In the $12 billion-a-year “green building” industry, a seal of approval can be obtained when a project includes water efficient landscaping, innovative wastewater technologies, and water-use reduction fixtures.
Taryn Holowka, communications manager for the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), compares green building certification to the nutrition label on food packaging. “If you’re a building owner and contract people to construct your building, you may spend so many millions of dollars and you really don’t know what you’ve got,” she says.
The USGBC is the most notable of national green building certification programs and has 70 chapters throughout the United States. Some groups operate on a regional level as an extension of USGBC efforts. There are also other regional groups that operate independently. Green building certification “provides not only that piece of mind,” says Holowka, “but it’s a type of verification that everything is built and operating exactly as it was intended to.”
Aside from its environmental benefits, green building as a business decision makes good sense: It’s a $12 billion-a-year industry and continues to be fueled by increased consumer demand. “They want to live in a healthy home, use less energy, have lower utility bills, and have lower water bills,” notes Holowka.
Jeff Gephart, a Vermont green building program representative, notes that after having spent 15 years involved in residential energy efficiency services, “It is interesting how much sexier green seems to be to people. The feel of greenness seems to generate greater interest in some respects than just efficiency. In fact, people sometimes are a little slow to realize efficiency is big part of greenness.
“But that’s fine. If we can take all of the steps in one leap and bound, great. There is a lot of forecasting out there across the spectrum—the National Association of Home Builders says this is already a significant market and is going to grow significantly as well.”
Green Evolution
Although it may seem that “green building” is a relatively recent trend in architecture and construction, it actually has its roots in the pre-20th century, according to What’s Working Inc. At that time, structures were designed and built by builder-architects who designed with climate in mind and understood building from design through construction through lifetime operations. Throughout the ensuing decades, generalists gave way to specialists as the practice of building as an integrated design process waned.
In the ’70s, architects and environmentalists questioned that approach. The energy crisis of 1973 brought that concern more sharply into focus, as the US Department of Energy and related groups were formed. The Sustainable Buildings Industry Council followed in the early ’80s.
Other efforts ensued. In 1991, Austin, TX, created the Austin Green Building Program, which in 1992 was named one of the 10 most innovative government environmental programs worldwide by the Rio Earth Summit. As the decade unfolded, the sustainable building movement snowballed through the creation of various “green building” organizations. The apex came in 1993 when then-President Bill Clinton announced plans to “green” the White House to provide a role model in efficiency and waste reduction. Also in 1993, the USGBC began. The national effort spawned regional efforts, beginning in such areas as Boulder and Denver, CO; Scottsdale, AZ; and Kitsap and Clark counties in Washington.
One of the key elements in green building is LEED—Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—a nationally recognized voluntary green building rating system for building design, construction, and operation. Performance is measured in five key areas: water savings, sustainable site development, energy efficiency, materials selection, and indoor environmental quality.
Buildings account for 12% of potable water consumption. For water efficiency, credits can be obtained for water-efficient landscaping, innovative wastewater technologies, and water-use reduction. LEED programs include retail, schools, multiple buildings, and on-campus building projects; neighborhood development; homes; core and shell development projects; commercial interior projects; existing building operations and maintenance; and new commercial construction and major renovation projects. LEED programs are being developed for healthcare and labs.
LEED was developed to provide a consistent, credible standard for what constitutes a green building and is based on a consensus-based process. Federal and state agencies choose LEED as a standard. Those seeking LEED certification must be familiar with the system and take recommended workshops. They typically have professional expertise in architecture, engineering, facilities management, or interior design. A core competency is required. Tracks tied to specific professions go beyond those competencies. LEED-certification hopefuls also must take an exam. Nearly 40,000 people are LEED-accredited professionals and are qualified to serve on a building team to guide a project through a green building LEED process.
The first step toward LEED certification is to register a project. To earn certification, a building project must meet certain prerequisites and benchmarks—or credits—within a variety of categories. Depending on the number of credits, projects can earn certified, silver, gold, or platinum recognition. LEED certified buildings have reduced operating costs, increased health benefits, and conserved natural resources. The USGBC also is developing ongoing education to respond to rapidly changing green technologies.
“LEED was developed to be a guideline to define green building,” says Holowka. “Before there was LEED, anyone could say they had a green building and really didn’t know what it took to make a green building. Maybe they had solar panels, but one thing doesn’t make it a green building.”
LEED works with the building as a whole, including its water use, as well as energy, materials, and indoor air quality, for example. “All of those things are taken into consideration and dealt with in the LEED system, so it really is a rigorous and comprehensive system,” says Holowka. “It’s third-party verified, so you know exactly how much energy or water the building is using and what the building is made of.”
Holowka says the building industry has been slow to change, but now, the USBGC has more than a billion square-feet involved in LEED, representing a “significant portion” of the building industry. Nearly 824 projects have been certified over the past seven years, with some 6,500 projects in the construction process that aim for LEED certification. “It’s really growing,” Holowka notes. “Last year at this time, those numbers were half of that. It’s pretty amazing to us that something like this could catch on. But there are a lot of issues out there today like energy, climate change, and water issues that are driving this.”
Water efficiency encompasses water use in and outside a building: The goal is to reduce the amount of drinkable water used for other purposes. Water-saving technologies involve waterless urinals and installing aerators on faucets, for example. On the outside, native landscaping that does not require a great deal of water is credited.
“They are plants that belong there anyway, so they will thrive in the environment they are in,” notes Holowka. Other outdoor measures, such as rainwater reuse and using graywater for irrigation, also count for points. Most of our projects are using about 30% less water than comparable conventional buildings.”
Initially, the USGBC had developed LEED for new construction and pilot-tested the program for residential homes. “We thought all of the interest would be coming from the builders who wanted to differentiate themselves in the market as being a green homebuilder,” she says. “We’re actually seeing the demand coming from the consumers.”
Auspicious Beginnings in Texas
The first regional green building effort in the United States is the award-winning program in Austin, TX. The program predates the USGBC. “That doesn’t mean we invented green building,” says Richard Morgan, the Austin Energy Green Building program manager. “There have been many people out there practicing green building, high-performance building, or sustainable building.
“We probably became the first because Austin has for many years been a very environmentally aware community. We have a lot of people who are doing a lot of serious thinking about the building environment and its impact on the future of our city.”
The primary difference between Austin’s regional program and other national efforts is that its evaluation tools are locally developed, Morgan points out.
“They are very specific to our climate, the types of buildings built in Austin, and the needs of the city,” he says. “Another major difference is that we can make decisions locally, since we’re not dependent on a national organization to determine whether a specific measure really does have a green building benefit or impact. That moves the process along a lot faster.”
Traditionally, the program has been voluntary. However, some classes of buildings are required to get a green building rating. In the residential sector, all affordable housing that receives any type of incentive from the City of Austin—be it a large financial incentive or down payment assistance for homebuyers—is required to meet minimum green building standards.
“For the last four years, city council and city management have been using green building as a trade-off when developers request variances from zoning criteria,” Morgan says. “Higher density and higher height limits often are required to meet some level of green building.”
Austin’s program mirrors that of the USGBC program, using slightly different terminology, Morgan says. The water category rolls water conservation and water quality into one measure.
“We give additional points for reducing irrigation water by 50%, an additional point for 75%, an additional point for 100%, and up to three points for irrigation and water reductions,” says Morgan.
“There are additional points for indoor potable water reduction by 15%, and we provide additional points for 25%, 35%, 45%, and 55%.”
The program encompasses further details, such as using condensate for the wastewater system, as well as high-efficiency water fixtures. On the residential side, the basic requirement is the installation of a minimum of two high-efficiency toilets. Other measures include the use of an on-demand hot water recirculation system to avoid water wasting down the drain while its user waits for it to get hot, the use of aerators in faucets and showerheads or showerheads that have a maximum flow of 2 gallons-per-minute or less, and Energy Star dishwashers or clothes washers. Clothes washers that meet certain criteria can qualify for rebates from both Austin Energy and the water utility.
Morgan says the biggest water issue in Austin is in landscaping. The program addresses that by requiring native or adapted plants be used, with 90% of new plants coming from the city’s Grow Green or Water Wise plant lists. Topsoil must contain a minimum of 25% inorganic material. Rainwater harvesting is promoted; additional points are awarded with an increase in the gallons of rainwater reused.
As for Austin’s certification process on the commercial side, the owners’ representative or someone from the design team submits a letter of intent. Staff members are assigned to the project, working with the design team from programming through development.
“We review their designs, make recommendations about how they might be changed to be more effective and whether they will actually meet code or not,” says Morgan. “When the project goes into construction, we perform a couple of monitoring visits on the site. When we have all of the documentation and have done final site visits, assuming that everything is OK, we’ll certify the building. It’s an intensive process.”
Austin does less “hand-holding” on residential projects, Morgan notes. “Typically, a builder or architect submits the ratings spreadsheet to us, we review it for obvious problems, make recommendations and do monitoring during the construction process, and then do a final inspection at the end and issue the certificate. If the builder, design team, or homeowner requests it, we can provide a more thorough plan review and recommendations.”
The program has taken off in Austin over the years. Last year, Austin rated 1,049 single-family homes, which represents 21% of all new single-family homes permitted; that number has remained steady over the past few years.
For the commercial sector, Austin is involved in about 100 projects encompassing some 10 million to 12 million square feet. “That’s pretty substantial,” Morgan notes. “Five years ago, we had 18 projects on the books.”
Austin’s program has been so successful that other municipalities have turned to Austin officials for advice. “We were doing so much of that, our city management asked us to put together a business plan to pursue consulting for other municipalities,” Morgan says.
Doing Well by Doing Good in Wisconsin
Another award-winning program is the Wisconsin Environmental Initiative, which was selected Green Building Program of the Year in the 2006 National Green Building Awards. John Imes serves as the executive director. Green Built Home began in 1999 as a partnership with the Madison Area Builders Association. The program has since expanded throughout the state.
“The idea was for builders to make more investments in technology, practice, and mindset to reduce the environmental footprint of home construction and also home performance going forward, and to create market distinction for those builders who are making those investments,” says Imes.
The program’s philosophy had been “Doing well by doing good.”
“That meant doing well financially by doing well environmentally, so we worked with builders,” he says.
Program managers assembled a technical advisory committee comprising builders, association representatives, energy efficiency experts, architects, and environmental building designers to create a checklist of basic environmental requirements. With more than 330 items, Imes believes the list is one of the most comprehensive in the United States.
The list has basic requirements that every home must meet in terms of energy efficiency, stormwater runoff, and indoor air quality, as well as minimum criteria for other areas. The program is voluntary.
“But it also provides builders flexibility—once they meet those basic requirements—to put their own signature on green building,” says Imes. “In some cases, builders are taking more of a general approach. They’ve got point totals in a lot of different areas or may decide they want to highlight energy efficiency, air quality, or waste management. It gives them an opportunity to put their own signature on it.”
Marketing benefits include logos and signs for yards and homes, plaques for certified homes, media coverage, and apparel for builders.
Imes believes the public has surpassed builders in terms of the desire to incorporate more environmentally responsible practices, materials, and approaches to homebuilding. “We’re seeing a lot more demand in the marketplace,” he says. “The philosophy years ago was to create demand for those builders who were making those investments. If there are builders out there that aren’t interested, maybe they are not as successful.”
Wisconsin’s water efficiency features include the installation of kitchen and bathroom faucets and showerheads with gallons per minute that are less than what is called for in code, dual-flush toilets, a recirculating hot water loop system, and front-loading horizontal access clothes washers. Landscaped areas are credited for the use of rain gardens, native landscaping with a minimum of 40% of non-paved areas, and rainwater recovery from roofs for watering with a 50-gallon minimum storage capacity. Other credits are given for irrigation systems that include soil moisture or rain sensors.
Wisconsin’s program is organized with a minimum point total of 60. “We’ve developed a green build that shows a green gradient getting darker as it goes toward the right,” says Imes. “There’s a conventional home, a certified green-built home, and then a score for a particular house.
“We didn’t want to get into the one-, two-, three-star type of rating systems,” he adds. “Some builders said they didn’t want to stay in a two-star hotel. But one of the issues was if you’ve got a star system and 69 points is one star and 70 points is two stars, then you really have to have an auditing protocol to ensure it is actually a 70-point house.”
Imes contends that drives cost and creates more of a bureaucratic system rather than a voluntary system.
“We do spot checks and test every home in terms of the energy-efficiency testing, and once a level of performance is determined, then it is more random,” he says. “Let the public judge what the point total means. We want that dialogue to be between the homebuyer or remodeling customer and the builder or remodeler.
“When we do the spot checks, we’ll ask for the Material Safety Data Sheets for all of the products used. We work a lot with the Wisconsin Energy Star Homes program, which I think is one of the more rigorous energy efficiency programs in the country.”
Builders and remodelers can express green building in different ways as long as they meet basic requirements.
“May the most eco-efficient builder or remodeler win,” says Imes.
In Dane County, WI—the state’s fastest-growing county—the number of green-built homes has increased to 60%. During the program’s first year, 26 homes qualified; now, there are more than 1,200. Interest is increasing in the greening of multifamily developments and remodeling.
Wisconsin’s program is not affiliated with the USGBC. The program was the first east of the Mississippi River and the first in the Midwest. When the program began, there had been some vocal skeptics from within well-respected builders’ circles, notes Imes. One of his proudest achievements was when one of the program’s strongest critics turned a corner and became one of its strongest advocates after other builders convinced him that as a group they’d either “be driving the bus down the road or chasing the bus down the road,” Imes notes.
Within a year, the Madison Area Builders Association had created a Green Built committee, thus creating a model for other homebuilders’ associations throughout the state.
“I didn’t want to create an empire in Madison, Wisconsin, with a bunch of green building minions running a program,” says Imes. “We really wanted to create leadership. I think we’ve struck that balance between a comprehensive checklist and very meaningful reductions in terms of the environmental benefit.”
Colorado’s Codes
Another regional first is in Boulder, CO, where the municipality is the first in the country to mandate a green code for residential building. A predecessor to Boulder’s current Green Points program was an energy option program, put into place after the energy crisis of the mid-’70s.
“It was energy and water conservation–based, so when building and energy codes caught up with those alternative options in that program, the city council instructed the staff to put together a full-blown green building program,” says Elizabeth Vasatka, the environmental coordinator for Boulder’s Office of Environmental Affairs.
The program was implemented in 1996 solely for new residential construction. It was updated in 2001 to include remodeling, and green attributes within the construction were expanded. The amount of points needed for each factor was increased, and the larger a building was constructed, the more environmental attributes that had to be included.
“Five-hundred-square-foot residential building projects trigger green points and then no matter how big it is, the program taps out at 300 points,” Vasatka says.
Boulder’s program differs from the USGBC.
“When we put ours in place, there was no USGBC yet,” Vasatka says. “They came out just for commercial, and we were just residential. Over the past three years, they’ve been piloting their LEED program for homes. The city is not a LEED home provider.
“We weren’t necessarily interested in LEED when it first came out, because it was just for new construction and the majority of our permits are for remodels and additions,” she adds. “Now we are updating our green point code and are looking at the LEED process and LEED for home structures to see what we can implement and potentially streamline our process.”
LEED is penetrating the marketplace and encompasses “amazing expertise,” Vasatka acknowledges.
“They’ve been working on the program for a long time, so we are definitely looking at how some of the elements of that program and Energy Star could potentially help us with our updates,” she adds.
Boulder has an affordable housing ordinance with what Vasatka says includes stringent development regulations and standards.
“We have basically built out,” she says. “We are really intentional about how the community looks and feels. There is a lot of effort put into planning and building. Our community is pretty dense, but people would like it to be more dense.
“We have height regulations because we have amazing western views. There are regulations on water conservation and stormwater. Boulder’s regulations could potentially be more stringent than those at the federal and state levels because we are definitely sustainable-minded.
“We’ve been wanting to put a commercial green building code on the books, and that’s in process as well,” Vasatka says. “On the whole, the community has developed in a pretty sustainable manner.”
With respect to water-efficient measures, Boulder factors in xeriscaping and drip irrigation for the exterior of a residence and low-flow faucets, toilets, and Energy Star appliances on the inside.
Social Responsibility in Vermont
In Vermont, a green building certification program there ties in to the USGBC, but with a local twist. The voluntary Green Building Certification program in Vermont is jointly operated by Building for Social Responsibility—called Vermont Builds Greener—and the USGBC’s LEED for homes. The program uses LEED for its Homes scoring system with a few Vermont requirements, such as land-use and development criteria.
“LEED for Homes says build Energy Star and go beyond,” says Jeff Gephart. “The services to build Energy Star are available at no charge in Vermont through Efficiency Vermont—a statewide energy efficiency utility—and then there are services relative to the certification of the joint certification of Vermont Builds Greener and LEED for homes that gets layered on top of that.”
While the LEED for Homes pilot project has been operative for about two years, the Vermont Builds Greener program predates it by about a year, Gephart notes.
“Building for Social Responsibility had no funding available for significant marketing in program support materials, so it was not well known,” he says. “It was actually fairly well known in the green building community because of how aggressive the scorecard was. A lot of the things the USGBC has in its score card appear to have initially come from their examination of Vermont Builds Greener, particularly the home-size analysis and point scoring component.”
The program has become well received in Vermont. The state has had more than 200 builders and architects attend recent trainings, and while Gephart says that may not seem like much on the face of it, he points out that Vermont is a relatively small state.
“We believe there is more of a market for it here,” says Gephart. “There is a lot of interest in the architectural community and a fair amount of interest in the building community, but on a percentage basis, the interest is significantly smaller on the builder’s side than on the architect’s side. There’s a fairly significant and growing interest on the consumer side that to a degree is driving the builder’s side of it.”
Water efficiency isn’t as big a focus in the northeast compared to other areas, Gephart notes.
“We’ve done trainings that have included the information about the LEED for Homes points available for drip irrigation and other actions. That’s not really a component that most people are looking for help with up here—where we pay more attention to water usage is in the area where energy is associated with it, relative to heating the water or reclaiming heat from that heated water.
“What we value more here is how you reduce the amount of heating of water that you need. Can you reclaim waste heat from that water with a GFX [graywater heat recovery system]? We also want to make sure the showerheads and the faucet aerators are low-flow and that the water heating is efficient to begin with. All of those are more of a focus here from a practical and reality standpoint where we are not the dry climate that say Austin, Texas, has.”
Gephart says Vermont officials are trying to buck the trend in the United States of “bigger is better” when it comes to building homes, such as the “mini-mansions.”
“Resource use increases the larger you go,” he says. “That’s something we urge people to think about very early on in the process is designing something that works, something that is right for the usage, but not making it too big. Figure out what’s the appropriate size and how to configure it so we can do more with less.”
Developers are looking at green building from a few standpoints: one being whether they can charge more to use better products to cover costs, and the other is if they can institute green building techniques without increasing the cost, or even by decreasing it, says Gephart. He points out that some green initiatives being rolled into new construction is not as much an attachment to builders’ interest in improved home efficiency as much as interest in reduced liability and fewer callbacks.
“This system of engineered trade-offs enables us to get far more efficient, far more robust homes from the standpoint of prevention of problems with mold, mildew, and moisture without increasing costs,” he says.
“If we can get to that and also appropriately size our heating systems and avoid a cooling system in Vermont, we can probably save some money that could be applied to other features that may be harder to acquire without increasing costs on the green side.”
Development, being a profit-based endeavor, is embracing green building for many reasons, note certification officials throughout the US.
“The industry has simply begun to accept green building as better building, as quality control for builders and designers, and as providing a better product for the building owners at the end,” says Morgan. “There are national development companies that are doing everything they can do and have found that what they get is a better building that operates more efficiently, requires less maintenance, and is leased more quickly, and all of the initial investment in green building is paid back in less than a year through energy and water savings.”
Boulder’s program has been in place for a decade, so everyone has had time to adapt to it, Vasatka points out.
“With any major change or additional requirements on the building community there is always resistance involved,” she says. “But since the Green Points program was implemented, we’ve been able to foster a strong rebuilding community and have a strong industry here. Designers and builders are creating zero-energy homes. We have a lot of folks who really want to see a certain level of energy efficiency regulated.
“We have energy professionals and green building professionals who would like us to regulate at a much higher level than we’re doing right now, since our community signed on to the Kyoto Protocol in 2002 and the city council adopted a climate action plan in 2006.”
In terms of the cost of building green, Imes says Wisconsin’s program managers did not want to perpetuate the myth that building green costs more or results in any compromises of comfort, quality, or durability.
“Some of our best opinion leaders on that have been some of our businesses,” he says. “We work with Veridian Homes, which is the largest home builder in the state. For years, they’ve built all of their homes to the Green Built home standard, and they’ll say it didn’t cost them anything more. It was an opportunity to think differently about how they were building.
“What impressed me was they brought in their suppliers, different contractors, and sales and marketing people and really integrated this to the company. It didn’t cost them more, yet it got them quite a bit of distinction in the marketplace.”
Vasatka maintains that while some green building initiatives may cost a developer and builder more at the onset and while it is the consumer who will reap the benefits in higher energy efficiency with more stable utility costs, “They can market their buildings and get a higher price.”
It’s been proven that a green structure increases in value in the marketplace much faster than a conventionally built structure, Vasatka says.
“It’s really a smarter way to build,” she adds. “It takes all levels of actions, programs, and mandates to make sure everyone’s involved. It only makes sense to secure an energy-stable future for the US and the world, so I think it’s the right thing to do and makes a lot of business sense.”
Gephart notes a growing awareness throughout the country as to the “impact of our building and development decisions and the impact on the planet.
“Everything from the escalating costs of fuels to the increase in the coverage of climate change in the media is having an impact,” he says. “We saw an era where a lot of the interest and the shift toward greenness was driven in part from an air-quality fear standpoint. We had the years of mold headlines that increased awareness. A number of these factors have come together to make people more interested in it, and as it becomes a little better understood, the fear that this is going to cost an arm and a leg has somewhat diminished.”
When the USGBC launched its LEED rating system seven years ago, it had 573 member companies. Now, there are more than 9,000.
“This definitely is a growing field, and we’re hoping it will get better,” says Holowka. “We’re hoping one day we will put ourselves out of business, because one day it won’t be green building—it will just be the way it is done.”