Page 63 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

40 GREEN BUILDINGS TODAY

Figure 2.8 Good daylighting design provides natural light for offices without
glare and unwanted heat gain.

Looking to the Future

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ENERGY STAR program, the most
well-known to consumers, should also be used to promote energy-efficient and Zero-
Net-Energy, or carbon-neutral, commercial and institutional buildings. By 2010, we
will begin seeing buildings routinely designed to cut energy use 50 percent or more
below 2005 levels through integrated design and innovative technological approaches.
With the growing awareness of the carbon dioxide/global warming problem and the
contribution of buildings and urban settlement patterns to this observed global warm-
ing, architects and others in the design and construction industry have begun to pro-
pose positive actions. One sign of this is the position statement adopted by the
American Institute of Architects (AIA) in December 2005, calling for a minimum
50 percent reduction in building energy consumption by 2010.* In its statement, the
AIA supported “the development and use of rating systems and standards that promote
the design and construction” of more resource-efficient communities. This position
statement echoes the requirements of the “Architecture 2030 Challenge,” which seeks
to reduce building energy use by 90 percent by 2010. †

*American Institute of Architects [online], December 19, 2005 press release, viewable at www.aia.org.
†See www.architecture2030.org for regular updates on this challenge, accessed July 31, 2008.