Cascadia’s Living Building Challenge
The Cascadia Region Green Building Council has created a Living Building Challenge to "building owners, architects, engineers and design professionals to build in a way that will provide all of us and our children with a sustainable future."
The Challenge invokes creativity beyond Platinum to a 'living building' – and is not developed as a competitor with USGBC and CaGBC, but as a spur to raise the bar, to imagine buildings that are built to operate as elegantly and efficiently as a flower.
"Imagine a building that is informed by the eco-region’s characteristics and
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that generates all of its own energy with renewable resources,
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that captures and treats all of its water on site
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that uses resources efficiently and for maximum beauty”
The system comprises 16 prerequisites
and no credits, is non-prescriptive and is performance-based.
Among the prerequisites not already mentioned above are: a Red List of materials that cannot be included in the project; a Construction Carbon Footprint; minimum construction waste diversion rates from landfills for a range of materials; mandated operable window access from all work spaces; no smoking throughout the building; and that the "project must contain design features intended solely for human delight and the celebration of culture, spirit and place appropriate to the function of the building."
In his subsequent address, USGBC President & CEO Rick Fedrizzi announced the USGBC is holding a Living Building Challenge Design Competition, whose winner would be announced at Greenbuild 2007 in Los Angeles.
Rick Fedrizzi, USGBC President & CEO
Rick Fedrizzi addressed the often-cheering crowd of USGBC and CaGBC members and colleagues, and showcased many indicators of success, including
- Currently, there are in the USGBC, 7,200 member organizations, representing over a million employees; 33,000 LEED APs; and
6,000 registered and certified buildings
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The U.S. General Services Administration and corporate industry leaders have "endorsed LEED as their tool of choice."
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LEED-Homes is in pilot phase
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LEED-Neighborhood Development is moving to pilot.
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As of 2007, 50 percent CO2 reductions from current levels will be required in all commercial LEED-NC, via energy, transportation, water and materials.
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All commercial LEED projects would be required to achieve a minimum of two Energy and Optimization credits
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A carbon offset program will be developed, using performance data.
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As of 2007, LEED-NC and Core and Shell projects that achieve certification will automatically be registered for LEED–EB.
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Beginning in 2007, All projects achieving LEED Platinum levels will obtain certification fee rebates.
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A portfolio pilot program is under way to help owners of building portfolios achieve recognition for their high-performance buildings
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Autodesk is in partnership with the USGBC to develop modeling tools to evaluate carbon footprint
USGBC’s Goals include:
By 2010:
100,000 certified commercial buildings
1 million certified homes
By 2020:
1 million certified commercial buildings
10 million certified homes
Green Finance: Accelerating Global Green Building Investment to Stop Dangerous Climate Change
Steve Bushnell, CPCU, ARM, Product Director, Real Estate Innovation, Commercial Business at Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company, noted that given the insurance industry is on the ‘bleeding edge’ and experiencing first losses due to climate change, Fireman’s Fund green insurance products are intended to make a difference regarding this risk. Under their new offerings:
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LEED-certified buildings will obtain lower insurance rates because, as he stated: "Firemen’s Fund believes green buildings are superior risks."
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"Under our Green Building Replacement, Green Upgrade, and Commissioning Expense coverages, commercial property owners and managers are able to rebuild and replace with green alternatives such as:
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Non-toxic, low odor paints and carpeting
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Energy Star® rated electrical equipment
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Interior lighting systems that meet LEED or Green Globe requirements
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Water efficient interior plumbing
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Energy Star qualified roof and insulation materials
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Commissioning expense - Engineering inspection of systems such as heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and controls"
These insurance products have been approved in 41 out of 50 states applied. Approval in NY State took three weeks. Parent firm Allianz may take these products to Canadian markets.
Bushnell related that the green insurance products arose out of the need for leadership in this critical area, as well as severe weather events and the resulting losses sustained by the insurance industry and their clients. Consequently, the industry "can no longer predict the future based on the past." The underpinning for LEED-certified building insurance rate discounts is the observation that "people who own, manage and promote green buildings are sound managers" – and attributes of a company’s management help determine its insurance risk.
Bushnell cited the HBR June 2006 article by Charles Lockwood: Green Buildings Are Going Mainstream, says Harvard Business Review, in which Lockwood identified the imminent obsolescence of "hundreds of billions of dollars" in conventional commercial buildings globally. Bushnell quoted Lockwood: "The impact of green going mainstream will be as profound on commercial real estate as the invention of central air conditioning in the 1950s and 1960s, or elevators in the 19th century."
Communicating with Bushnell after his presentation, this writer inquired whether obtaining occupant health (e.g. allergies and asthma incidences), absenteeism and other productivity data, with metrics depending on variables such as building type and industry as a function of certified buildings' post-occupancy measurement and verification, might assist in expanding the preferential insurance rate status for green buildings to life/health and EAPs (employee assistance programs). Bushnell agreed.
http://www.firemansfund.com/servlet/dcms?c=business&rkey=437
Approaching Zero: Striving for a Carbon-Neutral Neighborhood
One Planet Living is a joint initiative of the World Wildlife Fund and BioRegional. Greg Searle, founder and co-director of One Planet Living’s North American Program, shared his experiences living in London’s Beddington Zero fossil Energy Development (BedZED) while conducting his analysis of the long-term sustainable lifestyles program there during 2002-04. One Planet Living has ten sustainability principles:
1) Zero carbon
2) Zero waste
3) Sustainable transportation
4) Local and sustainable materials
5) Local and sustainable food
6) Sustainable water
7) Natural habitats and wildlife
8) Culture and heritage
9) Equity and fair trade, and
10) Health and happiness.
The concept of 'one planet' is the ecological footprint multiple of the earth that would be required in order to maintain current levels of consumption: for the EU it’s three planets, for North America, five.
The BedZED initiative is mixed use on four acres, comprising: 96 homes with density 108/acre, of which 34 were offered at market-rate, 23 as workforce housing (dwellings for key service workers such as police and firefighters), 25 low-income and 14 live/work.
Searle’s observations:
- Solar panels were integrated into the building’s shading, toward the zero-carbon goal, for a total of more than 1100 individual solar panels on the project. Searle noted that while homeowners seldom looked at their meters to note their energy use, they did hear the meters when the solar panels were on. He related with relish, the residents' collective enjoyment of the relative ongoing costs of their project compared to those of the 'high-energy' development near BedZED, nicknamed BedHED.
- Their developer did not incorporate setup and ongoing maintenance and management requirements for the onsite wastewater treatment system, the 'living machine.'
- The CHP plant, a 130 kW waste biomass provider of heat, electricity, hot water for all buildings, used 21 tonnes weekly of FSC certified forest trimmings from tree waste in nearby Croydon’s TreeStation for sustainably harvested wood. The problem was that planning permits for the CHP plant allowed it to run only 18 hours daily (not at night), instead of the 24/7 schedule for which it was designed. Further, the startup vendor went bankrupt, and it took some time to find a knowledgeable replacement. The CHP plant will resume operations in 2007.
- The lifestyles program required a staff to be on hand part-time to help orient and inform new residents as they moved in. The program included: shared transportation options, community vegetable gardens located within 150 metres, food box delivery services providing organic food, and sky gardens – each with 300 mm of topsoil (on which a roaming fox was seen by Searle, 3 storeys up).
Total avoided CO2 emissions for the project were: 39% from the CHP plant, 2% from PV, 9% from building efficiencies and passive solar, and a huge 44% from lifestyle changes due to local food and transportation options, as well as waste minimization due to composting and recycling initiatives.
The combined efforts resulted in a 1.25 planet reduction from three planet living.
One Planet Living’s goal is to create, by 2009, models of holistic communities in every continent which incorporate their environmental and social criteria in providing housing, clothing, food, healthcare, education, energy, transport and leisure.
Keynote by William McDonough, William McDonough + Partners
McDonough’s global goal is a "delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world with clean air, clean water, clean soil and clean power – economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed." (Clean power means clean fusion power, of which the sun is our fusion reactor, providing "probably 5,000 times more energy than our species needs to operate.")
"A city is something lived and something dreamed." Born in 1951 in Tokyo, Japan, McDonough noted that then, a city was a biological organism, a living example of waste as food. He lived in a village where oxcarts would collect human sewage and take it to the farms; it was called night soil. In the mornings, they would return with tofu. (He stated that in ancient China, it was impolite to leave a place in which one has been given hospitality, without leaving a 'deposit.')
When McDonough’s family moved to Hong Kong, the city was growing rapidly on 40 square miles with no additional supply of water. Refugees flooded Hong Kong, and they all had to conserve water: McDonough became used to brushing his teeth with thimblefuls, and retained awareness of a conserving lifestyle while growing up among nature’s abundance with his grandparents on Hood Canal.
McDonough noted:
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Nowhere in the Bill of Rights is conferred the right to pollute.
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There is a tension between guardians of state and the world of commerce: that guardians regulate is a sign of design failure.
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The guardian reserves the right to kill: "someone seems to have put into the Bill of Rights, the right to kill… If an entity is told (for example) there are acceptable limits of cadmium (in the environment) then what is told is that the entity has the right to kill… (and what is regulated, only) is just how slowly this can happen."
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"Being less bad is not being good."
McDonough and Dr. Michael Braungart founded MBDC in 1995, a design firm for products and processes using their Cradle to Cradle Certification criteria, which include social fairness.
McDonough identified fundamental questions:
What is our intention as a species?
How do we love all the children of all species for all time?
The example he gave regarding the latter was the city of Curtiba, Brasil, founded on the protocol that it would love children. An example of this is the placement of libraries within twelve minutes walking distance of every child. When children from slums on the outskirts of the city, whose parents didn’t pay city taxes, wanted to use these libraries, taxpayers protested. However, the mayor insisted that the libraries were for all the children. His message: “if children grow up to hate the city, they will destroy the city.”
While people may have heard some of McDonough’s words previously, these concepts remain relevant.
How many cities might we wish re-designed so they love children?
Sonja Persram, BSc. MBA, is author of Green Buildings: A Strategic Analysis of North American Markets for Frost & Sullivan (in press), addressing Energy, Water and Facilities Management. She is a member of the City of Toronto’s Green Development Standards Working Group. Contact: Sustainable Alternatives Consulting Inc: sonja@sustainablealternatives.ca