Panel on Green Architecture - (Notes)

Green building Panel discussion 11/11/2006. I know this is long, but a lot of it is just good ideas and data. For the most inspiring remarks, please skip to the end.

Introduction by Stephen Klass who did a reading from Morty's earth day letter to the campus who asks, What does it mean to become with a leader in sustainability?

The panel consists of Bruce Harley who works with mostly private homes with retrofits and new construction. He also trains builders and tradespeople, does design consulting and wrote Insulate and Weatherize which was selected by US green building council. Todd Holland is a sustainability coordinator for Smith, Holyoke and Amherst colleges. Joan Kelsh '85, coordinates green buildings for Arlington, VA. She encourage private businesses in Greater DC area to build green office buildings not because they have to but because its a huge benefit. She holds degrees from Williams in geology and environmental science and a masters from Yale forestry/envi studies. Marc Rosenbaum works on integrated systems design approach – finding the best solution for each project and client. He holds a BS and MS from MIT in engineering.

Harley (who was sporting a sweet MULLET)
Harley has a background in electrical engineering but he wanted to get into some more interesting stuff so he got into energy efficiency through working on mostly smaller, residential buildings. His company, Conservation Services Group (CSG), designs, develops and delivers energy efficiency and renewable energy programs. Most clients are gas and electricity suppliers as well as government policy makers and private homes. He installs solar, sells renewable energy credits, educates builders and contractors. He also worked on making the ENERGY STAR home building guidelines. Most important point? Look at building as a system not as individual parts.

Efficiency and durability before are more important than renewables. This is doubly effective because we can save money in the long run and save money when it comes to buying more expensive renewables. For this, early planning is key. Also essential is health and safety, in other words, the buildings must enhance livability. But thats easy because when principles of durability and efficiency you make big strides towards a healthy building. Another aspect is building with Integrated Design. It is hard to get people to know what to do because there are so many ways to build buildings 'green' yet poorly. “Green” equipment or features do not equal performance. On the ground verification is essential because the label often promises more than is delivered. Energy code inspections are federal programs in 9 states that test the major aspects of a buildings efficient design. Fault Tolderatne details: we shouldn't expect herculean effort from builders and tradespeople. Painting a building green doesn't make it a green building!

Todd is the energy manager for the five colleges. His main points are Energy efficiency and conservation (conservation is tentative because its hard to sell to people), Green and Clean and Energy efficiency is a fifth fuel. The greenest energy is energy not used. Some statistics on computers: according to the Williams website, the average desktop uses 96 watts when idle and 1.8 watts when off while a laptop uses 28 watts idle and .07 watts off. EPA and LNBL say average PC idle 58% during day but only 36% of users power down at night. For more information see www.treehugger.com for a movie on electrical vampires.

Amherst, Mount Holyoke and Smith colleges organized largest voter turnout in college history to vote to power 90% of student power from green sources. That was turned down by the college, but the they did do the three college challenge which pitted the colleges against each other, sort of a Do It In the Dark for colleges. It was led by student groups and saved 961,000 kwh. In conjunction with this the colleges bought 1,000,000 kwh. But the conservation drive was more efficient than the green energy drive! Some problems in buying green energy is people don't understand how you buy it. See http://www.green-e.org/what_is/dictionary/trc.html for more info on that.
Another project was to evaluate the 200 cold drink vending machines in 3 colleges (why so many? UVM has only 82!). those use $75,000 in electricity to run, which equaled exactly the amount of money made from sales. They removed some machines (24) which didn't make any money and installed 144 Vending Misers which save $15,000 per year. Its important because conventional large, de-centralized power statoins waste 70% of their energy as heat. It can be more efficient to generate heat and power all in one place (co-gen) even if just the heat or just the electricity is less effective.
Sources of electricity in new england: 48% natural gas, 10% nuke, 23% coal, 15% petroleum, 10% other. There is a brand new building in Holyoke (3 years old, LEED certified) which has no recovery of heat on lab building which circulates all the air every 10 minutes. They are installing heat recovery for intake/outtake and will save $46,000, 400 tons of CO2.
Problems with LEED are that commissioning is not enough, changes have to be checked. Also, LEED allows “point shopping” to avoid energy saving points.
New Paradigm means financial plus environmental stewardship = energy conservation. Sustainability paradigm: financial plus environmental stewardship plus social responsibility.

Joan (jkelsch@arlingtonva.us) works with people who are forced to do LEED and tries to help them use it as a good thing. What is Green? It means site planning for sustainability, safeguarding water and water efficiency, energy efficiency and renewable energy, conservation of materials and resources, indoor environmental quality because we spend most of our lives indoors, we need to build things that are good for us.

Environmental impact of buildings is 65% of total US consumption. Furthermore, buildings have a big impact on resources like the grid and sewer. Daylit buildings are better for people students have been shown to do better on tests, worker productivity is higher, patients in hospitals recover faster, etc. People like daylight.

LEED means Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. The Green Building Council is a national group. You pay $750 membership, project registration $450, certification based on size - $0.35/sq ft. This gets you a certification. Arlington has a requirement for certain level of Green certification: Joan tries to convince them to do this for the right reasons, even though they have to.

Marc Rosembaum spoke again, without prepared remarks but just what was on his mind. Here's the rough paraphrase.

What is the task in front of us? We aren't doing enough. We aren't doing what we need to do at the rate we need to do it. We are fighting the battle against global warming and we are losing. Heroically, but we are losing. Some people say we don't like to think about it too much because its depressing. But the truth lies in seeing things as they are, and this is very very hard. Because it is so hard, our whole culture is based on ways of avoiding the truth. But maybe beneath the surface all of us know that things are deeply off-kilter, and we know it. There are massive changes in store and they are not techinical. The hurdles are in values.

www.passivhous.de is the standard, the ideal. They build houses that use 80% of normal homes in Germany (this means even bigger savings here) Building a passivhous in Germany costs 10% more. In America if we ask a builder to add 1% to the capital costs of a project they have a heart failure. This is the value shift. Its not a technical problem.

Build the things that we don't need because there are impressive and we have been told that we should want them. The colleges in this country are the worst because they are in an arms race. It is an arms race to attract students. “How do you build to love all the children of all species for all time” Bill McDonough. Another hero of his is Joanna Macey who works on feedback systems which are large and complex. How do we grapple with problems on the largest scales? “Act your age” - we are made up of the stuff of stars and we are as old as the universe.

Some great points I thought I'd share:
Alumni hear about DO IT IN THE DARK etc from newsletter with socially responsible investment fund
One great idea was to put Energyguide poster in every building to show how the building compares to campus, what the numbers are to help make it more real.