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Greening Existing Buildings

Greening existing buildings is the next big green building trend.

If we are ever to meet our carbon reduction goals, we have to dramatically improve the existing building stock. Jerry's new book, "Greening Existing Buildings" (McGraw-Hill, 2009) recaps how to work a project through the LEED for Existing Buildings Operations & Maintenance (LEED-EBOM) rating system.

LEED-EBOM has been the fastest growing LEED rating system this year.

"Greening Existing Buildings" has already been named one of top 10 architecture books of 2009 in a national newsletter. You can find out why thousands of buildings are now pursuing this LEED rating by ordering this book now or by downloading free chapters.

In Greening Existing Buildings, Jerry tackles the question of the day: how to upgrade the performance of the large stock of existing buildings, to meet the latest green building standards. This authoritative book analyzes all of the LEED for Existing Buildings Platinum projects, features more than 25 interviews with leading practitioners, more than 20 specific building upgrade case studies and numerous tables, charts and illustrations. It's truly a "how to" book for greening anyone's building. The book will be available in October 2009.

Jerry Yudelson is a professional engineer with an MBA. He has trained 3,500 people in the LEED green building rating system, and has chaired Greenbuild, the world's largest green building conference, for the past five years. The founder of a green building consulting firm, he is the author of three books on green building marketing and an advisor to manufacturers, venture capital firms, design firms and developers.

Look Inside This Book:

Chapter 3: Markets for Greening Existing Buildings (PDF 300KB)

Chapter 10: LEED Certification Challenges and Approaches (PDF 27MB)

Greening Existing Buildings

Greening existing buildings is the next big green building trend.

If we are ever to meet our carbon reduction goals, we have to dramatically improve the existing building stock. Jerry's new book, "Greening Existing Buildings" (McGraw-Hill, 2009) recaps how to work a project through the LEED for Existing Buildings Operations & Maintenance (LEED-EBOM) rating system.

LEED-EBOM has been the fastest growing LEED rating system this year.

"Greening Existing Buildings" has already been named one of top 10 architecture books of 2009 in a national newsletter. You can find out why thousands of buildings are now pursuing this LEED rating by ordering this book now or by downloading free chapters.

In Greening Existing Buildings, Jerry tackles the question of the day: how to upgrade the performance of the large stock of existing buildings, to meet the latest green building standards. This authoritative book analyzes all of the LEED for Existing Buildings Platinum projects, features more than 25 interviews with leading practitioners, more than 20 specific building upgrade case studies and numerous tables, charts and illustrations. It's truly a "how to" book for greening anyone's building. The book will be available in October 2009.

Jerry Yudelson is a professional engineer with an MBA. He has trained 3,500 people in the LEED green building rating system, and has chaired Greenbuild, the world's largest green building conference, for the past five years. The founder of a green building consulting firm, he is the author of three books on green building marketing and an advisor to manufacturers, venture capital firms, design firms and developers.

Look Inside This Book:

Chapter 3: Markets for Greening Existing Buildings (PDF 300KB)

Chapter 10: LEED Certification Challenges and Approaches (PDF 27MB)

Deborah Fleischer, founder and president of Green Impact, works with mid-sized companies to launch green initiatives . In a recent entrepreneur's coaching event, she observed three key challenges common to many of the companies she spoke with.

1. Lifecycle assessment (LCA): LCA is an approach that considers the cradle-to-grave lifecycle chain involved in producing, using and disposing of a product or service. It forces you to consider materials use, energy consumption and related greenhouse-gas emissions of your product, packaging and transportation decisions.

While larger corporations might have the resources to tackle LCA head on, across the board, the start-ups were struggling with easily accessing good data to help them estimate the key impacts associated with their entire value chain.

A few LCA resources for start-ups to consider include Sustainable Minds, Earthster and EIO-LCA.

2. Packaging: Many of these clean tech products require packaging and pushing for recycled content and avoiding plastic is a challenge for a CEO with twenty other competing priorities.

The Sustainable Packaging Coalition is a great resource on this issue.

3. End of life: Thinking about what happens to these new "clean" products at end of life is challenging. How do you create incentives to get consumers to recycle or return a product? One of the start-ups was considering a rebate program and another planning on using a mailer to make it easy to return the product at the end of its life.

Read more at Matter Networks

Deborah Fleischer, founder and president of Green Impact, works with mid-sized companies to launch green initiatives that encourage innovation and grow market share.

Independent Certifiers: 
third party certifiers with a stake in ensuring the transparency and credibility represent the future of ecolabeling.

• Underwriters Laboratories, the product safety giants who has announced a new claims certification and standards setting service (www.ulenvironment.com)
• GreenGuard, the indoor air quality certifiers (www.greenguard.org/)  GREENGUARD Environmental Institute governs the GREENGUARD Certification Program
• Forest Stewardship Council "FSC certified" wood-based products ( www.fscus.org/news/index.php?article=506)
• USGBC, with green building standards and professional certifiers (www.usgbc.org)
• National Association of Home Builders  green building standards (www.nahbrc.org/greenguidelines/).
  
  Read more: http://www.thedailygreen.com/living-green/definitions/green-home-labels#ixzz0O6P982Sc
  
   

Government Certifiers
The Federal Government fills gaps not being filled by NGOs or the private sector to label critical industries such as organic food, energy and water-using products, and transportation.

U.S. EPA,  creators of 

• Energy Star label for energy efficiency appliances, electronics, lighting, office equipment, heating and cooling, and even houses (www.energystar.gov/)
• Design for Environment label for green chemistry (used in many cleaning products)
• Smart Way label for transportation
• Water Sense, for water-using products (www.epa.gov/watersense/index.htm)

U.S. Dept. of Agriculture  (USDA)

• Organic (Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) - National Organic Program (NOP) home page: http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/)

U.S. Dept. of Energy (DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy)

• Energy Star for energy efficiency
• 
  

The Public

• "trusted friends"
• "informed peers"

"The increased transparency that consumers are demanding these days - evidenced in ingredient disclosure, and access to the very farmers growing one's potatoes--will only fuel this trend. In the end, the power may rest with the people," says J. Ottman, Ottman Consulting.

Laboratory accreditation or certification

But certification goes beyond products.  It also affects the laboratories that evaluate products, chemicals, etc. 

The EPA also certifies laboratories through The NELAC Institute (TNI - National Environmental Laboratory Accreditation Conference). The purpose of the organization is to foster the generation of environmental data of known and documented quality through an open, inclusive, and transparent process that is responsive to the needs of the community.    NELAC Institute homepage and standards from the following (http://www.nelac-institute.org/)

The Drinking Water Laboratory Certification Program, (http://www.epa.gov/safewater/labcert/index.html)

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST): The National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP),   http://ts.nist.gov/ts/htdocs/210/214/214.htm  

Other laboratory accreditation programs are operated by:

American Association of Laboratory Accreditation   
http://www.a2la.org/

AOAC International
http://www.aoac.org