Buildings create a variety of environmental impacts – from energy use and depletion of resources and habitat to occupant health effects. But one of the most critical and increasingly used sustainability performance metrics is carbon: the outcome of most of our energy production and the most prevalent greenhouse gas. Understanding these metric helped the design and construction industry set goals, identify best practices and better manage building-related environmental impacts. As a result, the green building market has matured rapidly over the last several years.
So what can we do about our increasing carbon emissions? Let’s look at where these emissions are generated. The construction and operations of buildings account for almost 40% of U.S. CO2 emissions according to data from the most recent Energy Information Administration Greenhouse Gases report. Transportation and industrial energy uses account for the rest of the pie, at 34% and 27%, respectively. Together, these emissions account for more than 80% of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Clearly, it makes sense to focus on buildings in attempting to reduce emissions. But in order to reach CO2 reduction targets, we also need to take into account how these three major sectors interact and how we can create synergies in emissions reduction strategies.
As projects and their influences become more complex, and as the environmental imperatives become more demanding, the need for reliable analytical tools and techniques grows. Planners and urban designers have numerous tools that help them better understand the environmental impacts of their decisions. But the information gained from these tools is rarely incorporated into building-scale analytical profiles. If we were to not only incorporate them, but scale out beyond the building as well, we could address the non-building components that impact energy and sustainability.
Transportation to and from our buildings is driven by variables such as location, density, walkability, infrastructure and proximity to transit, just to name a few. Transportation energy can be three times or more than the carbon impacts of the building’s operation. As you can see in the accompanying graph, urban density is inversely proportional to transport-related energy consumption. Denser development is lower-carbon development.
Utility infrastructure is another great example. Material-intensive infrastructures like buildings have significant embodied energy and require continuous energy input for operations and maintenance. The amount, type and efficiency of our infrastructure is directly tied to where we locate as well as how we design and integrate the components that require infrastructure services in our communities. Most importantly, it sets the baseline for the financial and environmental demand of the system over the life of the project.
Another key influencing variable on project energy and sustainability performance is people. A community is not sustainable if the spaces between buildings are not serving the needs of building users. Planning and design to promote the health, well-being and productivity of people helps to instill a sense of stewardship over the environment that supports them. Further, planning, programming and design can help encourage pro-environmental behaviors – such as walking – the preferred practice.
GBS is helping to bring all these design disciplines together. We provide comprehensive analyses and objective decision making to the table, so our clients can meet the environmental and regulatory imperative with a lot more confidence. As we all work together to approach buildings within their greater context, we can effectively reduce our carbon emissions and improve our environmental outlook.
Viabhav
Team Manager & Senior Consultant
Advanced Climate Solutions