HOW MANY GREEN BUILDING PRINCIPLES ARE THERE?

November 15th, 2009

By Carl Seville, GBA Advisor

(This column originally appeared at www.greenbuildingadvisor.com as an entry of Carl Seville’s blog, Green Building Curmudgeon. The link to this particular item is http://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/blogs/dept/green-building-curmudgeon/how-many-green-building-principles-are-there.)

Some say there are five key green building concepts, others say four, six, seven, eight, or even nine. When will we reach a consensus?

Lately I have been struggling with identifying the core concepts of green building and remodeling. For years I was comfortable with a list of four items: energy efficiency, durability, indoor environmental quality, and resource efficiency. Then I got an earful from my little unibrowed buddy, Michael Anschel, who pinpoints five core concepts: energy efficiency, water efficiency, resource efficiency, indoor environmental quality, and site and community impact. We had a spirited discussion about it, recorded for posterity, where I convinced him that he needed to include durability, based on my argument that too many professionals still have a long way to go toward making buildings durable.

Then Martin Holladay comes up with his “Green Homes Don’t Need to Be Durable” blog post, which he won’t let go of. Now I am really starting to question my own sanity and that of everyone else in the green building industry.

Let’s Try to Come Up with a Number

After a quick review of green building programs that I am familiar with, LEED for Homes has seven sections; the National Green Building Standard has six; Minnesota Green Star has five; and EarthCraft House has nine. Okay, now I am totally confused.

On top of this, I am currently working on a green building textbook with Abe Kruger, and we have come up with eight principles: energy efficiency, resource efficiency, durability, water efficiency, indoor environmental quality, community impact, homeowner education and maintenance, and sustainable site development. I realize that in the end, everyone is heading in the same direction via slightly different routes. Demand is rising, both in the industry and among consumers, for a single green standard that everyone can follow. While I can see that happening eventually, I expect that it will take a long time for all the existing programs to distill themselves down to a single, consistent standard. In the meantime, we will have to work with what we have.

(Carl Seville, owner of Seville Consulting in the Metro Atlanta area, is a green builder, educator, and consultant on sustainability to the residential construction industry. After a 25-year career in the remodeling industry, he has dedicated himself to advancing residential green building and remodeling by consulting with, speaking to, writing for, and training industry professionals, and by certifying homes under the LEED, EarthCraft, NAHB, and Energy Star programs. Seville, a green remodeling consultant from Decatur, is among a group of 15 green building industry experts serving as advisors for www.GreenBuildingAdvisor.com, a new residential green building website launched by BuildingGreen, LLC. For more information about Seville, see www.sevilleconsulting.com.)

Entry Filed under: Housing, Green building