Greenwashing: NY Times Edition
Friday, September 4th, 2009In an ideal world, all buildings would be zero-energy. They would have garden rooftops to clean rainwater and cool the city in which they are built. Every lightbulb in the building would come with a lifetime warranty, each plank of wood used, ounce of concrete poured, metal metallurgized (probably not a real word) would have come from someplace else, some other less efficient building, torn down (sustainably) to provide parts for a better, cleaner, greener building.
In a less ideal world, the building would still exist. It would have CFLs, a green air conditioning system, no-formaldehyde wood components, working windows. Some of the materials would be recycled, but some would not. The developer might have purchased some carbon offset credits to adjust for this, but probably not. Still, there would be recycling/composting facilities and solar panels on the roof to offset the impact on the fossil fuel-run energy grid.
In our world, there are still forests which aren’t sustainably run, pH-destroying nitrogenous fertilizers, formaldehyde in our processes, high-VOC stains and paints being used, and buildings which, although there might be a wealth of CFLs and LEDS, aren’t using any solar or wind power, let alone a green garden on the roof.
But that’s why we’ve got green building programs, I hear you say. Or, do we? The New York Times is reporting this week that some buildings certified by the USGBC aren’t meeting the program’s standards once certified and in use. The USGBC doesn’t deny it, either.
The council’s own research suggests that a quarter of the new buildings that have been certified do not save as much energy as their designs predicted and that most do not track energy consumption once in use. And the program has been under attack from architects, engineers and energy experts who argue that because building performance is not tracked, the certification may be falling short in reducing emissions tied to global warming.
Yikes.
The tack most of us in the green journalism community have taken on the subject is to say that if there weren’t organizations like the USGBC making their certifications desirable for tax credits and energy savings audits, the building community at large might have had less pressure from the green movement as a whole. Basically, any movement toward sustainability is better than none at all. Still, it makes this reporter wonder why a developer would bother going through the paperwork, the energy audits, and the bureaucracy of the process to attain LEED certification in the first place if the building’s overall performance wasn’t going to be tracked, monitored and, in some way, monetized. Theoretically, it’s just as much as savings for them in the long run as it potentially is for the environment.
Let me know what you think! Leave your comments.
standing in Greensburg but the grain elevator, the New York Times reported on May 7, 2007 that the town of approximately 1,500 would have to be completely rebuilt.