The sustainable design and green building movement have made tremendous advances over the past decade to the point that virtually every building project today employs some level of green design.  And yet despite the bar being raised significantly there remains resistance in the public and private sectors to embracing “no brainer” investments in sustainable building and infrastructure that would further benefit all stakeholders.

It is my belief that in order to convince business and government leaders to take the next step, and invest more heavily in sustainable design solutions, design professionals need to become more conversant in the economics and profit potential inherent in smart, sustainable design…we need to talk the talk.

Proponents of green building and sustainable design have included a “triple bottom line” (TBL) argument in their pitch as the movement has grown.  The three P’s of TBL are most commonly listed in the following order:

1.      People (social)

2.      Planet (environmental)

3.      Profit (economics)

For background, Wikipedia states that sustainability was first defined by the Brundtland Commission of the United Nations in 1987. Over a decade later the TBL phrase was coined by John Elkington in his 1998 book “Cannibals with Forks: the Triple Bottom Line of 21st Century Business.”

The most prominent US organization in the green design space, the United States Green Building Council (USGBC), has stated that they “pursue robust triple bottom line solutions that clarify and strengthen a healthy and dynamic balance between environmental, social and economic prosperity. “ Although the USGBC speaks about a commitment to TBL solutions, the origins and current focus of their successful Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) system are primarily rooted in environmental concerns. When factoring in the life cycle returns achieved from investments made in pursuit of LEED® credits there is a clear economic benefit, yet architects, engineers and designers often are less passionate and only marginally successful at making a strong business case for sustainable designs.

Of course most design professionals are not trained as business people, and our motivation for embracing sustainability seems naturally biased towards the first two P’s of the TBL triumviri, namely “people” and “planet.” By contrast, the original protagonists for sustainability and TBL thinking started with economic “profit” driven decision-making and sought to add social and environmental performance considerations to the formula.

To achieve the more ambitious goals of the green building movement, architects, engineers and designers need to further embrace and communicate the profit and economic potential of sustainable design measures. We need to focus on honing our skills in communicating the economic and profit potential of smart design, with the same rigor that we have applied to advancing technical building solutions.

As an example, many business clients will balk at spending money on energy saving enhancements that they are told have a payback period of 7 to 10 years. However, if these same business executives were told that they could obtain a 10% to 14% return on investment (ROI) by investing capital in the current financial climate they would be more likely to sign on. By understanding and reframing the conversation in an economic and finance perspective project leaders can be more persuasive in obtaining managements support for green capital spending.

In the public sector as well more passionate communication about the economic ROI to taxpayers from sustainable building and infrastructure investment is needed to sway politicians to take action. Too often rational decision making is derailed, and policy stalls, when liberals focus only on saving the planet and their conservative foes challenge the science behind global climate change, rejecting any consideration of spending on sustainability. Despite the divisive social or environmental beliefs across the population, it is safe to say that there is more political unity around the economics of capital spending that saves taxpayers money.

Do you agree that the third “P” in the TBL formula – profit and economics – needs to be more prominently embraced by the design and building industry as we seek to promote a more sustainable built environment? Do you have successful ideas or examples to share on the topic?

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Source: Triplepundit.com

Ronald Weston, AIA, LEED AP is an architect and consultant who assists small business and social entrepreneurs with the sustainable design and planning of their built environments.

About 6 months ago we at Trilogy Partners completed an 8000 square foot zero net energy home, a first for Breckenridge, Colorado. Beginning with design and until now I’ve been conducting an internal debate as to whether it’s even possible for a home that large to be considered “green,” zero net energy or not. The somewhat difficult conclusion I’ve reached is based on the philosophy of “early adoption.” What I refer to is the process by which new technologies get adopted into the mainstream marketplace. Early adopters are usually passionate individuals who are less price sensitive and are willing to invest in emerging technologies or ideas while they are still more expensive than alternative solutions. In the case of this ski in and out home on the slopes of the Breckenridge ski resort our owner was willing to put aside cost issues to create a platform that would in essence serve as a model for the future. Although the trend is toward building smaller homes, indeed for the foreseeable future larger homes will be built by those that can afford them. This experiment with a larger “green” home will hopefully provide a blueprint for sustainability and accountability.

A "green" White House?

Agencies face many mandates to become more environmentally friendly: Reduce gasoline consumption in cars and trucks, lower water use and greenhouse gas emissions, and adopt more renewable energy sources, among others.

But the mandate that agencies struggle with most is one to convert their existing buildings to meet green standards. That means decreasing energy use at hospitals and health clinics and reducing waste at laboratories. Agencies will also have to work to bring historic buildings, and even prisons, into compliance.

Those steps take money, and that’s what agencies are increasingly short on.

Of 20 agencies graded by the Office of Management and Budget on their compliance with green mandates, only seven met the 2010 mandate to have at least 5 percent of their buildings meet energy-efficient and sustainable standards.

Dan Tangherlini, chief financial and performance officer at the Treasury Department, said tighter budgets are certain to make this an even tougher challenge going forward.

But, he said, tighter budgets “shouldn’t be an excuse for us not to continue to find efficiencies and try to create new sustainable practices.”

Treasury used a strategy of “1 percent solutions,” such as installing low-flow fixtures, instituting recycling programs and making small improvements to help make their mandates more achievable, Tangherlini said. In that way, it exceeded the 2010 mandate by making 8 percent of its buildings sustainable.

To be considered green, a newly constructed building must use 30 percent less energy than a typical building of the same size. Renovated buildings must use 20 percent less energy. Also, they must meet specific standards for water efficiency, recycling, indoor air quality and low-emission paints and sealants, among other things.

Agencies need to have 15 percent of their buildings meet these green guidelines by 2015.

OMB’s scorecards grade agencies on how they comply with mandates for reducing energy use in federal facilities, reducing gas use in fleets, and other sustainability goals. Agencies were given green lights for meeting or exceeding the goals, yellow for partial completion and red for failing to meet the mandates.

Agencies scored worst on the green buildings mandate.

“Conquering the green buildings beast will be difficult,” said John Selman, energy and environment program director for LMI, a nonprofit organization that helped develop greenhouse gas reporting protocols.

He said agencies need to think of new strategies and innovative ways to bring their building portfolios into compliance while keeping costs down.

Still, agencies will need extra funding and time to achieve these sustainability goals, he said. And making a business case for these projects will be hard in the current budget environment.

“These projects, they are not donated. Someone has to pay for these things, and that’s the greatest challenge,” Selman said.

Olga Dominguez, senior sustainability officer at NASA, said the space agency is looking at more innovative ways to achieve sustainability goals. NASA missed the 5 percent mark, with 4 percent of its buildings meeting the guidelines.

NASA has used energy savings performance contracts, in which a private company makes efficiency upgrades to an agency facility in exchange for long-term payments from the energy savings generated by the upgrades.

Willie Taylor, director of the Interior Department’s Office of Environmental Policy and Compliance, said the green building mandate was Interior’s most challenging. Less than 1 percent of its buildings meet the green goal.

Interior does not construct many new buildings, and its building portfolio contains many historic structures that cannot be renovated to comply with the goals. But Interior will be tackling the goals in increments over the next few years.

According to a June sustainability report, the department plans to have 6 percent of its buildings meet the guidelines in 2014 and 15 percent in 2015.

At the Health and Human Services Department, less than 1 percent of buildings meet the green goal. Ned Holland, the department’s chief sustainability officer, said HHS is working to upgrade its buildings as it secures funding for the projects.

The department’s many laboratories, hospitals and American Indian health clinics require more resources and funding, and making those buildings more sustainable is fully consistent with its core mission.

But HHS has made progress by upgrading laboratory space, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Laboratory Sciences Building 110, which follows the guidelines and blends the use of natural daylight, sustainable design and energy-efficient lighting.

Stephen Leeds, senior counsel to the administrator at the General Services Administration, said tighter budgets will present additional challenges in finding ways to further reduce the use of energy and other resources.

Leeds pointed to an effort at GSA to develop sustainable technologies that aim to yield savings.

“It means that we have to tighten our belts, and we are going to find new ways to accomplish the goals laid out for us,” he said.

Source: FederalTimes.com

Coalition of environmentalists claim government has failed to protect the atmosphere

Lawyers representing children and young adults filed a series of lawsuits against the US government alleging that its agencies have fallen short in their duty to protect the Earth’s atmosphere for future generations.

Cases are to be launched in every state and Washington DC, according to the plaintiffs, a coalition of green groups called Our Children’s Trust.

The individual plaintiffs named in the suits are mostly teenagers, as part of an effort to emphasise the obligation that the government and state legislatures have to preserve a healthy atmosphere for future generations.

The aim of the suits is to have the atmosphere declared a “public trust” deserving of special protection, a concept previously used to clean up polluted rivers and coastlines.

Legal experts remain unsure whether the principle could be applied to climate change, but noted the parallels with an ongoing lawsuit brought by a number of states against the five largest US utilities that is attempting to brand greenhouse gas emissions a “public nuisance”.

Even victories in just one or two states would give the environmental movement increased leverage as it campaigns for the revival of legislation tackling emissions that had previously been blocked by Congress.

“People have tried pushing legislation and that hasn’t worked,” Alex Loorz, a 16 year-old Californian named as one of the plaintiffs, told Associated Press. “Obama hasn’t been able to push anything through. The only option we have is the judicial system – taking this to the courts.”

Judges will have to decide whether the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) existing efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions go far enough.

The agency has controversially decreed that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health, and is in the process of introducing regulations to curb emissions. As such, the EPA and the Obama administration have consistently argued that the ongoing regulatory efforts should not be pre-empted by the courts.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue an opinion on the public nuisance case this spring, which could influence courts hearing the public trust suits.

The cases are likely to take years to be resolved, but if successful they could have huge implications for carbon intensive businesses by effectively forcing the government to impose more stringent emissions regulations.

Source: Businessgreen

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Are you thinking about remodeling your home in the near future? If so, now is a great time to begin making your plans since the National Association of Home Builders designates the month of May as Remodeling Month! There couldn’t be a more perfect time to start the plans that will help make your home a more comfortable and functional place to live.

Remodeling can be both exciting and intimidating, but the good news is that the entire process doesn’t have to be stressful if you have planned carefully. The National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of the Remodeling Industry have lots of resources on their websites that are helpful for every step of the remodeling process, covering topics like hiring a contractor, green remodeling, budgeting, and more!

Trilogy Partners can help you with your remodeling plans, too. Contact us to learn how we can assist you with your remodeling needs. Also, check out our posts on remodeling topics for great information and inspiration, and be sure to subscribe to our blog for the latest updates!

Images Courtesy of Nahb.org and Nari.org.

Brendan Coburn, an architect, turned the interior of an 1847 row house into a sleek, modern space. The switchback staircase in the middle of the house has landings made of slabs of glass and is topped by a skylight.

IN late 1999, when Bertina Ceccarelli moved from California to New York to work for an Internet startup called GiftCertificates.com, and bought a one-bedroom apartment in Murray Hill, among the first things she needed was help with the outdated kitchen. A friend suggested Brendan Coburn, a former boyfriend whom she described as a “brilliant architect.” Ms. Ceccarelli was impressed by such a glowing recommendation of an old flame, and even more impressed by what Mr. Coburn envisioned.

“He sketched everything out perfectly, to a T,” said Ms. Ceccarelli, now an executive vice president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is headquartered at the Bronx Zoo. “Originally, I just wanted to redo the kitchen. But Brendan suggested things like staining the floors black to emphasize the horizontality and make the space seem larger. I was bowled over.”

At the time Mr. Coburn was working from his parents’ apartment in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and at night, he and his client, then in their mid-30s, often studied drawings and examined samples of cabinetry and countertops over drinks.

Once his work was done, Mr. Coburn called Ms. Ceccarelli with a proposal. “Could we have dinner and talk about something other than your apartment?” he asked. The dinner turned out to be a bona fide date — no samples of kitchen tile or wood veneers this time. The next day Ms. Ceccarelli broke up with the man she had been seeing, and by March 2001 she and Mr. Coburn were engaged.

But their wedding, which took place five months later, occurred during a tumultuous period. Mr. Coburn’s father had died in May. His brother had divorced. Then came Sept. 11.

“It had been an intense year, with lots of untethering in the world,” Mr. Coburn said. “All these things made us feel that we needed to build a home.” Weeks after the attacks, they began house hunting.

The couple had two criteria. As Mr. Coburn summed them up: “The place had to be a dump, so we could redo it. And there had to be a garden on the south side of the house.” He loved row houses, the defining architecture of his Cobble Hill childhood, but having grown up in one that faced east and west, he knew they could be dark.

The house they settled on, a two-story structure on Sackett Street in Carroll Gardens, had been built in 1847 and according to Mr. Coburn, “had been getting worse for 150 years.” Ms. Ceccarelli agreed. “During the open house,” she said, “people were literally rolling their eyes.”

They bought the building for $575,000 in March 2002, and over the next nine months spent $550,000 to transform it, a cost that would have been far higher had Mr. Coburn not served as both architect and general troubleshooter, working closely with Marty McKenna, his general contractor. They moved into the house in March 2003, three months after the birth of their son, John.

Few people strolling along Sackett Street would guess that behind the worn red brick facade with the weeping cherry out front there sits a sleek modern structure in which everything — walls, floors, the top-floor extension — is brand-new. The parlor floor seems as open as a loft, and even on the darkest days, the rooms are unexpectedly bright.

“The big design idea,” Mr. Coburn said, “was to make the house into a light box, one that captures different light all day long and all year round.” To achieve this, he used two major elements.

One involved building a switchback staircase in the middle of the house, punctuated with landings made of slabs of glass and topped by a skylight that lets sunlight flood the room. The other involved constructing huge windows facing the rear garden. “One of the most compelling architectural qualities of row house neighborhoods is the relationship between the house and the garden,” Mr. Coburn said. “And Brooklyn is particularly blessed when it comes to finding and exploiting this relationship.”

For some couples, allowing one member to design an entire building would be a sure-fire recipe for disaster. Marriages have teetered over the choice of doorknobs. Yet Ms. Ceccarelli struggles to remember something about which the two of them disagreed.

“The only thing we didn’t see absolutely eye to eye on was the Viking stove,” she said. “I wanted something sexier, like maybe a Gaggenau. But really, it was such a silly conversation.”

And while Mr. Coburn privately yearns for a proper dining room, as opposed to the table by the front window that seats six, there too the couple were on the same page.

“We had to be honest with ourselves,” Ms. Ceccarelli said. “We hardly ever use the dining-room table. Most of the time when we have guests, everyone sits in the living room and we serve them wine and cheese.”

The parlor floor opens onto a deck that leads down to the garden, designed as a series of outdoor rooms. John has a treehouse, with a secret door so his friend from next door can visit. The tenants in the basement apartment also have outdoor space.

The second floor is home to Mr. Coburn’s tiny office, along with what he describes as the “TV and Lego pavilion.” In the rear is John’s room, outfitted with his father’s wooden building blocks, along with a huge map of the world on which John can trace his mother’s travels — most recently a safari in Bangalore, India — and a large plush tiger. (Having a mother with an office at the Bronx Zoo has its upside.) The top floor is devoted mainly to the couple’s bedroom.

Architects invariably yearn to build something of their own, or at least to get their hands on buildings they can retrofit. Mr. Coburn is no exception. “If it were up to me,” he said, “we’d have a tiny Greek Revival farmhouse somewhere in the country and change row houses every couple of years.”

Ms. Ceccarelli looked slightly ashen at the possibility. “Um, maybe not,” she said. “I didn’t quite sign up for that.”

Source: nytimes.com E-mail: habitats@nytimes.com Tina Fineberg for The New York Times