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 Green buildings sound great. But can we afford them? The benefits are impressive. Building green means seeking out solar or other renewable power sources, utilizing smart architectural design to maximize natural sunlight and ventilation, and selecting recycled and nontoxic construction materials.
If we ever hope to have less energy dependence in America, buildings must be a big part of the deal. The country has 5 million commercial structures, 76 million residential. They account for two-fifths of total national energy use. And we keep building them at a furious pace-an estimated 38 million new buildings by the end of this decade.
The environmental stakes are immense. Buildings generate a third of our carbon dioxide emissions (a chief culprit in global warming). They're responsible for half our sulfur dioxide emissions, a quarter of nitrous oxide emissions, major acid rain and smog problems, according to a Progressive Policy Institute roundup.
But-are green buildings economic enough to build? The popular notion has been no -that innovations like solar panels pose the risk of construction delays and higher costs.
By contrast, Charles Lockwood, architectural critic and author, recently e-mailed me: The 'green is too expensive' myth is no longer true. A variety of real-life projects with standard construction costs, he notes, are receiving silver or gold ratings from U.S. Green Building Council's LEED (Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design) rating system.
One is the Toyota Motor Sales campus near Los Angeles, a 624,000-square foot facility that was built with costs competitive with other Southern California office parks. It's received a gold LEED rating. Solar power meets 20 percent of the building's energy needs. Building materials are 50 percent recycled, nearly all employees work under natural daylight, and the site is equipped with low-maintenance landscaping including drought-tolerant native plants irrigated with recycled water.
And that's no exception, asserts Dan Heinfeld, president of LPA, Inc., second largest architectural firm in California and designer of the Toyota project. Whether new buildings or renovations, he asserts, projects can be sustainable and constructed on standard, cost-efficient budgets. His firm, Heinfeld asserts, has designed literally dozens of such buildings in California.
The California State and Consumer Services Agency, in a study of 33 green buildings, concluded their construction costs are slightly more expensive - $ 3 to $5 a square foot, or 2 percent - than conventional structures.
But a big difference emerged when the agency factored in reduced costs for energy, water and waste-disposal, plus enhanced employee health and productivity. The estimate: $50 to $75 per square foot savings over the average 20-year life of a building -- more than 10 times the 2 percent cost premium for green buildings.
It seems obvious: the reason only a tiny percentage of new American buildings and retrofits aren't green isn't cost. It's lack of ingenuity or knowledge of new construction techniques, as well as architects and builders wed to the same-old practices and lenders leery of anything unconventional.
The fault also lies with national leaders unwilling to tell us in clear terms that a nation secure economically and environmentally and against foreign threats, means energy savings across the board-efficient and sustainable buildings included. It's a message our current president apparently doesn't comprehend, at least won't articulate. As for challenger John Kerry-well, we're still listening. Plus, an array of governors and mayors are preaching the new green gospel.
This may be an issue on which corporate America turns into an instructive leader. Not just Toyota, but such firms as IBM, Steelcase and Herman Miller have commissioned green buildings. And the Ford Motor Co. has commissioned William McDonough, the world renowned environmental architect, to redesign its historic 600-acre Rouge complex at Dearborn, a site contaminated over decades of intense manufacturing.
Centerpiece of the Ford project is a new, 750,000-square foot assembly plant, this time not on a sylvan greenfield but atop a bleak brownfield. Its living roof, planted with drought-resistant sedum plants, is eight football fields large. It can absorb and filter up to 4 million gallons of rainwater, absorb greenhouse-gas carbon dioxide, give off oxygen and keep the factory cooler in summer and warmer in winter than a conventional tar covering.
As such projects proliferate, maybe we'll all take notice. Even the National Assn. of Realtors has now come on board, constructing a new headquarters with special glass to minimize temperature extremes and maximize fresh air circulation. It's the first LEED-certified building built from scratch in downtown Washington, D.C.
All the good individual examples are just reminders, though, of the massive changes - in attitudes, in priorities, in building construction, in transportation, across the board - that we'll need for a truly green U.S.A.
Copyright © 2004 Washington Post Writers Group
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