HER LEED » Some LEED-ers, Some LEED-less

Trade, Monuments and Pioneers

Lisa Goddard — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 18:38:32 +0000

As the leaders of global trade met in a town that symbolizes “Made in America,” talks of tariffs and protectionism stirred up the conversation among participants and protesters organized around banners warning of climate destruction.

Meanwhile, cooperation and compromise appear to be barriers for creating a low carbon economy in the Mojave Desert of California. A 5000 acre solar thermal facility was abandoned for a monument to preserve the critical ecosystem of the desert. Harnessing the sun to supply humans with an alternative to fossil fuel energy seemingly trumps an outdated promise to keep the desert as is, forever. Why is it that protecting the desert and putting up solar panels are mutually exclusive?

This week’s HER LEED Award goes to Axion International for rolling out the world’s first thermoplastic bridge. Designed from 100% recycled plastic and materials including glass and vehicle bumpers, it can support a load of 70 tons and diverts waste from our endless stream. If it doesn’t require a military budget to implement, than perhaps our 2010 public works projects will produce this type of innovation.

Sustainability = Innovation

Lisa Goddard — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 18:50:26 +0000

In the September issue of Harvard Business Review, they featured an article entitled “Why Sustainability is Now the Key Driver of Innovation.” The authors, distinguished professionals all of them, provided anecdotal solutions for businesses to become more environmentally conscious.
The buzz across the media and blog world is that sustainability and innovation are the driving forces of a lower carbon economy. What this spark fails to ignite is that those who control the means of production control where the innovation is heading and those that don’t end up writing articles about it.
The oil and gas companies dominate energy innovation. Their money creates cutting edge horizontal probes that can scan the crust of the ocean floor and are controlled by the retinas of engineers. Yet a better solution to concrete in buildings which emits 9% of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has still not been developed.
If innovation is going to be equated with sustainability we must address what it is we are trying to sustain. Sustaining resource extraction and the dependency on a fossil fueled economy isn’t what we’re reading about but the majority of innovation dollars are thrown in that direction. The oil and gas companies are perpetuating behavior that is far from sustainable. Innovation in the form of energy policy and regulation needs to occur for sustainability to mean more then just profit margin.

Show me the money…

Lisa Goddard — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 16:32:41 +0000

Yesterday Reuters posted an article that demonstrated the incremental change that is taking place in the built environment.
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act designed to stimulate the economy appears to have the trickle down effect in the green building domain. Those that are working, are too busy to respond to email and those that are not, are writing on blogs and auditing classes in between searching all the applicable job sites and adding their resume to the 100+ queue of overqualified applicants.
Meanwhile, states like California are receiving large chunks of funds earmarked for job creation yet those funds are used to pay down the states enormous debt.
Talk of mandating green building is interrupted by the technical annoyance that green design hasn’t improved building efficiency. So while the USGBC scrambles to finally address this hiccup in legitimacy, the built environment or should I say the building professionals wait for the opportunity to contribute.

Reuters Art.

Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or Greenwashing?

Lisa Goddard — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:11:05 +0000

Henry Gifford the New Yorkers “Boiler Man” and an energy consultant in New York City is a dissenting voice for measuring building efficiency based on the US Green Building Council’s LEED rating system. In his eye opening paper, “A Better Way to Rate Green Buildings,” Gifford asserts that appearance of energy efficiency is the focal point of the LEED system not actually accomplishing energy savings as the USGBC would have us believe.
Gifford states that, “There is only one realistic way to
rate the energy efficiency of a building: by
how much energy it actually uses after it is
occupied. For any green building rating
system to be truly effective it must require
public scrutiny of utility bills for all rated
buildings, not just a few selected examples.”
Gifford’s point hit homes on August 30, 2009, when the New York Times published a piece in the Environment section on these green labeled buildings. It appears that the can of worms has been opened and the USGBC is scrambling to address it.