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Green Buildings Cut CO2 Fastest
The fastest and cheapest way to cut deeply into CO2 emissions is to overhaul old buildings for efficiency and build new ones green from the start. Turns out that buildings are responsible for more than one-third of North America's CO2 emissions, says a new report by the Commission for Environmental Cooperation. Promoting green design, construction, renovation and operation of buildings could cut North American building emissions from more than 2,200 megatons of CO2 annually to 500 megatons. Rapid deployment of emerging advanced energy-saving technologies could bring about these savings by 2030.
Currently, green buildings routinely reduce energy usage by 30 to 50 percent over conventional buildings. The most efficient now outperform them by more than 70 percent. The authors recommend ways to accelerate greening our homes and offices, calling upon government, industry and nongovernmental leaders to:
Create national, multi-stakeholder task forces for achieving a vision of green building in North America • Support the creation of a North American set of principles and planning tools for green building • Set clear targets to achieve the most rapid possible adoption of green building in North America, including aggressive targets for carbon-neutral or net zero-energy buildings, together with performance monitoring to track progress towards these targets • Enhance ongoing or new support for green building, including efforts to promote private sector investment and proper valuation methods • Increase knowledge of green building through research and development, capacity building, and the use of labels and disclosures on green building performance.
We need some national vision here. Yet another reason why 308 days, 19 hours, 37 minutes, and 1 second left (as of this writing) can't fly by fast enough.
Julia Whitty is Mother Jones' environmental correspondent, lecturer, and 2008 winner of the John Burroughs Medal Award. You can read from her new book, The Fragile Edge, and other writings, here.
We need to government to help to do more things like this. Green building are the way of the future.
Thanks
Jason Berkes
Our company is in a conventional tall building run by a clueless very large site manager. We are starting to take up a 'green initiative' but in order to do so, we have to get the building company on board.
Since there is very little regulatory incentive, the only thing we can appeal to is their 'money' sense. You know, less taxes with a green roof, less water used with low flow toilets, less light with flourescents and wind energy, etc.
But of course, some things are not based on immediate cash incentives. That is where government has to come in, and there are no regulatiosn yet in communities.
There should be.
Green buildings are great, and we need exactly what the Commission advocates. But we also need them to be in the right places. A green building isn't really green if it's built in a sprawl location, where the CO2 emissions from driving can wipe out any savings due to the technology of the building. See http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/when_a_green_building_really...