TOBEY WILLIAMSON, JANUARY 30, 2001
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TOBEY WILLIAMSON, JANUARY 30, 2001 |
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Encouraging High Performance Buildings
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
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INTRODUCTION GREEN DEVELOPMENT THEMES: BUILDINGS, TIME, ECONOMICS, ENVIRONMENT GREEN BUILDINGS AND PRODUCTIVITY INDOOR ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY (IEQ)
FOUR IMPORTANT GREEN BUILDING SPECIFICS
FOUR EFFORTS TO ENCOURAGE BROADER IMPLEMENTATION OF GREEN DEVELOPMENT
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Introduction
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It is no accident that there are hundreds of ornate temples dispersed throughout contemporary Kathmandu, Nepal. The city grew up around commerce. Lying as it does among the foothills of the Himalayas between the rich cultural traditions of India to the south and the mysterious mountain kingdoms of Tibet to the north, lively trade routes passed through the snow-capped peaks and into the narrow Kathmandu valley. And with the caravans of spices, silk, and crafts came opulent wealth. In medieval times, three kingdoms divided the lands of the valley floor and the commercial riches passing through. As is often the case, there was some tension regarding how this wealth was distributed and to which kings each merchant owed his allegiance. Recognizing that waging wars was likely to get in the way of the business at hand and furthermore that cities full of beautiful buildings might attract more wealth, the kings of these realms instead engaged in a temple building competition.
A loose analogy can be drawn to Devens. Characterized by natural beauty and situated along heavily traveled transportation routes in a prosperous region, this planned business community is growing fast and is destined to attract more development. Fortunately, there are no tensions between the various business owners regarding the distribution of success. On the contrary, there is a strong cooperative network developing around the tenets of industrial ecology. But what if a spirit of healthy competition was fostered in the name of architectural excellence? What if the results of the competition were buildings that cost less while performing better and that attracted more investment while improving our environment?
This paper is about "green" buildings, which have also come to be known as "high performance" buildings because of their improved environmental and economic performance compared to conventional designs. It is hoped that upon reading it, decision-makers at Devens will be better prepared to consider their options for promoting green development as the preferred choice for new development at this up and coming planned business community. There are two reasons for opening it with an anecdote about the roots of the architectural beauty in Kathmandu, Nepal, of all places, for. First, this story vividly shows how an architectural design competition, such as the one recently proposed for the new Devens Public Safety Building, can produce excellent results. But more importantly, because just as any beautiful, old city can, Kathmandu offers us a kind of visionary hindsight about what can come to be if conscious attention is paid to the relationships between buildings, time, economics, and the environment. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Green Development Themes:
Buildings, Time, Economics, Environment | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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These themes are reemerging as a basis for green development because so many people are realizing some basic truths that were self-evident during earlier periods of civilization that were time and material rich but energy poor. First, whether they are examples of the very best in spirit-lifting architecture or the most demeaning of the world's slums, the spaces we inhabit affect our daily lives. Second, since they last so long, the structures people build - from temples in Nepal to office buildings in Massachusetts - impact generations. And finally one fact has come to the forefront, the resources used in the construction, operation, and eventual decommissioning of our buildings are substantial, today accounting for nearly half the annual energy and material use in the U.S.3 This leads to an important distinction between today and medieval Nepal. In the 21st Century we must focus both on developing attractive urban environments and on developing solutions to global environmental challenges that seemingly loom much larger than the details of our cities. The list of ecological problems that could limit the options of generations to come is both long and daunting. Climate change, resource depletion, toxic pollution, atmospheric ozone loss, species decline… the list goes on. So, at its core, the evolution of green building methods and technology is driven by a desire to improve our environmental legacy regarding both urbanized and natural lands. The strategies employed are a mixture of ancient and futuristic solutions to small design problems that, when implemented on a broad scale will go a long way towards solving the much larger problems we face. Actually, just as the popular environmental dictum, "Think Globally, Act Locally" states, the largest of our environmental challenges truly lie in the details of our cities and, at least partly, in the buildings that define their character. Best of all, high-performance buildings are the results of richly creative processes that, because they focus on the opportunities embedded in environmental problems, are able to synergistically provide economic and social benefits as well. In this spirit, the following pages present these topics:
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Green Buildings and Productivity
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Of the economic opportunities that green buildings present, the one that offers the most potential is the gain in employee productivity that a comfortable and healthy workplace can help to bring about. Some may wonder-why should people even be included in a discussion of building systems? As is often the case, the best answer may be another question. If we do not design our interior spaces specifically for the people that inhabit them and with conscious forethought of their expected activities-for whom and for what are we designing them? A compelling reason for focusing on people first is apparent in Figure 1, which shows that by far, the largest expense associated with a building over its lifetime is the combined salaries of the people who work inside it. Since these costs are more than five times the next greatest cost, even minimal improvements in productivity can lead to large amounts of money returned on the investment in salaries.
Productivity, however, can be difficult to measure. Indicators, ranging from the easiest to the most difficult to compare, include reduced absenteeism, greater quantities of work accomplished and improved quality of work. Efforts have been made to link the quality of office and manufacturing environments to the ability of people to excel at their jobs. Case studies in a document titled, Greening the Building and the Bottom Line: Increasing Productivity through Energy-Efficient Design, detail the ways in which improved lighting, heating and cooling systems make it easier for people to see, to hear, and, ultimately, to concentrate on their tasks. Of the five studies in which productivity, in terms of the quantity and/or quality of work accomplished, could be measured and compared between conventional and high performance buildings, the average gain was 14%. A few of the case studies contain compelling examples of the ways in which buildings can affect the way people feel, measured in some by the amount of time workers decide to spend at work. For example, of the three green buildings for which absenteeism was measured and compared against earlier occupied conventional buildings, it decreased by an average of 18% in the more efficient buildings. One case study uses the amount of money shoppers are willing to spend in a retail store to measure the effect of efficient lighting. Wal-Mart's prototype "Eco-Mart" in Lawrence, Kansas, which for various reasons was half lit by electric lights and half by daylight, showed that shoppers spent more money in the daylit half of the store.4 Overall these case studies suggest that by focusing on visual acuity and thermal comfort, gains in energy efficiency and worker productivity are added benefits. More research is certainly necessary on the connections between buildings and productivity. Still, one cannot help but wonder- what could be accomplished if improving employee morale and productivity was among the first criteria for the design of a building? Could a design process that responds to the needs of all the users of a building-from the maintenance staff up through the CEO- lead to a better functioning organization? Would the solicitation of input from employees on how a workplace was to be laid out lead to increased loyalty in a tight job market? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Community Design
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These questions are similar to those asked by practitioners of Community Design. A movement begun as a remedy to the dis-empowerment expressed by urban peoples in the wake of the failure of Urban Renewal in the 1950's, which is widely agreed to be due to its focus on "top down" planning and design. In contrast, community design is a more grass roots effort characterized by participation of lay people in a cooperative design process that has a basic goal of raising general environmental awareness. Community designers have long recognized a fact that was stated so well by Winston Churchill, "We affect the design of our buildings, thereafter they affect us." This wisdom is entering the popular culture quickly, as evidenced by this quote in a recent Wired Magazine article, "Design is a chain reaction: We make design, and in turn, design makes us."5 When the profound thoughts of historical leaders have diffused into the Generation-X culture of high technology, it suggests that more efforts at collaborative processes for the design of workplaces are soon to follow-and they won't be the first. Sociologist Russ Ellis is credited with influencing the design of the new Levi Strauss headquarters in the 1970's, making it a more interactive office space that helped to change for the better the corporation's decision-making process.6 When developing a plan for a new company headquarters, the lesson for business owners and managers alike is that it is difficult to predict just how much of an effect, from a systems perspective, even the smallest change in a building's design could have on an organization's effectiveness. For example, including an employee kitchen and lunchroom could lead to informal discussions of a project that would in turn lead to more creative ideas. Or designing a recycling center for easy accessibility and use might drive home the concepts of Industrial Ecology, leading to larger company wide savings. Any useful change can have a powerful effect on morale, if the idea for it comes directly from an employee and gives her a stronger sense of connection to her workplace. The potential of more inclusive and thoughtful design to affect our lives and our workplaces will become more apparent as the Community Design movement in architecture and urban design integrates more fully with the Green Development movement in the coming years. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ)
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Even without answers to the questions raised by community designers and without specific information about the activities a space might be designed for, there are some general qualities about indoor environments that people appreciate, and which can a have a positive effect on productivity. Consider the evocative feeling of the following list of phrases:
Since even these words tend to promote a sense of well being, one can begin to understand how wonderful spaces designed to embody their principles can be. Detailed descriptions of the topics that cover these concepts could easily fill volumes of books, and in fact they do. So, the following brief descriptions of thermal comfort, daylighting/lighting and indoor air quality, which could be considered to be the most important aspects of IEQ, should be considered only as introductions. For those who are interested, the resource list at the end of this paper provides further sources of information. Thermal Comfort Excepting cases regarding specialized equipment needing precise climate control, we can assume that electronics and other machines perform well in roughly the same conditions as people. And though we often design our cities around our cars, it is still safe to say that the basic idea of both heating and cooling buildings is to create a space in which people feel comfortable. When we feel neither hot nor cold, it is because our bodies are effectively self-regulating our temperature. As Edward Allen puts it, "a 'heating' system allows the body to cool less rapidly in cold weather, whereas a 'cooling' or 'air-conditioning' system helps the body to cool more rapidly when the weather is hot."7 The human body is a system that responds to a variety of characteristics in its thermal regulation. Among these are - the temperature, relative humidity, and velocity of air movement in our surroundings. Most of the time, the effect of these conditions are obvious, just think of how uncomfortable we feel on a windless, hot and humid day. But, perhaps not always so obvious is the effects of the relative temperature of the surfaces or masses around us. For instance, not only does a hot radiator effect our comfort level because we take on the heat it gives off, but sitting near a poorly insulated window in the winter makes us cold because it is taking on our heat. Anyone who has tried to type wearing mittens or concentrate in a hot muggy office knows how important this topic is to productivity, but designing buildings that make people thermally comfortable in Massachusetts is complicated due to the diversity of weather in the New England climate. For short periods of time, mostly during spring and fall, no systems are required since the outdoor air is so pleasant that people do well just as it is- these are the days that we would rather not be cooped up in a stuffy office. But during much of the rest of the year, most of us would rather be inside somewhere since it is either too hot or too cold or perhaps too wet outside. So, during nearly half of the year, buildings in New England need to be heated and humidified to make people comfortable. For most of the balance of the year they need to be cooled and de-humidified. A variety of methods have been devised for controlling indoor climate to help the human body to perform its own "interior climate control." Green building design tends to focus on the techniques that use the least amount of energy to do this, which are called "passive systems." Figure 2, a chart paraphrased from Edward Allen's book The Natural Order of Architecture, provides examples of passive techniques for heating and cooling.
Figure 2
Since metabolism, physical activity and clothing choice vary considerably among individuals, providing conditions that satisfy the greatest number of people should be the goal in building design. This goal can be reached through a combination of the preceding techniques, which are all interdependent and semi-interchangeable. In fact, we (and our pets) often do each of them instinctively. For example, if we have to be outside on a cold, windy winter day we tend to look for a sunny spot out of the wind. And if we have the choice we would probably sit on a wooden bench instead of a stone bench, unless of course the stone bench had been warming in the sun all afternoon. This spot we choose is called a "microclimate," since it is a small place sheltered in such a way that its temperature, humidity, and air movement conditions vary considerably from its surrounding. By this definition, all buildings could be considered microclimates. But since they tend to stay put once we build them, we have to consider all of the above factors beforehand if we want to take advantage of these natural factors. Properly orienting them to the sun and prevailing winds, providing superior insulation properties in the building envelope and glazing, and including a large amount of thermal mass to absorb and release heat at opportune times are the only ways that we can create comfortable interior spaces without expending vast amounts of energy. In effect, the purpose of passive climate control is to create more of the sunny-warm places in winter and the cool-dark spaces in summer for ourselves that we find our pets instinctively occupying day in and day out.
Allowing for a wider range of temperature variation during the day within reasonable parameters is an important part of passive climate control strategies. Keeping a building between 67 and 72 degrees year round (rather than the common low sixties in the summer and mid seventies in winter) will tend to work out fine if all of the various aspects of thermal comfort described in the chart above are attended to in the design. But in preparation for the inevitable prolonged heat waves and prolonged cloudy cold snaps in Massachusetts, some sort of energy efficient active system should also be included as a backup to or as an accessory for these passive systems. Geothermal heating and cooling systems may be a good choice, depending on the amount of space available for laying the underground pipes for the heat pump and the square footage that needs to be heated/cooled. As an added incentive, Massachusetts Electric Company has a program that will pay a portion of the cost of installing geothermal systems.8 Actively heating or cooling only the areas where people spend the most time, rather than the entire interior space is another often-used strategy for efficiency in green buildings. Finally, since a manufacturer of some of the most efficient electrical equipment in the world, American Superconductor, is right here at Devens, some sort of deal could possibly be brokered that would lower the price of this equipment for use in the heating systems of new construction. Daylighting/Lighting
Just as the passive means for providing thermal comfort are preferable in green buildings because of their lower energy usage, sunlight is the preferred method for lighting them. Additionally, daylight is more pleasing to the eye than electric light because of its natural color and variability and the windows that allow light to enter also provide a link to the outdoor environment that can be refreshing. For a variety of reasons though, diffuse or reflected, indirect sunlight is better suited to most indoor situations. For one, glare from direct sunlight is debilitating, especially when it is adjacent to interior focal points such as blackboards, presentation screens, or computer monitors. Direct sunlight also has the tendency to discolor materials left in its path for an extended period. And while the heat gained from the winter sun is useful for passively heating people and thermal mass, the summer sun can be very uncomfortable. So, for the same reasons that we wear sunglasses and sit in the shade on a hot day, windows usually need some degree of shading to make effective light sources. Finally, since the sun is hidden behind clouds or the earth for a good portion of the year, electric lights are also going to be a necessary, at least as an accessory source for most green buildings. Whether it is from the sun or from an electric lamp, more light is not necessarily better. Light quality is a more important measure than quantity, and as with any measure of quality, it is subjective. Matching light levels to the task at hand is the best method for making sure that a lighting system is both efficient and effective. Once the correct level of light is determined for a task, the next important part of an efficient lighting strategy is to put light where it is needed, rather than lighting an entire space. This can be accomplished relatively easily with electric lights, but requires a higher degree of forethought about an interior plan to use daylight effectively. Using light-shelves to reflect window light or central light-shafts are both strategies that allow light to penetrate deeper into an interior space. Finally, it is important that ambient light levels and task lighting levels be compatible, as this can help to reduce high contrasts, which contribute to visual fatigue. Indoor Air Quality Everyone appreciates the power of fresh air to re-invigorate the senses, yet many of the buildings where we spend 90% of our time (and closer to 100% of our working time) provide little or no access to it. Similar to the descriptions above about the effects of lighting and thermal comfort, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found that improving indoor air quality can result in higher productivity and fewer lost work days.9 EPA along with many other organizations concerned about public health became involved in research about indoor air quality in the 1970's, about the same time that the terms "Sick Building Syndrome" and "Building Related Illness" entered the national vocabulary. As the story goes, the energy crisis had led to policies to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. Many of these improvements were accomplished by sealing building envelopes to reduce air exchange, thereby reducing the daily tonnage of air that needed to be heated or cooled. Unfortunately, the vast array of new synthetic building materials utilized in the era and some poorly designed heating and air conditioning systems combined in these sealed environments to create an unhealthy atmospheric cocktail of toxic compounds, abrasive particulate matter, and pathogenic organisms. Symptoms ranging from headaches and allergies to outbreaks of infectious diseases and even some forms of cancer were all eventually traced back to the quality of the air in the buildings where people were spending their days. Improving indoor air quality has since become an important goal, though retrofitting some of the poorer quality buildings often makes it a difficult one to accomplish. Creating high performance buildings provides an opportunity to avoid these problems from the outset. Strategies for doing so depend on the type of pollution meant to be avoided. Figure 3 outlines some broad indoor air pollution types and strategies for eliminating them. Figure 3
Avoiding materials, such as paints and adhesives, that give off unpleasant and harmful odors and carpets or wall coverings that release synthetic fibers is the simplest way to ensure high quality interior air. If these materials cannot be avoided, providing adequate ventilation is next best way. One of the easiest methods for providing adequate ventilation is to allow occupants the option of opening their windows, though this and other means of air exchange need to be reconciled with heating and cooling efficiency. Specifying operable windows is a simple but powerful concept for a variety of reasons. For one, they give people greater control over the amount of fresh air they get. They also allow opportunities for people to better regulate their own thermal comfort. Finally, open windows provide an even stronger link to the outdoors than looking through closed ones, since the smell of springtime and the sound of singing birds can come in as well. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Whole System Design
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Achieving even the minimal green building goals of using as little energy as possible to provide light, thermal comfort, and fresh air requires careful weighing of options and creative problem solving. When additional goals such as noise control, water conservation, indoor gardens, user friendly recycling centers, local and non-toxic material use, and on-site generation of electricity are added, the process becomes increasingly complex. Fortunately, whole system design has emerged as both a means to manage this complexity, and more importantly to discover synergies among the various goals. The example of operable windows above, though simplified for effect to exclude such unpleasant sounds and smells as those emanating from diesel trucks, illustrates the idea of a synergistic solution on the component level. The same type of thinking can be extended to the entire building so that the various systems interact in beneficial ways that support one another. In a description of whole system or "integrative design" Michael Corbett, the green developer of the highly reputed Davis Homes in California offers this advice, "… you are on the right track when your solution for one problem accidentally solves several others."11 As a counter example, consider conventional architectural practice, which acts as though the building envelope and the HVAC system are completely separate systems, only understood by different teams of experts and designed in isolation. What typically happens is that an architect draws up plans to enclose a space-take as an extreme, but perhaps not so unlikely example-a sealed atrium with un-shaded, un-insulated windows that face both the hot summer sun and a chilly prevailing winter wind. Then he hands off this ill-conceived plan to the mechanical engineer who is asked to design the heating and cooling system, which of course will require extraordinary amounts of energy year round to do the difficult job the architect has created for it. In contrast, whole system design recognizes that the amount of insulation, thermal mass, and glazing in the buildings envelope interacts with the amount of solar gain allowed by the building's orientation to hugely effect heating and cooling loads. And that therefore interactive design among the various system engineers from the beginning of the process will create a better functioning product. As discussed earlier, the tenets of community design say that with more people involved who have a stake and some knowledge to add to the process, the result is an excellent product. To further clarify whole system design the Figure 4 outlines some of the basic differences between it and conventional design.
Figure 4
Establishing a multi-disciplinary team that can effectively communicate goals and strategies and then work together to spin a web of interrelated solutions is crucial to the success of a green building project. So too is allowing them enough time. A project that is often referred to as an example of building excellence because if its high level of integration, the ING Bank headquarters in the Netherlands, took three years to design. This extra time was largely a result of the bank board's insistence that everyone involved, including the people who would work there, understand every detail. In the tradition of community design, the benefits of taking this time are apparent in any number of statistics. Employee absenteeism is down fifteen percent due largely to the organic building that integrates water, plants, sunlight, quiet and art into their daily work experience. Energy efficiency measures resulted in the use of ninety-two percent less energy than an adjacent building constructed at the same time. The added expense of the higher quality systems was paid for in three months, and the systems are currently estimated to be saving $2.9 million per year. These energy savings, a new public image, and improved employee morale were all nurtured by a design process and a building. Combined, these new assets have contributed in no small way to the bank's growth from fourth to second largest in the country since their new headquarters was completed.12 Best of all, the building costs were no more than the market average, coming in at $100 per square foot for the shell and systems and at $200 per square foot completely furnished and equipped with energy efficient appliances and computers.13 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Life Cycle Costing
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How is it possible to pay the same amount for higher quality? One reason is that integrated design produces a result that is greater than the sum of its parts. Another reason it is possible to spend less to get more is that a technique called "life-cycle costing" is used, which accounts for costs over the entire life of a building rather than just the initial costs. Initially this may seem like a budget conflict in that one does not expect to have to pay up front for the cost of heating a building for its entire life. But, the idea is not to pay for these costs up front, but rather to include them in the initial analysis so that they may be reduced early when it is easiest to do so. The following quote is instructive on this matter:
"Up-front building and design costs may represent only a fraction of the building's life-cycle costs. When just one percent of a project's up-front costs are spent, up to 70 percent of its life-cycle costs may already be committed; when seven percent of project costs are spent, up to 85 percent of life-cycle costs have been committed." The U.S. Department Energy has developed energy modeling software that helps designers to understand and manipulate relationships between different building components so that life-cycle costs can be conserved up front. The software packages, called PowerDOE and EnergyPlus15, are limited in some respects in that they cannot account for some advanced designs developed after the software itself was developed. But they do demonstrate effectively the interactions between a building's HVAC system, electric lighting, glazing, orientation, floor plan, envelope, and occupancy schedule, thereby allowing some modifications to be made from a base case.16 Furthermore, Massachusetts Electric Company (MECo) currently has money in their budget to split the cost of this modeling work with the owner of the building. According to Joseph Mannarino, Senior Technical Representative, MECo also pays cash incentives to install efficient equipment. Depending on the circumstances the utility will pay from half to the entire extra cost up front, in order to reduce the amount of time before the increased efficiency pays for itself, a period known as the "payback time." Considering the life-cycle costs of a building's systems leads logically to an appraisal of a building's longevity. When asked a somewhat conventionally framed question about which components of a building cost the most, Green Architect Bruce Coldham replied that it is better to shift costs to the longest lasting structures and away from those that would likely need to be repaired or replaced over the building's life. He went on to say that the benefits of this shift add up in exciting ways. For instance, expending money and effort on the efficiency of the building envelope, the longest lasting and the most important building component tends also to make it last even longer. This is true because the basis for energy efficiency in walls is a reduction of thermal bridging between indoor and outdoor air, a factor which has a direct influence on the amount of water that condenses within the structure, which in turn has a direct effect on how quickly the structural materials begin to breakdown. The benefits continue to add up in that a well designed, tight building envelope can reduce the size of the HVAC system even as much as 100%, thereby limiting or eliminating moving mechanical parts which account for the majority of repair and replacement costs. Furthermore the closer the system size is to zero, of course, the closer the initial cost is to zero as well.17 This type of thinking is what Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins call "tunneling through the cost barrier," in their book Natural Capitalism.18 Indeed, high quality individual components do routinely cost more than lower quality ones. But when these components are combined together into a system with functional relationships that then has its costs examined over its lifetime, the whole is often cheaper than and has more value than the sum of the less expensive parts. Figures 5 and 6 depict the differences between conventional and whole system, full life-cycle-accounted design economics.
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Commissioning
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A crucial part of high performance buildings is ensuring that all the design work that goes into establishing these functional relationships in conceptual form is not wasted by poor construction or faulty systems in reality. Commissioning agents (CA) are included in a green building team to perform this job. The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) definition of commissioning is as follows:
"A Systematic process of ensuring that systems are designed, installed, functionally tested, and capable of being operated and maintained to perform in conformity with design intent." Though each member of the team should be encouraged to take a holistic view, this view is essential for the commissioning agent. According to Dr. John McCarthy of Environmental Health and Engineering, Inc. the following are important roles for the CA to play on a green building team:
Done properly, commissioning contributes the following benefits while only adding one percent (1%) to the design costs:
When the savings in energy usage, service calls, and change orders resulting from proper commissioning are added together and balanced with the overall cost of the agent's time, the cumulative payback period is under a year. After which, the savings go directly into the owners pocket.19 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Four Important Green Building Specifics
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Unfortunately, there is not room in a paper of this length to describe all the facets of green building design in the detail that they deserve. While most of the above sections have focused on the general strategies of high performance buildings, the following are brief descriptions of some important specific trends, such as designing for ease of reuse or deconstruction, specifying environmentally sound materials, building integrated photovoltaics, and efficient use and treatment of water. Some of these will likely pay for themselves over the long run, while others may be considered economical because of their aptness as symbols of corporate environmental leadership. Design for Re-Use/Deconstruction The best way to save materials, energy and money on a construction project is to avoid it all together. Barring this, the next best way is to reuse an old structure for a new use. Buildings from the recent past are proving to be less adaptable to reuse than are more historic structures, as evidenced by some of the abandoned buildings extant at Devens. It is often the case that these newer buildings were not designed with the thought that they may be needed in the future for something other than their original use. Occasionally the quality of the materials used and/or the workmanship was poor, leading the structures to wear out quickly. Rather than saddling future generations of decision-makers with similar problems, why not encourage designers of new developments to consider the longevity and reuse potential of their structures? Providing a solid and dignified framework while simultaneously allowing a flexible organization of the interior space is the key. Some trade-offs will likely be necessary between designing exactly for a current use as community design suggests and allowing for ease of conversion for some future unknown use. But, ideas like swapping a dropped ceiling for a raised floor can help, since this makes ductwork and wiring more easily accessible. 20 Choosing materials that last and weather well is also crucial. As a kind of bonus these tend to be higher quality materials that will please original occupants equally. Specifying Environmentally Sound Materials From an energy standpoint, the most environmentally sound building materials tend to be those that last the longest. This is so because it helps to accomplish the goal of reducing the amount of energy required to produce, transport, install and dispose of them, which collectively is known as "embodied energy." Of course, choosing environmentally sound materials involves more than just finding the one that lasts the longest. Plastic lasts a long time, but this does not necessarily mean that we want to panel every interior space with it. For one, plastic does not have the same appearance and feel as wood or other materials. Depending on the type used, plastic may also contribute more than its share to indoor air quality problems through the release of VOCs. Currently, they are also derived from non-renewable petroleum. Other considerations in the choice of materials therefore are to choose materials that are either renewable, such as sustainably harvested wood, recycled/recyclable, or so vast in their availability as to be considered nearly inexhaustible, such as earthen materials like mud, clay, and sand (glass.) Sustainably harvested wood should become easier to find due to the expansion of third party certification programs that have established criteria and programs for encouraging its production. Specifying recycled or reusable materials is already a money saving step taken by many construction projects at Devens. For instance, the Anhueiser-Busch facility saved $22,000 by using concrete forms from the Boston Builder's cooperative. The golf course saved money by re-using asphalt torn up from the site. Many other opportunities for saving money and materials are no doubt possible. Encouraging new developments to specify materials made from only one type of material (known as non-composite materials) will provide more opportunities for savings in the long run by making deconstruction and recycling easier. Finally, coming back to the issue of embodied energy is important because of its impact on one of the most pressing of environmental issues facing us-global climate change. As whole system design makes buildings more efficient to operate, the amount of energy required to construct them becomes proportionately more important. In addition to long-lasting, recycled/recyclable and sustainably harvested materials, specifying materials that use little energy in production helps to reduce the total energy used. The following materials are listed in order from least to most energy used in production: wood (640 kilowatt-hours per ton), Brick (4x times greater), concrete (5x), plastic (6x), glass (14x), steel (24x), and aluminum (126x). Though currently difficult to do exclusively, relying heavily on materials that are indigenous to the area surrounding Devens will reduce the embodied energy content even more. As another added bonus (we know we're doing well now), research has shown that spending money on local goods and services is an excellent way to improve the health of a local economy. Photovoltaic Energy Generation Producing renewable energy for use on site accomplishes many of the same goals as reducing embodied energy. For one, the less energy converted from fossil sources, the less contribution we make to atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. In a more positive light, the more energy produced locally, the more money can circulate locally instead of being siphoned off to distant utility companies. As an example, advances in photovoltaic (PV) technologies, which turn sunlight into electricity, and policy measures like net metering (electricity meters that run both directions), have made it possible for homeowners to make their energy costs drop below zero-meaning their homes earn money just by sitting in the sun. While it is a bit more difficult to provide for all of the power needs of commercial or industrial buildings with PV, it is becoming economical to create some electricity with solar panels, especially when government and utility incentives help to pay the increased up-front costs. These incentives are to varying degrees coming quickly and already available. On the one hand, as part of the Statewide utility restructuring, a Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard was developed that sets a timetable for the introduction of new renewable energy generating facilities. Under this timetable utilities are obligated to increase the percentage of their electricity generated by new renewable means. It follows then, that they will soon begin looking for ways to do this and the distributed generation that PV technologies allow is one strategy at which they are looking closely. Joseph Mannarino of MECo states that incentives for PV will be available as soon as the economics are right.23
Though this fund is set up to pay for a variety of renewable energy technologies, a number of reasons point towards constructing solar electric buildings as the best way for businesses at Devens to cash in. First, direct solar energy is likely the most abundant renewable flow in the area. Second, building integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) panels, which are designed to produce electricity while performing the function of roofing, siding or glazing materials, make it possible to shorten payback periods. This is accomplished by subtracting the cost of conventional materials for the building's facade and/or roof from the investment since these materials would have been bought anyway. Finally, PV panels function as a well-recognized symbol of a company's environmental leadership that will help to set them apart from the competition. Solar Design Associates (SDA) in Harvard has extensive experience in the design and installation of photovoltaics. Paul Wormser, Director of Technology at SDA, has developed an excellent presentation of the current state of these technologies and has stated that his company would be glad to serve as consultants to any construction projects at Devens. Efficient Water Use and Treatment
The well-established guidelines for site plans at Devens already encourage careful consideration of water flows. Detention basins have become a routine way of dealing with stormwater onsite, and they can be integrated into building designs. For example, the new Environmental Studies building at Oberlin College uses an ecologically engineered system of plants and animals called a "Living Machine" to clean its wastewater, releasing an effluent into surrounding detention ponds that is cleaner than the water that was piped in as drinking water. Depending on the nutrient content of the wastewater produced by a company, valuable products- even energy, can be extracted in the same process.26 As one final note of the potential for integrative building design to provide great rewards, work is currently being done to combine these Living Machine systems with energy generation systems to produce hydrogen gas. Considered by many to be the next step in clean and dependable energy storage and transport media, hydrogen gas could nearly replace all petroleum products, especially in vehicles during this century.27 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Four Efforts to Encourage Broader Implementation of Green Development
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Now that the benefits of green buildings have been explained, it is time to return to the original questions about how to go about encouraging their construction. As the anecdote about temples in Nepal suggests, competition to create the best possible product is not new to architects. Neither is it a new concept among efforts to create high performance green buildings. This section provides a brief overview of two successful green architectural competitions in the United States- the Austin Texas Green Builder Program, The United States Green Building Council's (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System. Since cooperation is also required to achieve the information exchange that produces excellence, two examples of non-competitive municipal programs that are helping to accelerate the diffusion of green building methods and technology will also be discussed. These are the Green Building Design Fund at the Londonderry, New Hampshire Eco-Industrial Park, and the High Performance Building Guidelines for the City of New York. Other programs are actively working on the same goals worldwide, with a particular concentration in the Scandinavian countries of Europe. Austin, Texas Green Builder Program The Green Builder Program in Austin, Texas was the first comprehensive program in the U.S. to encourage the use of sustainable building techniques in residential, multifamily, commercial and municipal construction. Like any innovation, it began with a good idea and a group of people committed to its realization. In the early 1980's, the City of Austin faced the less than comfortable reality of urban growth outpacing the capacity of the region's current power plant. Rather than spending the large sum of money necessary to construct a new generation facility, city officials decided to follow the lead of some of the more progressive power companies and energy experts who were then on the fringes of policy debates. These experts were pushing the radical idea that encouraging people to get more use out of the energy already being generated would solve the problem of the looming energy deficit at less cost than increasing the supply. Amory Lovins, now the Co-founder and Research Director of Rocky Mountain Institute, an entrepreneurial non-profit firm specializing in sustainable development, was one of the first to popularize this notion which he termed, "negawatts." Since the 1970's, when Dr. Lovins began pushing his counterintuitive ideas of energy efficiency and demand reduction, utility companies have made millions of dollars by encouraging people to use less of their product. In Austin, this shift in thinking spawned a variety of municipally sponsored energy efficiency programs. One of the first, was a City Energy Code that set minimum requirements for energy efficiency. City officials soon realized that incentives would create a more balanced and effective means of reaching the goals established in the energy code. So, the Austin Energy Star Program, which rated the energy performance of new homes, was begun. Designed to promote newly built energy efficient homes, it created a framework for the city to provide marketing assistance to builders who exceeded the minimum requirements of the code. More than 6,000 homes were rated under this program. By the early 90's, realizing that more could be done, not just to save energy, but to protect Austin's natural environment and ultimately the city's quality of life, officials decided to move boldly forward. There was already a growing awareness of the multiple impacts that conventional construction has on the environment and the idea of sustainable building was beginning to take hold as a means to reduce or eliminate these impacts. So, the manager of the City of Austin Energy Star Program embraced the idea of encouraging sustainable building practices as a natural evolution of his program. After the success of the Residential Green Building Program, the City explored ways to incorporate green building into commercial construction. Beginning in 1993, the city's team began with a needs assessment. A survey of local architects, general contractors, and individual building owners indicated the importance of multi-disciplinary involvement early in the design process. In the final analysis, officials decided that the City's services should stress technical design and energy efficiency assistance as well as education programs on the benefits of green buildings. Recognized by many as the initiator of a trend, the Austin Green Building Program is still alive and well. As the program continues to grow, its administrators continue to look for new ways to spread the message of sustainable design and construction. They recently developed templates of their program to help other communities start similar efforts. The templates focus on residential and municipal construction and are available for sale through the City's website.28 The United States Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System In many ways a direct descendent of the work in Austin, LEED is a rating system for the self-assessment of the quality of new and existing commercial, institutional, and high-rise residential buildings. The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) has been continuously developing the system since 1993. USGBC is a coalition comprised of visionary representatives from all segments of the building industry - including product manufacturers, environmental groups, building owners, building professionals, financial industry leaders, utilities, city governments, research institutions, professional societies and universities. These stakeholders, who are so obviously interdependent in terms of the knowledge, materials, and processes of constructing and using high quality, low-impact buildings, had never before worked so closely together. Now they are establishing consensus on how the building industry can use the power of the market to address the economic and environmental consequences of its actions so that it may remain competitive and continue to expand and produce profits into the future. The LEED Green Building Rating System they have developed is a tool that is helping to accomplish this goal. Based on a set of explicit energy and environmental criteria related to a wide range of architectural issues, LEED helps building owners, designers, and users to evaluate environmental performance from a "whole building" perspective over a building's life cycle. The system was designed to encourage a shift towards better performing buildings while still remaining flexible enough for individual prioritization of the issues to be addressed and the strategies used to address them. In other words, broad standards are set and specific strategies are laid out to reach them, but it is up to each design team to choose those among them the ones that they find to be the most useful and/or economical. This flexibility also helps designers and owners to strike a balance between practices known to be effective and emergent technical concepts that are still being refined. Designed to be comprehensive in scope, yet simple in operation, the rating system is based on points received for accomplishing various goals. After meeting a set of prerequisites based on established state and local codes, federal environmental and safety regulations, and /or recognized Best Management Practices there are four levels of excellence for which to strive: Certified, Silver, Gold, and Platinum. Certification is awarded to buildings that receive between twenty-six (26) and thirty-two (32) of the sixty-nine (69) total points available (38-46%). Platinum certification requires fifty-two (52) or more of the points to be earned (75%). The flexibility of the system comes not only from the four levels of excellence, but also because some of the six (6) categories of building performance have more points available than other ones. For example, guidelines for the specification of building materials and resources have a total of thirteen (13) potential points, energy guidelines offer a total of seventeen (17) points, and water efficiency guidelines provide a total of five (5) points. Achieving the highest quality in each of these categories would earn a Silver certification. If budget or time constraints dictated that this was the highest standard to be sought, the other three categories could be ignored. But since, strict compliance with DEC regulations on site planning alone should provide a company with twenty-two (22) points. If even a few minimal efforts were made to improve building operations, most new construction at Devens would receive LEED Certification. A little extra effort would surely yield even higher ratings. Further flexibility is built into the system through the subcategories within each category, which USGBC terms, "credits." Each credit is representative of a specific aspect of the overall category. For example, among the subcategories included in the Indoor Air Quality category are credits for low Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) emissions as well as credits for Thermal Comfort. Each credit, or subcategory, has a number of points listed beneath it. Some credits have more opportunities for points than others do. For instance, adhesives, paints, carpets, and composite wood are all implicated as vectors for the emission of VOCs. One point is gained for specifying low VOC content in each of these materials-resulting in a total of four possible points for the subcategory. The credit for Thermal Comfort allows for only two possible points-one for complying with a standard and one for installing a permanent monitoring system. Additionally, some of the guidelines are presented as a scale of quality, whereby one point can be gained for meeting the lowest acceptable standards and more points can be gained by exceeding standards. Energy credits are structured this way, with the bulk of the points available to buildings that optimize the use of energy. All of this information about how the LEED rating system works begs the question-what does one gain from LEED certification? The easy answer is that, owners gain competitive advantage over the long term by investing their money in buildings that perform better than conventional buildings. This is great for the owner who occupies the whole of their building for its entire lifetime. But what about the balance of owners who plan to either lease portions of or sell their entire asset at some point? Since benefits accrue over the lifecycle of a building, how can these owners be assured a return on their investment? This is the crux of the challenge embedded in USGBC's mission to create consensus on necessary changes in the building industry. Competition, such as that fostered by LEED, is a wonderful driver of innovation, but it is a flawed method for encouraging information exchange, which speeds both innovation and the diffusion and uptake of new ideas. This dilemma as it relates to the creation or revision of any "game" can be stated as follows: all the time and effort in the world can be spent to establish "rules," but unless they are understood and acknowledged by all the players involved, the result is not competition, but rather, a futile set of disconnected efforts. USGBC has taken this dilemma into account in the design of the LEED program, which at heart, is seeking to change the "rules" of the building industry "game." Each building certified by LEED receives a plaque to be displayed prominently in the interior or exterior of the entryway. The impetus for the plaque is twofold. First, it is to acknowledge the level of achievement, as well as the extra effort required in every aspect of the building's design and construction to reach that level- whether it is Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum. Secondly, as Dr. David Orr, a professor of environmental studies at Oberlin College puts it, "buildings teach." By establishing a symbol that connects these high-performance buildings, people are more apt to recognize that being inside them produces a different feel than being inside a conventional building. The promotional and marketing materials that USGBC provides with LEED certification helps to further explain the benefits, both those that are immediately obvious, such as excellent indoor environmental quality, and the ones that require more careful study, such as energy savings and increased worker productivity. Londonderry, New Hampshire's Green Design Fund Clearly then, education is an important aspect of efforts to encourage green buildings. In an effort to help established design and construction firms to gain the new skills and knowledge they need to create better performing buildings, the Londonderry New Hampshire Eco-Industrial Park has developed an innovative method. First, the eco-park has an ecological design team on contract. Second, a portion of the land development permitting fees is earmarked for a Green Design Fund, so that the services of this team are available to any incoming company. This has proven to be an effective method of improving environmental performance. Rather than focusing entirely on regulations, it focuses on incentives for doing better and backs them up by providing an opportunity for the sharing of knowledge that make improvement possible. New York City's High Performance Building Guidelines Much like Londonderry and Austin, New York City has realized the important role that municipal government can play in transforming the building industry into a steward and regenerator of our natural environment. Without going into too much detail about the vast amount of work that the New York City Department of Design and Construction (NYCDDC) has put into their High Performance Building Guidelines, it is important to note a few key points. First, New York's efforts have focused primarily on public facilities. They have done this for a few reasons. Most notably because these are the buildings that they can most easily influence. But also because they have recognized the positive impact that high performance buildings have both on the City's operating budgets and the well being of government employees. Importantly, realizing that these types of changes are inevitable in the construction industry, the municipal government of New York has taken decisive action to be among the first to encourage them with the hope that their effort will spread and help to stimulate the market for new technologies. Second, by working within existing City capital and operational practices, the Guidelines both ensure the fiscal integrity of each project and prove that better buildings at equal cost are possible. This is accomplished by encouraging the formulation of responsible budgets at the planning stage and mandating that the design team identify any high performance cost premiums (along with life-cycle cost savings) an justify them to the City. In effect, these guidelines serve the double function of saving taxpayer money and of raising expectations about the quality of all buildings. Finally, through demonstration projects, (including both renovation and new construction), policy development, outreach and education, NYDDC has begun to mainstream green building techniques. Collaborative efforts in all of these arenas have helped the initiative to spill over into other city departments contracting for design and construction work. The staff is hopeful that information about these techniques will continue to diffuse through the network of players in New York's architectural and construction industries and that high-performance buildings will soon be commonplace.
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Conclusion
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This paper has deliberately focused on the benefits of high performance buildings without delving into the environmental issues that are driving the transition to them. In conclusion, it should be noted that the challenge the world faces in the next century is to create a long term balance between the well being of human populations and the well being of the ecological systems that we are dependent upon. High-performance buildings help to do this. Fortunately, just as no one person or group is responsible for the many facets of this challenge, the maintenance of global economic/ecological balance does not rest in the hands of any one party. Instead each organization, whether it is a business, a community of residents, or a governing body, has a small role to play. Each must ensure that its own economic actions and influence help to sustain and regenerate rather than degrade human and natural capital. Even more fortunate, as this paper has shown, is that by taking action early to reduce waste and improve the health of our local built environment, the economic and social benefits can begin to grow and compound like interest on a deposit. As a new municipality with close ties to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Devens stands in an excellent position to serve as a statewide model of high performance building techniques. Just as Nepal's medieval monarchs new very little about the wonderful legacy of their architectural competitions, decision-makers at Devens can only take the first inspired and hopeful step towards a brighter environmental economic and social future. As a potential first step, the proposed design competition for a new high-performance public safety building could produce one of the first in a long line of exceptional architectural achievements not only here, but also throughout Massachusetts. One might ask-why is a demonstration of high performance buildings important with all of the efforts around the world and all the information that is available about various initiatives and individual buildings? Because before a demonstration project is readily available for viewing, there are only two possibilities regarding the general perception of green development. Either no one is asking any questions about green buildings, or one of the questions is likely to be-Can they really be built? After a quality project is available for viewing, one question will quickly surface-Why aren't WE doing that? And when that question is raised, Devens will be well on its way to a wonderful legacy, as Kathmandu was the moment the second competing King caught sight of his rival's first temple. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Recommendations
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Resources
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People
Bruce Coldham, Principal Architect
ARC Design Group,
155 Pine Street,
Amherst, MA 01002
Joseph "Chip" Mannarino, Senior Technical Representative,
Massachusetts Electric Company,
939 Southbridge Street,
Worcester, MA 01610
John McCarthy, President,
Environmental Health & Engineering, Inc.,
60 Wells Avenue,
Newton, MA 02459
Paul M. Wormser, Director of Technology,
Solar Design Associates, Inc.,
PO Box 242,
Harvard, MA 01451
Books
Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution. by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins, and L. Hunter Lovins. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1999.
How Buildings Work: The Natural Order of Architecture. by Edward Allen. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Reshaping the Built Environment: Ecology, Ethics, and Economics. Charles J. Kibert, editor. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1999.
Ecological Design. by Sim Van der Ryn & Stuart Cowan. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1996.
Creating Sustainable Buildings. by Angela Vituli, Miriam Landman, and Akiko Hayano. Master's Project, Tuft's University, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy, April 1998.
Websites
Austin Texas Green Builder Program
New York City Department of Design and Construction
Rocky Mountain Institute
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Program
United States Green Building Council
Environmental Building News
Center for Renewable Energy and Sustainable Technology (CREST)
CD-ROMs
Rocky Mountain Institute's Green Developments
CREST's Green Building Advisor
Environmental Building News' E Build Library
Endnotes
1Zeiher, Laura C. The Ecology of Architecture. New York: Whitney Library of Design, 1996.
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For more than a hundred years, each of the succeeding monarchs eyed with envy the latest efforts of his rivals to create an inspired building and then rallied his greatest craftsmen to outdo it with an even more magnificent structure. Today the legacy of these peaceful and creative efforts lives on in some of the most beautiful architectural creations the world has ever known. Each is unique and striking, yet it took a shared will to create them.
