New building strategies created through sustainable design By Michael Beckerman, CEO, CREtech and CREtech Climate
While many will readily cite necessity as the mother of invention, few mention that the dire circumstances in question were often not necessary themselves. Climate change, easily the greatest threat facing our planet today, is unfortunately one such instance. It is true that we have not had the technology to forecast the exact consequences of our emissions until relatively recently. However, science had progressed enough to tell us that our standard of living may not be sustainable as far back as the mid-1900s. When British Engineer Guy Callendar was the first to demonstrate that the Earth’s temperatures had risen over the preceding 50 years alongside CO2 concentrations in 1938 and was dismissed with skepticism, it marked the beginning of a trend that we are now scrambling to rectify.
One often sees the word “ambitious” used to describe the emission-reducing initiatives of locations such as New York City and California, and with good reason. We no longer have the time to experiment with unambitious strategies. Had we taken note of the facts decades ago, we may not have needed to squeeze hundreds of millions more electric vehicles onto the roads in the next eight years or require New York City to ban natural gas in all new buildings under seven stories in the next two. However, we as a global population share the blame for this reactionary approach to climate change and must similarly work together in order to make the best of the hand we have dealt ourselves.
Spurring New Strategies
Fortunately, the direness of our situation–in conjunction with unrelated factors such as the pandemic and the advent of the internet–has spurred technology to evolve quite rapidly. As one of the world’s biggest contributors to global emissions at 39 percent annually, the real estate industry has begun to make a point to use this new technology in innovative ways in an effort to lessen our carbon footprint as quickly as possible.
A significant part of this process is learning from our mistakes and identifying sustainable methods of retrofitting and performing new construction. One foundational element of this is engaging the Internet of Things (IoT) to gather analytics and actionable data more efficiently. This strategy can give project and facility managers the means to automate the dynamic readjustment of levels such as ventilation, heating and lighting in order to keep them optimal in a way that would have been impractical or virtually impossible 10 years ago.
Structural 3D printing has also recently emerged as a sustainable building method that saves time, capital and resources. By utilizing this method–particularly against the backdrop of today’s ongoing supply chain issues–the construction industry can greatly increase its efficiency through methods such as modular construction. On an environmental note, 3D printed building materials can be significantly lighter than other materials, meaning that moving these materials can require fewer trips and less burned fuel during the transportation process.
Installing green roofs and solar paneling are examples of more well-known practices that have nonetheless proven their merit over time. The number of benefits to green roofing is great, including improved air quality and the lessening of cooling and heating costs. In addition to the commonly known benefits of solar paneling, such as storing energy for the winter months and providing an alternative to electricity, the passive solar concept has been made easier through construction methods like prefabrication. By constructing buildings using modules that can be swapped out for others, new construction positions itself to make solar paneling retrofits easier to accomplish in the future–as well as any other new innovations that have yet to be discovered.
An Avenue to Untold Benefits
The full list of new construction methods that modern sustainable design has made possible is far too exhaustive to list here. It includes items such as synthetic roof underlayment, which weighs less than standard asphalt-based underlayment and is made from recycled scrap materials, and the use of haulers to achieve landfill avoidance of as high as 95 percent. From the HVAC angle, renewable energy systems such as geothermal heat pumps and evaporative air conditioners provide excellent alternatives to natural gas use and can lower a building’s operating costs as an added bonus.
The benefits to this sustainable construction are equally numerous and extend far beyond improving our global carbon footprint. Studies have shown that living in green buildings can have excellent benefits for our cognitive functions, with one study conducted in an office building showing cognitive scores rising 61 percent. Office workers have also repeatedly been proven to be more productive in sustainable buildings and a vast number of reports cite green buildings as having a positive effect on mental health. Sustainable construction is also an economic driver, providing an increase in demand for construction workers and contributing hundreds of billions of dollars in labor income to workers across the country per the U.S. Green Building Council.
While it is unfortunate that our collective backs needed to be placed against the wall in order for these innovations to take hold, our situation is admittedly better than it could have been. The good news is that despite our reactionary approach to climate change, we appear to have the tools we need in order to reverse its effects. Accomplishing this feat will require ambition and global coordination on a scale not yet seen throughout history, but the tools we now have at our disposal make it a distinct possibility.
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