Green is the New Black
Tax breaks, lower electric bills, impressed customers -- companies are finding plenty of benefits in greening up their buildings. And it's not that hard.
Published June 2005
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COMMENT ON THIS ARTICLEA few years ago, Chuck Richards began to make plans to double the size of his health club, the Sunset Athletic Club in Portland, Oreg. In addition to adding 55,000 square feet, Richards wanted to explore transforming the gym into a green building, a structure that's healthier for the people in it and for the environment. He did his reading on the subject and learned enough to assure himself that the move would be good for him economically -- especially when it turned out that he could get state tax credits for energy conservation. Even so, Richards was shocked when a local green building consultant estimated the energy cost savings the remodeled building would realize after five years -- close to $1 million. "It was a really big number," he says. "Something I wouldn't have expected to reach for at least 10 years out."
From the floors to the ceiling, the Sunset Athletic Club is now filled with ecofriendly modifications. Recycled paints cover the walls, and the floors are composed of recycled rubber. Most of the gym is insulated with UltraTouch, a nontoxic and flame-retardant material made from recycled cotton denim and T-shirts. Light sensors overhead automatically turn the gym lights on and off based on the amount of sunlight streaming in from its large windows.
Conserving electricity is one of the key elements of the U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standards. These voluntary standards, available on usgbc.org, measure how green a building is by providing target levels of energy use, water use, waste generation, and more. Some states -- Maryland, New York, and Oregon among them -- are already beginning to offer tax advantages to companies that get certified, and other states may soon follow.
In October, the council released a new set of standards, the LEED-EB, for greening up existing buildings while leaving most of the interior and exterior unchanged. The New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colo., was one of the first companies to rework a building in accordance with the new EB standards. New Belgium made changes to its facilities so that heat created by its brewing process is captured and reused to heat water for making beer. "We're closing energy loops," says New Belgium's sustainability director, Hillary Mizia. "That's the principle behind everything we do."
To that end, the company treated its windows with a low-emission glaze that reflects long-wave heat rays in sunlight. As a result, the offices stay cool in the summer using less air conditioning. It also retrofitted some of its windows with so-called sun shelves or light shelves. Made of perforated metal and painted white, the shelves sit under the top fourth of the windows (like a higher window sill). They can bring up to 50% additional daylight into a space when placed on south-facing windows.
But the addition of a green roof didn't work as well for New Belgium as anticipated. Covering a building's roof with plants can reduce storm water runoff and keep a building cooler. But green roofs are difficult to install, especially on existing buildings that weren't designed to support the extra weight of watered plants. Not long after it was finished, New Belgium's sod roof -- made of native grass and thick, leafy plants called seedum -- started turning brown. The liner under the soil had sprung a leak and rainwater was draining away. Still, CEO Kim Jordan and her staff have decided to try again.
