Had a busy week and feel like you missed some of the content we put out?  No problem!  Here is a succinct recap for you:

As always, we've been putting out blog posts regularly this week.  Our two most popular were:

1) Ashrae 189.1 Is The Most Important Story in Green Building Today 

2) Jill Bellenger's guest blog, Green Building Sense: Do As the Locals Do

Honorable mention goes to my guest post yesterday, The Trouble in Going At It Alone, which held its own.

In other news, our podcast seems to steadily be reaching more listeners.  If you or someone you know hasn't discovered it yet, it's never too late to join.  You can catch up with us on our Podcast Page or you can search for Build2Sustain in iTunes.  If you have been listening, thank you!  And please let us know what you think.  Drop us a comment on the Podcast Page or better yet, rate or review us on iTunes.

Happy Weekend!

This month, we've invited Jill Bellenger to share some of her thoughts on the green building industry.  Jill Bellenger, ASLA, CPH is a founding principal at 3 Design Consulting LLC.  She is a Landscape Designer and Certified Professional Horticulturist, with a focus on the principles of the Sustainable Sites Initiative and LEED for Neighborhood Development.  She is an experienced Green Business advocate, with core expertise including conservation landscaping, LEED, graphic design, professional development programming and green building practices.

Living sustainably goes beyond what’s inside our homes, offices, and schools.  It also takes into account the connectivity of these uses, and how appropriate their locations are in relation to each other.  But not all green buildings are created equal.  It’s becoming more common to see buildings and even neighborhoods go through rigorous green certification processes, and depending on where you’re located, their design can be measured in a number of ways.

Primarily LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is paving the way for more sustainable residential, commercial, and mixed-use buildings and neighborhoods.  It’s one of the many recognized rating systems available (this one from the non-profit US Green Building Council) to make sense of all the potential ‘greenwashing’ that has, unfortunately, become a part of the whole Green movement. 

I say ‘many’ rating systems because as it turns out, LEED has really sparked the interest of quite a few municipalities.  Over the past decade, cities like Austin, Seattle, Portland, and San Jose have their own locally-based guidelines.  Some are complete with Green Building Task Forces or sustainability departments geared toward streamlining the program for its users.  Many of these are in response to the Federal Stimulus Bill, where cities need to use a given amount of funding for environmental programs.

Not to mention EPA’s Energy Star, which has a rating system of its own in an effort to decrease building energy usage by at least 15%.  While some homeowners may only be familiar with the Energy Star label for energy efficient appliances, the program can also be used building-wide in an effort to market it as on the cusp of sustainable design.

What happens when you are faced with so many of these rating systems is that building or renovating a project to the utmost green standards can really have varied results from design to construction.  For example, LEED has several credits that specify a building adhere to either an architectural standard such as ASHRAE or instead to a local standard, whichever is stringent. 

Having a variety of rating systems for green building is a step in the right direction, bringing light to some glaring concerns in the way buildings have been built over the past few decades.  But it’s also a little as if every city created its own version of ADA codes for accessibility, and designers could pick and choose which code to follow.  What you’d find is a genuine attempt to increase accessibility but no consistency on how to reach it. 

No matter which rating system you’re involved in, it’s best to become educated about what is available, the kinds of tax and other local incentives out there in your area, and the stake your area is claiming in regards to green building.  Until there is a nationally required rating system, LEED, Energy Star, and the many other options are slowly becoming mandatory benchmarks for sustainable design. While the future of green building is uncertain, it is extremely reassuring that there’s still a continual increase in the resources and organizations dedicated to improving the way we design. 

For our next series of Advisory Board member guest posts, we are asking "What are you working on?"  Advisory Board member Sara Sweeney starts off this week with all of the projects that have been keeping her busy lately.  You can find out more about Sara on the B2S team page.

I feel a little bit like this post is a What I Did on my Summer Vacation post, and that’s kind of fun. 

2009 was by no means a stellar year for most of us. And if Raquel and James had asked me to write this post a year ago, it would have been a pretty short post, stating “trying to get work.” Last year at this time, I was teaching and that was it. However, because of that, because of having no work, it forced me to innovate both myself and my business in ways I did not expect I would need to do. It also opened doors to opportunities I never expected –even if the opportunities took months to come to fruition. Today, I can write that I am quite busy on several different fronts. 

I continue to teach part time at Philadelphia University, which I love. I teach a class on building systems and materials to the sophomores in the Department of Architecture. It’s their first introduction to how buildings go together, how they really work. Not only do I love the class and teaching, I also love the energy of the students and learning from them. It is indeed a win-win scenario. 

On the business front, I have a few LEED consulting projects in the works now. One project is with my former firm, Blackney Hayes Architects and is a new 72,000 sf academic building for Ocean County College. It is my first LEED v3 project and I am very excited to be really getting my head into the new rating system. I have also just started two smaller projects, also LEED v3 projects. One is a small Black Box theater for a CDC in the Kensington Section of Philadelphia, with a very talented young and local firm, ISA, Brian Phillips and Daryn Edwards at the healm. The other project is a new mixed use building for PBCIP, a non-profit neighborhood organization in Camden, NJ. PBCIP wants to build a landmark new sustainable office, retail and training facility at a prominent intersection in the Parkside section of Camden. Once a vibrant industrial city, Camden now has the reputation of being one of the worst cities in the United States. To be part of this project is very exciting. Also exciting is the architecture and engineering firm I am working with, DCM Architect + Engineering, a Camden-based firm headed by Eduardo Guzman and Robert Bensen. Eduardo is one of the most talented and forward-thinking architects I have met, and I can only say the same about Robert, who is a P.E.  

I am also working with strategic partner, Scott Chrisner, of Chrisner Group, on the Home Performance with Energy Star residential energy audit program, as well as offering full service green project management. It is part of the New Jersey Clean Energy program, and being a part of this new program here in New Jersey is very exciting.  

Finally, I am being trained by Bedford Cost Segregation, a company dedicated to providing cost segregation services, to help them out with projects. It is essentially a tax planning strategy to accelerate depreciation deductions and improve cash flow. It is a completely different way to look at a building, since its focus is breaking down the building specific to components which depreciate in 39, 15, and 7 years. The faster a component depreciates, the more money is available in deductions up front. I really wasn’t sure if I’d like the work –I was able to test the waters a few weeks ago on one project. I was surprised at how interesting I find it, and now I am taking the next steps to learn more so I can continue consulting with them. 

Looking at this list, I never would have expected a year ago that this is what I would be working on, nor would I have expected I would be this busy. But I knew I needed to keep at it last year, and it has paid off in the end. Now, I need to get back to work!

The NY Times yesterday highlighted Jamestown Properties, a German commercial real estate company that is planning on undertaking sustainable renovations for all of its US properties.  You can read the full article here.  In the article, Matt Bronfman, the managing director and COO, mentions a "European perspective" as a reason why.  I am fairly certain that this perspective is just as conscious of company profits.  Here at Build2Sustain, we dedicated an entire white paper to the business benefits of sustainable renovation.  How long will it take for American companies to see the advantages in making similar investments in their holdings a high priority?

A little over a week ago, we highlighted Caterpillar as an example of what can be achieved with an intelligent retrofit.  The project earned LEED certification and the energy savings were well publicized.  But we weren't satisfied.  We know that the most important part of any business case is ROI and payback.  With that in mind, we reached out to Tom Gerike, Engineering Project Team Leader at Caterpillar to learn more.

1) Reports indicate your retrofit achieved an energy consumption reduction of more than 40% resulting in $800k worth of savings. We're always making the business case for sustainable retrofit and renovation; can you give us a sense of the ROI and payback period associated with the retrofit?

We spent approximately $3,000,000 to get this $800,000 in savings for a payback of 3.75 years.

2) Were there primary building systems you knew you could target when planning the retrofit or did you evaluate everything? What was the design process like?  

Primary building systems that were evaluated were the air handlers and air distribution, the chiller plant, and the lighting.  The design process was based on seeing what current equipment was not performing as it should have been and then looking for further improvement opportunities.  A walk-through audit was performed after maintenance improvements were made to determine what kind of engineering changes were needed for the systems.

3) As a result of your design process, what primary building systems were retrofitted? Were core systems retrofitted (HVAC, Lighting, Windows), was this largely a control-based retrofit, or both?

The major areas of work for this project were to convert the building from a constant volume system into a variable air volume system, controls upgrades to convert pneumatic controllers at terminal devices to direct digital controllers, control upgrades to the chiller plant, and the installation of an automated lighting system to schedule the lights on and off.

4) You achieved LEED Gold-EBOM certification for this project. Was LEED certification a primary goal of the project? How did that impact the way you approached the project?  

Yes, LEED certification was a primary goal.  It impacted the approach of the project in the following way.  To get LEED, you need a minimum score on the Energy Star of 69.  We were well below that value, so the energy improvements became a major focus of the project in order to reach that minimum score.  Also, the savings from the energy improvements went to offset the costs of additional changes need to achieve LEED.

5) How long did the project take from internal proposal to completion?  

We worked 2 years on this project.

6) Given the success of this project, are there future Caterpillar sites slated for similar retrofits?

Yes, we are always looking to make energy efficiency improvements that are in line with our enterprise sustainability goals.