Sometimes, I think we forget what we're talking about when it comes to the sustainability movement. Even the ardent professionals among us who try everyday to help the world's people consume a little less or those trying to make the products and services that can create a better, more resourceful world, even the most globally conscious among us...they too sometimes forget what it is we're really talking about when we say "sustainability."

We're not talking about anything less than the advancement of human civilization. I know that sounds a little ridiculous, but it's absolutely true. I would never pretend to know what political turmoil will come next or what piece of art will move the culture.  But I do know none of that advancement will take place without a powerful movement toward sustainability. There are simply more and more people on the planet competeing for the same number of resources. So if we do not rapidly change the way people consume and create those resources, we will not advance as a global civilization. Everything we do as modern people consumes energy: moving from place to place, writing our next piece of research, listening to music. Every bit of that requires energy and we don't know where we're going to get it all.

Buildings are no small part of that struggle. When taken together all sectors of existing buildings use 48% of the energy consumed in America, according to the folks at Architecture 2030. So the built environment is half of the energy crisis, half of the problem. As building professionals, when we tackle a problem like that--a problem so large--we aren't just making things better for our client, we are advancing civilization.

The ancient Romans gave us infrastructure, the very idea that we could alter the earth and move its resources from place to place. Water, earth, grain: the idea that not only could these resources be stored, but shared between areas of plenty and areas of want was given to us by that flawed empire. The British gave us the first hint of globalization; the idea that products and services and government could actually function over vast distances. I've skipped over whole swaths of history and culture, but I ask you, what will our age be known for? We can be the people that usher in an age of unbridled ideas and instant communication, the people who not only created vast wealth, but were able to remake the way we used natural resources and became harmonious with the Earth. The power to create that age is within all of us...that's what we work toward everyday when we talk about sustainability. 

We're gearing up over here for a major go-to-market initiative. Part of that effort has been researching the impact of the commericial sector when it comes to energy use. I came across a fantastic white paper put out by the Center for Sustainable Systems out of the University of Michigan. I love reports like this one, because they are easily accessible no matter what your level of knowledge about the built environment. I encourage you to download the paper, and give it a read. But in the mean time, here are some amazing stats for the report...

In 2005, the commercial sector consumed 18 quadrillion BTUs of primary energy – a 65% increase over 1980 levels.

Lighting and indoor climate control consumed 50% of commercial sector primary energy in 2006

In 1996, construction, renovation and demolition of non-residential buildings generated 77.4 million tons of waste.  This amounts to 1.6 lbs per capita per day – compared to 4.3 lbs per capita per day from municipal solid waste.

There's a ton more to find in the report. Go check it out.

Have a great weekend.

There are 4.9 million commercial buildings in the US.

In 2009, more than 275 projects achieved LEED-EBOM certification. Compare that with only 12 certified projects in 2004, 11 in 2005, 17 in 2006, and 27 in 2007. (Stats taken from the Center for Sustainable Systems) For me it's very hard to hold those numbers in my head at the same time. And while I know it's not really a fair comparison to pit the entire commercial building stock of the US against a program that's only 6 years old, I hope I'm trying to make is clear. Existing buildings are the key to sustainability, if we are to achieve it in this country.

But this is a challenge so large, how shall we meet it? With the literally billions of square feet that need to be retrofitted throughout the country how can we possibly come up with a strategy to handle it all. When it comes to scaling sustainability I believe there are two core principles that our industry must utilize in order to do our part to solve the national energy crisis.

Stress what matters to most clients...ROI

When discussing scaling green building, there is often a discussion around education. The argument goes if building/business owners simply understood sustainability more clearly they would of course embrace it en mass and we'd rapidly grow a market that achieves wide scale. Sadly, I believe in our day and age everything is politicized and "green" is seen as something only some folks will be interested in. The job of greening America's building stock is a big one, and we cannot afford to make green building something only folks in blue states are interested in. We simply cannot afford to align the green building as a movement, liberal (i.e. Al Gore), or otherwise. Doing so will marginalize 49% of Americans and immediately inhibits scale. The scalable market for sustainable measures isn't found in the passionate few who think about sustainability every day. It's found in the greater population of business and property owners who don't. If we want green to scale to those folks we have to make the simplest most compelling argument possible. ROI - simple return on investment. There is a very real link between sustainable retrofit/renovation and cost savings. Exploiting that link and making green building not simply something that is done for altruism and prestige, but in the pursuit of profit is the only way to grow the market.

I know this strategy is limiting. By focusing our efforts only on those measures that are most profitable we limit the scope of what a green retrofit can be. However, given the enormity of the task at hand...we must get to work now...

Profitability is also the "gateway drug" to larger sustainability efforts by property owners and managers. Once business and property owners begin to see the benefits of simple efforts toward greener operations, the doors will open to a wider world of possibilities. We didn't get to this lousy building stock overnight...we can't expect to correct it overnight.

The Perfect Cannot be the Enemy of the Good. (Or, Incremental Change is OK)

When it comes to the greening our existing building stock we have to recognize as an industry that every building won't be able to employ every measure of sustainability in our tool kit. That doesn't mean we do nothing. It means that we attack the problems we can with every client every, every time. Affordability, return on investment and durability of retrofits are key selling points. At this point the most compelling argument for this kind of retrofit is being made in lighting technology. Lighting currently consumes about 25% of energy in commercial buildings. But promising new LED sources/fixtures along with improved lighting controls are becoming proven technologies that can be widely deployed at relatively little cost. We can right now, reduce the impact of lighting in the commercial buildings of the United States by incredible sums. I recognize that simply retrofitting a lighting system doesn't turn a brown building green, but if it makes a dent, we should take a swing.

One last thought...incremental change to system as large as the US commericial building stock is probably preferable to wide scale change anyway. Imagine if you could have waved a wand in 2005 and put the best CFL replacement lamp in every single building in America. Later this year we'd be disposing of them in favor of even better LED alternatives.

It is a testament to the brightest thinkers of the green building community that they want to design and build structures with a minimum or a net positive effect on the planet. I applaud those efforts and want to see them continued. But unless as an industry we can go after the other 99% of buildings in the US, we will not have solved our energy problem, we will only have some examples of buildings and technologies that could.


I love walking around my neighborhood (Astoria, Queens) because it's one of those areas of NYC where you get a true cross section of the population. There are some upper middle class, middle class, and working class folks of every ethnic and religious denomination. You're as likely to run into a white out-of-work actor as you are 2nd generation land owner leaving his local mosque. The other great thing about Astoria is that it's a great case study for small business environments, especially retail. Raquel and I were walking home when she decided to stop into the fabric shop along the way. The place was full of patches, brightly colored yarns, sewings kits, and bolts of fabric. It had the potential to be so exciting a place, so welcoming an envrionment, yet it wasn't. It was, instead this cold grey pall was cast over what should have been a vibrant visual array of fabric and supplies.

I didn't even have to glance upward before I realized the cause. The place was lit exclusively with 5000k T12 fluorescents and not evenly. Look upward and you saw that the fixtures were open, you could see the harsh lamps directly overhead. Worse than that the ceiling tiles were hanging down or removed in some cases to reveal the tin ceiling from whenever the place was built above. As I walked around the space, I couldn't help but think that this place needed a renovation, not just because it was lighting the space inefficiently but because it was lighting the space poorly. And therein lies why I find the sustainble retrofit market so exciting. The opportunity for these kinds of projects is everywhere, literally everywhere. As designers, builders and specifiers, let's look around and find our next opportunity. If I were pitching this shop owner on a retrofit, it wouldn't be to save the planet by being more efficient. I would tell him, he'd sell more fabric if his customers could see everything more clearly and in the proper color, and that he'd save money on his electric bill if he used less of it. I didn't pitch him this past Sunday, but the week is young... perhaps this little fabric shop in Queens will be Build2Sustain's first customer.