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Green Building

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Efficiency First
'); document.write('posted on September 02, 2010 03:52:52 pm
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I met today with Jared Asch, the National Director of Efficiency First.

They are a nonprofit that connects together people seeking green jobs with product manufacturers to promote energy efficiency. Jared and I will both be speaking at the upcoming West Coast Green Conference at the end of September and I have have been talking with all of my fellow speakers about their efforts.

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For thirty-plus years, the modern environmental movement has been preaching energy efficiency, but it has only been recently we've seen it being taken seriously. Why the change? Surely rising fuel prices, instability of oil imports and our growing dependance on those imports factors into it - but these issues have persisted for decades.

I asked Jared about what has changed recently. He pointed out how the business case for energy efficiency now has a proven track record of success. "We didn't have that just ten years ago," he added. Jared has worked for 6 Senators, 3 presidential campaigns and several Members of Congress, and understands how policy can affect positive change. He mentioned the power of simply having an Administration supportive of these ideas. US Energy Secretary Steven Chu is an admitted "energy efficiency nut."

Back in December, President Obama told a group of businesspeople at a Home Depot in Virginia that energy efficiency was a “win-win,” because it saves energy, helps our environment and create jobs. “Here’s what’s sexy about it," the President added, "saving money.” Jared quotes this on the cover of their brochure.

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IMAGE SOURCE: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Simple tasks, such as weatherstripping around your doors, caulking around your windows and insulating your attic can easily cut your home energy use by 30%. If American households saved just 10% of the energy used to heat and cool their homes, it would amount to 8.2 billion kW saved, equivalent to the annual greenhouse gas emissions from over a million passenger vehicles.

Not only do these things reduce energy use and cut your monthly utility bills, they do much more. As it turns out, energy efficiency retrofitting of our existing buildings is also a job creator. Jared pointed to their Home Star Program, a piece of proposed legislation that would give homeowners rebates for energy efficiency retrofits. Home Star would create about 168,000 jobs, help homeowners save money and move us toward energy independence. He told me they are only a couple of votes shy of the 60 needed to pass it in the Senate.

Energy efficiency is at the core of every climate solution. We cannot reach the goals we need to reach (350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere) without an aggressive policy of energy efficiency retrofits for our existing buildings. Every Architect, Contractor and Designer needs to take notice and push this as part of their remodeling projects.

Just yesterday, the Center for American Progress released a report showing how a national energy efficiency program could create 625,000 sustained jobs over ten years, ignite $500 billion in investment, and save people over $64 billion off their utility bills. Money in their pockets they could use to move the economy forward.
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Is optimism infectious?
'); document.write('posted on September 01, 2010 08:00:00 am
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Walking into Cameron Sinclair’s office in San Francisco’s South of Market District, the first thing one notices is a whiteboard calendar mapping out worldwide travels. Executive director of Architecture for Humanity, Sinclair is, at any given time, as likely to be in Canada or Cambodia as in his San Francisco home base.
While the global economy is inching through a recession, Sinclair tripled his staff in 2009 and his 10-year-old nonprofit is looking to double its $5 million budget in the next decade.
With projects ranging from earthquake reconstruction in Haiti to centers that use soccer as a tool for education and social change in Africa, AFH aims to use architecture and design to solve humanitarian crises. More than a humanitarian organization, it’s a network of 40,000 professionals that work collectively using open source designs, collaboration and a high level of ingenuity to improve the lives of as many as 60,000 people annually.
Sustainable Industries managed to catch Sinclair during a mid-summer stop in San Francisco for a conversation about entrepreneurship, taking risks, growing a business sustainably, and how the lessons he’s learned in the nonprofit world translate to other business types and models.
SI: You’ve referred to the Open Architecture Network as “free innovation.” Beyond architecture and design, what are some areas where you see open-source solutions as having the potential to make a real impact?
CS: What’s nice about the Open Architecture Network is that we begin to find other people who are interested in open-source in their own realm [such as biotech]. I know materials people that are looking at open-source materials and figuring out new ways to use those materials in new markets. So, it’s really it’s about opening new markets.
SI: Most businesses are designed to bring in the biggest returns. What advice would you give to business leaders outside the nonprofit world who are trying to redesign their business models to include environmental and social returns?
CS: The open innovation model is really about R&D. When R&D gets stifled by conservative or cautious shareholders, how are you supposed to advance your company? You end up being a one-trick pony. … If you want your business to keep innovating, you should look at your R&D sector as a place where you allow your internal designers to play and come up with fun ideas that wouldn’t get done in the normal process. Try to collaborate with other companies and companies outside their business.
In terms of environmental returns, look at the long tail of your work. Maybe there’s a percentage of your business that’s looking at high-risk, low returns, but also high environmental impact. So right now it may not be a profit-making situation, but in 20 years when we have very scarce resources, it suddenly becomes low-risk and high-return.
People look at right now. Shareholders look at right now. The fact is, in 20 years we can’t predict [what will happen]. So I always think, as a business, you should look at your R&D as a place to experiment for 10, 20, 30 years.
SI: How do you translate the values of Architecture for Humanity, a nonprofit, to the for-profit world?
CS:The big myth is that nonprofits don’t act like businesses. We’re a nonprofit and our mission is humanitarian, but we run it like a for-profit. We have a fee-for-service business model. … The strategy in which we work is transferable. … I think in a business methodology it’s what’s known as a distributed network system. We’re a huge believer in not only sharing innovation, but in distributed methodologies of working. … The most sustainable product is one that’s harvested locally. … That’s kind of how we work as a business. All of our architects are local, we source materials locally, [local people actually] build the buildings. But we run [the organization from] here.
SI: It seems to make you more nimble.
CS: Yeah, and I think as a larger business, you can be more nimble. … When you’re a new startup, I think you can’t use the old model of working any more. You have to look at what makes sense for you. What is your profit model?
[ pagebreak ]
SI: At TED last year, you talked about the idea of an ‘ethical footprint’ [in reference to indentured construction laborers]. What kind of accountability would you like to see in that respect and how would you propose making that happen?
CS: I think there needs to be ethical labeling. We’re all guilty. … We know in certain instances we can’t control who works on buildings and so forth. We can’t control the cutting down of materials or where a material is being sourced. And it’s not a holier-than-thou approach, it’s, ‘Let’s be honest about where things are happening.’ … When you talk about an ethical footprint, you talk about a whole ecosystem in the way that you work. … Let’s look at the whole entire ecosystem of the business and figure out where the cracks are.
SI: You’ve done some hiring in the past year [tripling the size of the organization]. To what do you attribute your growth?
CS:I think there’s an awareness factor. People are becoming more aware, partly because of our involvement in things like Haiti. We’ve had an upsurge in support financially and we’ve changed our business model so you can donate a day of design. You can donate a day of someone’s time. Collectively, if we have 365 donors, that’s a full-time salary for someone.
There’s a great need to do this work and I think 2010 is a year of taking stock. People are saying, ‘What have I done for the past 10 years?’ They’ve been hit by this massive financial downturn, loads of people being laid off. There’s going to be another round of massive layoffs. We know it’s coming. … We have a lot of mid-career professionals that want to spend six months or a year in the field to recharge their energies. … We end up being a good resting spot for people.
SI: You’ve also embarked on a capacity building campaign, aiming to double your budget and impact in the coming decade. How do you plan to do that?
CS: We have something called community builders. Something we’ve learned over the past few years is … we have a whole series of donors who are deeply committed to sustainability and deeply committed to architecture. We realized we could tap not only their financial support but their knowledge and their resources.
And, so rather that just asking people to donate to a capacity-building campaign, we ask them to become community builders. … [they] get to be a part of the growth of our organization. They have access to all of our data internally [and can visit projects]. They’re active donors. … It’s just a matter of finding a dozen or so really committed people.
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SI: What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered as you’ve grown and is there a concern about ensuring you stay true to your mission as you embark upon this expansion?
CS:This was never supposed to be what it is. This was supposed to be a weekend project for me, to feel good about being an architect. Back in 1999, there were a couple of us who said there must be more to architecture than just this. We were talking about how we must be able to build cost-effective, sustainable structures that actually impact the lives of others—very simple mission. We said if we do a couple projects, maybe one project a year, we could really see if that was a plausible thing to do.
Fast-forward 10 years, we’ve got 50 projects on the books. We’re working in 15 countries. We have a huge amount of people wanting us to help all over the world. We say no to 60 percent of the asks that come in. [Of the others, about half turn into projects]
… How do we make that 50 percent? We’re only going to do that by doubling in size. There’s not a lack of need. There’s definitely not a lack of people wanting to do this. The only thing that’s stopping us is the business scaling. So we have to figure out mechanisms of scaling. … We’re looking at all sorts of levels of financing: corporate support, individual support and micro financing.
SI: Looking back over the past 10 years, is there anything you wish you had done differently?
CS: Never underestimate the power of well-meaning people to disappoint you. People really want to help you, and you realize that you can spend a lot of time and energy trying to collaborate with somebody who then drops the ball.
… The other thing is never underestimate the power of strangers to amaze you. … I think what I would have done differently is to pay less attention to the perceived support system and more toward to the random collection of people who are engaged in the process.
SI: You’ve gotten where you are in large part because you haven’t necessarily asked for permission to do things and you haven’t taken the time to wade through the red tape, which can slow down innovation. Is that something you think you can keep up?
CS:Yeah, and we’re about to do a project that not only is going to wade through red tape…but it’s going to put a sledgehammer to a lot of things. … We’re not going to stop. And I think there’s a responsibility for us to stay true to our mission, which is to keep pushing the boundaries. If we don’t do that, we have to rethink about the way we run our business.
We are charged with trying to push the envelope of the humanitarian design. We’re only going to do that by bending the rules a little bit, or by redefining the rules.
For more, download a one-on-one interview with Cameron Sinclair conducted by former Sustainable Industries Editor Becky Brun at West Coast Green in 2009.
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California\'s Proposition 23 represents why we might be doomed
'); document.write('posted on August 26, 2010 09:18:57 pm
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When I first began speaking publicly ten years ago, I eschewed anything to do with politics. The sustainability movement should be nonpartisan, nonpolitical in order to appeal to everyone, I thought. My talks and articles were designed to appeal to everyone, But in developing solutions for helping municipalities develop green buildings, I kept confronting the limitations of government and the game of politics that acts as a block to real progress.

This frustrated me to no end, and I found political opinion creeping back into my slides and writings. Some in the audience felt alienated, some even walked out, but most thoughtfully listened... and I got through.

This November, California voters will vote on a measure called Proposition 23. Prop 23 officially calls for a "suspension" of California's landmark global warming law (called AB32) "until unemployment drops to 5.5% for four consecutive quarters." The proposal positions itself as a "jobs initiative" and tries to pass itself off as merely a temporary measure until the economy gets back on track.

Passed in 2006, Assembly Bill 32 (AB32) is referred to as the California Global Warming Solutions Act. It was the first legislation in the world to comprehensively regulate and reduce greenhouse gases. Under AB 32, emissions from vehicles (oil) and energy generation (coal) are required to be cut about 15% by 2020, and an additional 20% by 2050. AB32 would push California to the forefront of the clean energy revolution, produce green jobs and stave off the threat of global warming.

Although this would only immediately affect California, it would, in reality, have an impact on the entire Country. The eyes of the nation are watching California and our wonderfully progressive policies. When they succeed, other states will follow suit.

But here is why Prop 23's call to suspend AB 32 is so particularly sinister:
It was placed on the ballot by Assembly Member Dan Logue, who calls it a "jobs initiative" to hide the real backers behind the bill. The bill is supported by two Texas oil companies, Valero and Tesoro and a coal company, Koch Industries. Valero alone has pumped over $4 million and counting into Prop 23. Valero and Tesoro are among the nation’s biggest polluters, and their California refineries are among the top ten polluters in the state.

The proposed suspension may take a while. The states current unemployment is around 12.3 percent and hasn't dropped to 5.5% for an entire year since 1976 (34 years ago). The cleverly crafted language was designed to ensure AB32 never sees the light of day.

You may be asking, "If AB32 was passed back in 2006, why the rush to stop it now?" Simple: the requirements set forth in AB32 are set to take effect this January. The November election gives the polluters just enough time to try and stop it.

This battle will play out as you'd expect: conservatives will claim this will destroy jobs, raise taxes, and increase your energy costs (using fear); while environmentalists will unsuccessfully provide the facts, only to be ignored by the middle class voters susceptible to the fear play.

Some in California worry that by regulating carbon emissions we'll be putting our economy on the back burner. But nothing in our recent history has indicated that California must choose between economic stability and environmental responsibility.

Innovative energy policies established in the 1970s have saved California consumers $56 billion and created 1.5 million full-time jobs with a payroll of $45 billion. From 1995 to 2008, clean, safe energy generation jobs grew by 85 percent with the highest concentration in solar and wind. In 2008, energy efficiency jobs grew by 91 percent, according to Next 10, a nonpartisan think tank.

If new, better-paying jobs, healthier air, driving money into the local economy and saving money is attractive, then AB 32 is a breath of fresh clean air and worth keeping.

Speaking of which, I look forward to chatting about such things with Panama Bartholomy, from the California Energy Commission, one of the speakers at West Coast Green (September 30 - October 1st).

LINKS:

Huffington Post

Stopping Prop 23

Campaign to stop Proposition 23

California Bright Spot

California Air Resources Board AB 32 Information

My Editorial in Desert Sun
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Rethinking Dilbert\'s green home
'); document.write('posted on August 24, 2010 04:12:37 pm
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Yesterday's Wall Street Journal ran a screed against building "green" homes by Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip "Dilbert." It's unfortunate that the Journal and Adams would choose to try to inflame public sentiment against green building in such a hackneyed way.
Seems Adams and his wife built a brand new "green" home and ended up spending a lot of money without actually reducing operating costs.
I'm going to put aside Adams' lede which is a gross mis-characterization of the green building sector as a bastion of hippies who build "ugly" buildings "using mostly twigs, pinecones and abandoned bird nests," to focus on the factual errors that make up the bulk of the piece, which I've already been sent twice though I haven't checked my email in a few minutes.
After reading the column, it's pretty apparent that Adams didn't do his research before making some key decisions. As anyone who has built any kind of home will tell you, not doing enough research is a path guaranteed to cause problems. Unfortunately, Adams seems to have not done any research after the fact either. Among other glaring inaccuracies in his piece are claims that, "...the greenest sort of home would have few windows because windows bleed heat," "... you could put a lovely garden on your roof ...But don't try telling me a garden roof wouldn't be a maintenance nightmare," and "Remember to skip the water-wasting lawn. White pebbles are the way to go if you want to save the Earth."
One has to wonder how Adams arrived at any of these conclusions as he claims to have spoken with a number of green building experts throughout the building process. Apparently none of them told him about high-efficiency windows such as those manufactured by Serious Materials, buildings certified as Passive Houses that use 90 percent less energy than a building built to code yet still allow in lots of natural light, green roofs that use native plants so watering needs are minimized, tray systems to contain soil and the numerous companies that will install them for a homeowner. And apparently, none of the landscape designers in California with experience using native plants (or anywhere else for that matter) were a part of his expert team since the only choices he saw for his project were a white pebble lawn, artificial grass or a lush, green lawn of real grass.
$\"Portland$ It's unfortunate as well that The Journal, arguably the country's business newspaper of record, ignores the bright green spot in the real estate market. Take for example the Portland Metropolitan area. The area's Multiple Listing Service tracks sales of certified "green" homes and found that even in this very down market, the market share of new and existing certified "green" homes is increasing even as those homes are commanding price premiums of as much as 29 percent in some counties, according to Earth Advantage.
Nationally, 93 percent of design and construction professionals continue to endorse green building despite the recession because they believe that energy costs will continue to increase in the future. This belief led 88 percent of respondents to the “Fourth Annual Green Building Study,” (PDF) conducted by Allen Matkins, Constructive Technologies Group (CTG) and the Green Building Insider, to say they are more likely to include energy saving or sustainable elements in their future construction projects. That is a 14 percent increase compared to 2008.
One might think that the Journal, a bastion of conservative business thinking, might see the business opportunity in all of this and stop lambasting sustainable building techniques via big name authors who set the bar for sustainability ridiculously low and still fail to achieve the goal.
I prefer a more pragmatic definition of green. I think of it as living the life you want, with as much Earth-wise efficiency as your time and budget reasonably allow.
But I guess a fear of change and a mis-understanding of the value in long-term sustainable thinking still rule the day at the Journal and in the world of "Dilbert." Maybe it's time for Adams to leave the safety of thinking inside the cubicle once and for all. Then he might find that his self-professed love for the Earth can be easily melded with a comfortable, sustainable life that actually costs less than the one he tried to leave behind when building his new "green" home.
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Where is the future?
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I turned 40 last week. As friends were asking, "How does it feel?" I was reminded of a drawing I did when I was ten years old. The year was 1980 and I was living in a dense urban block of Philadelphia. I had already been obsessed with Architecture since I was eight, but now at 10 I had asked my parents for some real drawing tools, and they obliged with a set of pens, pencils and paper. I spent hours dreaming up a future of curvy, organic buildings that defied gravity. Ink smudges covered my fingers from sketching visions of the future.

My mother was forty when I was ten, and I clearly remember thinking how I would turn 40 in the oh-so-distant year 2010. What kind of buildings would we be building in 2010? Surely the world would be unrecognizable. The boxy, lifeless and grey blocks of my neighborhood would be replaced with things I couldn't even imagine.

Little did I know that we would still be building with skinny sticks of wood, held together by nails and with punched openings for windows. My younger self never would believe how I now spend my time having to convince clients to not put toxic materials in their home or fighting to get a building inspector to approve the use of recycled water.

Would my 10 year old self be disappointed in how ordinary and un-revolutionary the majority of todays' buildings really are? Where is the future we expected?

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In the 1985 hit film, Back to the Future, the character Marty McFly travels back in time thirty years to find striking differences in fashion, automobiles and music. The buildings, however, were relatively unchanged. If Marty were to go back in time today, he would return to 1980. He would be confused by our skinny ties, long cars and the sounds of Devo, but the buildings would go by unnoticed.

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In the sequel, Marty travels ahead 30 years to 2015 to a world full of imagination. The future they present is exciting and very different from the present. But as intriguing as some of their predictions, they clearly overestimated certain developments.

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Is it safe to expect the next five years will bring us hoverboards, self-drying jackets or Mr. Fusion? Not likely. But you aren't expecting those things. However, the buildings they showed (which don't seem so far fetched) are out of reach to us. What slows the innovation in our built environment?

In order to move forward, we must embrace our own long term economic success. We need to rebuild our aging infrastructure, update those outdated systems and stop clinging to a romantic vision of old Architecture that embodies wasted resources, energy inefficiency and poor quality environments. Let's rebuild our buildings and save ourselves in the process.

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And this is the reason I am so excited about the upcoming West Coast Green Conference. Of the 40 or so conferences I attend each year, it is my favorite if only because of their focus on innovation. (Disclosure: I am on the Advisory Board). Hundreds of the top thinkers in architecture, planning and sustainability join together for three days to share ideas and develop solutions on how to design our future. You can hear more of my thoughts on this here.

Incidentally, the entire Back to the Future Trilogy is available in a special 25th Anniversary Edition on Blu-Ray on October 26th.

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MORE INFORMATION:
West Coast Green Conference
September 30 - October 1, 2010
http://www.westcoastgreen.com

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—Eric Corey Freed is an architect and author of four books, including Green$ense for the Home.
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Looking at alternatives after the PACE setback
'); document.write('posted on August 23, 2010 11:28:28 am
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Aaron Berg

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) recently derailed one of the most popular and important tools for financing energy efficiency and clean-energy job creation. The tool, called Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE), had attracted interest from communities across the country and millions of dollars in federal funding. Now, PACE programs for residential homes are all on hold, or canceled, while states and municipalities consider different strategies.
FHA, however, had legitimate reasons for stopping PACE, as PACE would have created tax liens on private property senior to the existing mortgage instruments that it insures. This would have subordinated the FHA’s senior position behind that of new investors thus increasing the perceived risk of the transaction through a diminished collateral position for the primary mortgage holder. The benefit of PACE is the proposition of a repayment mechanism for clean-energy financing focused on the foreclosure rights and liquidated value of the entire underlying real-estate asset perfected by the tax-lien (super-lien) it creates. This collateral-based approach is commonly recognized by bond markets as “safe” and could potentially provide the basis for raising significant capital from public-bond investors. But the mortgage industry’s current problems highlight the limitations of this strategy.

The U.S. economy has experienced tremendous downward pressure on real-estate asset values, exacerbating the distress of the mortgage industry and the financial sector that floated the bubble. Millions of mortgage loans are currently held in securities that have questionable asset/collateral value securing them. Roughly one quarter of U.S. mortgages are underwater and some homeowners are choosing to walk away from their mortgages because their houses are no longer worth what they owe or what they originally paid. PACE financing instruments could have inadvertently marginalized and deteriorated the collateral value available to mortgage holders on existing loans. This unintended consequence of PACE financing has some real and perceived negative consequences for a fragile mortgage industry whose recent collapse nearly sunk our global economy. In this context, it’s no surprise the FHA decided to step in.

So where does this leave us? And where do we go from here? We have a depressed economy in dire need of job creation, more than 100 million homes across the country in need of energy tune ups, efficiency investment potential with real returns to investors, and millions of dollars in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy and the Obama Administration to jumpstart this multi-billion dollar industry. First, it’s critically important that we recognize the tremendous support and enthusiasm for clean-energy financing PACE recently created. Something we surely need to capture in our efforts to continue blazing ahead on the path to a more vibrant and restorative economy. Thankfully, other strategies are ready to pick up what PACE has started and deliver on the promise of financing clean-energy improvements.

One approach is to focus on the ability to predict cash flows for clean-energy loans by monitoring and verifying the energy savings/performance of buildings that undergo energy-efficiency upgrades. With reliable, controllable, and verifiable savings from clean-energy improvements, private capital can finance these improvements with support from public funding. McKinsey and Company has estimated the investment potential for energy efficiency in the United States at $520 billion with returns of $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years. Private capital will chase this enormous market, and build an entire industry of clean-energy jobs in the process, when investors are confident in the security of their returns with clearly documented and proven energy savings.

The U.S. Department of Energy recently awarded $450 million to 25 different cities and states to undertake innovative and collaborative approaches to financing energy efficiency. The “BetterBuildings” awards lay out a goal of leveraging private capital by ratios of at least 5:1. If successful, that will translate into approximately $2.75 billion in energy-efficiency work over the next three years, a substantial boost to this emerging industry. But even with 5:1 leverage, this is still only half of one percent of the $520 billion investment potential identified by the private sector.

Another alternative to PACE is to work with utilities like the City of Portland and State of Oregon have done with the Clean Energy Works Portland program. Portland was recently awarded a $20 million grant from DOE’s BetterBuildings program. A new non-profit company, Clean Energy Works Oregon Inc., has been created to serve as the capital aggregation and service delivery platform for roll out of energy efficiency upgrades serving a wide range of customers, communities, and buildings. As the nation’s primary energy providers, utilities have an important role to play in attracting this investment. But this role need not be extensive or cumbersome to the utility companies. By serving as a pass-through conduit for on-bill repayment, utilities can offer investors and lenders a reliable repayment mechanism with low historic default rates. Utilities already provide financial and technical incentives for clean-energy initiatives, but the simple service of on-bill repayment may offer even more support for energy investment in the long run. And it’s a logical fit; utility companies exist to deliver energy services to their customers. By directly engaging utility companies and financial institutions in a positive dialogue, energy-efficiency programs across the country can still spark the growth in clean-energy investment that PACE had promised to deliver. The result may be stronger and more financially stable for all parties involved.

At a very basic level, financing is a means to an end. If we can agree on the end goals of putting people back to work while achieving greater energy security for our nation and greater ecosystem security for our planet, there is no reason we shouldn’t be able to continually dream up innovative and effective ways to finance clean energy. PACE was one innovation. On-bill repayment is another. These tools only scratch the surface of our creative potential. The recent boom and bust of PACE doesn’t have to end in anything more than a lesson that we have a long road of innovation ahead for financing clean energy. Getting it right will require agility, patience, and collaboration.

Aaron Berg is President & Founder of Blue Tree Strategies, a Portland-based clean-energy consulting company and is currently serving as CFO of Clean Energy Works Oregon Inc.
This article was originally published on Clean Edge, August, 2010 and is used by permission.
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Modular construction doesn\'t need local manufacture
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The story I wrote today on the new relationship between Project FROG and YKK AP Americas got me thinking about the emissions associated with shipping modular building components.

Common knowledge dictates that the main advantages of modular construction is less waste associated with new construction and the ability to localize manufacture of components which reduces emissions associated with the transport of materials. But the fenestration that YKK is supplying Project FROG are all being made in Ontario, Canada by Erie Architectural Products.

Project FROG currently has projects in Connecticut, California and Hawaii.

I asked about the emissions associated with shipping products as heavy as glass windows--even ones in aluminum frames, as these are--thousands of miles across the continent and an ocean.

First, Project FROG ships building components that are panelized so they're not shipping "a lot of air," says Ash Notaney, vice president of supply chain for Project FROG. This means the company uses 25 percent of the trucks other modular companies do, he says. The company also performed "a detailed lifecycle analysis" on their designs which found that over a projected 50-year lifespan, 64 percent of emissions come from building performance and just 2 percent comes from shipping. "The tradeoff is that we want to invest in higher quality fenestration systems even if that means it has to be shipped," he says.

Project FROG says its buildings are built to perform 25 percent to 50 percent better than the requirements of California's Title 24 and that it is working on a net-zero energy building in Connecticut.
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Modular could lead commercial construction market
'); document.write('posted on August 19, 2010 11:41:07 am
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A trademark of Project FROG's energy efficient structures is an abundance of natural light.

Some building products companies are trying to reposition themselves ahead of the recovery of the commercial construction market. When that recovery comes, two companies say their new partnership makes them both well positioned to be successful in a new marketplace.
YKK AP America manufactures various building envelope components for light commercial and residential structures. An agreement to provide aluminum windows to San Francisco-based Project FROG, a startup that designs and builds panelized modular buildings for the education, healthcare and government markets.

Using factory-made windows from one supplier increases their overall efficiency, says Ash Notaney, vice president of supply chain for Project FROG.

Non-residential construction declined 14 percent between July 2009 and July 2010, but is up 5 percent in 2010, according to Reed Construction Data. "We see is this as a good time to transition the focus of our company … to reposition to what is going to be the next innovation of the built environment," says Oliver Stepe, senior vice president of YKK AP. "There's no doubt that based on social and regulatory trends, the built environment has to become more sophisticated from a product and envelope standpoint." The move to work with a modular building company is the first step toward this goal, he says. The company plans eventually to offer a suite of building-envelope products that work together as a system to increase overall building efficiency.

As a private company, YKK AP does not release revenues. It has about 800 employees and 1 million square feet of manufacturing facilities in North America, according to Stepe.

The modular space is well positioned when the commercial real estate market recovers, according to Notaney. It means building "faster and for less cost," he says. Time to completion from first contact with a customer can be as short as six months, according to Project FROG. Most of the 35,000 square feet of its completed projects are in the 5,000-to 10,000-square-foot range, though it is starting to design buildings larger than 10,000 square feet.
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Wrong time for the Oregon Sustainability Center?
'); document.write('posted on August 16, 2010 10:37:45 am
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Last week the Portland City Council voted unanimously to direct the Portland Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) and the Portland Development Commission (PDC) to initiate schematic design for the Oregon Sustainability Center, a $75.3 million mixed-use building aiming to meet the Living Building Challenge. Wasting almost no time, Portland Mercury jumped on the story asking if a Living Building is economically sustainable.
Any project in which a government is considering investing as much as $14 million is fair game for a question like this. In economic times such as these, it's even more pertinent to ask. I don't think Portland Mercury is looking at the issue deeply enough, or coming at it from the right angle.
First, Living Buildings, or something like them, have to be the future of new construction. There's no negotiating this point in my mind. We simply cannot afford to keep putting up new buildings that--no matter how efficient--add to the load on our rickety electric transmission and water delivery and treatment systems. It's not sustainable in the traditional sense of the word, let alone in the "green" sense. So while efforts to put up the first Living Buildings are going to be more expensive than buildings built to code or even to LEED Platinum standards, the long-term payoff for society that comes from learning how to do this right is going to be invaluable. Although about half of the buildings standing today will still be standing in 2035, according to a 2005 study by the Oak Ridge National Lab called "Towards a Climate-Friendly Built Environment," (pdf) "The built environment in the United States is expected to increase by an amount roughly equal to 70 percent of today’s existing building stock," that same study found (granted, this was before the real estate bubble burst, but the underlying point is still likely quite valid since population is projected to increase from 295 million in 2005 to 378 million by 2035 and 420 million by 2050).
Second, it's premature to say that living buildings are not economically sustainable. Reduced costs for energy and other resources will make Living Buildings a good investment over time. As I reported in 2009,
Although meeting the Living Building Challenge was projected to cost more than meeting Gold certification under the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) rating system, the recent study found the extra costs result in higher performance resulting in a payback period of fewer than 20 years.
The question Portland should be asking then is if now is the right time for the city to be planning to spend $14 million on such an innovative project. To answer that, I turned to Jason McLennan, CEO of Cascadia Green Building Council and International Living Building Institute. Now is the right time for Portland to do this project, he says, because it will put them in a leadership position. That, in turn, will attract new business, technology, intellectual capital and tourism dollars, according to McLennan.

"The cost of innovation is one that people always undervalue and then they wonder why their community is not competitive," he says. "People shoot themselves in the foot in lost opportunities. Then they’ll blow the money on something that might seem like an immediate need that doesn’t bring long-term benefit."
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Vegas hotels first to receive five \'keys\'
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Las Vegas' CityCenter, home of MGMRI properties ARIA and Vdara

Twelve MGM Resorts International (NYSE: MGM) properties this month received high ratings from the Green Key Global Green Key Eco-Rating Program. The resorts are the first in Nevada and Michigan to receive Green Key Ratings, which are specifically designed to recognize hotels, motels and resorts committed to improving both environmental and fiscal performance.
Hotels are awarded a one to five "key" rating based on the results of an online environmental self-assessment and onsite inspection. ARIA and Vdara at CityCenter in Las Vegas were the only MGM properties that earned "5 Keys." Both properties also received Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold Certification for sustainable design and construction from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The Green Key Eco-Rating program allows participating properties to benefit on both internal and external fronts, says Tony Pollard, president of the Canada Hotel Association and managing director for Green Key Global.
"We are positioned as a baseline product that every hotel can use to see how to improve its energy and environmental performance," Pollard says. "Hotels can use results internally to determine what they are doing wrong and where they can improve, and externally they can use it by virtue of the fact that they can market their rating to environmentally friendly travelers."
The Green Key Eco-Rating program was originally established in Canada in 1996 for the Hotel Association of Canada and currently works with approximately 1,500 properties worldwide. To date, there are 11 Canadian and three U.S. properties that have received a "5 Key" rating, according to Pollard.
In the United States, Green Key is a joint partnership between the Hotel Association of Canada and LRA Worldwide Inc. MGM Resorts International has significant holdings in gaming, hospitality and entertainment, and owns and operates 15 properties located in Nevada, Mississippi and Michigan along with 50 percent investments in four other properties in Nevada, Illinois and Macau.

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