Without More Energy Data, We’ll Never Get Green Buildings

Everyone knows the mileage of his or her car, but no one knows the energy use of his or her buildings. That’s the prime gripe of the green buildings world, which, perhaps more than anything else, is in dire need of some miles-per-gallon-style data. The problem is that though builders have incentives to implement efficient insulation, lighting, and heating/ventilation/air conditioning, tenants don’t have incentives to follow through and make energy-wise choices. The LEED program certifies buildings that are designed in an environmentally sustainable way, in the hope that the certification will create a premium on well-designed buildings and encourage more green construction. But what happens after the occupants move in? That’s where the disconnect occurs.

According to Mark Frankel at the New Buildings Institute, about one in four LEED-certified commercial buildings perform below the average of similar buildings in energy efficiency. Given the approximately 2500 building projects that are LEED-certified, that figure ought to give pause to any energy-conscious corporation in search of building space. And this is no piddling problem: Recall that buildings account for almost half the energy use in the U.S., two-thirds of the electricity use, and are the biggest contributors to carbon-dioxide emissions. Improving our building stock and motivation customers to choose sustainable space is a central component to mitigating climate change. But just because 25 percent of LEED-certified buildings underperform doesn’t mean that the credentials we endow upon morally superior architecture are in need of a complete overhaul. Someone needs to introduce some legislative whip-cracking to ensure that buildings are well-maintained, and as Frankel sees it, building owners and occupants need to be held accountable for operations. But that’s easier said than done.

The issue is a thorny one. How occupants use the space is largely dependent on the kinds of commercial activities they indulge in. It’s also not clear how occupants should be judged–should the presence of a server room or a restaurant be penalized? They do, after all, consume more energy than an office that’s only occupied for five hours a day. Or should performance be gauged relative to the type of occupant, like zoning in urban areas? If your office does have a server room, should we make sure you’re using the most efficient equipment?

Those questions are important but in fact might be secondary to the primary issue, which is that a building’s performance is determined both by the energy consumption rate that is inherent in its design, and by how occupants operate the building, invest in its upkeep, and choose their electrical equipment. And because no one has monitored this extensively, we lack good baselines to compare buildings against each other. That makes it hard to lure tenants by advertising that one building far outstrips another. To make LEED truly take off, the program may well need to incorporate monitoring capabilities in the form of smart metering and more tenant involvement, though the road will be bumpy.

That may well happen. A recent McKinsey study concluded that investing in building efficiency could reduce overall U.S. non-transportation energy consumption by 23 percent by 2020, reducing greenhouse gas emissions substantially and saving money in the long run. In January, California will begin requiring that the owners of non-residential buildings disclose the energy performance data for the past year for any building they intend to lease or sell. And a new energy rating system, known as Buildings EQ, was recently announced as an alternative to the Energy Star reporting requirements, which are the leading (optional) metrics by which efficient appliances are identified. Boosting buildings’ energy performance was even included in discussions for the Waxman-Markey climate bill, before it was dropped.

Performance monitoring will certainly be critical to making the American Institute of Architects’ Architecture 2030 happen. Under this plan, all newbuildings and major renovations will be carbon-neutral by 2030. But if we don’t know how today’s best buildings operate, calling them carbon-neutral might just be window-dressing.

Posted by Sandra Upson