Catch the Wave on free webinar

SERF and the Centre for Sustainability & Excellence (CSE) are co-hosting a free webinar 12:30-1:30 CST on Thursday, January 24.

CSE , a global leader in sustainability consulting and training, is partnering with SERF to train SERF Professionals (SPs).  SPs have the exclusive ability to act as third-party verifiers for SERF certification applications.

SERF president Joe Maguire and CSE president Nikos Avlonas will be on hand to discuss SERF as a streamlined, affordable alternative to LEED certification and the SP designation as opportunity to expand your professional practice.  Click here to register.

Who really pays for LEED certification?

Obtaining LEED certification costs a lot of time and money.  The resources required are not limitless and are generally diverted from other uses, though that seems impolite to discuss when pursuing sustainability.

But LEED certification does not, of course, add to a property’s sustainability.  Rather it confirms, or certifies, that objective sustainable criteria have been met.   If anything, the high costs of LEED certification divert funds that may be otherwise be spent on sustainable materials or systems.

In the end, the high cost of LEED ultimately comes from somewhere….or someone. 

I wonder how the retirees of Stockton, California feel about their city’s expense in obtaining LEED Gold certification for their new water plant after having their retirement benefits cut in Stockton’s bankruptcy proceedings.

While hardly the sole culprit of bankruptcy, Stockton’s self-imposed requirement to LEED certify all structures over 5,000 square feet is indicative of City Hall’s feckless finance.

SERF offers a low cost sustainable certification that doesn’t break the bank.  I bet that sounds like a good idea to some good folks in Stockton.

How do you like them Apples?

Apple recently announced it will not certify its products with EPEAT. EPEAT is a non-profit organization that certifies “environmentally preferable products”. It is also a program that is backed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

EPEAT would affect Apple’s sales to some governments and educational institutions which require EPEAT certification as a prerequisite for purchase. But how does this affect Apple? According to the blog Apple and EPEAT: What it means the sale of Apple computers to government and educational institutions is a tiny fraction of Apple’s total sales. The real market lies in the consumer market which demands products like their ultra-thin MacBook Pro. According to a Wall Street Journal blog Apple Removes Green Electronics Certification From Products, this laptop design requires the battery to be glued to the case, making disassembly and recycling difficult. This causes the computer to fall behind EPACTS stringent recycling requirements.

But does parting ways with EPEAT mean Apple products are not green?  Hardly.

According to CNN Apple abandons green certification Apple meets Energy Star 5.2 requirements for energy efficiency and lead the pack in reporting each product’s greenhouse gas emissions on their website and removal of toxic material.  Yet all these achievements go unrecognized in the eyes of an inflexible rating system.

What does this mean for buildings? Are conventional environmental certifications constraining design and end-user needs that buildings need to meet to qualify? We think so.  That’s why SERF affords some flexibility and rewards innovation in green building certification.

Bridging the Political Divide on Sustainability

The gulf between conservatives and liberals on the merits of sustainability may be lessened with a little history lesson.  So says SERF Scholar Colin Maguire in his paper American Stewardship:   A Path Already Laid,  which he is presenting at next week’s 2012 Environmental Justice and Global Citizenship Conference at Oxford University in England.

The study traces the Founders’ philosophies on private property rights, a core American principle, with the corresponding responsibility for property owners to be good and proper stewards of their land.  Sustainability is, it seems, not such a new concept in America, and should be embraced as an essential element of our nation’s founding.

Can Governments Really Afford LEED?

There seems a refreshing change in the air questioning municipal, state and federal agency mandates to LEED certify new structures under their purview.

No one finding their way here will question the environmental and social good–even a social demand–for building green by our public sector.  But in the midst of budget crises resulting in spending cuts at every level of government, the high cost of obtaining LEED certification (some 10 times higher than SERF, often more) is beginning to raise fiscal eyebrows.

 

Recent pressure on the DepartmentofDefense and the GeneralServicesAdministration at the federal level expose serious opposition to LEED mandates by those agencies from both Congress and industry groups.  One wonders whether taxpayer groups will join the fray if the GSA is more forthright and current on their calculation of the cost to obtain LEED certification (see our earlier posting, Paying, andpaying, fortheLEEDlabel.)

 

Local mandates and costs are harder to aggregate and quantify.  I will relate one anecdote from my travels this week in California presenting  SERF to AIA chapters. Following my talk at AIASanDiego, a Fire and Rescue project manager from the City of San Diego offered that owing to the City’s requirement that any of its structures of at least 5,000 square feet be LEED Silver, there are necessary public safety structures which go unbuilt because the city does not have the requisite money and staff time to devote to the exhaustive process.   A more streamlined and less expensive route to certification would not only save the City money, but allow them to move forward with mothballed projects.

 

Gee, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Paying (and paying) for the LEED Label

As mentioned in past blogs, the burdensome cost of LEED certification–measured in both time and money–lies in  consultant fees and documentation.  A very reliable study commissioned by the US General Services Administration (GSA) proves the point.

The GSA is an independent federal agency responsible for the construction, operation, and maintenance of federal facilities, including courthouses, office buildings, land ports of entry, and research facilities.

GSA commissioned this report to identify the incremental cost of LEED certification for two buildings: A new mid-rise federal Courthouse and a mid-rise federal office building modernization. The report analyzed both the incremental construction costs as well as soft costs–i.e. LEED-based documentation and consultation fees.

The incremental cost was calculated from a baseline construction cost for building to GSA’s  stringent guidelines. These guidelines required commissioning on all their buildings, higher energy efficiency than the code requirements, energy efficient underfloor air delivery systems and use of a large proportion of recycled materials in construction.

Given all these existing sustainable practices, the study showed that the additional consultation and documentation cost to be LEED certified was $112,412 for LEED Certified status up to high of $190,052 for LEED Gold status for the Courthouse Building. Similarly, the soft costs for the Office Modernization project was $106,716 for certified and $177, 328 for Gold.

Also according to the report, the soft costs as a percentage of the total construction costs will be significantly higher for buildings of smaller sizes than the buildings (260,000 to 300,000 square feet) in the study.

I wonder how much greener these buildings would have been if taxpayer dollars were invested in performance improvements rather than on consultant and documentation fees.