Join YR&G for our upcoming FIELDtrip to explore sustainability in action, in and around the Denver Metro area.

Wednesday, June 6th

5:00 – 6:00pm Tour
200 South Kalamath Street, Denver

Followed by drinks at The Rackhouse Pub (attached to Stranahana’s)
208 South Kalamath Street, Denver

FREE
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
(Space limited to first 30 registrants)

Strahanan’s Colorado Whiskey distillery uses 80% Colorado grain, handcrafted distilling techniques, and provides grain waste to local farmers for feed. Join us in learning about Stranahan’s innovative sustainability strategies and the new technologies they are considering for their operations and production processes. We’ll explore the production brew house, still house and rack house, and volunteer-run bottling room while Tour guide Taylor Kane provides an overview of the company, their current practices and their sustainability ambitions. Please arrive by 4:45 so the tour can begin on time (spots will be given away for those that do not arrive on time). Bring your valid ID with proof of age so you can join the tour!

The tour will be followed by drinks, to continue the conversations and fun with whiskey, beer and food.

YR&G sustainability consulting, education, and analysis

For three years now the MIT Sloan Management Review has worked with the Boston Consulting Group to survey executives on the implementation of sustainability practices. Covering a vast swath of sectors the report provides insight into how things are moving generally with regard to sustainability and also serves as a reason to reflect on how the construction industry is facing the issue in relative terms. The report, titled “Sustainability Nears a Tipping Point” can be found here: http://sloanreview.mit.edu/feature/sustainability-strategy/

The first thing that jumps out to me in the study is how recent the engagement with sustainability is for so many companies. Seventy percent say they’ve added sustainability to their agenda in the last six years and 20 percent of those say this has happened in the last two. This is remarkable given the poor state of the economy over much of this period. Clearly a lot of corporations don’t see embracing sustainability as a cost burden but as a necessity. Nick Robbins, head of the Climate Change Centre of Excellence at HSBC is quoted, “People are seeing that sustainability is part of the next phase of development and that it will be disruptive and structural, rather than incremental.” I love that phrase, disruptive and structural, because that’s what sustainability needs to be to enjoy any kind of success. This new engagement is evidenced by the rapidly growing number of media outlets that deal directly with these issues, from magazines, to blogs, to white papers from DC think tanks and policy directives from a huge number of municipalities.

Also striking is the percentage of companies that say sustainability is a permanent part of their agenda, 70 percent. And almost no one indicates plans to lower their commitments in the years ahead. Rather remarkable “stickiness” for an issue that elicited a lot of eye rolling in the corporate crowd only a few years ago. Lots of folks, both proponents and detractors, saw the OPEC crisis of the 70s come and go without much in dramatic policy change and assumed that the “whole green thing” would blow over. You don’t hear so much from these folks anymore – they can tell which way the wind is blowing and how strongly. Better to turn your sails than wait around for conditions to change.

The report groups companies into “embracers” and “harvesters” which is both useful and the kind of annoying management consultant jargon that makes people stop reading their reports. In any case, both groups of companies have been driven to a sustainability agenda by their customers and clients, whether these are consumers or institutions like universities and pension plans. It remains true that customers aren’t generally willing to pay a sustainability premium, but they are listing it as a preference and it is driving change across all business sectors. This tracks well with our experience in the building sector where one of the major factors in building owners pursuit of green building measures are related to tenant demands – and those demands are in turn driven by the demands of the tenants “customers” – the staff they want to retain and the graduates they want to hire. Not surprisingly, those companies whose CEOs heard these demands and have made strong commitments in this area are the ones with sustainability most deeply and successfully embedded.

Still, all is not rosy in the building industry. While the report found that construction sector companies that think sustainability is “necessary to be competitive” rose about 20 percent, the percentage of companies who feel it is “permanently on the agenda” actually fell a few points – the only sector in which this happened. This is maybe not so surprising. No sector has been hit as hard as the building industry by the recession. With jobs disappearing and little positive prospects on the horizon we can hardly blame the industry for not knowing what, exactly, the future holds.

There is much more nuance in the report than I’ve outlined here – especially as regards the financial implications of these sustainability commitments. If these issues and their role in our economy are of any interest to you at all it’s well worth your time.

Originally posted on Tork Better Business Center 

I wish LEED had more nuanced critics.

As regular as winter, articles crop up purporting to outline the problems with LEED. Every time I dive in eagerly and almost every time I come away disappointed. Maybe this is inevitable. LEED is technocratic, both in terms of content and process, and the building industry moves at its own pace. Maybe we can’t expect our frothy media to deliver on this subject.

The latest instance along these lines is an article for Urban Land, provocatively titled LEED Backlash, that contains three paragraphs of wheat surrounded by a cloud of somewhat disorienting chaff. First, the wheat.

The piece notes that the most recent Department of Defense (DoD) reauthorization bill included a provision that restricts DoD projects from pursuing Gold or Platinum certification without a waiver from the Secretary of Defense and requires the DoD to complete a cost benefit analysis of their green building standards (which, despite the bill, still require LEED Silver certification.) It’s a fascinating development but the tenor of the LEED Backlash article seems misplaced. First, they report that “the U.S. Congress passed and President Obama signed a bill in December that severely restricts the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) from spending extra money on” LEED. This implies that government has arrayed itself against LEED, when in fact a small minority have attached a restrictive provision to a massive defense funding bill. As the article notes later, “It appears that Congress’s action primarily stemmed from a dispute over the use of wood in green construction.”

It goes on to state, “A coalition of green building advocates, timber interests, and dozens of congressional members have objected to what they believe is an exclusion of domestic sources of wood in the LEED point system.” This is fascinating, but it doesn’t mean there is a generalized backlash against LEED. It means that much of the timber industry is still frustrated that FSC remains the baseline within LEED to receive credit for the use of sustainably harvested wood. The article, for instance, could just as easily have been titled “Timber Lobby Engineers Destructive Rider to Defense Authorization Bill.” This debate has been raging for years and is far from resolved. More specifics on the background would have been illuminating. Who exactly is in the “coalition” noted by the author? Which member of Congress added the provision to the bill? I’d be fascinated to know more about this but instead the author surrounds this nugget of actual news with a host of vague quotes about LEED’s place in the market, pro and con, and a frustratingly undeveloped premise that governments are “pursuing green building standards other than LEED.”

Which brings us to the chaff. The article suggests that California’s CalGreen building code is somehow a rebuff of LEED. But LEED is not a code. It’s not written as a code and the USGBC would be first to tell you that it should not be implemented as one. In almost every instance of LEED being “mandated” by a public jurisdiction you’ll find that the fine print is much looser. Most require that projects meet LEED standards, but not actually certify. And most include broad provisions for the folks that hold the purse strings to opt out if LEED isn’t suitable for the project. This is prudently cautious, but also a recognition that LEED should not be treated as something that can be legislated. The advent of CalGreen and other green codes can be seen as a direct result of LEED’s success in the market- not a repudiation of it. The article also treats the existence of Green Globes as news and states rather vaguely that it is “gaining momentum.” I’d love to know how Green Globes is faring in the market. If states or cities are using it as a guide I want to know about it. Same goes for the International Green Construction Code, developed by the International Code Council and soon to be, as the article notes, adopted by Maryland. In the same sentence the article notes the presence of the Living Building Challenge, so progressive it is mind-boggling, and a new certification for windows and doors by the AMAA, a comically out of place reference. As a result, the article hints at some fascinating developments in the industry but doesn’t pursue them in any kind of depth.

There are certainly big questions about the future of LEED; for one, LEED certified buildings don’t always perform as one might expect. Why, specifically, does this happen? While LEED is looking at the horizon the floor is being raised by increasingly stringent energy codes. Will LEED remain relevant in this context? These are important but complicated questions and none of them are served by articles that treat them without nuance.

Another piece in the same publication, The Greening of the Real Estate Industry, looks at the disconnect between right-wing policy and the work of the private sector. It’s well worth a read and be sure to scroll down to the comments where you will be treated to entries from Roger Platt of the USGBC on the obstruction tactics of the timber lobby and a reply from Kathleen Sims of the Plum Creek Timber Company.

LEED has many rough edges. It does some things well and others not so well. Understanding these flaws and their impact on the future of our industry is important work. Let’s make sure we treat those issues with the care and specificity they deserve.

Originally Posted on Urban Green Council

6:00 – 7:00pm

Tour begins at 6pm, mingling from 6:30 to 7pm

Please join us as we tour the FLOR offices and showroom.

FLOR, Inc. is the company behind the beautiful, innovative and responsible system of 50cm (19.7-inch) carpet squares that can be assembled to create unique rugs, runners or wall-to-wall designs of any shape or size. Tour FLOR’s inspiring office space and get a glimpse into the company’s product collection and refreshing perspective on responsible design.

Location:

FLOR, Inc. 600 W. Van Buren Street, #800

Tour is limited to 25 people

RSVP HERE

Green building professionals often suffer from the same handicap as economists, we assume our subjects (the people in our buildings, the consumers in our economy) are purely logical robots.  But of course, this is not the case.  We can design the most perfect lighting control system that accounts for interior daylight, lowers electrical lighting levels and moves the blinds at the perimeter to suit conditions.  But if the interface is too complicated, or if the system doesn’t work for a couple people- it is going to be turned off.  Guaranteed.

I suspect the dustup over the last few years about some LEED buildings using more energy than expected was rooted in exactly this issue.  In many cases, who uses a building, and how, is a greater factor in a buildings performance than a battery of brilliant design solutions.  One of my all time favorite quotes is from Steve Jobs:

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer . . . That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like.  Design is how it works.”

Understanding the actual needs and behavior of a buildings users is required, and following through with sincere engagement of those folks is critical.  Otherwise, the building may not work.  The actual people in the building won’t be happy, which ought to be our ultimate metric.

Halligan lays out a set of five simple guidelines to help in this effort, including some quotes by our very own Josh Radoff.  Though still new, several folks are doing research in this field, including ACEEE and the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago.

- Yetsuh Frank

Healthcare Industry Buildings – New Construction and Major Renovations

• The Green Guide for Healthcare: Design & Construction is a free guide developed by the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems and Health Care Without Harm that can be used to gear the new construction process in the right direction. Remember, this is not a third-party rating system, but rather a guide for implementation for benchmarking facilities. For a more concrete program, use a third-party certification, such as LEED for Healthcare.
• LEED for Healthcare was launched in 2010 (officially released in 2011) by the U.S. Green Building Council as an adaption of the LEED for New Construction Rating System specifically for inpatient, outpatient and licensed long-term facilities, medical offices, assisted living facilities and medical education and research centers. LEED for Healthcare (LEED-HC) goes beyond the typical LEED requirements for new construction projects to include credits that uniquely address healthcare such as achieving a connection to the natural world for patients and employees, minimizing potable water use for healthcare-related process loads, phasing out the use of products and materials with harmful elements (such as mercury and lead), and improving acoustical quality of spaces.

Operations & Maintenance for Healthcare Facilities

• The Green Guide for Healthcare: Operations is a free framework that can be used to engage in benchmarking performance across a variety of sustainability topics in the day-to-day operations of a healthcare facility. It addresses staff education, transportation, energy efficiency, water conservation, chemical management, waste management, green cleaning, integrated pest management, environmentally preferable purchasing, and more. Again, this guide is not a third-party rating system, but it can be used to supplement and optimize your healthcare-specific approach when using LEED-EBOM. For instance, your LEED-EBOM Sustainable Waste Management Policy can include a section that addresses the disposal of regulated medical waste, as outlined in the guide.
• LEED for Existing Buildings: Operations & Maintenance (LEED-EBOM) is another way to go to officially certify the sustainability of facility operations, although its not tailored specifically for healthcare. LEED-EBOM focuses on implementing a series of policies and plans that set standards and procedures for areas like waste management, sustainable purchasing, green cleaning, and integrated pest management. Although the requirements do not focus on healthcare, each plan can be written to address the specific issues of the facility. It’s reasonable to adapt any LEED-EBOM program for a healthcare facility, and the rating system does a good job of getting at the core issues. To certify, the building has to prove that it’s performing to the required standards during a performance period, usually three to four months long.
• If you want to start smaller, you use the Practice Healthcare Eco-Checklist for Operations to evaluate the current status of your overall sustainability program. You can also use tools likeGreenhealth Tracker for waste management or ENERGY STAR for Healthcare for energy and water use to gauge where your facility stands in those individual areas.

You can kick-start the implementation of a framework by creating a sustainability team that can take the lead in performing a gap analysis for the facility. A gap analysis looks at your facility’s current performance and compares it to each piece outlined in the chosen framework. It is a great, easy way to ground your program in the specific realities of your facility. Through this process, the sustainability team can determine appropriate metrics to benchmarking performance (maybe borrowing from the frameworks listed above), achievable goals, and a timeline and action plan for implementation.

No matter which framework you choose to use, think about goals that are meaningful for your healthcare facility, and that have the greatest potential for improving your facility’s overall sustainability performance.

Resources:

• The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) – www.usgbc.org
• Practice Greenhealth – www.practicegreenhealth.org
• The Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems – www.cmpbs.org
• Health Care Without Harm – http://www.noharm.org/
• ENERGY STAR for Healthcare – http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=healthcare.bus_healthcare
• DOE’s Hospital Energy Alliance-http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/alliances/hospital_energy_alliance.html
• The Center for Health Design – http://www.healthdesign.org/
• Sustainable Hospitals – http://www.sustainablehospitals.org
• Healthier Hospitals Initiative – http://www.healthierhospitals.org/
• ASHRAE Advanced Energy Guidelines for Small Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities (2009) –http://www.ashrae.org/standards-research–technology/advanced-energy-design-guides
• Sustainability Roadmap for Hospitals -http://www.sustainabilityroadmap.org/implementation/pim/waste/index.shtml
• Healthy Food in Healthcare Pledge – http://noharm.org/us_canada/issues/food/pledge.php
• Resources for choosing safer chemicals: http://practicegreenhealth.org/topics/chemicals/chemicals-policy-development
• EPA’s Comprehensive Procurement Guidelines:http://www.epa.gov/epawaste/conserve/tools/cpg/products/index.htm
• Guidance for developing a green cleaning policy:http://practicegreenhealth.org/topics/chemicals/green-cleaning/green-cleaning-policy-development-implementation

-Josh Radoff, Principal

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(as originally posted on: UrbanGreen) - A couple weeks back I attended “math night” at my kids’ school- when the parents hear about the math curriculum they can expect their children to be following in the coming year. (Bear with me- I promise this is relevant to green building.)  The major focus of the evening were changes that will be required by New York State’s adoption of what are called the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for mathematics.  The CCSS are a state-led effort to develop best practices guidelines for teaching mathematics across the country.  When I first heard that we were about to review the findings of an enormous committee of state bureaucrats I kicked myself for not bringing a book to the meeting.  I presumed that we’d be subjected to a nearly illegible mess of obvious and/or irrelevant platitudes- all delivered in bureaucratese, crammed onto Powerpoint slides in chunks of 3-400 words.

Imagine my surprise when the items presented to us were clear, instructive and, almost unbelievably, intellectually invigorating.  What I found most astonishing as we walked through the standards was that they were so sound and so deeply fundamental that they could be applied to almost any discipline.  In their own way, the standards are systems thinking at its most effective.

The common core standards are below, along with my thoughts on how they can be applied to the sustainability and green building fields:

1. Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them.
I like the implication here of making sense of a problem before searching for the solution.  Often the way a problem is presented to us obscures the core issue.  Taking a moment to ask if the question being asked is the right one can help us ensure that we are not slaves to habit and inertia- the forces most powerfully aligned against change.

2.   Reason abstractly and quantitatively
For me the emphasis here is on the “and.”  Any problem can benefit from being thought of from both the abstract and the objective perspectives.  The field of green building is at something of a crossroads on this point.  In the last few years we have focused overwhelmingly on data, especially with regard to energy conservation.  This was a much needed shift.  For years we have relied too much on anecdotal evidence of performance- gathering and using data to inform our strategies is a huge step forward.  At the same time, we need to remember to step back from the spreadsheets from time to time and “see the forest.”  The data is a tool, not an outcome in itself.  Some abstract thinking needs to compliment our new-found focus on the quantitative.

3.   Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others.
Despite our best intentions, there is a lot of group-think in our community.  We have a tendency to relate anecdotal stories that aren’t backed by the data, and we are too slow to question the reasoning of our peers.  We need to shake things up if we are going to keep the ball moving forward.

4.   Model with mathematics.
In a general sense, you could take this to mean that we need to look at how solutions actually impact performance- rather than simply assuming the benefits of prescriptive measures.  On a more specific level- many are unaware of the many modeling tools now available to help us with early design decisions.

5.   Use appropriate tools strategically.
As I say above- there are new tools available- but we need to be circumspect about their use.  Often we use tools like energy modeling as a means to avoid difficult questions or the hard work of critical thinking.  Instead we should be using computer modeling as one of many tools in our arsenal.  LEED, come to think of it, is just a tool. One that needs to be applied strategically, when it is most helpful, and left by the side when not.

6.   Attend to precision.
Our community is in desperate need of precision.  There are a lot of fuzzy anecdotes out there that need to be sharpened up with some actual data.

7.   Look for and make use of structure.
Here the math folks are wanting the kids to fundamentally understand the “base ten” system- and that the system is a human construct.  If we had 6 fingers on each hand we would use a “base twelve” system.  The sustainability community, and design professionals in particular, need to be similarly aware of the context of each problem, its underlying structure.  Ignoring the fixed variables surrounding any given project (budget, etc.) will only lead to grief.

8.   Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning.
I would file this under “don’t reinvent the wheel.”  Rather, develop a process that ensures understanding before action and then make sure you apply that process to each project, problem or challenge.

So, a rather long post on an obscure subject. I intend to use this remarkable little list as a touchstone- something to return to every so often to remind me of fundamentals I might be forgetting (and, just perhaps, as a pleasant reminder that I never have to take algebra again.)

Whoever was on the CCSS committee should be carried around on some shoulders in public.  Find out more about the standards here.

Photo credit: Mike Hammerton

- Yetsuh Frank, Director

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- Yetsuh Frank, Director

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Strangely- those who point to the Solyndra bankruptcy as a clarion call to end subsidies for the renewable energy industry are remarkably silent on the billions afforded to the most profitable and powerful corporations in the history of the world. Our government sends huge amounts of our tax dollars to corporations like Exxon and Chevron that, in terms of control of global resources and impact on global finance, make the Holy Roman Empire look like a network of homeless shelters. Government subsidies ought to be used as a kickstart for fledgling industries, but the culture of lobbying in Washington means that federal money goes to the strongest, most powerful companies, not the folks that would use the cash to advance innovation. So it’s great to see NPR providing some context to the discussion of energy subsidies.

Federal Energy Incentives (1950-2010), via NPR.org

But to me it feels like NPR only gets halfway down the road. A government subsidy is an investment. You wouldn’t buy an inexpensive car if you knew that the maintenance costs were astronomically higher than other options. When we talk about federal investment of our tax dollars we need to look at both the near-term benefits AND the long-term costs associated with that decision.

To this reader, the graph provided by NPR (seen here) is deeply, although probably not intentionally, misleading. First it divides subsidies across the fossil fuel options of oil, natural gas and coal (though you can’t hide the gorilla in the room- oil gets 44% of federal subsidy dollars.) They thencombine solar and wind subsidies on the graph, a total of 9%. The net visual effect of the graph is that there is relative balance among subsidy distribution (except for oil.) But the more striking message within these numbers is that fossil fuels greedily consume 70% of federal energy subsidies, and if you include nuclear in the “dirty” fuel package the total is nearly 80%. Meanwhile solar and wind get only 4.5% each. So- we are pouring money into industries that contribute massively to climate change and/or have significant downstream costs from pollution and a host of other issues. And the “subsidies” numbers from NPR don’t account for direct tax rebates (almost $50B every year to the oil industry.) This is what is called a losing bet.

We are constantly barraged by the simple fact that solar and wind power “cost too much.” But consider the long-term costs of these various industries. Recent studies confirm that the coal industry, for instance, is actually a NET LOSS to the national economy when you include the downstream impacts of the pollution created. And these studies don’t even include the potential impacts of climate change- numbers that ultimately dwarf pollution impacts. Let me say that again, conservative economists (not treehuggers) have determined that the coal industry loses our country money-today. Remember that any time someone tells you that propping up the fossil fuel industry is necessary to retain jobs. It is these statistics (and the recent abandonment of the Clean Air Act  by the Obama administration) that embolden the Sierra Club to run ads like the one below (sorry for the poor quality phone pic) for their Beyond Coal campaign.

Unfortunately, energy subsidies (like most federal funds) are directed not to those whose industries provide the greatest long-term benefit to society- but to those industries with the most muscle. NPR’s graph of energy subsidies could easily stand in as a measure of the lobbying clout of these various industries. In DC, muscle = money.

- Yetsuh Frank, Director

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