Pros And Cons Of A Green Building

The mission statement for EcoLiving is “To provide cost-effective, quality, and modern design and construction services while promoting greener living. Striving to advise and help our clients reduce their carbon footprint, along with our own, for the well being of our future generations.”

According to the author of “Taking the Lead” Felice Silverman, “the introduction of LEED v4 represents the next step in the evolution of sustainable design, but it’s interesting to note that as we learn more about creating green spaces, new concerns continue appear”. The example she gives deals with encouraging people as designers to see products earn third-party certifications, and designers should remember to look at more than just the single-attribute benefits of products. Designers need to be able to arm themselves with the best information on sustainability there is, and continue to review process, systems and products that could potentially cause harm to the environment and the people

In recent years, Florida International University has been known to advocate and implement environmentally efficient solutions throughout its numerous campuses. The original home of FIU, the Modesto A. Maidique Campus was initially opened in 1969 with only a few buildings. As was typical of the time, most of the construction and systems in place were not environmentally conscious. Over the years, many buildings were added, and when it came time to create a new academic research building in February 2013, one of the goals was to try and obtain LEED Gold certification from the US Green Building Council by implementing a multitude of environmentally-responsible features.

In order to create an improved environment in Newington, numerous plans have been established. For example In 1997 when construction began to take place for the housing of the athletes, an environmentally friendly process was crucial to the owners. “Environmental sustainability was heavily pushed by the Olympic committee, and every home came with solar panels and water recycling facilities, features that still exist. When it was built, the suburb was the largest solar-powered suburb in the world.” (Property Observer, 2012)

Changing the way energy in buildings is monitored, controlled and consumed can bring down CO2 emissions and reduce costs (Faucheux & Nicolaï, 2011) .

The city’s top three energy goals include increasing overall city energy efficiency by 5%, city building energy efficiency by 10%, and the renewable energy usage by 20 megawatts (City of Chicago, 2015a). Further, since 71% of carbon emissions come from the energy used by buildings in the city (City of Chicago, 2015a), it is unsurprising that government has taken notice. As stated by the City of Chicago (2015a), a goal has been set to increase renewable energy use 25% by the year 2026. Reductions in carbon emissions are not only beneficial in terms of energy efficiency, but they also reduce harm to the environment that can lead to climate change (City of Chicago, 2015a). It is also important to note that increasing energy efficiency can include building new, costly infrastructure that will pay off long-term, or can be as easy as replacing all street lights with energy efficient bulbs. In fact, updating street light energy efficiency is such a simple and cost-effective energy usage reduction tactic, it used in many of the cities we have studied this semester, such as Portland (Bureau of Planning and Sustainability, 2011). It is evident that the City of Chicago (2015a) believes that no sustainable effort is insignificant.

German policy encourages building structures that are both efficient and that often produce their own energy, by allowing the government to directly pay property owners a fair market value for any renewable energy produced, versus Iowa’s standard of low-rate utility payouts (AIA) (Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency). This is but one example of the differences in policy that I plan to investigate in my research.

There are several ecological and environmental benefits of green roofs which have consequentially brought in increasing interests in this technology. A green roof, as a “carpeting” of plants on the roof of buildings, offers many benefits in addition to enhancing its aesthetic value. Primarily, green roofs have the ability to delay the storm runoff peak occurrence, thus reducing the peak flow rate and mitigating flood risks. Another benefit is its thermal insulation potential that reduces the urban heat island effect. They also help with pollution abatement, carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and general improvement of life quality in urban ecosystems (Xiaosheng et al. 2014).

In the book Building Green Skyscrapers by Mary Reid, the solution that would be more effective to solve the problems that skyscrapers create is the Hearst Tower in New York City because this tower saves water and steel. First, the Hearst Tower saves water and also reuses it at the same time. It is used as a cooling system and for watering the plants. In the text, it states “The waterfall cools and adds moisture and freshness to the dry indoor air. The water comes from rainwater that the Hearst Tower collects on the roof” (Reid 20). This proves that this building is very eco-friendly and that it can help people save water. Next, the Hearst Tower saves steel, because they used the steel that they recycled to build the buildings. In the text,

The Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability (CIRS) is designed to be the greenest building in North America and its continual development in sustainable practices has allowed the building to be an internationally recognized leader. Thus, it is certified LEED Platinum. The CIRS has been a UBC project since 1999 – as it went through several iterations, location, inhabitants and owners over the period of time. Simultaneously, significant advancements were made in sustainable technology, public awareness and green building policies. Therefore, the design

According to the article, the single largest chunk of energy consumption is in the heating and cooling of buildings. This amounts to 31% of total final energy consumption. It mentions a man named “Mr. Liebreich” who had difficulty findings builders who were skilled in energy savings techniques. He had to follow them around to ensure they were properly taping the insulating boards and follow other energy saving techniques.

Green buildings could become one of the main factors to preserve our rapidly decaying environment. There is no easy way to define a green building, but a green building is essentially a structure that amplifies the positives and mitigates the negatives throughout the entire life cycle of the building (Kriss, 2014). There are many definitions for a green building, but all of them include the planning, designing, constructing, and operating of the building while taking into huge considerations of the energy use, water use, indoor air environment, materials used and the effect it has on the site the green building is being built on. The first green buildings dates back to as far as the 1970’s, when solar panels went from experiments to reality. Green buildings were not as popular as they are today due to their extremely high pricing. With technology rapidly growing, solar panels are becoming cheaper and cheaper, making the transition to creating green buildings more affordable. This is the primary reason for the increased growth of green buildings today. A modern company that is paving the way to the growth of green buildings named LEED, Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, focuses primarily on new and effective ideas for environmentally friendly buildings projects. With more than 60,000 commercial projects worldwide and 1.7 million square feet being certified every day, LEED is one of the leading groups for promoting green buildings. LEED has popularized the entire

There have been many adverse changes to the global environment, and the life around it is being threatened by Global warming. Green Technology can help prevent global disaster and improve the ways we produce organic material to recycle cleaner material for a better world. Without the use of green cleaner technology, there have been changes to the world such as global warming, and its harder to prevent that if the cost of green technology is high making it harder for people and business to obtain green technology. There are also people that worried that Green technology is not as efficient and are uncertain about performance.

A roof coating provides a monolithic, fully adhered, fluid applied roofing membrane with flexible properties that allows it to expand and contract with the temperature without incurring damage. It can be applied over any commercial roof substrate, curing to form a seamless 100% acrylic elastomeric membrane engineered to seal the entire roof, prolonging the roof life. The benefits of a “cool roof” elastomeric roof coating are tremendous for both your building and its commercial roofing in Fort Worth. In the following, we look at some of those benefits.

The human people population is constantly growing and the demand for natural resources thus grows with it. Food is a limited resource which is essential for survival, currently some parts of the world are under food shortage due to famines, draught war and poor agricultural skills. Throughout history we depended on agriculture for the production of food. Agriculture got a burst in the 1950s during the green revolution were lots of chemical for pest, weeds control were discovered. The green revolution did not largely benefited developing countries due to high priced chemicals, most countries resulted to deforestation to clear land for farming Agricultural skills alone are not enough to support the human people population, it is predicted that by 2050 the would not be enough land for farming to feed the population. The green revolution caused a lot of people due to the improper use of chemical and their