In the short quarter century after the first significant efforts to apply the sustainability paradigm to the built environment in the early 1990s, the resulting sustainable construction movement has gained significant strength and momentum. In some countries—for example, the United States—there is growing evidence that this responsible and ethical approach is dominating the market for commercial and institutional buildings, including major renovations. Over 69,000 commercial building projects have been registered for third-party green building certification with the US Green Building Council (USGBC), the major American proponent of built environment sustainability, in effect declaring the project team’s intention to achieve the status of an officially recognized or certified green building. The tool the USGBC uses for this process is commonly referred to by its acronym, LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). Thus far, 27,000 commercial projects have navigated the LEED certification process successfully. Nowhere has the remarkable shift toward sustainable buildings been more evident than in American higher education. Harvard University boasts 93 buildings certified in accordance with the requirements of the USGBC, including several projects with the highest, or platinum, rating and including more than 1.9 million square feet (198,000 square meters [m2]) of labs, dormitories, libraries, classrooms, and offices. An additional 27 projects are registered and pursuing official recognition as green building projects. The sustainable construction movement is now international in scope, with almost 70 national green building councils establishing ambitious performance goals for the built environment in their countries. In addition to promoting green building, these councils develop and supervise building assessment systems that provide ratings for buildings based on a holistic evaluation of their performance against a wide array of environmental, economic, and social requirements. The outcome of applying sustainable construction approaches to creating a responsible built environment is most commonly referred to as high-performance green buildings, or simply, green buildings.
The Shifting Landscape for Green Buildings
There are many signs that the green building movement is permanently embedded as standard practice for owners, designers, and other stakeholders. Among these are four key indicators that illustrate this shift into the mainstream. First, a survey of design and construction activity by McGraw-Hill Construction (2013) found that, for the first time, the majority of firms engaged in design and construction expected that over 60 percent of their work would be in green building by 2015. South Africa, Singapore, Brazil, European countries, and the United States all report this same result: that green building not only dominates the construction marketplace but also continues to increase in market share. This same report suggests that around the world, the pace of green building is accelerating and becoming a long-term business opportunity for both designers and builders. The green building market is growing worldwide and is not isolated to one region or culture. According to McGraw-Hill Construction, architects and engineers around the world are bullish on green building. Between 2012 and 2015, the number of designers and building consultants expecting more than 60 percent of their business to be green more than tripled in South Africa; more than doubled in Germany, Norway, and Brazil; and increased between 33 percent and 68 percent in the United States, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Australia. The reasons for the rapid growth in high-performance green building activity has changed dramatically over time. In 2008, when a similar survey was conducted, most of the respondents felt that the main reason for their involvement was that they were doing the right thing, that they were simply trying to have a positive impact. Fast-forward just six years to 2014, and the reasons had changed significantly. The most cited triggers for green building around the world are client demand, market demand, lower operating costs, and branding/public relations. Green building has become simply a matter of doing good business, and has entered the mainstream in both the public and the private sectors. Although those interviewed indicated that they were still interested in doing the right thing, this reason moved from the top of the list in 2008 to number five in the six-year period between the two surveys.
A second illustration of the green building movement’s staying power occurred at the Arab world’s first Forum for Sustainable Communities and Green Building held in late 2014. Mustafa Madbouly, Egypt’s minister of housing and urban development, told the audience: “Climate change forces upon us all a serious discussion about green building and the promotion of sustainability” (Zayed 2014). According to the United Nations Human Settlement Program (UNHSP), cities in the Arab world need to introduce stronger standards for green building and promote sustainable communities if they are to have this chance of tackling climate change. The UNHSP estimates that 56 percent of the Arab world’s population already lives in cities and urban centers. This number quadrupled between 1990 and 2010 and is expected to increase another 75 percent by 2050. In short, applying sustainability principles to the built environment is essential not only for the well-being of the region’s population but also for their very survival. According to the World Bank, the unprecedented heat extremes caused by climate change could affect 70 percent to 80 percent of the land area in the Middle East and North Africa.1 Green building and climate change are now inextricably linked, and the main strategy for addressing climate change must be to change the design and operation of the built environment and infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions dramatically.
Third, in the United States, activity in sustainable construction continues to increase, some of it marking the continued evolution of thinking about how best to achieve high standards of efficiency in the built environment while at the same time promoting human health and protecting ecological systems. The state of Maryland and its largest city, Baltimore, provide a contemporary example of how strategies are being fine-tuned to embed sustainability in the built environment for the long term. In 2007, both Maryland and Baltimore, the 26th most populous city in the United States, adopted the USGBC’s LEED rating system, requiring that most new construction be LEED certified. At the time, this move was considered groundbreaking, and it paralleled efforts by many states and municipalities around the country to foster the creation of a much-improved building stock. Baltimore, along with 176 other American jurisdictions, mandated green buildings and supported their implementation with a variety of incentives, including more rapid approval times, decreased permitting fees, and, in some cases, grants and lower taxes. In 2014, in a move that is likely to become more common, both Maryland and Baltimore repealed the laws and ordinances requiring LEED rating certification and instead adopted the International Green Construction Code (IgCC) as a template for their building codes. A construction or building code such as IgCC, in contrast to a voluntary rating system such as LEED, mandates green strategies for buildings. This turn of events marks a significant change in both strategy and philosophy because it indicates a shift ....
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