which opened in October in Southern California, was designed to meet LEED Platinum (certification still pending).

Kaiser Permanente, which operates 38 hospitals and more than 600 outpatient medical offices across the country, was one of the first healthcare institutions to eliminate polyvinyl chloride (PVC) from carpets and flooring. In 2004, in fact, the organization worked with manufacturers to bring PVC-free building products to the market when none existed. Last June, Kaiser Permanente leaders announced they wouldn’t purchase furniture with flame-retardant chemicals.

“For Kaiser Permanente, sustainability is about health,” Gerwig says. “By addressing air pollution and climate change, reducing the use of harmful chemicals, and promoting sustainable food choices, Kaiser Permanente is taking concrete steps toward reducing pollution and conditions that can harm health.”

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Better Building Products

ephyra — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:57:49 +0000

EcoPower

Securitron EcoPower™ is a highly efficient power supply designed to work with low-power electrified locks. This small, aesthetic access control power supply reduces standby power consumption to only 8.5mW (0.0085W), a 99% decrease compared to current linear and switching power supplies. EcoPower can reduce total door power consumption from 10W or more to a phenomenal 0.21W, when used with a lock like one leveraging Ecoflex technology. The low power consumption means that the included EcoPower battery provides 24 or more hours of backup power. EcoPower is the most efficient, fully featured power supply available today.

Securitron
www.securitron.com

H2i R2-Series VRF Zoning Systems

Mitsubishi Electric US Cooling & Heating Division (Mitsubishi Electric), has introduced the Hyper-Heating R2-Series of Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) zoning systems. It can operate at up to 100 percent of its rated heating capacity at temperatures down to zero degrees Fahrenheit – the highest performance heating capacity at the lowest temperature in its field. The H2i R2-Series joins the Hyper-Heating INVERTER (H2i®) family of products, the most complete family of cold climate heating products. The patented flash injection technology allows the H2i R2-Series to simultaneously cool and heat down to minus 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Mitsubishi Electric
www.mitsubishicomfort.com

Electrified Mortise Locks

Ecoflex™ technology, available in electrified mortise locks from ASSA ABLOY Group brands CORBIN RUSSWIN and SARGENT, represents a significant innovation in door opening technology. Ecoflex electrified mortise locks reduce energy consumption up to 96% compared to standard electrified mortise locks, as certified by GreenCircle. With this dramatic reduction in energy consumption, drawing less than 1/4 watt at 12V, EcoFlex offers more flexibility to consolidate power supplies and reduce operating costs. Ecoflex offers a flexible, reliable solution with a single ANSI/BHMA Grade 1 mortise lock that can be used for 12V – 24V applications and can be easily field-configured for fail-safe or fail-secure operation.

EcoFlex™
www.intelligentopenings.com/Ecoflex

Trio-ETM Energy Efficient Steel Stiffened Door

Trio-E is a door opening system that delivers superior insulated values and strength plus, provides aesthetic qualities desired in today’s commercial building applications. The “E” is for energy efficiency and Trio-E has the lowest U-Factor (0.29) for a steel stiffened door in the market today. The Trio-E will provide years of strength and sustainable energy savings for any building. Trio-E is strong- with a steel stiffened core for durability, beautiful- with no visible weld marks on door face sheets, and sustainable- using injected polyurethane foam for superior insulation. Offered by ASSA ABLOY Group brands CECO Door, CURRIES, Fleming, and Pemko.

CECO Door
www.cecodoor.com

Infinite R™

Heat energy only flows from a warmer place to a cooler place. The amount of heat flow depends on the temperature difference and the conductivity of the heat flow path. Traditionally, we limit heat flow by adding more “R” Value, usually in the form of fiberglass, cellulose or foam, between the temperature differences. The Infinite R™ approach is totally different. It controls the temperature differential across the «R»-value. When temperature differences are kept low, then the heat flow across any «R»-value is also kept low. If the temperature difference, sometimes referred to as Delta T, equaled zero then zero heat flow would occur. Using the Infinite R™ approach, zero heat flow conditions have been witnessed even when large temperature differences exist.

Infinite R
www.phasechangetechnologies.com

Multi V Mini

The Multi V Mini is a Variable Refrigerant Flow (VRF) heat pump system that is available in capacities of 3, 4 and 4.4 tons. Through VRF, users can effectively heat or cool only the areas or rooms to the desired temperature. The Multi V Mini is available in both single and three phase systems and is compatible with a wide range of LG ducted and non-ducted indoor units. The system is easy to install with attractive, lightweight design features.

LG
www.lg-vrf.com/multi-v-products.aspx

SMARTBATT®

Moisture in a project is unavoidable, but now there’s a revolutionary way to manage it. CertainTeed’s SMARTBATT™ fiber glass Insulation with MoistureSense™ Technology features an integrated smart vapor retarder that changes its permeability with the ambient humidity conditions of a building. Unlike traditional kraft faced insulation that will not completely block moisture in the winter, nor open up enough for complete drying in the summer; SMARTBATT adapts its permeability based on humidity levels in the wall, blocking moisture or allowing it to escape, helping prevent mold and mildew in wall cavities.

CertainTeed Insulation
www.certainteed.com/smartbatt

Wood Certified to the SFI® Standard

Wood’s inherent sustainability as a natural and renewable resource makes it an excellent environmental choice for any new construction or renovation. But many of wood’s positive attributes depend in large part on whether the forest resource is renewed. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative® (SFI) Standard offers a proof point that the forest has been managed for multiple environmental, social and economic values – today and tomorrow. Architects and builders are turning to products certified to the SFI Standard to meet green building requirements. Look and ask for wood certified to the SFI Standard for all your projects.

Sustainable Forestry Initiative®
www.SFIprogram.org

100 Series

The Andersen 100 Series product line features environmentally responsible and third-party-certified construction, economical pricing, and energy-saving performance with a clean, low-maintenance aesthetic. Recycled content is an important component in the construction of 100 Series products. As it contains 18%–24% pre-consumer recycled glass and wood fiber content. In addition, 100 Series products meet the strictest indoor air emission criteria in the United States, namely the California Section 01350. 100 Series is made using the company’s patented Fibrex® material; a highly sustainable structural composite blending the best attributes of wood fiber and polymers—much of it reclaimed from Andersen’s manufacturing operations. It combines the strength and stability of wood with the low-maintenance features of vinyl. Independent testing has found that Fibrex material has a low thermal expansion and contraction rate, is resistant to rotting and termite damage, and retains its rigidity and stability in high temperatures.

Andersen
www.andersenwindows.com/products/series/100-series

Indoor Air Quality Gypsum Board

AirRenew Indoor Air Quality Gypsum Board is the only drywall that cleans indoor air by permanently removing formaldehyde. In addition to AirRenew Essential, we offer AirRenew M2Tech for added moisture and mold protection. For areas requiring abuse resistance as well as moisture and mold protection, AirRenew Extreme Abuse & AirRenew Extreme Impact are designed for areas prone to surface abrasion and indentation. Extreme Abuse is recommended for hallways, playrooms, garages, and utility rooms. Extreme Impact provides the highest level of protection and is suited for high traffic applications such as hospital corridors, gymnasiums, utility rooms, airport terminals and public buildings.

www.airrenew.com/span>

Reclaimed Wood

Centennial Woods, LLC produces aesthetic building products manufactured from reclaimed Wyoming snow fence wood. The Company has been in business for over 15 years. We maintain the 500+ miles of snow fence that protects Wyoming highways from blowing and drifting snow. The wood that is reclaimed from these snow fences is unique in that it is FSC Certified recycled and 100% reclaimed and repurposed. It is unusually weathered; incorporating vibrant, natural coloring; and naturally weather resistant. These features allow Centennial Woods products to be highly sought after in the “Green” building industry. As a result of these features, and of the extensive source of wood available to Centennial Woods, the company has become the premier provider of reclaimed wood for exterior/interior siding, walls, ceilings, floors and other creative applications to green builders in the United States and Internationally.

Centennial Woods, LLC
www.centennialwoods.com

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Can green building make China’s cities more competitive?

ephyra — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:57:49 +0000

By Christopher Gray

November’s historic climate change agreement between China and the United States provides the green building community with another opportunity to evaluate our movement’s importance to China’s long-term economic and environmental forecast. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) has already become a major driver of market transformation in China, but how does green building fit into the complex puzzle of China’s overarching economic and demographic trends?

Now that President Xi Jinping has signaled the full extent of China’s commitment to combating climate change and greening its economy, several questions remain regarding the long-term strategic direction that China should take to ensure that it reaches its ambitious goals.

Given current conditions and projections, it is clear that China’s best chance of reaching its goal of capping carbon emissions by the year 2030 is to focus on a rapid green transformation of its urban centers. The most logical first step in this process would be to focus on the transformation of China’s built environment, not only in established international cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, but also in China’s emerging industrial megacities. Making this form of investment would not only improve the quality of life for China’s enormous urban population, it also has the potential of elevating the economic and cultural competitiveness of China’s lesser known megacities.

The problem that emerging economic powerhouse cities like Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hangzhou are all collectively facing is that the industries that have driven their rapid transformation into megapolises are no longer sustainable. The historic climate change agreement reached by Beijing and Washington this week was not simply prompted by a desire for increased cooperation and better relations; the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has unequivocally stated that drastic and far-reaching cuts in greenhouse gas emissions will be needed almost immediately if we have any hope of avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Because many of the long-term impacts of climate change are only beginning to occur, many of the achievements of green buildings are currently seen as positive features versus essential economic conditions. This perception will change as the negative effects of climate change become more frequent and severe, and the necessity of living in a city with a built environment that maximizes its water resources, uses energy efficiently and effectively and utilizes smart urban planning and design to minimize travel distances for its citizens becomes more obvious.

Cities that are unable to rely on the sustainable design of their built environment will struggle to compete with their internal and international competitors for a number of reasons:

These cities will be unable to offer the same quality of life to their citizens that other greener cities can offer and they will similarly struggle to develop and retain top talent for their workforces.
The increased scarcity of material resources such as water will also cause the costs of everyday life to skyrocket, and this will force the cost of economic activity to soar in cities that do not make substantial investments in green buildings.
Cities that fail to use the principles of sustainable design to situate buildings along mass transit routes will also struggle with substantially higher costs of living and doing business in comparison to cities that demonstrate a commitment to making those investments now.

Chinese cities are still heavily reliant on economic activities that are largely dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. As momentum builds toward the establishment of an international consensus aimed at phasing out these very activities, Chinese industrial cities will need to dramatically reduce the emissions attributed to their built environment if they have any hope of avoiding harmful economic disruptions while they transition toward greener methods of industrial production.

China’s internationally established cities have already begun to take aggressive steps toward greening their built environments, with Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong already ranking among the top cities in the world for LEED.

As more recently developed cities in China attempt to reach their full economic, social, and political potential they too will need to focus on controlling the environmental impacts of their built environment. Failure to make important investments in global, internationally recognized green rating systems like LEED today will make avoiding large economic and social disruptions tomorrow a difficult proposition to manage.

Winner’s Circle

ephyra — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:57:49 +0000

By Cecilia Shutters

Sustainability in Louisville is all about taking the reins.

How does a city design for a sustainable future? Answer: Begin by having the right people at the starting gate. In a Derby City-style trifecta, leadership from the city, the university, and a new innovation incubator—the Nucleus Innovation Center—aim to place Louisville, Kentucky, in the winner’s circle of sustainable development.

Louisville’s Mayor Greg Fischer is unequivocal about his commitment to put the city’s 400 square miles on the map as an eco-friendly hub. Maria Koetter, director of the office of sustainability for metro Louisville, actualizes this commitment. Mayor Fisher tasked her office with developing a comprehensive sustainability plan, Sustain Louisville, which the office

Louisville’s Nucleus Innovation Center offers a rooftop garden and a 100 percent reflective roof.

released in March of 2013. Key successes from the first year have already been reported this past June.

“For a new office of sustainability like ours, leadership means bringing the right pieces together and building from there, rather than trying to ‘reinvent the wheel,’” Koetter says. “We are fortunate to be able to reach our goals faster and better because of the organizations that already exist. For example, one of our nonprofit partners, the Louisville Sustainability Council, coordinates monthly working groups for five action teams dedicated to the initiatives we set in Sustain Louisville.”

Top: Maria Koetter. Middle: Dr. Shirley Willihnganz. Bottom: Vickie Yates Brown.
Photo credit for Dr. Shirley Willihnganz: Power creative

Sustain Louisville outlines goals along six sections: energy, environment, transportation, economy, community, and engagement. Within these goals, 69 individual initiatives are set, each on a path to move from planned to completed (four of which have already been completed since the initial 2013 plan was released). The city has reported on the plan’s outcomes, which include an energy savings performance contract expected to result in $27 million in energy efficiency upgrades for city-owned buildings; 83 ENERGY STAR commercial buildings in the city; an update to the Land Development Code to allow for more community garden space; and grant funding to complete the most comprehensive heat island effect study in the country.

The study, conducted within the Georgia Tech School of City and Regional Planning, is the first step in addressing concern that the city has one of the fastest growing heat islands in the country. To address the issues Koetter says, “We set out to identify ways we can improve. The initial results of the heat island study show that we have lots of work to do. Much of this work is related not only to tree canopy but also to the built environment as well.”

The University of Louisville is also taking its sustainability initiatives to a new level. Dr. Shirley Willihnganz, provost of The University of Louisville (UofL), oversees all aspects of university academics and operations. Her goal is to fulfill a state mandate to become a premier, metropolitan research institution. She interprets this, in part, to be an imperative to strengthen the community surrounding the walls of the university as much as the community within—enumerating sustainability as a priority in this mission.

To start, UofL has committed to actively reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve climate neutrality by 2050. Their Climate Action Plan outlines sustainability goals across the spectrum of the university’s activities from purchasing practices to behavior change, and from green buildings to food and transportation options, and everything in between.

At the beginning of 2014, UofL reported in the plan that they estimate an emissions drop of over 27 percent—from 246,929 to 178,679 metric tons (equivalent to taking 14,167 cars off the road) from 2006 to 2013. Currently nine Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified buildings—almost one million LEED-certified square feet—exist on campus. Willihnganz affirmed the university’s ongoing policy to stick to LEED guidelines even after 14 years of budget cuts, a decision that predates the state requirement that new public buildings receiving more than 50 percent investment from the state achieve LEED certification.

“Every building that we have built since we made that commitment has gone forward with the intention and gotten LEED certified. Even a building that’s basically a computer, can do that,” says Willihnganz. “I also think that policy is really important, because policy helps guide behavior.”

For Louisville’s Nucleus Innovation Center, the emphasis on an innovation “ecosystem” cannot be overstated. Vickie Yates Brown, president and CEO at Nucleus, is the force making Louisville’s aspirations for innovation a reality.

She attributes the development of this ecosystem, officially serving as the economic development extension of the University of Louisville Foundation, to partnerships and a shared vision between the city and state government, university, private sector, and the entrepreneurial spirit of the city.

“We felt that we needed to lead by example. So if you’re in an innovation park and you have the local and state government, and everyone coming together in a partnership to work together to build an innovation park, you are expected to embrace best practices, you are expected to lead by example,” describes Yates Brown.

Housing office space, dry labs, and even a test kitchen, the new 197,000 LEED-Silver space on the edge of NuLu, a LEED-registered neighborhood, seems to epitomize Nucleus’s quest. The building offers some impressive green building strategies such as the 6,000-square-foot roof with reflective pavers and an expansive native plant garden. The 100 percent reflectivity of the roof is especially important to the city’s heightened awareness of heat island effect. The Nucleus is modeled to achieve a 35 percent reduction in indoor water usage and captures 90 percent of stormwater run-off via a retention basin under the building made possible via a partnership with the Metropolitan Sewer District.

Willihnganz synthesizes what is happening in Louisville best, “The world needs all of us, we all have gifts, all have things to bring, and everybody should be counted for what they can bring; [we need to] find the very best, biggest use for that.”

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Inland Empire Gives Back

ephyra — Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:57:49 +0000

By Jeff Harder

A Californian USGBC chapter brings green principles to its residents.

The Inland Empire begins some 40 gridlocked miles east of downtown Los Angeles. It’s a bedroom community comprising Riverside and San Bernardino counties, a place famous for reasonable housing prices and exhausting commutes. It’s also a proving ground for a crucial question: Beyond extolling the virtues of energy audits and sealing building envelopes to architects, builders, and contractors, how can the sustainability movement convince ordinary homeowners and community members why going green matters?

The answer looks a lot like the Sustainable and Healthy Communities

Through community workshops, residents gain job experience and sustainability training.

Initiative, now in its third year under the auspices of the U.S. Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Inland Empire (IE) Chapter. It’s a plan aimed at exposing the benefits of energy efficiency and environmental consciousness using a simple principle: Show—don’t just tell. By partnering with other organizations, the initiative has upgraded more than a dozen homes in the area, given unemployed volunteers skills and experience to build new careers, and brought sustainability education to schools and other local institutions.

“I think our members were thirsting for an opportunity to get out and apply those principles of sustainability in a real way that would help our community,” says Rick Fochtman, chair of the Sustainable and Healthy Communities Committee that oversees the program. “This is the perfect venue to do that: We’re furthering the message, but we’re doing it in a way that’s really helped people out and has made an impact.”

Erica Farr and Rick Fochtman chair of the Sustainable and Healthy Communities Committee.

Michael Peel, the committee’s past chair, started the initiative in 2011 as an outgrowth of his day job at a nonprofit that centered on bringing jobs, healthcare, education, and other services to underserved communities in the Inland Empire. “Mike had strong ties to the different organizations that were working with him, and as a project for our chapter, we started to figure out ways we could bring the green message to that community,” Fochtman says. The overarching goals of the initiative involved spreading a series of green development zones throughout the Inland Empire—areas that concentrated investments in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and other practices.

The following year, when USGBC-IE teamed up with the city of Rancho Cucamonga—which had instituted its own program linking environmental consciousness with healthy, active living—the Sustainable and Healthy Communities Initiative took off. In particular, the initiative geared its efforts toward a Hispanic audience—a large demographic in the Inland Empire, and one often overlooked when it comes to spreading the message of sustainability. “It’s extremely difficult to find anything having to do with sustainability conveyed in Spanish,” Fochtman says. After partnering with a civic group in the city’s Northtown neighborhood, they began hosting presentations and seminars on basic energy efficiency practices for homeowners.

“But rather than just talking to people and putting on another class, we wanted to actually demonstrate [how to do these things], and that’s how our program got some great attention,” Fochtman says.

Thirteen homeowners volunteered their homes for no-cost energy audits and energy-saving upgrades. Using grants from USGBC, the Southern California Gas Company, and Home Depot, a coalition of community members and contractors ferreted out inefficiencies with rented heat guns and blower doors, then made an average of $2,000 worth of improvements to each home to reduce their monthly energy bills. “More importantly, we taught the homeowners and their neighbors what the process was and why it was important,” Fochtman says.

At the same time, these projects boosted the résumés of roughly 50 out-of-work volunteers in a region with unemployment rates higher than the state average. The Inland Empire Chapter helped organize classes on sustainability, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, and technical training, and the workers put their education into practice doing modest tweaks to insulation and air tightness, like adding weather stripping and insulation. “We provided them basic training in the principles of sustainability, and then through these workshops and employing energy efficiency measures on houses, we gave them job experience,” Fochtman says. On one project, USGBC-IE partnered with GRID Alternatives to outfit a home with solar panels. The program has produced a few notable success stories—one alumnus from Northtown who completed the training program even started his own home energy auditing company.

Elementary students learn about making sustainable choices at home such as recycling plastic.

More recently, the Sustainable and Healthy Communities Initiative has spread to community institutions elsewhere in the Inland Empire. Fochtman himself has led four presentations on energy efficiency, waste management, and other topics at different churches. “We’ll start with a general interest topic, like sustainability or global warming, and from there we follow up with more practical, applied seminars, like how to change out fixtures in your home to improve water efficiency,” he says. “The idea is to intrigue them with concepts, then come back with concrete ways that they can make improvements in their own lives.”

Underscoring the Sustainable and Healthy Communities Initiative is a simple, crucial truth: Outreach only
resonates when it speaks to the demands of the residents. “It’s a matter of really getting in, finding out what the group wants, and being adaptable,” Fochtman says. “Some people don’t want to talk about global warming—well, then we don’t need to. We can talk about other things.”

Fochtman talked about other things in spring 2013, during an assembly in front of his children’s elementary school. In response, he received a book full of handwritten thank-you notes. One message read: “Thank you green speakers for coming to our school. I promise I will save electricity.” Later on, at his kids’ soccer game, children ran up to Fochtman and boasted about the lessons they took home to their parents. “It was really fun hearing how they asked their mom to put out a new trashcan for the recyclables,” he says.

Saving electricity and recycling are simple gestures, but the assembly clearly made an impression on the pint-sized audience. It was exactly what this crowd needed to hear—and it embodies what the Sustainable and Healthy Communities Initiative does to make a lasting impact.

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Leading by Example

ephyra — Mon, 08 Dec 2014 19:16:36 +0000

By Barbra Murray

StopWaste adds to its list of firsts with LEED v4 Platinum certification.

StopWaste—a public agency responsible for reducing waste in Alameda County, California—is green by nature, and its staff is always conscious of the need to “walk the talk.” The agency, which works on behalf of the 14 cities in Alameda County, the county itself, and two sanitary

Nathan Greene and Wes Sullens of StopWaste.

districts, tries to lead by example, and one of its latest accomplishments may well draw the attention of building owners and building professionals around the globe. The organization’s 14,000-square-foot headquarters in downtown Oakland recently became the first building to earn Platinum certification under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) v4 Building Operations and Maintenance..

“There’s been a lot of angst around v4, so getting the project out there and showcasing it—especially it being a public sector project—will help everyone realize that v4 is not scary,” says Wes Sullens, manager of Green Building Policy and Advocacy at StopWaste. Sullens also worked with U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) on the development of v4.

If it can be achieved in the public sector, where the purse strings are short and pulled tight, and with a structure that was originally erected in 1926, then private-sector building owners of both new and existing structures can certainly embrace LEED v4.

StopWaste was already ahead of the game when it decided to seek LEED O+M v4 certification. In 2007, its headquarters building earned the title of the nation’s first renovation project to earn LEED-New Construction v. 2.2 Platinum certification. The project cost, including the acquisition of the building and all renovations was approximately $6 million.

“At the time we had been promoting LEED to our cities and county as a low-cost green thing you could do,” Sullens recalls. “There was a lot of talk back then from citizens saying ‘That is so expensive, 10 to 15 percent more expensive,’ but we’d been proving, with public buildings, that you could do it for a lot less than that. LEED Silver for no additional cost—that was our mantra. We wanted to prove that we could do it on time and on budget—no additional costs.”

Cisterns affixed to the building collect rainwater.

And StopWaste was doing it on time and on budget early in 2006 when it became clear that LEED Platinum certification was within reach, so they went for it with the assistance of Komorous-Towey Architects (KTA). In came the photovoltaic solar panels, a shower, and a unique rain catchment system. Faced with a roof that sloped in an inconvenient direction, the team conceived a plan to attach the rain barrel to the side of the building to collect rainwater from the solar panels. “It was a really nice synergy that happened at the last minute,” Thomas J. Towey, CEO of KTA, notes. “It was low-cost way to feed that system. We had some really fun things like that happen.”

Salvaging played a large role in ratcheting up to the Platinum level, and dovetailed with the organization’s waste reduction mission. Among the great finds were metal panels that now adorn the façade of the building. Those panels were leftovers from a sign company, so with letters and words cut out of the metal here and there, KTA had to choose its words carefully. “‘LOVE’ appears many times,” Towey says, laughing at the thought.

And the price tag on going Platinum: less than $100,000.

Architectural firm Komorous-Towey Architects stepped in to help StopWaste achieve LEEDv4 Platinum certification. Daylighting is one way StopWaste wins points.
All photos: © Emily Hagopian. www.emilyhagopian.com

While its original LEED certification gave StopWaste a head start in its LEED O+M v4 pursuit—“We were set up for success,” Sullens says—the agency was well aware that the new LEED edition took requirements up a notch—or five. BuildingWise, a San Francisco-based green building consulting firm, was on hand to shepherd StopWaste through the guideline alterations, additions and the like. In some cases, what seemed like a small issue on the surface, turned out to be a challenge.

“For a small building, it had lots of cool little green bells and whistles,” says Levi Jimenez, project manager at BuildingWise. “They had a shower on site, they had indoor bike racks, they monitored their own waste which was really helpful. All of the service providers were very happy to oblige the specific criteria-per-credit, so getting service vendors on board was quite easy.” But not everything was easy. Even with StopWaste being, as Jimenez notes, “very conscious of how they purchase things,” ongoing consumables were out of reach at this time. And some measures that had been achieved relatively easily in the past version of LEED, such as outdoor maintenance and landscaping measures, were more difficult on tight urban sites like StopWaste. “Because they are small—only 14,000 square feet with about 2,000 square feet of landscaping—it was difficult to maximize some points,” says Jimenez.

Despite the occasional hurdles, BuildingWise found advantages to v4. Some of the credits have been consolidated, creating a more efficient program in general in Jimenez’s opinion. But perhaps the big takeaway from v4 is serving as a positive example. Jiminez and his BuildingWise colleagues hope that others will follow StopWaste’s lead. “I think there’s enough friendly competition in the marketplace that people do want to stay on

top of the game and stay ahead of their neighbors,” Jiminez says. “It’s easy for anybody to say ‘I have a green building’ or ‘I have a high-efficiency building’ but without some sort of proof or label saying somebody else verified this, then all you have is a building. To have that verification is critical and it seems like the market is moving toward stronger competition with LEED certified buildings.”

“Things like not earning the consumables credit leaves us with room for improvement,” says Nathan Greene, facilities manager at StopWaste. “We view earning LEED O+M v4 Platinum as a validation and snapshot on how we have been doing, but that doesn’t mean we are finished. We still have to operate our building every day and make the right choices consistently—finding innovative ways to walk our talk.”

StopWaste plans to continue innovating. As part of their Platinum certification, and with the help of Virtually Green, the team earned an Innovation credit for monitoring and gamifying plug-load energy use in cubicle workstations. Furthermore, StopWaste plans to set up a LEED Dynamic Plaque, a continuous evaluation of the building’s performance. “The Dynamic Plaque is not without controversy,” says Sullens, “but my hope is that, as an industry, existing building owners can add more and better metrics to the Dynamic Plaque platform so that it gets enhanced significantly over time.”

StopWaste is developing an ongoing waste tracking app for the Dynamic Plaque that utilizes wifi-enabled scales to track waste in real time. Scales will be placed under the recycling, composting, and garbage bins in the building and will link to a central dashboard that plugs into the Dynamic Plaque. “We are excited to test pilot this new waste tracking system,” says Greene, “and to make it an open application programming interface for others that want to track waste in real time as well.”

At the end of October, USGBC announced that it would extend the closing date for LEED 2009 registration from June 15, 2015 to October 2016, thereby giving the building industry some breathing room for easing into LEED v4, which USGBC acknowledges is more rigorous.

“The bar has been raised,” Sullens says of LEED O+M v4. “Yet it is still achievable and has real value. With v4, the USGBC has redefined what it means to build and operate green buildings and that definition continues to be an internationally recognized sign of leadership.” By becoming the first v4 Platinum project in the world, StopWaste has become an international symbol of leadership as well.