Groups' aim: Make it easy to be greener

Mary Stone//November 10, 2006//

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The Clinton Global Initiative brought the U.S. Green Building Council here recently to help close the yawning divide that keeps developers here from building green.
Myths and misinformation are the reasons for people’s reluctance to take up sustainable design, said Tracie Hall, executive director for the U.S. Green Building Council’s New York Upstate Chapter.
Hall was seated at a gathering of LEED-certified or affiliated professionals at an event sponsored by Greater Rochester Enterprise Inc. and moderated by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y.
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design citation, or LEED, is the common measure in the design industry, established by USGBC six years ago to standardize green building.
Hall said Clinton approached the council about coming to Rochester to set about making “a greenprint”-as the senator called it-or blueprint to making LEED certification commonplace in Rochester. The idea is to root green building within a larger Rochester branding effort to make the city an innovator in sustainability.
One main aim of that goal is opening developers’ minds to green building and adding to existing incentives for LEED certification.
The comments and ideas generated from the panel discussion and groups that gathered afterwards in a charrette were collected by Stantec Consulting Group Inc. USGBC will author a publication based on the feedback and work with GRE and Clinton’s office to finalize and circulate the information.
Officials did not disclose the date of the plan’s release, but Hall said Monday was just the beginning of the efforts to make green building a communitywide priority.
One thing that might have egged them on was chatter of green building strides being made in Syracuse. Officials at Monday’s charrette said there was talk of Syracuse Mayor Matthew Driscoll’s plan to sign a proclamation committing the city to USGBC standards at its own buildings wherever possible.
Lately, Syracuse has become a beacon for elevated environmental standards.
The Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems pioneers means to improve the health and safety of urban and built environments, and Syracuse won the Environmental Protection Agency award last year for climate protection.
The award was given for the city’s energy and climate protection program instituted to reduce the city’s energy use 20 percent by 2006 and reduce greenhouse gas emissions 20 percent by 2010.
The effort in Rochester this week was meant to energize locals here to begin thinking about the environment within the context of green building and renovation.
USGBC reports 40 percent of all waste is from construction. It makes sense then, officials said, to focus first on green building as a substantial step in environmental protection.
The focus of LEED, they explain, is the environment on the inside and out. The certification process is meant to take into consideration a vast range of measures that require specifics such as how much construction waste was recycled, Hall said.
“Indoor environmental quality is also a huge deal. No matter which aspect of a LEED project you’re dealing with there is a sizeable portion of it devoted to that,” Hall said.
LEED status is awarded at four levels of certification: certified, silver, gold and platinum. Projects qualify for different levels of certification based on the sustainable-design principles used, such as the use of natural lighting and ventilation, water reclamation systems and the use of recycled, non-toxic materials.
But as professional designers study to become LEED-accredited, there is no such accreditation for the tradesmen who carry out their LEED-compliant designs.
This was an obstacle locals discussed at this week’s event. Workshops are under way to respond to this need and to explain the process to subcontractors, Hall said. The Green Advantage workshop will educate tradesmen, and, she said, explain why, for instance, substitutions for certain adhesives or paint can hamper LEED certification.
It is important for them to gain a sense of LEED’s point system. “For example (the project) can achieve points (based on) the percentage of waste that is recycled,” Hall said.
“They’re on the front line for creating the documentation that will be submitted for LEED certification,” she added.
Workshops also are planned to introduce local developers to LEED certification for existing buildings, said Lorna Midgelow, program director of the Rochester Green Business Network, a program of the Center for Environmental Information Inc.
It is the first LEED course to be offered in Rochester, Midgelow said.
The day-long program is planned for this spring-possibly sooner.
“We wanted an existing-building course because we have a lot of refurbishment in this area,” Midgelow said.
Hall was a participant in the charrette on Monday. Among the measures people suggested, one consensus stood out: that Rochester should set the standard by ensuring Renaissance Square becomes LEED-certified at a gold or platinum level.
There are obstacles to LEED certification-if only in the minds of people who consider it but do not pursue it. Hall said it is a misperception that the process to obtain LEED certification is laborious.
Midgelow said the up-front cost of green
building is the biggest barrier to LEED certification.
What people do not understand, she said, is that the cost is minimal if green design is decided upon at the outset-at the design stage. Such buildings cost only 1 percent to 2 percent more than standard buildings, Midgelow said.
And the USGBC reports an up-front investment of 2 percent, on average, results in life cycle savings of 20 percent of the total construction costs.
“Basically, it’s important to start at the beginning thinking green,” Midgelow said.
That is vital in many ways. Jay Murdoch, technical marketing manager of insulation systems business at Owens Corning, said that by 2030, half of the buildings in existence will have been built over the last 30 years.
To fan the reach of LEED certification, USGBC streamlined its process with online forms that can be completed as the project is completed. The idea is to make LEED less daunting.
Because certifications fall into different levels of LEED, the new online service helps people calculate the points they are entitled to, which are based on the impact of the measures they take in their green building or renovation projects.
Tammy Schickler is a fan of the service. She is a LEED-accredited consultant and principal of Sustainable Performance Consulting, a local company that specializes in green building advisory services.
USGBC did well to streamline documentation requirements and the review process, but a resistance to LEED certification persists, Schickler said.
“My opinion is that every project should incorporate sustainable-design aspects into their project program. There is enough information to support that sustainability breeds energy savings, improved indoor air quality and considers the building’s overall environmental impact,” she said.
The problem, she said, stems from certification costs and building commissioning fees, which she said are perceived obstacles.
“One of the biggest issues currently faced by many projects is the cost of adding commissioning to a small, simple, inexpensive project. For large projects-those over $5 (million) to $10 million dollars (in) construction cost-the cost of commissioning should be somewhere between 0.25 percent and 0.75 percent of the cost of construction,” Schickler said.
“However, there are certain ‘fixed’ costs associated with developing and sustaining a commissioning program that could push the cost of commissioning a small project to be as much as 2 percent to 5 percent of the cost of construction-a level most project budgets can’t afford,” she said. “The USGBC committees are actively fine tuning, enhancing and evolving the LEED system, and it is only a matter of time before this ‘difficulty’ is addressed.”
After Monday’s panel discussion, Midgelow said the people gathered had some good ideas beyond making the LEED process simpler for developers but also making it more advantageous.
One example, she said, was Steven Beck, director of the project solutions group at LeChase Construction Services LLC.
“In the discussions yesterday at the charrette we did discuss an expedited permit process as a means of incentivizing contractors, builders and developers to follow a sustainable and/or LEED-certified process,” Beck said.
“One way that it could work would be that a contractor (or) owner would register a project through USGBC for certification and certify to the appropriate permitting agency that the project would follow all the stated requirements for certification. The permitting agency would then give preferential status to the permit application and expedite the permit process,” he said.
On sensitive time-to-market projects, the benefit of a shorter overall schedule would be substantial enough to motivate builders to pursue certification and in return, he said, the permitting agency would have a standard degree of quality assurance.
For now, it is one idea among several to come out of Monday’s sessions as USGBC and local officials draft Rochester’s greenprint.
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