Historic Preservation: the Ultimate in Green Building
Once upon a time, Kermit the Frog pined that “It’s not easy being green.” But that was long before “green buildings” became a design standard for architects and engineers around the country. Kermit, today it is hip to be green.
According to the U.S. Green Building Council, which promotes green building through their Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) program, almost 1300 buildings are now certified, with another 9800 in the process of becoming certified.
That’s some pretty impressive statistics, especially considering that ten years ago the green building movement was still largely unknown.
But there is more than meets with eye when it comes to sustainable green buildings. When it opened several years ago, the Philip Merrill Environmental Center, headquarters of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, was touted as the “Greenest Building in the World.” In fact, it was the first building to obtain LEED Platinum status, the highest certification awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council. The building is located ten miles from Annapolis, and is a wonderful testament to sustainable design, recognized throughout the nation for its environmental friendly features like photovoltaic panels, geothermal heating, and rainwater recycling.
But the Philip Merrill Environmental Center was a new building. And it was constructed ten miles from the former location of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which had previously been headquartered in Annapolis. There, many of the Foundation’s 100 employees walked or rode their bikes to work. Unfortunately, the new building was no longer an easy walk or bike ride for the employees, so they have been forced to drive.
And driving, as it turns out, uses 30% more energy than operating a building.
A September 2007 article in Environmental Business News stated the following about the center: “The fact remains, however, that the additional energy use from more employees driving to work may well exceed the energy savings realized by the green building.”
In other words, though the building itself is a green building masterpiece, the net result of relocating ten miles has effectively cancelled the energy-saving benefits of the building.
And this doesn’t even take into account the energy used to build the facility: manufacture and transport of products, construction of the building, associated waste, etc. A recent study found that on average, it takes 40 years for a new green building to recover the energy used to build it.
Furthermore, if a building was demolished to make way for the new building, that figure rises to 65 years because of all the wasted energy that had been used to construct the previous building.
Could you imagine starting a business and waiting 65 years to break even?
This is not to discount the importance of green buildings and the LEED program – they are vital for the sustainability of our environment. And they are better than the alternative: construction without “green” features. But green buildings are typically “green” unto themselves, and not necessarily to the environment as a whole. The products used in construction, the transport of those products, and the construction of the building itself are all harmful to the environment.
And the fact remains that the United States is hungry for buildings. A recent report by the Brookings Institute estimated that approximately 1/3 of all buildings currently standing will have been demolished and replaced by 2030. That is a staggering figure – something that the environmental benefits of 11,100 green buildings cannot even begin to put a dent in. Think of 2500 NFL stadiums brimming with debris. That is the waste that will be generated as these buildings are demolished.
So why, exactly, is this information posted on Windows into York?
As it turns out, York is a pretty green town. At this exact moment in time, there are no LEED certified buildings in the City of York, and only a few in the County. (Though the York County Administrative Center and Greenway Tech Centre will both soon be certified.)
But York has a lot of something that is extremely important to the green building movement: old buildings. Historic buildings, in fact.
In the next post we’ll look at the “greenness” of York. You may be surprised; I sure was.
