It’s Not Easy Being Green:

Sustainable Development and the New Color of Construction

By:

Bruce B. May[1]

Alyssa A. Schindler[2]

Jennings, Strouss & Salmon, P.L.C.

Phoenix, Arizona

I.Introduction

Theodore Roosevelt once said, “I recognize the right and duty of this generation to develop and use the natural resources of our land; but I do not recognize the right to waste them, or to rob, by wasteful use, the generations that come after us.”[3] With the California energy crisis of 2000-2001, the rolling Northeast blackouts in 2003 and the steadily rising cost of oil in the background of the nation’s conscience, Roosevelt’s words are as true today as they were almost a hundred years ago. As environmental policies have grown and developed in time with research and technology, a new trend has emerged in the environmental movement: green building.

Despite its name, a green building is not one that has been painted chartreuse. Rather, it is a building that is environmentally friendly, healthy for its occupants, and energy efficient. Green design attempts to take into account the entire life-cycle of a building, from siting and construction to demolition, in order to gain a holistic perspective of that building’s effect on the surrounding environment. With only a minimal increase in initial costs, sustainable design and construction principles yield a number of benefits for developers and business owners. These benefits include reduced waste production, decreased water and energy use, lower operating and maintenance costs, and increased employee productivity.

Although the movement towards environmentally responsible design and construction is little more than a decade old, sustainable development has swiftly become a major trend in real estate. As more and more state and federal agencies develop programs to either encourage or require environmentally sound construction, a real estate professional who ignores the increasing importance of green building principles may find himself or herself missing out on a very large segment of the real estate market.

This paper will provide a broad overview of sustainable design and construction in the United States. Part II will explore the history and development of the green building movement. Part III will discuss the evolution of uniform green building standards and how those standards have helped to transform the real estate market. Part IV details the federal government’s role in promoting green building principles, while Part V examines sustainable development programs at the state and local level. Finally, Part VI details the costs and benefits of green building practices.

II.The Birth of the Green Building Movement

A.Buildings by the Numbers: The Environmental Impact of the Built Environment

Many people today, even in our more environmentally conscious society, are tempted to dismiss green building and sustainable design principles as no more than a fad encouraged by left-leaning environmentalists who want to stop progress to spare some trees. However, a brief look at the impact that buildings have on their surroundings demonstrates that the trend towards sustainable development makes sense from both a business and an environmental perspective.

Americans spend 9 0 percent of their time inside buildings.[4] Buildings (both commercial and residential) in the United States account for:

  • 37 percent of primary energy use;[5]
  • 68 percent of all electricity use;[6]
  • 60 percent of non-food, raw materials use;[7]
  • 136 million tons of construction and demolition debris per year;[8]
  • 12 percent of potable water use;[9]
  • 39 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.[10]

As these figures demonstrate, how we construct our built environment has a huge impact on both the natural resources of the United States and the operating and maintenance costs of the buildings that are constructed. Sustainable development, by reducing the impact that a building has on its environment, not only results in the conservation of natural resources but also in buildings that are less expensive to own and operate.

B.The First Shades of Green: The Impetus for Change

Compared with other elements of environmentalism, the move towards sustainable development is fairly young. In fewer than twenty years, however, green building has developed from a fad in the environmental movement to a trend in design and construction that has changed the way buildings are built both in this country and across the globe. How then have green building principles been able to achieve such a high level of global acceptance and implementation in such a short period of time?

Green building, like many other aspects of the environmental movement, has its roots in the energy crisis of the 1970s. After the OPEC oil embargo in 1973 caused energy prices to skyrocket, the governments of the United States and many Western European countries began researching methods of reducing energy usage in both commercial and residential buildings, which at that time accounted for almost 40 percent of energy consumption worldwide.[11] The need to reduce energy consumption in the built environment was also recognized by the American Institute of Architects, which formed an energy task force to explore energy-efficient building and design principles.[12]

The energy-efficient buildings of the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, were all too effective. Built to be airtight, these buildings spawned a new phenomenon called “Sick Building Syndrome,” or “SBS.” Due to the increased use of synthetic building materials in commercial buildings constructed during this time, combined with the increased reliance on central ventilation, workers in these buildings were breathing in alarmingly high levels of toxic fumes given off by the synthetic building materials.[13] Employees increasingly reported headaches, respiratory problems, chest pains and other problems as a result of the contaminated air.[14] Studies by the Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) showed that indoor air pollution was always two to five times higher than outdoor pollution and sometimes one hundred times worse than the air outside.[15] By 1990, the World Health Organization (“WHO”) estimated that 30 percent of all office buildings had unhealthy levels of indoor air pollution.[16]

Perhaps one of the best examples of the problems of the new energy efficient buildings is that of the Bateson Building, a state office building in Sacramento, California. Designed to be a “building of the future,” the Bateson Building was hailed for its energy efficient design when it opened in 1981. Less than a year later, however, the building had become the target of a $50 million class-action lawsuit by the workers in the building, who claimed that they had been exposed to toxic fumes and inadequate ventilation.[17]

By the end of the 1980s, there was a growing recognition that a more holistic approach to development was needed. The first major step towards the creation of sustainable development principles came from the World Commission on Environment and Development, better known as the Brundtland Commission after its chairman Gro Harlem Brundtland. The Brundtland Commission was established by the United Nations at the end of 1983 for the purpose of developing “a global agenda for change.”[18]

In 1987, the Brundtland Commission released its report, Our Common Future, defining sustainable develop as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”[19] The Brundtland Commission recognized that economic growth and development is often accompanied by ecological degradation. The Commission therefore attempted to outline strategies for development that would be able to foster economic growth while at the same time reducing the harmful effects that such growth tends to have on the environment.

In 1992, the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (“UNCED”) was held for the purpose of discussing the implementation of the recommendations in the Brundtland Commission’s report. At the conference, almost 180 different governments adopted the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (“Rio Declaration”). The Rio Declaration established a number of principles for the future of development, including the principle that “[i]n order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it.”[20]

The Brundtland Commission and the subsequent UNCED, however, focused more on broader aspects of sustainable development, from land management and the protection of ecosystems to environmentally sound management of biotechnology. The application of sustainability principles specifically to the design and construction of buildings did not begin to gain traction until the early 1990s. The phrase “green architecture” first appeared in an article in The Independent in 1989.[21] By the end of 1990, green building had been discussed in a number of articles in England,[22] although at the time it was still considered more a part of the environmental “counterculture” in the United States.[23]

The need for sustainability within the built environment was first given a clear voice by William McDonough and Michael Braungart. In 1992, McDonough and Braungart developed a set of sustainable design principles commissioned by the City of Hannover, Germany in preparation for the 2000 World Fair, whose theme was “Humanity, Nature and Technology.”[24] The primary goal of the Hannover Principles was to “provide a platform upon which designers can consider how to adapt their work towards sustainable ends.”[25]

To this end, McDonough and Braungart set forth the following nine principles for sustainable design:

  1. Insist on rights of nature and humanity to co-exist
  2. Recognize interdependence
  3. Respect relationships between spirit and matter
  4. Accept responsibility for the consequence of design
  5. Create safe objects of long-term value
  6. Eliminate the concept of waste
  7. Rely on natural energy flows
  8. Understand the limitations of design
  9. Seek constant improvement by the sharing of knowledge[26]

These nine principles have formed the basis for the development of green building concepts both in the United States and in the rest of the world. Little more than a decade after their release, governments and private companies across the globe are examining the relationship between development and nature in order to develop buildings that are both profitable and respectful of the balance between man and nature.

III.The U.S. Green Building Council and the Standardization of Sustainable Construction

One of the largest catalysts for the mainstream acceptance of green building principles in the United States was the U.S. Green Building Council (“USGBC”), a non-profit organization formed for the purpose of promoting sustainable design and construction in the United States. From its somewhat inauspicious beginnings as a group of no more than a couple dozen industry professionals, the USGBC has grown to a membership roster of more than 5,000 organizations from every corner of the building industry, from architects and engineers to product manufacturers, building owners and government agencies.[27] Little more than ten years later, the USGBC has been instrumental in the development of a uniform system of green building standards, increasing public awareness of the need for environmentally sound construction, and parlaying green building from a counterculture movement to a global trend in design and construction.

A.Framing Green Buildings: Toward a Uniform Ratings System

The USGBC was formed in 1993 by a coalition of professionals in the building industry. The USGBC describes itself as “the nation’s foremost coalition of leaders from across the building industry working to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work.”[28] One of the first goals of the organization was to create a uniform set of green building standards so that these standards could easily be incorporated into building codes across the country.[29]

The efforts to establish standards for green buildings did not begin with the USGBC. The American Society of Testing and Materials (“ASTM”) was one of the first organizations to attempt to create a uniform system for rating green buildings, through a committee chaired by David Gottfried, one of the eventual founders of the USGBC.[30] The ASTM Green Building Committee was formed in 1987, at nearly the beginning of the green building movement.[31] At that time, it was necessary not only to develop a rating system but also to define green building in general.[32] The USGBC initially worked with the ASTM committee to develop these standards. Despite the number of draft standards that were created, however, the committee never approved any standards.

By 1995, several members of the USGBC became frustrated with the slow pace of the ASTM approval process and decided to move ahead with the development of these standards under the auspices of the USGBC.[33] By 1996, the USGBC had started on its own rating system, which it called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEEDTM.[34] In 1997, the Department of Energy (“DOE”) awarded the USGBC $200,000 for the development and implementation of the LEED rating system.[35] The first set of LEED standards -- for new construction and major renovations -- was publicly released in 2000,[36] although it had been widely circulated and in use prior to its official release.[37]

As for the ASTM Green Building Committee, it was effectively dissolved in 1997, when the chairperson, Dru Meadows, withdrew from the post.[38] In 1998, however, the ASTM formed a Sustainability Subcommittee, chaired by Dru Meadows.[39] In 2001, the Sustainability Subcommittee released “Standard Terminology for Sustainability Relative to the Performance of Buildings.”[40] The standards define a green building as “a building that provides the specified building performance requirements while minimizing disturbance to and improving functioning of local, regional, and global ecosystems both during and after its construction and specified service life.”[41] The issuance of these standards helps meet one of the initial goals of both the USGBC and the ASTM Green Building Subcommittee: providing a uniform description of green building concepts.

B.The LEED Standards and Market Transformation

Although LEED is not the only rating system available for green buildings,[42] it is one of the most widely used and easily accessible rating systems available today.[43] The mission of LEED is to encourage and accelerate “global adoption of sustainable green building and development practices through the creation and implementation of universally understood and accepted standards, tools, and performance criteria.”[44] Essentially, the goal of LEED is to transform the real estate market, so that green building standards become the rule, not the exception, for all major construction in the United States.

The LEED program is a consensus-built, market-driven, voluntary ratings system that assigns points to various construction projects in five main categories: sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, and indoor environmental quality.[45] Projects can also earn points in the category of innovation and design process.[46] A developer’s registration with the USGBC signals his or her intent to seek certification for a project. Upon completion of the project and review by the USGBC, a project can be LEED Certified. Certification is based on the number of points a project earns, which will earn it a ranking from Certified (26 points) to Platinum (70+ points).[47] In this way, the LEED system fosters competition in the real estate community, as LEED has essentially become a brand name when it comes to green building. The USGBC has also developed a LEED Accredited Professional exam,[48] and more than 19,000 professionals in the building industry have received LEED Accreditation since the inception of the program.[49]

LEED certification of a building requires the analysis of a number of factors from every stage of the building process. The first step is the siting of the project. Has the building been sited so as to reduce disturbance to the surrounding environment? Has an existing building or site been rehabilitated or restored? Does the project involve the redevelopment of a brownfield? Is the project located near public transportation or other means of alternative transportation? Next is the design of the building itself. Has it been designed to take advantage of natural shading and lighting opportunities? Does the building design incorporate a life-cycle analysis or encourage community development? Certification also takes into account the types of building materials that are used, such as whether they are bought locally or contain recycled content. In terms of natural resources, LEED certified projects should incorporate energy efficient design principles, such as heat recovery and natural ventilation. Water conservation should also be considered, from the installation of water-conserving fixtures to water-efficient landscaping.[50]

Admittedly, there are problems with the ratings system, which the USGBC has been working to ameliorate in later versions of the standards. Early studies suggested that the system was more effective as a marketing tool than as a “comprehensive methodology for assessment of environmental impacts.”[51] There were also concerns that companies applying for certification were opting for the easiest LEED points in order to achieve certification.[52] The LEED certification program, however, has also made great strides in increasing public awareness and implementation of green design principles. In the four years since the LEED standards were released, more than 100 projects have been certified and projects have been registered in all 50 states and fourteen countries.[53] The speed with which LEED has received national and international recognition and implementation indicates how important green building has become.