Bamboo buyer beware, says Kelly LaPlante.
"This is one of the biggest areas for greenwashing," she told me during a tour of a suite she redesigned on behalf of Lexus at San Francisco's Fairmont Hotel. (As part of a marketing campaign, Lexus is sprucing up hotel suites in San Francisco and Washington, D.C, The Fairmont one costs $869 a night, but you get to use a Lexus hybrid V8 while you're there.)
A coffee table from Lexus
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)A lot of companies offer bamboo flooring and panel so they can sell a green product, but many of them also use toxic adhesives and other chemicals that take away the advantages of using bamboo. Bamboo grows fast and needs little fertilizer, making it a relatively green building product.
Some also grow it in distant places and truck it in, eliminating further environmental advantages. You've got to dig into the suppliers to figure out if you're buying green. Later this year, she will set up a site that rates various building suppliers on how green they really are. It should be good reading.
Other remodeling tips from LaPlante:
• Recycle as much as possible. She recently remodeled three cottages in Venice, Calif. They reused drywall and so much material that they didn't even need a dumpster out front. The less stuff that ends up in the land fill, the better.
"When you demolish something, are you demolishing or carefully removing," she said.
That footstool/table you see in the picture is an example of recycling. It's made out of leather found in old Lexuses.
• Green is not necessarily a statement. You can consciously pick green materials, but it doesn't have to be a theme. In fact, self-conscious green will likely look dated in the future.
"We try to make things that don't look like green design," she said.
Making buildings greener is key to fighting climate change, Clinton told a packed audience.
(Credit: Gregory Wenzel)CHICAGO--Fighting climate change requires making the nation's homes, offices, and schools healthier and more energy efficient, former president Bill Clinton told thousands attending the Greenbuild conference on Wednesday. Sweeping efforts to reduce the carbon footprints of buildings, which emit three-quarters of most cities' greenhouse gases, can measurably benefit the environment, he said.
"The sale's been made," Clinton said. "Otherwise Al Gore wouldn't have gotten the Nobel Prize. Now what we have to do is...to prove that this is not a big bottle of castor oil that we're being asked to drink."
To that end, the Clinton Climate Initiative has been engaging businesses and leaders of 40 cities to plot ways to reduce carbon emissions. The project launched in August 2006 as part of the William J. Clinton Foundation.
"This is the biggest economic opportunity that our country has had to mobilize and democratize economic opportunity since World War II," he said.
In partnership with Clinton's effort, GE Real Estate announced on Wednesday that it will "green" all of its operations, which comprise $72 billion worth of assets and 385 million square feet of property in 31 countries.
Clinton also announced efforts to help make the nation's schools more sustainable by retrofitting existing buildings to use less energy and fewer hazardous materials. A quarter of American students attend school in dangerous buildings, but renovations can save money and create long-term health and educational benefits, he said.
Clinton noted the efforts of Arne Duncan, CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, and other school leaders from around the country who joined him onstage. Chicago is retrofitting all of its schools to attain certification through Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. LEED ratings are run by the nonprofit U.S. Green Building Council, which produces Greenbuild. Other speakers lauding the benefits of sustainable design noted that there are more LEED-certified prisons than schools.
Audience members swarmed Clinton as he left the stage.
(Credit: Gregory Wenzel)Clinton insisted that the United States and emerging superpowers should embrace a successor to the Kyoto Protocol by 2010. Clinton blamed the failure of Kyoto in the United States on both Congress and the Bush administration.
"If the coming giants India and China and those coming behind them--Vietnam Ukraine, all these emerging countries--if they insist on the old industrial society's patterns of energy use, it is true that the most calamitous consequences of climate change will occur," he said.
"We have no idea what we can do in terms of reducing greenhouse gases because we just got started."
A Cambridge, Mass. home is expected to get the highest rating from the Green Building Council at what appears to be market prices.
The two-unit building, which I took pictures of while it was being built, has got many of the green features you could think of: bamboo flooring, air-tight insulation, and a combined solar electric and hot water roof.
The developer and designers of the house--Sustainable Living and PowerHouse Enterprises--said on Friday that they expect the house to get Platinum certification, joining only about a dozen other residences with that rating.
And the price for this two-bedroom, two-bathroom townhouse in a desirable neighborhood? It's listing for $869,000, which appears to be in line with local prices.
Typically, green homes are custom-built for very wealthy people with a team of architects.
Getting the price to market prices is the driving idea behind PowerHouse Enterprise, according to company executives. To keep costs down, the designers use off-the-shelf components and assemble the home at the factory. It is delivered by truck and put into place by a crane.
Utility bills for the house should be 70 percent lower. Savings from space heating should be about $2,000 a year, according to PowerHouse.
For a look at PowerHouse Enterprises' PowerPod, a small modular home, see these photos and a video.
Fenway Park, the hallowed home of the Red Sox, is getting a 21st century green make-over.
The team is working with environmental advocacy group the National Resources Defense Council to spruce up the oldest baseball park in the nation, reports Architectural Record magazine, noting that the LEED green building rating system needs adjustment for sports facilities.
(Credit:
MLB.com)
One of the consideration is a solar electric array to reduce the park's energy consumption as well as better ways to manage waste, including a recycling program, according to NRDC which is consulting with other professional sports teams.
The improvements are planned for the park's centennial in 2012.
It's a water-based molecule that repels water.
That's Hycrete's business in a nutshell, according to CEO David Rosenberg. The company has a molecule--which consists of a water molecule with a long hydrocarbon attached--that links up to metallic ions in whatever it's mixed into. In the right circumstances, the molecule behaves like an oil and pushes water away.
The company currently sells its material to concrete manufacturers and contractors who use it to replace the bound-to-fail plastic membranes employed to keep water out of building foundations and freeway pilings. With Hycrete's molecules mixed into the cement, water can't get into corrode rebars or start wicking into the foundation where it can create long-term problems.
"One of the fundamental problems with concrete is that it is a hard sponge," he said. "Through capillary action it sucks water in."
So far, contractors have mixed the substance into 53 major projects, including sound barriers on a freeway in New Jersey. In the future, the company may mix its material into drywall to prevent moisture seepage. You could also mix it into roofing material and then put a green roof--rooftop lawns are getting bigger in urban environments like Tokyo--on top of your house without worrying about trickle down.
Grandpa's invention
Hycrete is something of a family affair. Rosenberg's grandfather, Michael Rhodes, actually invented the material about twelve years ago. A serial inventor, Rhodes worked on a number of projects for NASA, including a solid rocket fuel.
With the growth of the clean tech market, concrete is suddenly hot again. (It hasn't been this way since the Roman Empire.) Building contractors are vying to green up their projects by installing environmentally friendly HVAC systems and carpets. Concrete, which invariably goes into every project, is a natural extension of that.
A couple of building supply companies already sell concrete made of fly ash, a leftover byproduct of coal-burning power plants. Putting in concrete cuts down on the pollution utilities would have to otherwise dispose.
Hycrete allows contractors to not use plastic membranes, which in turn lets the builders earn points under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. The more LEED points you get, the greener your building is.
More importantly, though, it can cut down costs and risks. In the building world, no one likes the waterproofing contractor. The membranes often fail and the end result is legal disputes.
"A lot of people get into this big fingerpointing game with the waterproofing contractor," he said. By using Hycrete's additive, the membrane is eliminated. The company also promises to warrant its performance. Hycrete, in fact, sticks around for about 90 days after the building is complete to make sure things worked out properly.
Traditional waterproofing also takes time. One builder estimated that construction time was reduced two months by using the additive.
When most people think of green buildings, they imagine slick corporate headquarters or millionaires' trophy homes.
But a lot of the technologies and practices used in expensive green buildings are becoming more accessible.
Over the past several months, I've visited a number of commercial certified green buildings (like the Genyzme Center in Cambridge, Mass.) and I just returned from the Solar Decathlon, a competition to build the best home powered only by the sun. Of course, I've researched improvements on my own humble abode outside Boston.
So let's talk green. I'm hosting an Ask the Editors Live forum (click here for the link) on Thursday (tomorrow, October 18) where I'll take questions from you on green buildings and homes. Please join us!
Some topics we can discuss: solar electric and solar thermal, materials, small wind, lighting, biomass, and costs. And I'm happy to share some data and experiences from past coverage. See you tomorrow, Thursday at 11:00 Pacific!
Forget biodiesel. To put a dent in global warming, we are going to have to stop using coal, said Ed Mazria, founder of Architecture 2030 at the West Coast Green conference taking place in San Francisco this week.
"The only fossil fuel that can fuel global warming is coal. If you stop coal, you stop global warming. End of story," he said. Architecture 2030 is a non-profit that encourages builders, suppliers and architects to move toward making carbon neutral buildings by 2030.
The problem with coal is two fold: it spews a lot of carbon dioxide, among other materials into the air, and the world has a lot of it, making it tempting to use. In the U.S. alone, there are 151 coal plants in the planning and construction phase.
The emissions from a single coal-fired power plant for one month will negate the efforts Wal-Mart is putting forth to curb its emissions. Wal-Mart wants to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent in seven years, he said.
Home Depot has announced it will plant 300,000 trees to offset is carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, those 300,000 trees will have to live 100 years before they offset the fumes from ten days from a coal-fired plant, he said. Replace every incandescent bulb in America with compact fluorescents? The benefits are eradicated by the carbon dioxide from two coal-fired plants over a year, he said.
"The silver bullet is no more coal," he said.
The coal question is the big question in the green industry. Coal plants do put a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, but getting rid of them rapidly, say many, is economically unfeasible. Some have begun to advocate erecting more nuclear power plants to offset coal use. Several companies have also put forward ideas for cleaning up coal.
Of course, that won't be easy, but there are technologies and ideas that can help right now, said Mazria. Designing buildings to take advantage of passive cooling and natural lighting will cut energy use. Solar panels will reduce fossil fuels, he said. Architecture 2030's goal is to make the building sector carbon neutral by that year. According to stats from Oak Ridge National Laboratories, buildings consume approximately 48 percent of the energy in the U.S. (43 percent goes to operations, 8 percent goes to construction) and account for 43 percent of the greenhouse gases. 76 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. goes to operating buildings.
And the U.S. has conserved before. Energy use between 1973 and 1983 stayed relatively flat, according to stats from the Energy Information Agency, he said. But in that time period, 35 million new cars got on the road.
Mazria also showed off some very scary simulations of what will happen if sea levels rise to a meter or more. A lot of coastal Florida will vanish at 1 meter. Galveston, Texas goes under at 1.5 meters.
Climate change may become irreversible if the atmosphere hits 450 parts per million of carbon dioxide, he said, citing studies. Right now, the earth is at 385 parts per million and the figure is currently rising at 2.2 parts every year. Without changes, we will hit the 450 level by 2035, he asserted.
Green homes come from factories.
It sounds like a contradiction, but it isn't. By building a home in a factory, builders can cut down on the amount of wood that gets thrown out and trips back and forth to the lumberyard. Plus, building in a factory lets the contractors get tighter seals on everything, which leads to better insulation and less chance of mold getting into the walls. (The home also gets done in much less time and costs a little less, if you live in an area where construction costs are high.)
Michelle Kaufmann Designs is currently building a demonstration green home in a factory owned by another green builder, XtremeHomes. You can see the home in part of this video. In a few weeks, we will film another video when the home will be put on a foundation. The home will be on display at the West Coast Green conference staring September 20 in San Francisco.
One thing to note in the later video will be the style of the home. Many assume that a home out of a factory will be sort of dumpy, like a double-wide trailer. The homes are actually being pitched to upper and mid-range buyers and can have more design nuances than traditional subdivision homes. (Before starting her company, Kaufmann worked for architect Frank Gehry.) XtremeHomes is building a 6,000 square foot home for someone in Lake Tahoe. You can see that home going up in the video too.
The traditional housing market bubble may be bursting, but green buildings clearly have plenty of life.
In the past few weeks, we have run a handful of photo galleries and features on green buildings--one old and some not even built yet. Here's a rundown of recent coverage:
Last week, I got a tour of Genzyme Center, an award-winning green building in Cambridge, Mass., from the building's facilities manager. Here is a photo gallery, with views you won't see from most tours of the building, and a separate video.
A look inside Genzyme's green building.
(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET Networks)The builders used a lot of technology to make the building green. Heliostats on the roof follow the sun during the day to beam light through the skylight, which is then dispersed with a chandelier of reflecting tiles.
Fresh air is circulated through an automated system that uses sensors and controls. While we were standing in the atrium, I was surprised to see and hear the motor-controlled blinds shift position by themselves. That's why they call it a "smart" building!
Also in Cambridge (and also walking distance from CNET's office), I visited a solar-powered home under construction. Students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are putting the off-grid house together for the Solar Decathlon, a Department of Energy competition.
In October, contestants from 20 universities from around the world will construct their solar homes on the National Mall in Washington D.C. Here is an article on the MIT effort and a photo gallery.
Finally, I checked out a commercial modular green home being constructed in, once again, Cambridge.
The idea is to make this type of energy-efficient home--which uses solar heating and sustainable materials--more commonplace by making it competitively priced. As it's still under construction, it's not yet on the market.
Far afield in the land of Texas, here is a photo gallery of two other green buildings: Austin City Hall and the Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas, which expects to be the highest-rated green building hospital.
I heard an interesting debate the other day on the topic of cities and skyscrapers. In a nutshell, when it comes to cities and buildings, is taller greener or is smaller better? In other words, should environmentally minded people like or dislike skyscrapers?
The Taller Greeners:
• Building up, rather than out, combats urban sprawl, means more concentration of people, means better for mass transit which equals fewer cars and lower emissions.
• Building bigger means more opportunity to use technologies like distributed generation, advanced energy efficiency, lighting and monitoring, which typically are more economic in larger projects.
The Smaller Betters:
• Smaller means more sustainable buildings and lifestyle, more trees and green space.
• Smaller means more neighborhood connectivity for all of us.
• Taller often means more nonsustainable steel, and lots of AC load, which we could avoid with smaller buildings.
• Smaller means less concrete and steel, which are often associated with the increased temperatures in cities.
Perhaps some of the environmentally friendly buildings in progress in places like Dubai or New York can bridge the debate, and make skyscrapers ultra green and ultra cool.
What do you think?
In the interests of full disclosure, I am writing this blog from the second floor of a skyscraper in my office in downtown San Francisco, and because of the lack of good public transport access where I live, I have to drive in to work every day.
