Green Building Blog

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) is the organization that formulates the energy, ventilation and thermal comfort codes that become a part of the building codes of most of the states through the ICC (International Construction Council). At the ASHRAE convention in New York City in January, 2008, there were several seminars on the legal ramifications of green buildings.  In June of 2008, Lexis Nexis, the reference guide of many attorneys, published a book entitled “Current Critical Issues in Environmental Law: Green Buildings and Sustainable Development”. This book, which I co-authored with two attorneys, explained USGBC and LEED® Guidelines, mentioned various state and federal incentives for green buildings and pointed out some of the complexities for owners, architects, engineers and contractors relative to designing and constructing them.

In 2003, I attended my first GreenBuild Convention, held in the new convention center in Pittsburgh, a very Green Building. At that convention there were approximately 4,000 attendees and less than 100 exhibitors. At the 2010 convention, only 7 years later - and in those distressed economic times - there were more than 28,000 attendees and almost a thousand exhibitors.

In the last article, we mentioned that a LEED "Certified" or even a "Silver" rated building can be designed and built at minimal extra cost over a standard non-rated building.  Let’s look at how that can be accomplished.

There is a common misconception that a "Green" or LEED®-certified building has to cost considerably more than a run-of-the-mill design that just meets minimum building and energy codes.  While this was true in the early days of the US Green Building Council (USBGC) LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) Guidelines, it is no longer the case 10 years later.