Page 145 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

7

COSTS OF GREEN BUILDINGS

The key benefit of integrated design process is its ability to achieve higher-performance
results without significantly increasing overall building costs. Costs are the single most
important factor in the development and construction world. The reason is simple:
Design and construction costs are “hard” because they are real and occur in the present,
whereas benefits such as projected energy savings, water savings, and productivity gains
are “soft” because they are speculative and occur in the future. Therefore, a benefit-cost
analysis for each project is crucially important, to convince building owners, design
teams, and developers to proceed with sustainable design measures and the LEED
certification effort. This approach is addressed more fully in Chap. 8.
The biggest barrier to green buildings is the perception that they cost more. A
survey in the summer of 2007 revealed that 89 percent of respondents, comprising
experienced executives and participants in the building design and construction
industry, believed that green buildings cost more, with 41 percent believing that
they cost more than 10 percent additional.* The World Business Council for
Sustainable Development reported similar results in an international survey in the
summer of 2007. Respondents to a 1400-person global survey estimated the
additional cost of building green at 17 percent above conventional construction!
At the same time, survey respondents put greenhouse gas emissions from buildings
at 19 percent of world total, while the actual number of 40 percent is double this,
counting both residential and commercial buildings. †
These surveys reveal that even experienced construction industry participants have
false perceptions about a business they know so well. Therefore, the only thing that
will overcome this perception of higher cost is to demonstrate that the integrated
design process can deliver high-performance buildings at conventional costs. Many of
the interviews we conducted for this book verified that people who “know what they

*Building Design & Construction, 2007 Green Building White Paper, page 8, available at www.bdcnetwork.com,
accessed April 22, 2008.
†World Business Council for Sustainable Development, “Energy Efficiency in Buildings: Business Realities and
Opportunities,” August 2007, available at www.wbcsd.org/plugins/DocSearch/details.asp?type=DocDet&ObjectId=
MjU5MTE, accessed April 22, 2008.
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