Archive for the ‘General’ Category
Net Zero: Rethinking Green
Tuesday, September 27th, 2011When it comes to green building, it seems everybody wants to jump on the band wagon these days. The Federal Government has its EnergyStar program, many states have programs, then there’s Passivhaus, and of course LEED. The problem is, the central focus of most of these programs isn’t so much green as it is energy efficiency with a dose of waste reduction on the side. And for desert there’s an offering of green sourcing—so long as it doesn’t conflict with goal number one, that great holy grail of green building: Net Zero!
Which begs the question: At what cost Net Zero? For that matter, is Net Zero even a laudable goal? It does, after all, come with quite a cost. Setting aside the cost of achieving Net Zero, just the mad rush to do blower door testing with all its calculations that ensure every little crack is sealed up tight has led to unintended consequences. Sick House Syndrome is headed in the direction of an epidemic. Therefore, if green building is defined as cost saving, it could be argued that obsessive air sealing isn’t such a great idea. What is saved in energy is more than offset by medical costs. To which the usual rebuttal is: If you’re going to air seal, you have to have properly installed mechanical ventilation. Okay.
To paraphrase a German architect I once met: You Americans are so in love with your technology. Why don’t you just open a window? Which might be interpreted as: When your solution to a problem creates another problem which must then be solved, thus creating another problem, you have no solution at all.
But the obsession with air sealing is only the tip of the ice berg. Net Zero inevitably leads to discussions about solar.
Solar. The new ‘green tech’ darling. Even President Obama got in on the act. The question is: Just how green is solar? Solar systems are constructed of aluminum, which must be mined, glass, the silica for which must be mined, plastic, which comes from oil, and worst of all, rare earth elements, which also must be mined. The environmental consequences of rare earth mining and refining are beginning to raise alarm bells that echo of oil production—or worse. As the New York Times reported earlier this year:
Once little known outside chemistry circles, rare earth metals have become increasingly vital to high-tech manufacturing. But as Malaysia learned the hard way a few decades ago, refining rare earth ore usually leaves thousands of tons of low-level radioactive waste behind.
So the world has largely left the dirty work to Chinese refineries—processing factories that are barely regulated and in some cases illegally operated, and have created vast toxic waste sites.
So our green tech darling, solar, is leaving a trail of radioactive waste behind it. This is green?
It’s beyond time the building industry got out of the kiddie pool and began to think more holistically about green building. We need to be thinking in terms of the environment around the building; we need to be thinking about where the materials we’re building with and finishing with are coming from; we need to be thinking in terms of the environmental cost of the entire production stream for those materials; we need to be thinking in terms of community. Not just the community in which the building will sit, but the communities around the world that manufacture the materials we put into the building—and who have to live with the often toxic refuse caused by that manufacturing.
When we do that, I guarantee Net Zero will become far less important than Environmental Zero, which may make Net Zero of zero importance.
One View On What Makes a Building “Green”
Tuesday, August 30th, 2011I’d like to thank Philip J. Reed for giving us his opinion on what constitutes green building in the following guest post. Philip works in association with the Daybreak community in Utah. He has a close personal interest in green-friendly practices and sustainable living, and will be happy to follow up on any questions you may leave in the comments below.
Green building is a popular subject these days, but do you know what makes a building green? The concept relies on much more than environmental friendliness; economic development, transportation and infrastructure, land use, and still other ideas are all part all incorporated to promote a balanced, sustainable lifestyle.
At its core, this type of construction emphasizes the smart use of resources and processes to minimize the impact a structure has on the environment. Green buildings may contain products that have been reused, recycled, or made from a renewable resource. They support a healthy indoor environment and also employ smart landscaping, such as the use of native plants that won’t require extra water. Better designs minimize heating and cooling losses in a building, and make better use of energy as well. Even construction processes are more efficient, reducing the waste produced during building.
Spikes in energy prices and a significant environmental push in the 1960s and 1970s prompted early ventures into green building in the United States. The movement was formalized in the 1990s, and has continued to blossom today. To give builders a better sense of how to construct an environmentally friendly and economically smart structure, organizations such as the National Association of Home Builders have created Model Green Home Building Guidelines to provide more understanding of what constitutes green building and techniques to use which will facilitate the process.
Homes in Salt Lake are now constructed with a greener focus, and growing numbers adhere completely to EPA Energy Star® guidelines. Sustainable communities and neighborhoods now keep community gardens, walking and bike trails, activity centers, and community pools in mind. Business owners are incorporating smart principles into the design of their buildings, and several are LEED® certified. Even construction companies are doing their part by recycling a significant amount of their waste.
Those who believe in green building are passionate about the effects these practices can have on improving human and environmental health. Building choices, neighborhood design, and green infrastructure are all concepts which can have many beneficial results reaching far into the future.
References:
Daybreak Utah
U.S. EPA
U.S. Green Building Council
EPA Green Building FAQ
HGTV Pro (Article)
Can Liability Cause Contractors to Turn “Green”?
Thursday, April 21st, 2011
Christopher G. Hill (@constructionlaw) is lawyer and owner of the Richmond, VA firm, The Law Office of Christopher G. Hill, PC, a LEED AP. Mr. Hill has been nominated and elected by his peers to Virginia’s Legal Elite in the Construction Law category on multiple occasions. He specializes in mechanic’s liens, contract review and consulting, occupational safety issues (VOSH and OSHA), and risk management for construction professionals. Mr. Hill authors the Construction Law Musings blog where he discusses legal and policy issues relevant to construction professionals. Additionally, Mr. Hill is active in the Associated General Contractors of Virginia and the Construction Law and Public Contracts Section of the Virginia State Bar.
First of all, thanks to Michael for the opportunity to guest post. Please check out his post at Construction Law Musings here.
Lately, there has been a lot of news in the green building world relating to law suits and other liability nightmares relating to green building. The Destiny USA debacle relating to the green bonds program and the failure of a contractor to meet its sustainable building promises is one major issue. Another is the collapse of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation HQ in Maryland. All of this sudden liability related activity in the sustainable building area of construction could lead to two possible outcomes.
The first of these outcomes is the doomsday scenario. To wit (yes I said that, I am an attorney after all), the wonderful momentum built up over the last few years will come to a screeching, and unfortunate halt. Despite my Eeyore like tendencies and related posts on the subject, this is the worst possible outcome. Sustainable building is a great idea, liability concerns aside. To stop now because of issues that have always existed, yet have just recently reared their ugly heads would be a mistake.
The second, and healthier (in many ways) outcome is a learning curve and the use of these solid examples to assure that these types of outcomes do not repeat. Smarter folks than I have been screaming from the rooftops that such outcomes could occur if not taken into consideration. The problem has always been that no concrete examples had been available until now.
With these concrete examples we can now examine and better plan for the range of outcomes in a manner that is not merely the speculation of green building attorneys and other advocates who can be written off as a group of chicken littles. My hope is that, far from derailing the entire enterprise, those of us who advocate green building will learn and plan in a manner that can make green building sustainable for the future in a relatively liability free manner.
Of course, in an uncertain world, no such assurance is possible, but we can sure try.
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What I Love About America
Wednesday, March 30th, 2011A couple of weeks ago a chap named Jim Wright wrote a post in his blog titled America: You Keep Using That Word. It went viral. In a followup Jim asked a very good question: So, what do you love about America? No, not as in the usual banal patriotic platitudes that flow so easily from our lips. What makes America a place you would die for? That was his question. And as Jim is a fellow veteran, I must assume he knows something about the question he’s asking, since like all vets, he chose to put it on the line, if needs be, when he swore his oath to flag and country.
I would imagine that for some, trying to discover something about America within themselves that would cause them to lay down their life for their country was difficult. For me, it was actually rather easy.
America loves a good fight. We love to argue and we’ll argue about almost anything. We’ll argue with the last call the ref made at our kid’s ball game. We’ll argue about where the neighborhood skate park should go, how big it should be, what it should look like. Hell, we’ll even argue over what color to paint it. We’ll argue over road repairs, sewer updates, the kinds of trees the city should plant along the roads; we’ll argue with cops and shop owners and our own government. And when we really get cracking, we’ll even throw the bums out – even if that bum happens to be our president. It wasn’t too long ago that some of these fights got physical. A little over a century ago there were actually duels fought right in the Senate Chamber! Duels amongst Senate or House members out on the grounds were not uncommon, and they were legal.
And yet, for all of that, we’re still a nation. I’ll never forget Congressman Tip O’Neil’s comment as President Nixon got on Marine One to leave the White House for the last time. We just impeached a president. The leader of the most powerful nation on earth. And yet there was no gun fire, no riots, and no military coupe. (I’m paraphrasing, I’m sorry. I don’t remember the quote.)
For all our love of a good fight, for all our differences great and small, in the end, somewhere deep down in side know we are one and the same thing: We’re Americans. And I don’t know that there has been another group of people quite like us, who will happily fight and argue amongst ourselves until we’re blue in the face, and yet still stick together like glue when things get tough, since classical Greece.
Yes, it’s true that almost all modern countries now give their citizens a right to politically express themselves. But here, we enshrined it our Constitution. We consider the right to express our opinion, individually and in groups, almost as sacred as life’s breath. And the gods be damned should anyone try to abridge that right! A case in point was the Supreme Court’s recent decision to uphold a church’s right to picket veteran’s funerals. What that little fundamentalist church was doing to those families was horrible. The nation was outraged by their behavior. But I don’t know anybody who couldn’t just shake their head at the Court’s dilemma. They knew the court had no choice. They didn’t like it, but they understood it.
We may not like what that other idiot says. In fact, we may just go punch him in the nose over it. But by god, we’ll fight you to the death if you try to take away his right to say it.
And that, my friends is worth fighting for. That rare gift is worth dying for. That’s what I love about this loud mouthed, scrappy, hard nosed, belligerent country we named the United States of America.
