by aleida, on April 26th, 2010
Image courtesy of BrightTALK webinar
To mark the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, BrightTALK, the on-line webinar service, went all out with a week-long schedule packed with a total of 54 sessions. Of the eight presented on April 22, seven focused on green building. Kevin previewed the day’s line-up here. I started the day with The Economics of Green Building, presented by George Elvin, Ph.D., the Director of Green Technology Forum and an Associate Professor of Architecture at Ball State University.
The main theme of the presentation was, as he put it, “saving the planet without breaking the bank.” (Why do people insist on this ridiculous notion of “saving the planet”??) He touched upon these six major topics:
- no- to low-cost LEED credits
- tax incentives
- high ROI investments
- fist cost vs. life cycle cost
- economic benefits
- green project financing
The forty-eight minutes that Elvin had for this session prevented him from doing an in-depth look into any of these topics, yet he managed to pack in a lot of information. I’ll take a cue from him and focus only on what he presented for item number one. For it, Elvin provided some of the results of a survey from earlier this year that asked practitioners to identify what they considered the most low-cost LEED credits that they achieved in a building.
For the Sustainable Sites category, these were the results – the percentage indicates the number of practitioners who identified the credits as low-cost.
- SS P1 – Erosion Control: 95.50%
- SS P2 – Age of Building: 95.50%
- SS 3.1 – Public Transportation: 90%
- SS 3.4 – Car Pooling: 88.90%
- SS 3.2 – Bicycle Storage: 86.40%
- SS 2 – Density: 84.20%
- SS 1 – Green Site: 78.30%
Energy and Atmosphere had these results:
- EA P3 – Ozone: 91%
- EA 3.2 – Maintenance: 87.00%
- EA 3.1 – Staff Education: 85.00%
For Materials and Resources, the survey showed:
- MR 5 – Occupant Recycling: 95.70%
- MR P1.2 – Recyclables: 95.50%
- MR P1.1 – Stream Audit: 90.90%
- MR 1 – Waste Management: 86.40%
- MR 4 – Cleaning Products: 85.70%
- MR P2 – Light Bulbs: 77.30%
- MR 3 – IAQ Products: 76%
For Indoor Environmental Quality, practitioners believe these are the most low-cost points that can be earned:
- IEQ P2 – Smoke Control: 100%
- IEQ 10.3 – Cleaning Policy: 96%
- IEQ 10.1 – Entry Cleaning: 95.50%
- IEQ 10.4 – Pest Management: 89.50%
- IEQ P3 – Asbestos Removal: 86.40%
- IEQ P4 – PCB Removal: 86.40%
- IEQ 10.6 – Cleaning Equipment: 86.40%
- IEQ 3 – IAQ Management: 81.80%
- IEQ 6.1 – Controllability: 78.90%
- IEQ 8.1 – Daylighting: 78.90%
- IEQ 8.3 – Views: 78.90%
- IEQ 7.1 – Thermal Comfort: 76.20%
Also without going into any great detail, Elvin mentioned some simple strategies that can help earn a few of these credits. For the complete presentation, please click here.
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