Page 67 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

44 GREEN BUILDINGS TODAY

Americans to reduce their “ecological footprint.”* Green buildings are an important
component in the effort to bring carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels, as required
by the Kyoto Protocol, so that we can begin to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations
in the atmosphere at levels no more than 20 percent above today’s. Recent studies by
the international consulting firm McKinsey indicate that buildings can provide up to
25 percent of the required carbon emission reductions and at costs that can be easily
recovered over the life of the building. †

Barriers to Green Building Growth

There remain barriers to the widespread adoption of green building techniques, tech-
nologies, and systems, some of them related to real-life experience and the rest to a
lingering perception in the building industry that green buildings add extra costs.
Senior executives representing architectural and engineering firms, consultants, devel-
opers, building owners, corporate owner-occupants, and educational institutions have
positive attitudes about the benefits and costs of green construction, according to the
2005 Green Building Market Barometer, a survey conducted by Turner Construction
‡
Company. For example, 57 percent of the 665 executives surveyed said their compa-
nies are involved with green buildings; 83 percent said their green building workload
had increased since 2002; and 87 percent said they expected green building activity to
continue. However, despite an overwhelming sense that green buildings provided
considerable benefits, these same executives thought that green buildings cost 13 to
18 percent more than standard buildings!
In a 2007 survey by Building Design & Construction magazine, 41 percent of con-
struction industry participants surveyed said that green buildings added 10 percent or
more to cost of buildings, even while the clear evidence is that cost increases are less
§
than 10 percent! I address the cost issue in Chap. 7 but one should never forget that
all building decisions are fundamentally economic ones and that the added costs of
high-performance buildings will continue to be an issue, until project teams figure out
how to design such projects consistently with no cost increase.

*See www.footprintnetwork.org, for a fuller explanation of the term, ecological footprint, accessed July 31, 2008.
† "A Cost Curve for Greenhouse Gas Reduction," McKinsey Quarterly, February 2007, www.mckinseyquar-
terly.com/Energy_Resources_Materials/A_cost_curve_for_greenhouse_gas_reduction_1911, accessed June 30,
2008.
‡ Turner Construction Company [online], www.turnerconstruction.com/greensurvey 05.pdf, accessed March 6,
2007.
§ Building Design & Construction magazine, 2007 Green Building White Paper, November 2007, at page 8.
Available at www.bdcmag.com, accessed July 31, 2008.