Page 162 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

138 COSTS OF GREEN BUILDINGS

PLATINUM PROJECT PROFILE
Hawaii Gateway Energy Center, Kailua-Kona, Hawaii
Designed to house research, development, and demonstration facilities for the
Natural Energy Laboratory of Hawaii, the Hawaii Gateway Energy Center was
completed in January 2005. The 3600-square-feet facility’s total project cost
was $3.4 million.* Designed to be a thermal chimney, the building captures heat
and creates air movement using only the building’s form along with thermo-
dynamic principles. The project has a ventilation rate of 10 to 15 air changes
per hour without the use of a mechanical system. A 20-kilowatt photovoltaic
system provides all the energy needs. The building was designed to be 80 percent
more energy efficient than a comparable facility built to ASHRAE 90.1-1999
standards. †

SOFT COSTS FOR GREEN BUILDING PROJECTS
The 2004 GSA study mentioned earlier also looked at “soft costs,” costs for things
that are not part of building construction. The study estimated soft costs for addi-
tional design and documentation services ranged from about $0.40 to $0.80 per
square foot (0.2% to 0.4%) for the courthouse and $0.35 to $0.70 per square foot
(0.3% to 0.6%) for the office building modernization project. One caution: the
added percentage of total cost may be higher for smaller projects.
Therefore, each building team should look at every cost that a project would
incur, from permitting and site development to furniture and fixtures, before decid-
ing that a particular green measure is “too costly.” Integrated design requires sys-
tems thinking, to avoid the near universal tendency to look at individual cost items
in isolation, a process euphemistically called “value engineering.” Deciding which
costs are going to provide the highest value in a given situation should be a primary
task of the architect, working in concert with the client, the building owner or
developer, and the builder.
One thing is certain: there are costs associated with green building projects
that need to be taken into account, especially with those aiming at LEED certi-
fication. Many projects do not consider these costs especially onerous, but some
do. Table 7.3 shows some of the potential “soft” costs, that is, those not con-
struction related. Some of these costs should be considered essential to good
project design and execution, specifically building commissioning and energy
modeling, while others are more clearly associated with the LEED certification
effort.

*This is obviously a high-cost project owing to the many special features included.
† U.S. Green Building Council, http://leedcasestudies.usgbc.org/overview.cfm?ProjectID=592, accessed April 2008.