Page 160 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

136 COSTS OF GREEN BUILDINGS

GREENING AMERICA’S SCHOOLS
In 2006, Gregory Kats released a study of the costs and benefits of greening K–12
schools. The report, “Greening America’s Schools” became one of the most important
documents to justify green buildings for a very large market segment, K–12 schools.*
In Chap. 6, we profiled the benefits of green schools outlined in that report. The report
studied 30 green school projects in 10 states, completed from 2001 through 2006, and
concluded that the average green cost premium was 1.7 percent, or about $3 per square
foot. As defined by the report, the “green premium” is the “initial extra cost to build a
green building compared to a conventional building.” Typically this cost premium is a
result of more expensive (and sustainably sourced) materials, more-efficient mechan-
ical systems, and better design, modeling, and integration, along with other high per-
formance features. Many school architects use a state or school district’s predeter-
mined budget (or historical costs) as their metric for appropriate school cost. Some
green schools have been built within the same budget as conventional schools, but
many do need to spend extra money because of various design constraints. The data
on costs as well as savings compared to a conventional design were generally supplied
by the schools’ architects.

PLATINUM PROJECT PROFILE

Sidwell Friends School
The Sidwell Friends School is a pre-K through 12th-grade Quaker independent
school in Washington, D.C. Designed by Kieran Timberlake Associates, the three-
story, 72,200-square-feet building was completed in September 2006. A con-
structed wetland treats and recycles wastewater for reuse in toilets and the cool-
ing tower. Sidwell’s green roof retains some stormwater on the roof and allows it
to transpire back into the atmosphere. An onsite central energy plant serves the
entire campus. Photovoltaic panels provide 5 percent of the building’s electrical
demand. Solar-ventilation chimneys, operable windows, and ceiling fans mini-
mize the need for mechanical cooling. †

THE DAVIS LANGDON COST STUDIES
We gave an example earlier in this chapter of the Davis Langdon project cost study.
In 2004, the firm’s first LEED cost study offered strong evidence, based on 94 dif-
ferent building projects of vastly different types, that the most important determinant
of project cost is not the level of LEED certification sought, but rather other more
conventional issues such as the building program goals, type of construction, and the
local construction economy. In this study, the authors concluded that there was

*Capital-E [online], “Greening America’s Schools, Costs and Benefits,” October 2006, www.cap-e.com/ewebeditpro/
items/O59F11233.pdf, accessed April 26, 2007.
† www.sidwell.edu/about_sfs/greenbuilding.asp; www.kierantimberlake.com/pdf_news/sidwell-friends-school.pdf;
www.aiatopten.org/hpb/overview.cfm?ProjectID=775; accessed April 22, 2008.