a:27:{s:9:"weblog_id";s:1:"4";s:8:"entry_id";s:3:"442";s:6:"sticky";s:1:"n";s:14:"allow_comments";s:1:"n";s:16:"allow_trackbacks";s:1:"n";s:10:"entry_date";s:19:"2009-02-11 10:44 PM";s:15:"expiration_date";s:0:"";s:23:"comment_expiration_date";s:0:"";s:8:"category";a:2:{i:0;s:1:"4";i:1;s:2:"40";}s:9:"author_id";s:1:"2";s:10:"new_weblog";s:1:"4";s:6:"status";s:4:"open";s:14:"trackback_urls";s:0:"";s:18:"versioning_enabled";s:1:"y";s:5:"title";s:26:"Is \"Green\" Losing Steam?";s:9:"url_title";s:21:"is_green_losing_steam";s:6:"submit";s:6:"Update";s:11:"field_id_26";s:27:"Is \"Greenâ€ Losing Steam?";s:11:"field_ft_26";s:4:"none";s:11:"field_id_31";s:0:"";s:11:"field_id_44";s:294:"Will the green building movement survive the recession? For Tracy Hart, chief executive officer of Tarlton Corp., a St. Louis based commercial general contracting and construction management firm, there is no question of it. “When construction comes back,â€ she said, “it will be green.â€";s:11:"field_ft_44";s:4:"none";s:11:"field_id_28";s:45:"green, sustainable, Hart, Sammartano, Merrill";s:11:"field_ft_28";s:4:"none";s:11:"field_id_29";s:10775:"<p>Will the green building movement survive the recession? For Tracy Hart, chief executive officer of Tarlton Corp., a St. Louis based commercial general contracting and construction management firm, there is no question of it. &ldquo;When construction comes back,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;it will be green.&rdquo;<br /><br />The green building movement will not only survive, it will thrive, said Charlie Pavalec, president of Bell Electrical Contractors. Backed by a combination of government spending, tax credits, and new regulations, the green building movement &ldquo;may help to pull us out of recession,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />&ldquo;I had a concern that 2009 would be very tight, but what I&rsquo;m finding now is that the few projects that are going forward are green,&rdquo; said Thomas Taylor, general manager of Vertegy Consultants.<br /><br />&ldquo;Green building still has legs,&rdquo; agreed Paul Todd Merrill, Clayco&rsquo;s director of sustainable construction. &ldquo;Nine out of 10 RFPs (requests for proposals) we see out there want to know what green features we can bring to the table. Customers are looking at reducing other aspects, such as square footage or schedule, before they give up pursuit of sustainability measures,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Amidst all that opportunity, however, there lay challenges. One of the central tenets of green building is energy efficiency. Or is it?<br /><br />&ldquo;If you are trying to automatically say that a sustainable building is more energy efficient, I would not agree. We have seen sustainable buildings that aren&rsquo;t that great from an energy standpoint,&rdquo; Taylor said. &ldquo;And you can have a highly energy efficient building where the designers and builders did not pay attention to the site or to water or air quality, so I don&rsquo;t think the two go hand in hand,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Dan Sammartano, general manager of Salian Commercial, disagreed. &ldquo;You can&rsquo;t be &ldquo;green&rdquo; if you don&rsquo;t save energy,&rdquo; he said. And saving energy is a big part of why companies want green buildings, Merrill added. &ldquo;It makes good business sense, both in terms of hard dollars and in terms of differentiating the company. Depending on the market and utility rates, energy efficiency measures pay for themselves in three to eight years,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />&ldquo;Everybody wants energy efficiency. It is easy to do and it pays you back, so you would be idiotic not to do it,&rdquo; said Bob Leonard, a senior project manager at Paric Corp.<br /><strong><br />LEED 2009</strong><br /><br />Bowing to customers&rsquo; expectations, the U.S. Green Building Council is issuing a new version of LEED this year, called LEED 2009, which &ldquo;raises the bar on energy efficiency,&rdquo; said Emily Andrews, executive director of the St. Louis chapter of the U.S. Green Building Council. &ldquo;Up to now, LEED products have required you to use ASHRAE 90.1 as the baseline standard for energy efficiency. The new LEED requires you to go beyond it by a certain percentage,&rdquo; Sammartano said.<br /><br />Energy efficiency in LEED is the predicted energy efficiency. Building designers use energy models to predict how much energy a building will save and incorporate those predictions into the application for LEED certification. <br /><br />The problem with that, Sammartano said, is that, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ve had studies where people have gone back and measured the energy use in LEED buildings, and there is no correspondence with the models. Some buildings have performed better, but some buildings have performed much worse. Results have shown that even some gold and platinum buildings (the highest LEED &ndash;rated buildings) fall significantly below the ASHRAE standard in energy efficiency.&rdquo;<br /><br />Sammartano warned that if a significant number of LEED buildings fail to achieve energy savings, much less the predicted energy savings, &ldquo;the bubble could burst&rdquo; for LEED and green buildings.<br /><br />&ldquo;You can&rsquo;t blame the rating system,&rdquo; Andrews said. &ldquo;You as building owner are responsible. It is your bottom line, your money. If a building isn&rsquo;t performing to how it was supposed to perform there are tweaks you have to make,&rdquo; she said.<br /><br />&ldquo;There are glitches in every system,&rdquo; Taylor said. &ldquo;You are only using a rating system as a guide to get you to a better building, not as an end-all-be-all,&rdquo; he added.<br /><br />The Green Building Council has recognized the need for measurement, said Andrews, so the new LEED provides an incentive for measurement and verification by giving two more points for measurement than it gives for just modeling. &ldquo;And the other thing in LEED is that there is a basic commissioning requirement to make sure all the energy systems in a building are functioning properly,&rdquo; she said.<br /><br />Sammartano, however, questioned whether the Green Building Council really cares about how well a building actually performs. He cited one study of 121 LEED-certified buildings in which 40 percent obtained points for measurement and verification, but at the end of the mandatory one-year measurement and verification process only three of the projects could produce information generated by the measurement and verification process.<br /><br />Merrill, however, said the problem is not with modeling, it &ldquo;is with people who bend rules when energy modeling and LEED is correcting that,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />At issue is more than just confidence in the LEED building rating system, however. If a building owner discovers that a building is not delivering the energy savings that the architect said it would, &ldquo;there could be a liability issue,&rdquo; said Andrew Manuel, shareholder, Greensfelder, Hemker and Gale, PC.<br /><strong><br />That Which Gets Measured Will Succeed</strong><br /><br />&ldquo;LEED has been a fantastic learning tool,&rdquo; said Tim Gaidis, sustainable design director for HOK&rsquo;s St. Louis office, but &ldquo;the initiatives that will succeed going forward are the initiatives that can be measured, such as energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions The softer types of things that can&rsquo;t be measured will fall away, unless, like solar panels, they look good in PR to show that companies are making an effort at sustainability.&rdquo; Gaidis predicted that LEED would continue to evolve to remain useful and relevant.<br /><br />Sammartano is not alone is seeking to measure performance. Better measurements topped the list of green construction needs produced by the first annual BASF Forum on Sustainable Construction, which was held in Boston, MA in November.&nbsp; The forum brought together 30 senior architects, including a representative from HOK, to talk about challenges in sustainable construction. It was sponsored by BASF Corp., which makes chemicals used in many construction products.<br /><br />BASF spokesman Bill Pagano said the number one conclusion of the forum was, &ldquo;We need better tools to measure performance and justify first-cost for energy-efficient and more durable products.&rdquo; <br /><br />Merrill said that Clayco accepts the need for better data. &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve gone back and taken a look at buildings we built. We are tracking and trending information and one thing we&rsquo;re really seeing is that physical layout and natural illumination make a big difference,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />At the same time, modeling has a lot of value, he said. &ldquo;We never used to model buildings in Missouri, because we don&rsquo;t have an energy code. Just the fact that we are doing models leapfrogs in front of where we&rsquo;ve been. For example, we used to be doing R-30 roofs. We started doing models and found out we can get by with an R-20 roof without increasing use. Modeling is a tool for evaluating our practices that we didn&rsquo;t have before,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Preceding the BASF Forum on Sustainable Construction, BASF commissioned research firm BuildingInsight LLC to conduct a focused survey on green building issues. Respondents said that clients were willing to spend up to five percent more on first costs to improve energy efficiency. Those surveyed also said that on 35 percent of their projects clients wanted improvements in energy efficiency of at least 20 percent beyond standard requirements.<br /><br />Efforts to document building energy performance already are making their way into state and local regulations. Washington, DC, and California have adopted regulations that require benchmarking of energy use for commercial buildings through the Energy Star Portfolio Manager. Minnesota has made it a goal to earn the Energy Star label on 1,000 commercial buildings in the next two years. New York City is considering standard benchmarking legislation for commercial buildings. Ohio and Denver have pledged to benchmark government buildings. &ldquo;Soon these energy data will be made public, and those which achieve high rates of energy efficiency will be able to leverage this premium in ways LEED may not,&rdquo; Sammartano said.<br /><br />&lsquo;The marketplace is saying, &ldquo;Show me the money.&rdquo; It is not enough to say it will be there, you have to demonstrate it,&rdquo; Taylor said. As more data becomes available, however, it will also help improve modeling and improve LEED. &ldquo;I personally think this will have a very positive affect on people who truly practice sustainability. There are more people in marketplace who say they do it than truly know how to do it,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />&ldquo;There are challenges, but the opportunities outweigh them. Everything on the landscape leans towards green,&rdquo; Taylor added.<br /><br />&ldquo;There is a huge building stock in the United States and huge opportunities to make it more efficient,&rdquo; Gaidis said. &ldquo;One challenge is knowing how codes will evolve to require sustainable practices. We need more political and regulatory guidance,&rdquo; he said. The measurement challenge is not insurmountable, he said.<br /><br />&ldquo;The great thing about Kennedy&rsquo;s challenge to put a man on the moon was that it was a huge challenge and people rose to the occasion. When regulatory agencies or our clients ask us to go all the way to moon, we can do it; we just need to be challenged,&rdquo; he said.<br /><br />Merrill also is confident that issues of documenting energy performance soon will be resolved. &ldquo;We share the feeling that the future is green, that it will be the mainstream. We liken it to ADA requirements &ndash; it will become normal part of business,&rdquo; he said.</p>";s:10:"category_0";s:1:"4";s:10:"category_1";s:2:"40";}