Green Building Fact Sheets

Green Building Costs And Benefits

City of Seattle Sustainability Information
This site addresses the reasons to build sustainably and has links to local case studies, city policy and incentives, and guides for finding recycled products and understanding financial payback of cycle costing.
http://www.seattle.gov/environment/building.htm

Portland's Office of Sustainable Development
This site is a portal for both residential and business consumers seeking sustainable information. This site also is a good location to find out about green events in the Portland area.
http://www.portlandonline.com/osd/index.cfm?c=41481

United States Green Building Council Portal
The portal provides information regarding their LEED rating systems, case studies and links to industry publications related to sustainable design and building.
www.usgbc.org

BetterBricks
To help achieve sustainable, high performance buildings, BetterBricks is dedicated to raising awareness and demand for energy efficiency by sharing information and resources with the people who design, own and operate them. This site includes articles such as "Productivity and Satisfaction: Daylight Makes the Difference" and "Benefits of High Performance Building - Charts and Graphs"
www.betterbricks.com

Education for Sustainability
www.efswest.org

Whole Building Design Guide
This site provides government and industry practitioners with one-stop access to up-to-date information on a wide range of building-related guidance, criteria and technology from a 'whole buildings' perspective. The site includes case studies as well as information on a variety of sustainable strategies.
www.wbdg.org

Portal to US Dept. of Energy's [DOE] High Performance Buildings Program
The High Performance Buildings initiative is a government research program.To achieve our goals, we use energy-efficiency and renewable energy technologies, recycled and sustainable materials, and site sensitive design to minimize the burden on the environment. All this is achieved through a process called whole-building design. This site has a number of links that support research and design of high-performance buildings -- including those that follow LEED.
www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/highperformance

National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) focus on High Performance Commercial Buildings
This site is part of the US DOE, it has links to research high-performance buildings including an overall definition, report and summary of related costs and benefits.
http://www.nrel.gov/buildings/

Case Studies of Sustainable Projects:

Building Green: High Performance Buildings Case Studies
The High Performance Buildings Database describes buildings, interiors, and whole neighborhoods. To find projects of interest, use any of the search options provided. Instructions for each section of the "Detailed search" screen are included within the site. NOTE: Visitors to this site are able to list all projects, but must be a member to view project info.
www.buildinggreen.com/hpb

US DOE Case Studies
Includes a sampling of case studies in federal government as well as a few from industry. Some of the following documents are available as Adobe Acrobat PDFs.
www.eere.energy.gov/femp/technologies/sustainable_casestudies.cfm

Green Buildings Success Stories
Various categories of 'green building' / smart growth are listed along with summaries and links to specific projects. The focus is on energy smart communities or smart growth.
http://www.smartcommunities.ncat.org/buildings/gbintro.shtml

RMI's Green Development Case Studies
A few of Rocky Mountain Institute's favorite projects. This site summarizes each project along with cost and return information. They also offer a CD with many more projects for purchase.
www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid199.php

Washington Sustainable Schools (WSS)
The Washington Sustainable Schools (WSS) program has a site with its sustainable rating system (protocol) and a few pilot examples.
www.k12.wa.us/SchFacilities/SustainableSchools.aspx

Seattle-area Sustainable Building Projects
Seattle as of early 2005 has sixteen City-owned projects participating in the LEED program, representing 2.75 million square feet of space, not to mention a strong commitment to the Sustainable Building Policy and environmental stewardship. Links to all the buildings can be found at this site. In addition, you may use other links on the site to see more about Seattle's program and tools to expedite debelopment using LEED.
http://www.ci.seattle.wa.us/dpd/GreenBuilding/

Built Green Homes Regional Case Studies
Built Green homes and communities are unique, with features chosen from hundreds of items on the Built Green checklists. Every Built Green home also meets strict state and local codes for water use efficiency, stormwater, energy and ventilation. Case studies of actual certified homes and communities are presented on this page to provide a glimpse into the wide variety of sustainable possibilities that you can discuss with your builder, remodeler or designer.
www.builtgreen.net/studies.html

Reports, Articles and Research on Sustainable Design and Building:

Progress Report on Sustainability
This comprehensive report by Building Design and Construction Magazine dated November 2004 gives thorough analysis of the state of sustainable design in the USA, provides information on the new LEED products and offers an "action plan" to advance green building.
www.bdcmag.com/newstrends/bdc04White_paper.pdf

Building Momentum -National Trends and Prospects for High-Performance Green Buildings
Building Momentum is a report based on an April 2002 roundtable convened by the U.S. Senate Public Works and Environment Committee in conjunction with the U.S. Green Building Council. This report highlights components of green building- environmental, economic, health, and productivity. The result--a comprehensive document that fully examines the path of green building, the opportunities, and the future direction.

GSA Cost Study
This study addresses the question of "How much does LEED cost?" through extensive cost data from throughout the USA
www.wbdg.org/references/ccbdoc.php?i=280&r=1

The Davis Langdon Cost Study
Using data from cost models across the USA, the cost estimator Davis Langdon provides hard cost data about LEED Buildings and how they compare with the cost of conventional buildings.
Click Here

Environmental Benefits Of Smart Growth
Environmental benefits of an environmentally friendly approach are summarized by the EPA at this site.
www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/topics/eb.htm

The Top 20 No or Low-Cost Green Building Strategies
www.globalgreen.org/programs/20ways.html

Building Green on a Budget
This article addresses how to do green building with very limited budgets. See also the links at the bottom of this article to Low-Cost Green Design and Construction Practices and to Financing Green Projects and Integrated Design (some links require a subscription to BuildingGreen.com)
www.buildinggreen.com/auth/article.cfm?fileName=080501a.xml

Daylighting and the Impact on Human Performance
As of October 2003, the Heschong Mahone Group has completed a second suite of major human performance studies on behalf of the California Energy Commission's Public Interest Energy Research (PIER) program. Access the studies and summaries at this site.
www.h-m-g.com/Projects/daylighting/projects-PIER.htm

Center for the Built Environment
A variety of publications are readily available on specific areas of green buildings systems designs, such as Envelope, HVAC Systems and IEQ.
http://www.cbe.berkeley.edu/

Building Green: Buyers Show Interest, But Are They Willing to Pay?
www.realtor.org/SG3.nsf/Pages/winter04buyers?OpenDocument

"High-Performance Commercial Building Systems"
This site contains the High Performing Commercial Building Systems report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
www.library.lbl.gov/lbnl

Making Sustainable Material Choices: A Guide to Decision-making Tools
Written by the Athena Sustainable Materials Institute, this paper outlines Tools available when making Sustainable Material Choices and helps explain the concept of life cycle costing.
www.athenasmi.ca/papers/down_papers/Trusty_Toolkit%20paper.pdf

Sustainability and the Bottom Line
Links to Washington State companies and their corporate sustainability policies and how sustainability affects business operations and the bottom line.
depts.washington.edu/poeweb/resources/suscorp.html

2006-2007 EDES Report
The Ecological Design Education Survey (EDES) is a multi-campus student assessment of core ecological design disciplines at West Coast institutions of higher education. The EDES Report summarizes student perceptions of educational offerings in ecological design based on over 200 student respondents from 35 programs in architecture, landscape architecture, planning and related disciplines.
Click Here to Download the full report

Database of Sustainable Buildings:

U.S. Department of Energy's High Performance Buildings Database
The High Performance Buildings Database seeks to improve building performance measuring methods by collecting data on various factors that affect a building's performance, such as energy, materials, and land use. The Database includes information on the energy use, environmental performance, design process, finances [optional], and other aspects of each project. Able to search and view info in the database
http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/database/

Sustainable Design On-line Tools:

Energy Modeling Software
The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's The Building Technologies Department website that includes links to Energy Modeling Software.
eetd.lbl.gov/BT.html

Building Facade Performance
This site is the Massachusetts Insitute of Technology's interactive online tool for assessing the Performance of Building Facades.
designadvisor.mit.edu/design/

For comments, suggestions, and additions please contact: DavidW@Mithun.com