Ecological Friendly Construction is on the Rise

Eco-friendly construction is increasing, from single-family houses and planned communities to schools, hospitals and other large built environments. The green building movement is starting to make serious progress, reports E - The Environmental Magazine in its January/February 2007 cover story.

Today, five percent of new commercial construction meets standards set by the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program (LEED), a voluntary, consensus-based standard for developing high-performance, sustainable buildings. Ten percent of new homes satisfy the federal government's Energy Star guidelines, meaning they're nearly one-third more energy-efficient than regulations require.

Still, considering that U.S. buildings put out about a third of the country's greenhouse gasses, at the rate green building is penetrating the market today it will be many years before we cut emissions by the 70 percent thought necessary to stabilize global climate.

The green building movement expands on the 1970s solar-energy craze, when drastic oil shortages spurred interest in sun-powered homes and President Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the White House (later removed by Ronald Reagan). When oil prices came back down, interest waned. But by the early 1990s, the green building movement took off again according to Alex Wilson, president of Vermont-based BuildingGreen, executive editor of Environmental Building News and author of Your Green Home.

A number of cities around the country, including San Francisco (and neighboring Pleasanton, Berkeley and San Mateo), Boston, Seattle and Scottsdale, Arizona, are leading the way with laws that require new public buildings be green. So far, 54 cities and 23 federal agencies have adopted LEED standards for buildings, says Bill Browning, senior fellow for Rocky Mountain Institute and co-author of Green Development: Integrating Ecology and Real Estate.