Randy W. Bright, Church Architect

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Green Becoming Law

I have been saying for some time that it is only a matter of time before building “green” will become law. It has already been a requirement for several years for certain government projects to be LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified, but now it is affecting private projects.
To achieve certification, a building must be designed and constructed according to a checklist of principles that is scored on a point basis. The lowest rating of certification is “Certified”, which is 26-32 points. Silver is 33-38 points, Gold is 39-51 points, and Platinum is 52-69 points. 69 is the highest score possible. Less than a dozen buildings have been able to achieve the Platinum rating so far.
According to an editorial article in the December 2006 issue of Building Design+Construction magazine, some cities are not waiting for their state or federal legislatures to compel LEED certification for private-sector projects.
Albuquerque, New Mexico, now requires a Silver LEED rating for new privately-owned buildings that use over 50 kilowatts of electricity.
Boston now requires certification for any new building over 50,000 sf.
Calabasas, California requires Silver LEED for buildings over 5,000 sf; for Frisco, Texas, it’s 10,000.
Normal, Illinois, requires it for certain projects in their central business district.
Pasadena, California, requires certification for commercial buildings over 25,000 sf, and they require any residential construction of four stories or more to be certified.
Pleasanton, California, requires it of buildings over 20,000 sf.
Most recently, the City Council of Washington, DC, has gotten in on the act. They recently passed an ordinance requiring a Silver LEED rating for any private-sector project over 50,000 sf.

The City of Denver has enacted its “Greenprint Denver” initiative, which will require all new city-owned buildings and renovations to be Silver LEED certified, and to meet the requirements of the EPA’s “Energy Star” program. They want to become the nation’s greenest city. In a city like Denver, certification for private-sector projects can’t be far behind.
The author of the editorial called this “LEED creep”, and warned that LEED certification saddling developers for the additional cost of building green could make their projects unfeasible.
He pointed out that “most of these restrictions fail to accomplish what local government should be doing: encouraging more green building through private enterprise. If Albuquerque wants to conserve energy, for example, it should rely on LEED to hold down energy usage in buildings, especially since you can attain LEED Silver and not do a very good job of energy conservation.”
Furthermore, he said, “imposing LEED on private projects only serves to turn off developers, building owners, and the real estate industry to the true goal of encouraging more green buildings.”
I agree. Building green should always be voluntary, because market forces will eventually create the incentives to do so on their own.
Wal-Mart, for example, has over 2,000 Supercenters that average 1.5 million kilowatts energy use per year each. They have put a plan in place to reduce their energy usage by 30 percent over the next three years by building green. They don’t need to be told by the government to save energy; for them, saving energy means higher profits.
Wal-Mart currently has two 200,000 green test stores operating in Aurora, Colorado and McKinney, Texas.
Autodesk, the supplier of AutoCAD software, is in a partnership with the USGBC (United States Green Building Council) to develop their BIM (Building Information Modeling) software to make design buildings to be green easier for architects and engineers.
It is possible for this country to achieve energy independence, but it must be voluntary. Imposing stricter regulations on the building industry will only discourage construction.
And we need to be more honest in the reason for doing so. Using global warming to frighten people into building green will backfire when they figure out how phony the reason is. Being responsible managers of our resources, saving energy, and national security should be true the incentives to build green.


		8-1-2005 ©2006 Randy W. Bright, AIA, NCARB, Church Architect 4821 So. Sheridan Suite 209 • Tulsa, Oklahoma 74145 • Phone No. 918-664-7957 • Fax No. 918-622-0097• Email