give a building a certification…

…and it will be a building with a certification, and that’s about it

Few topics are more trendy in design and architecture at the moment than green buildings. Peruse the homepages of mainstream news outlets and you’ll find a thousand “List of the 15 most sustainable buildings that actually don’t look like crap!” (okay, we’re being facetious, but let’s not pretend sustainable building practices are stuck in the early 1900s in the era of electric cars and e-bikes). And the trend isn’t relegated to fancy architectural magazines: take a look around any office or apartment building completed within the last decade or so in a major city, and you will likely find a set of plaques commemorating various green building achievements. At the very least, you’ll probably find one awarded by LEED.

Founded and overseen by the nonprofit U.S.-based Green Building Council, LEED (an acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) maintains a collection of standards for performance on various green building metrics such as energy efficiency, renewable electricity use, and waste diversion. By providing verifiable estimates of these metrics and providing verifiable proof of achieving the relevant standards, a building can attain LEED certification, demonstrating a commitment to sustainability to potential tenants and in many jurisdictions becoming eligible for monetary incentives for their development projects.

LEED has received praise from within the design and construction industry, and some jurisdictions even require all new construction to attain certain green standards that may align with LEED metrics. However, the program has faced criticism and allegations of greenwashing. A recurring critique is the fact that certification is mostly based on modeling rather than actual performance: certification is achieved by providing predictions of the metrics a building will achieve, and there has historically been no requirement to subsequently report actual performance to maintain approval. While these predictions must be made using rigorous estimation techniques, they are still imperfect, and provide no guarantee that the promised benefits will actually materialize. LEED has been receptive to this criticism, and more recent codes officially establish a requirement for performance reports, but actual consequences in cases where buildings failed to measure up have been lacking — to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no building has ever had a certification revoked for failing to achieve a promised standard. LEED’s application to a building in isolation has also been described as myopic: in 2007, the US EPA itself sold off a longstanding building in downtown Kansas City and relocated to a LEED-certified building 20 miles away, in the suburb of Lenexa. While the new building itself performed far more sustainably than the old headquarters, the move forced most of the 627 employees newly relocated there into significantly longer commutes. With little public transit access out to the suburb, the newly extended car commutes almost certainly offset some of the environmental advantages of the new headquarters. On this issue as well, LEED has shown some signs of action, with the award of certifications now taking into account the expected impacts on indirect emissions from sources such as employee commutes. Nevertheless, these factors still receive significantly less weight in assessment than emissions directly attributable to a building, and LEED has no way to take into account future tenancy changes that may increase commuting distance for employees of a different enterprise.

Aside from occasional criticism from contrarian-minded authors, most of the journalistic work in this space that is not solely for the consumption of industry professionals is meant to be flashy and eye-catching for the layperson, full of eccentric techno-modernist facades as well as accolades and certifications of esoteric jargon. It’s tempting to sum up the environmental superiority of a building with a phrase like “LEED Platinum” that the majority of readers will just take at face-value to be an impressive feat, but we believe such shortcuts underestimate people who have enough interest in the topic to be reading about it in the first place. Sure, it’s an easy ad-revenue-generator to intersperse a lazy listicle with photos of majestic curvilinear museums and luscious roof gardens in the richest parts of giant urban centers — but if we want real change, we have to resist the urge to be hyperbolic and spend real mental energy on what is real and what is practical. 

So what is practical? How can we avoid the pitfalls of certifications like LEED and actually build sites that are sustainable and practical for the people who live or work there?

Well first of all, the easiest solution is to just not build at all — it’s obvious that building nothing is better for the planet than building something that falls under the category of “green.” Even structures that have net-zero energy use have to be made out of raw materials, and overwhelmingly the harvesting of these raw materials is not great for the earth. Forests are shrinking, and cutting down, processing, and transporting wood requires energy; the same principles apply to stone, brick, aluminum, concrete, steel, ceramic, glass, drywall, insulation, paint, piping (whether made of alloy or plastic), and anything else that is required in construction and beautification. Utilizing existing structures or being conscious of adding more square footage in places where space is limited and natural resources must be imported is critical to creating a sustainable future; let’s not pretend that bulldozing an old building to build a whole new one (often one that is unaffordable for most of the people who occupy the neighborhood) is sustainable just because you offset the energy consumption with a rooftop garden that nobody even uses — though this consideration must be made by taking into account urban versus suburban builds that change reliance on cars and prevent or reduce sprawl. On this topic as well, LEED is making improvements: LEED for Operations and Maintenance (O+M) allows existing buildings and indoor spaces to certify their sustainability progress.

Another critical piece is to pay less heed to aesthetic — the amount of resistance that projects like wind and solar farms, large-scale public transportation, and multi-story housing units face from NIMBYs (NIMBY stands for “not in my backyard,” and its use in modern vernacular parallels the usage of “Karen” or “dependa”) frequently slows down or halts development completely. The push for neighborhoods to remain the way they have always been (or the way they were when the NIMBYs bought their homes) is detrimental to sustainable development as a whole and its impact will never be overshadowed by even the most exciting of environmental certifications. Frequently, this is an attitude of older homeowners who feel that their property values must be preserved above all else; but if we no longer believe that the value of living somewhere should be a function of its “desirability” but rather of its amenities, diversity, and long-term future as a community, then this concern will be null. 

Third: we must stop taking certifications like LEED at face value and then neglecting to substantially follow up on the performance of buildings that have been termed “sustainable.” The idea that a building that houses actual humans will perform exactly as predicted at the time of its construction is laughable; if humans behave differently than expected (either because the expected behavior is unintuitive or because they are unaware of the efficient behaviors), we can improve the building’s performance by continuing to track sustainability metrics in the years after the fancy headlines have faded into obscurity. That is, if we actually care about the environmental impact and not simply the publicity and profitability that come with certification. As an example: while occupancy-based cooling and heating systems seem like a good idea, the amount of time it takes a whole office building to heat up or cool down is not negligible; it detracts from the comfort of early-comers to the office and passes up the efficiency of changing temperatures at non-peak hours. While a building is slowly arriving at a more reasonable temperature, people may utilize inefficient devices like fans and space heaters or even open windows in the summer, which reduces the impact of measures that were originally undertaken to be more sustainable.

Let’s discuss some sustainable “trends” that are less exciting but more effective than what we’ve detailed above.

Firstly, there is a new wave of building alongside nature rather than the extremer alternatives of either building in opposition to nature or cordoning off natural spaces. For example, wildlife crossings have become a popular way of connecting natural spaces that have been impeded by construction; through the use of tunnels or bridges that cross over highways and major roads, humans have been combating habitat fragmentations that force animals into smaller and smaller spaces. Allowing animals to safely cross into other spaces also reduces vehicular collisions that may injure both passengers and animals, in addition to causing property damage (especially with regard to large predators and ungulates, which cannot be easily written off as “just roadkill”). Similar structures include fish ladders that follow migration routes, canopy bridges that connect trees on opposite sides of roadways, and living roofs that cater to birds and butterflies. Bird-safe architecture is also a growing movement: double-paned glass was meant to insulate better and conserve energy, but it had the additional effect of being so reflective that birds could not tell that there was an obstacle in their flight path. Now many designers are rethinking clear glass facades on large urban skyscrapers in favor of irregular shapes, opaque exteriors, and fritted glass (which has a visible ceramic pattern on it and actually keeps buildings cooler) or UV-printed patterned glass (which maintains the transparency of glass to humans but is detectable by birds) that reduce collisions and fatalities. 

These nature-oriented changes are not limited to fauna; solar panels, wind farms, and hydro-dams use the existing flow of sunshine, wind, and water to create energy. And not only is energy creation optimized by working alongside nature, but biomimicry in design reduces energy use: in Japan, the noses of bullet trains were redesigned to copy the beaks of kingfishers, which are able to dive into the water to catch fish while barely making a splash. For examples in architecture, see: The Gherkin, a lattice-inspired British skyscraper with a shape that mimics the Venus Flower Basket Sponge to facilitate natural ventilation; and the Zimbabwean Eastgate Centre, an office and shopping complex that is constructed to utilize the natural cooling systems of a termite mound, with air entering at the lower levels and exiting above; among many other structures around the world. 

Then there are the actions individual people and households can take, if they are self-aware enough to not use “no ethical consumption under capitalism” and “corporations are responsible for the majority of issues that exacerbate climate change” to shirk all responsibility for creating a less wasteful and unsustainable society. We can reduce (ideal), reuse (underrated), and recycle (not really as helpful as advertising has made it out to be, considering for example that only two of the seven types of plastic are easily recyclable). We can adhere to local and state guidelines about water use; utilize sweaters instead of central heating and fans instead of central cooling; buy smaller cars that are hybrid or electric, or even e-bikes; stop buying cheap plastic crap on the internet. The bragging rights for these small actions may not be as impressive as a fancy plaque you glance at every morning on your way to the elevator, but it will probably be more meaningful. In terms of our buildings, the homes we live in are where we can have the most impact; undertaking fewer renovations that are solely for beautification is definitely good for the planet’s reserves of natural resources. Where we may have less power is size; single family homes are getting bigger, especially in parts of the world that are not yet saturated with residences. Bigger homes means less efficient use of space, more time and materials spent cleaning, more energy spent heating and cooling, and a whole host of other consequences. In addition, fewer older people are downsizing their residences as they become empty-nesters, which leaves many rooms of many houses empty (in addition to making homes less affordable and accessible to the next generation). Few other parts of the world culturally dictate that humans need this much space: it’s not just a Western concept, but solely an American one. 

For the love of god, let’s give up the McMansions. 

Green certifications and sustainable building practices are a step in the right direction, but they only treat the symptoms; the cause is cultural, and a cure is not as easy to implement (even if we could come up with one). If we ditch the complacency and take steps ourselves, at least we can say we tried to give the world a little while longer before it all goes to hell in a handcart.