The U.S. Green Building Council, started 16 years ago, has 20,200 members and more than 50,000 LEED registered and certified projects around the world (80 percent are in the US).

And the group plans to get even bigger as it turns its attention to college campuses and enlists the help of students.

The USGBC is helping universities across the country to establish sustainability courses and USGBC student organizations, and of course, to build green. The Washington-based NGO estimates that there will be 4,300 LEED projects registered (underway) and certified (completed) on college campuses at the end of 2009.

The USGBC defines a green campus as “a higher education community that is improving energy efficiency, conserving resources, and enhancing environmental quality by educating for sustainability and creating healthy living and learning environments.”

The colleges and universities that do all that will serve as examples, not only for students, but for the larger community, pushing the green envelope and raising a generation for whom green is the norm.

“We are going to develop a generation of people that just are absolutely hardwired for … sustainable living,” said S. Richard Fedrizzi, CEO and Founding Chairman of the U.S. Green Building Council, in a recent speech in Chicago to national university leaders.

Universities and students will incubate new, more conserving and sustainable ways of engineering structures and living spaces, Fedrizzi said, which will lead to more accountability and transparency in building.

“If you can take a 99 cent box of crackers that tells you how much fat, how much protein, how much carbohydrates, how much sodium is in that box, and you as a consumer have the ability to chose it based on your health, based on your values, based on a number of things or not, this is a striking contrast when you realize we’ll spend 30 or 50 million dollars on a building and prior to LEED we never had that nutrition label,” said Fedrizzi.

LEED, he explained, will be a road map. Through LEED certification, people will have precise measures of a structure’s air quality, energy use, and the quality and origins of its materials.

Helping the environment is not the only advantage, there are economic, health, and community benefits as well, Fedrizzi said. According to the USGBC, green buildings can significantly reduce energy use, carbon emissions, water use, and solid waste, with an average savings of 35-70%  in each of these areas per year.

Colleges, typically the nexus of any societal changes, will help perfect, promote and energize the green building movement.

“We (colleges and universities) may comprise only 3% of the carbon footprint, but we represent 100% of the student footprint,” said Michael M. Crow, President of Arizona State University.

• You can start a USGBC student group at your school.  With tools and resources from the USGBC you can pave the way on your campus.

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

While people scurry to devise new green components for homes, Don Blalock is in the enviable position of launching one that he’s been nursing along for the last six years.

His Aeonian brick will build houses that are significantly more energy efficient than conventional homes; help them qualify for LEED platinum certification and withstand hurricane force winds up to 240 mph. They’ll also resist heat, mold, mildew and termites, says Blalock, whose goal is to build “the most structurally sound house that’s livable (and) that will last for a very long time.”

Blalock, a onetime music teacher and 35-year veteran of the construction business, knows he sounds like someone peddling a secret sauce on an infomerical – “But wait! There’s more! We’ll throw in termite and fire protection with your durable new home!”

But he explains that he simply set out to build a better brick, one that would repel the water damage he repeatedly saw while overseeing reconstruction of houses for State Farm Insurance. Seven out of 10 homeowner claims involved water damage, from an array of sources including leaky pipes. Water damage led to mold “explosions” inside walls on receptive drywall and wood supports, compounding the damage and the indoor air quality.

Experimenting with brick, he says he developed a chemical process that tinkered with the molecular properties of clay to make it intrinsically more water resistant — creating a product able to leap over concrete block as a useful building base (and compete with sealed brick as a viable exterior).

The idea attracted enough private investment that the company broke ground on its first model home outside Charleston, S.C., on Monday. It’s expected to be done by November and will serve as a demonstration building and offices for Aeonian Brick Homes, which will sell whole-house plans that can be built with the brick.

A Charleston builder, Jessco Homes, also plans to build a house from Aeonian brick as a prototype of a net zero energy home.

“We ran across the technology a couple months back and decided we’ll build a home out of this material and couple it with some other features to try to build a zero energy home,” said Jessco CEO Jeff Stahl. The Jessco model, a one-story, will use high-efficiency heating and cooling systems and new lighting installations to cut energy use. The Aeonian brick will play a major role in reducing energy needs, acting as a heat barrier.

“In a normal stick home, you don’t get the thermal energy mass you do with this,” said Stahl, whose company is launching a green building incubator program called Eco Sustainable Systems.com. Aeonian Brick, he says, has “huge potential” to protect homeowners from escalating electrical bills — as well as hurricanes and termites.

Can Brick Be Green?

Brick has been known to last for the ages. In desert climates, ancient ruins made of bricks have largely survived. But in wet areas, fired clay bricks erode and can absorb water that can nurture mold and mildew issues in a home.

Aeonian brick homes will keep mold out, Blalock says, and be revolutionary in other ways, too, starting with how they’re built. The smooth, 8×8x4-inch bricks are made from compressed clay that’s been precision-molded and fit seamlessly together, like Legos. The bricks form the house’s exterior surface and serve as frame, insulation and drywall. Electrical wiring and plumbing are embedded during construction. The result is a nearly airtight, water-resistant structure that Blalock hopes to see embraced by builders in hot, humid and hurricane-prone areas.

The key is the material and their tight fit. “This material is so precise I can make a brick today and I can make a brick next year, both will be within 1/100 of an inch,” Blalock says.

Even though the bricks use regular clay, which takes resources from the earth, the process is greener than traditional brick production. Regular bricks must be fired at high temperatures over an extended period of time (many days) whereas Aeonian brick is molded and steam cured, replicating ancient processes and using far less electricity.

It also claims green points for removing the need for stick framing, saving trees. More green savings accrue by subtracting the drywall. The price for all this? About the same as for conventional building, Blalock estimates, because the savings in multiple materials make up for the costs of the unique new brick.

The bricks are formed like compressed earth products, but perform better because the clay is altered with a chemical that makes the clay water resistant. The catalyst is derived from oil slag, but Blalock swears it’s non-toxic (and claims competitive privilege in concealing the formula). The petroleum byproduct involved has been tested in other uses and proven to be safe, he says, noting that the Aeonian process makes use of waste material.

“This is the essence of recycling. This is recycling something you want to get rid of that the companies
are having a hard time getting rid of.”

The houses can be scored, molded and painted to blend in completely with an existing neighborhood. The paint bonds to the material, inside and out, and will not require repainting, he promises. These houses won’t look weird, Blalock says, and can be made to look “exactly” like other homes in the area. (Which may or may not be a good thing.)

Copyright © 2009 Green Right Now | Distributed by Noofangle Media

There’s a shiny green report card out in Warren County, Kentucky this month.

The county’s school district won the Alliance to Save Energy’s 2009 Andromeda Award for its programs, which include $4 million in energy savings over the last five years, a 28 percent energy use reduction, a daily curriculum that focuses on energy efficiency and Energy Star ratings on four buildings. But the star of their show undoubtedly is the new Richardsville Elementary, a Warren County School on target to become the nation’s first net zero energy public school when it opens in fall of 2010 (see photo above).

“This is a project that’s near and dear to us,” said Mark Ryles, Director of the Division of Facilities Management for the Kentucky Department of Education. “There were many hands in it. There was a very clear mission, which was to develop and design a net zero school building” and to  “enhance the educational opportunities,” he said.

“We were tickled to death that Warren County had won,” said project architect Kenny Stanfield with the firm of Sherman, Carter, Barnhart. In fact, the district beat out 15 other nominations that ranged from projects involving water heating technology to green condos to a Los Angeles Community College sustainable building effort across its nine campuses.

“Warren County has been a leader for a while, but this is really recognizing all of their efforts so that’s tremendous,” Stanfield said.

In planning the new building, engineers, school facilities management and architects had to first focus on all the areas in which energy could be saved, and then decide how to generate the rest. As a result, the elementary school will have exterior walls built of insulated concrete and Styrofoam, a geothermal HVAC and water-heating system, an air-monitoring system that regulates ventilation to the outdoors, and a north-south orientation with skylights and clerestory windows that pour daylight into classrooms, the gymnasium, the media center and the cafeteria. Overall, the building is expected to consume about 75 percent less energy than the national average for school buildings. (see interior image, right)

More than 40,000 square feet of solar panels take over from there. Mounted on the rooftop and support structures, the solar panels will generate electricity the school needs and send any extra to the grid. While there will be times when the school needs more than it generates, the two should balance on an annual basis. That’s the net-zero thesis at work.

Kentucky is clearly doing something right. They began building geothermal systems for heating and cooling their schools in 1990; other initiatives followed. As of Jan. 30, the state has a dozen Energy-Star certified K-12 schools, according to its own website. And as some newer schools began to exceed the goals set by Energy Star – and even the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEEDS platinum rating — the possibility of a net-zero school took hold.

“We believe that this was a logical step for us. It wasn’t an anomaly,” Ryles said.

The average energy nationwide for schools is about 73 kBTUs per square foot. Kentucky was building schools that were ending up in the 40s, then the 30s, Ryles said. And then a little accidental catalyst called Plano Elementary went up in Warren County.

“Plano kind of flew under everyone’s radar,” said Ryles. It was using just 28 kBTUs per square foot. “At that point if you drew a line across the chart, the next stop was net zero.”

He and engineer Ken Seibert began kicking the idea around. One day, Seibert called and said he had something to show Ryles. The state department of energy got wind of the meeting, and asked if they could bring some people along to listen, folks from state government, big universities, and energy providers. Ryles brought a couple of guests of his own – Warren and Kenton county school representatives. Before he knew it, Seibert was making his presentation to 25 or 30 folks.

“Mr. Seibert put on a show that was fabulous,” Ryles said. “He demonstrated a hypothetical way it would work, he showed us the engineering model, then showed us the business model. It was unbelievable.”

They were all in the same room. Warren and Kenton counties wanted in. Richardsville Elementary – and two other schools, Bristow in Warren County and Turkeyfoot in Kenton County – would soon be on the net zero design boards.

Turning the idea into reality faced some challenges: With school boards and cities and states and private businesses, it can be hard to get everybody to work together. There are various intersecting rules and regulations, and everyone has a territory to call their own. Negotiating new projects through all that red tape and ownership can be sticky.

The Empire State Building is getting a $500 million energy efficiency retrofit that is expected to reduce the iconic skyscraper’s energy consumption by up to 38 percent.

The project, already underway, is intended to become a model for analyzing and retrofitting existing structures for environmental sustainability. The makeover is a collaboration among a group of world-class environmental consulting, non-profit, design and construction partners, including Clinton Climate Initiative, Rocky Mountain Institute, Johnson Controls Inc. and Jones Lang LaSalle.

Building systems work is slated to be completed by the end of 2010, with final completion of tenant spaces by the end of 2013. Work that is scheduled to be completed within 18 months will result in more than 50 percent of the projected energy savings.

With an estimated project cost of $20 million, additional savings and redirection of expenditures originally planned in the building’s upgrade program, and additional alternative spending in tenant installations, the Empire State Building is projected to save $4.4 million in annual energy costs, reduce its energy consumption by close to 40%, repay its net extra cost in about three years, and cut its overall carbon output.

At the project’s conclusion, the Empire State Building is expected to gain GOLD certification for the government’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Existing Buildings.

Partners in the project are eager to create a replicable model for similar projects around the world by proving the viability of energy efficiency retrofit projects. Their goal is to dramatically increase building energy efficiency and reduce overall carbon output with “sensible payback periods and enhanced profitability.”

“Commercial and residential buildings account for the majority of the total carbon footprint of cities around the world – over 70 percent in New York City,” Anthony E. Malkin of building owner, Empire State Building Company, said in a statement. “Most new buildings are built with the environment in mind, but the real key to substantial progress is reducing existing building energy consumption and carbon footprint.”

The project partners created a repeatable process to analyze the Empire State Building and establish a full understanding of its energy use, as well as its functional efficiencies and deficiencies.  In reviewing more than 60 optional activities, the team identified eight economically viable projects, applicable to building-wide renovations, electrical and ventilation system upgrades and tenant space overhauls that would provide a significant return on investment, both environmentally and financially.

The eight projects were:

1. Window Light Retrofit: Refurbishment of approximately 6,500 thermopane glass windows, using existing glass and sashes to create triple-glazed insulated panels with new components that dramatically reduce both summer heat load and winter heat loss.

2. Radiator Insulation Retrofit: Added insulation behind radiators to reduce heat loss and more efficiently heat the building perimeter.

3. Tenant Lighting, Daylighting and Plug Upgrades: Introduction of improved lighting designs, daylighting controls, and plug load occupancy sensors in common areas and tenant spaces to reduce electricity costs and cooling loads.

4. Air Handler Replacements: Replacement of air handling units with variable frequency drive fans to allow increased energy efficiency in operation while improving comfort for individual tenants.

5. Chiller Plant Retrofit: Reuse of existing chiller shells while removing and replacing “guts” to improve chiller efficiency and controllability, including the introduction of variable frequency drives.

6. Whole-Building Control System Upgrade: Upgrade of existing building control system to optimize HVAC operation as well as provide more detailed sub-metering information.

7. Ventilation Control Upgrade: Introduction of demand control ventilation in occupied spaces to improve air quality and reduce energy required to condition outside air.

8. Tenant Energy Management Systems: Introduction of individualized, web-based power usage systems for each tenant to allow more efficient management of power usage.

Related links:

• Clinton Climate Initiative
• Johnson Controls Inc.
• Jones Lang LaSalle
• Empire State Building