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New Handbook Provides Standards on Continuous Green Building Improvements

Published November 28, 2011 going green Leave a Comment
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Green Buildings. Image Source: BPN.

While compliance with green building standards is essential in green construction, continuous improvement and maintenance are just as important. Most building owners and construction firms often forget that green buildings have to be continuously improved in order to truly help the environment and reduce energy costs.

To make sure that you get the most out of your green building by reducing electricity and water costs, while also keeping your carbon emissions at a bare minimum, The Building Performance Tracking Handbook might be what you need. Developed by the California Commissioning Collaborative and funded by the Energy Commission, the handbook provides standards of assessment for building improvement.

The handbook provides a standard operating procedure that allows building owners and managers to understand how the building is performing, which parts use the most energy, and how green building expectations are met. By educating building managers about this information, they can identify problems and find solutions. This framework of fine tuning and benchmarking the energy performance of the building from time to time is becoming a popular practice in New York and San Francisco.

Also in the handbook are the basics of green construction. For those who are already on the more advanced levels, there are supplementary resources, which provide a deeper understanding of green buildings. There are also case studies from which building operators can learn a lesson or two on green construction. Commercial buildings can also find out the several benefits that they will gain from green construction, such as reduced energy costs, a higher market value, and higher occupancy rates.

We at Norsteelbelieve that building performance needs to be tracked from time to time. While we lay the groundwork for green steel building construction that complies with the most rigorous standards of green construction, maintenance and continuous improvements continue to play a large part in the development of our products.

“Green” is the Way of the Future for UBC

Published January 24, 2011 going green Leave a Comment
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UBC Proposed Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability Building. Image Credit: Perkins and Will.

Going green isn’t just good for the environment – it can also generate good publicity.  A growing segment of the population is now interested in investing in environmentally-friendly home and office spaces.  According to a recent article published in the Vancouver Sun, the University of British Columbia will soon be jumping on the green bandwagon.

The school plans to turn its entire campus into a “single integrated system,” by using devices that will generate electricity onsite, process rainwater, and regulate and insulate temperatures via the use of plants.  Older, pre-existing buildings will be slowly updated with “green” heating, cooling and processing systems, while new buildings will be built in strict accordance to LEED’s certification parameters.

UBC is partnering with Honeywell, BC Hydro, and the City of Vancouver, among many other industry leaders, to bring their plan to fruition.

A $37 million building will act as the project’s flagship.  Currently under construction, the Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS), building is a result of 11 years of tireless planning and research.  It will be equipped with all the latest and greatest green technology and will help to usher in a new era of sustainability for UBC and the city of Vancouver.

The CIRS building will include a “living wall” comprised of plant life that will help regulate the building’s temperature, while heat will be collected from a ventilation exhaust system.  It is estimated that UBC’s green initiatives will result in an 860 megawatt reduction in the burning of natural gas.

While converting the entire campus will take some time and is estimated to cost “hundreds of millions” of dollars the project will be rolled out slowly, albeit consistently.  The university is interested in investing in the long-term growth of the school, while setting an example for the rest of the community.

For more information about the University of British Columbia’s green initiatives, and to see a video about the CIRS building, visit UBC Sustainability.

Are Green Buildings Affordable?

Published January 10, 2011 going green 1 Comment
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Oxfam Canada Building. Image Credit: Build Green Solutions.

This week, the Tyee published an article called ‘Five Myths about Green Building.’ It’s a great article and well worth a read, but the first myth struck a chord with me. It’s about the myth that green buildings have to cost more, which is not necessarily true, as per the Daily Commercial News’ article, ‘OXFAM Canada green retrofit sets the bar high.’ The article goes on to explain how a green building company managed to successfully retrofit the ancient 1950’s OXFAM building to have LEED Platinum environmental attributes for less than $100 per square foot.

(By the way, that article in the Tyee was the first in a series on similar articles, so do keep an eye out for the follow ups).

The Tyee starts by explaining why the myth about green building costs originally became ‘fact’. Giving examples, such as the Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre and the Olympic Village and Southeast False Creek neighbourhood, the article points out that a lot of the most high profile green buildings are outlandishly expensive and, in the first example, cost B.C. taxpayers more than double the promised price.

The article then argues that it wasn’t the green aspects of these builds that made them go so dramatically over-budget, but rather inexperienced and over-ambitious planners. Indeed, according the article, “a study that compared 221 new buildings found no difference in cost between 83 LEED buildings and 138 similar conventional buildings”.

The man behind the survey, Davis Langdon, makes a very interesting point regarding how a change in thinking towards green building will come about. He argues that green building techniques are still considered an extra feature rather than an essential and fundamental part of building practices and, until that changes, builders, and by proxy the rest of the population, will continue to think that green design is an extra cost rather than a long-term cost-saving measure.

The retrofitted OXFAM building is a great example of this truism; because the building was so incredibly inefficient on every level, the developers were able to approach the project more holistically, tackling “air quality, waste management, renewable energy opportunities, emissions offsets and water conservation” in one go, rather than adding on green features one at a time.

The Word ‘Green’ and Sustainability

Published October 29, 2010 going green Leave a Comment
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Image: Grass. Source: Public Domain.

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, the word ‘green’ evolves from the Middle English grene, from Old English grēne; akin to Old English grōwan to grow and its first known use was before the 12th century.

‘Green’ typically refers to a hue of the spectrum that lies between yellow and blue on the colour spectrum and contains the lightness and saturation found in grass and emeralds. This colour has always been associated with that of foliage and nature. It is a colour associated with hope, rebirth, growth, sickness, youth, naivety, envy and jealously and the devil. This is a colour with a long history of passionate imagery.

Since then, the colour ‘green’ has since become used as a synonym for environmentalism and sustainability, because of its association with nature, health and growth. ‘Green’ evokes the enthusiasm of a social political movement that recognizes global awareness, environmental protection and social responsibility. For example, the Green Party is made of various political parties that emphasize ecology, social justice and grassroots democracy in all their campaigns.

Peter Senge, a Senior Lecturer of Behavioural and Policy Sciences at the MIT Sloan School of Management states that in essence, the idea of sustainability means “paying attention to very fundamental needs—food, water, energy, and the waste and toxicity they produce, and the fact that the world really is becoming more and more of a village and villages don’t live with 5 percent of the people with 70 percent of the wealth or 15 percent with 80 percent of the wealth, whatever numbers you want to look at.” Sustainability and ‘green living’ refers to a whole new way of thinking about the world that places emphasis on social awareness, healthier lifestyles, environmental stewardship, low impact building, making use of the best available resources and much more.

The word ‘green’ referring to sustainability has assimilated into everyday usage, pop culture, marketing strategies and even corporate culture. In additional to its primary definitions and historical references, it now holds another strong connection with that of sustainable living and environmentalism.

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