Environmental Issues & Building Design | Sustainability Workshop

3/1/14, 7:44 AM

Environmental Issues & Building Design | Sustainability

Workshop
According to the scientific community, climate change is happening and its effects will
have severe consequences for our society and environment. Reducing energy use in
buildings is one of the most important ways to reduce humans overall environmental
impact.
Nearly unanimous scientific
consensus has established that
climate change is occurring as a
result of human activity.
Mathematical models of global
climate change have linked a
human-driven increase in GHGs to
an increase in global temperatures As ice core records from Antarctica show that changes
in carbon dioxide concentrations (blue) track closely with
(especially in the past 250 years,
changes in temperature (red). Carbon dioxide levels are
now higher than at any time during the past 650,000
The primary source of this increase years. (CREDIT: Marian Koshland Science Museum,
source)

since the industrial revolution).

in GHCs has been attributed to the

emissions generated by the use of fossil fuel-based energy.

Climate change has been linked observable disturbances such as the loss of mountain
glaciers and ice cover on the Earths polar regions, changes in the timing of the spring
bud-break, and an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events
such as cold waves, heat waves, large storms, hurricanes and tornadoes, floods, and
droughts.
Climate scientists have theorized that human civilization is in danger of crossing a
threshold or tipping point that could lead to more radical changes in the global
climate, and that could accelerate the onset of either a new hotter and wetter age
similar to the Earths environment before the appearance of human beings, or a new
ice age. (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC Fourth Assessment Report
[AR4]).
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Environmental Issues & Building Design | Sustainability Workshop

3/1/14, 7:44 AM

Scientific estimates place the window of opportunity for reversing this trend in the very
near termaccording to some, as briefly as over the next ten years. After that, the
global climate may change irreversibly, and humans will just have to adapt.
In many arenas of implementing real practical change, architects, engineers, and
builders are the only ones with the skills and resources that provide real, practical,
cost-effective, and inspiring solutions.

Environmental Impacts of Buildings

Quick stats
Buildings account for 40% of energy
use worldwide (WBCSD).

Buildings account for 40% of worldwide energy

use which is much more than transportation.
Furthermore, over the next 25 years, CO2

Energy used during its lifetime causes

emissions from buildings are projected to grow
as much as 90% of environmental
impacts of buildings (Journal of Green faster than any other sector (in the USA), with
Building).
emissions from commercial buildings projected
Building operations consume more than to grow the fastest1.8% a year through 2030
2/3 of all electricity
(USGBC).
(BuildingScience.com)
Residential and commercial buildings
Often, energy use in the form of electricity drives
consume 40% of the primary energy and
the largest environmental impacts. Where that
71% of the total electricity in the
United States. (ASHRAE)
electricity comes from determines what those

impacts are. In the United States for example, where buildings account for more than
70% of electricity use, most of the electricity is generated by coal-fired electrical power
plants (USGBC).
These exact impacts can quantified by lifecycle assessment (LCA), the most thorough
way to determine the environmental impacts of a design. There is no perfect way to
measure environmental impact. LCAs can measure greenhouse gas (units = CO2e =
CO2 equivalent) to measure global warming potential, or might measure other things
like human health, water, and land-use impacts. You may hear the word embodied
energy or embodied carbon this refers to the energy or greenhouse gas emissions
caused throughout an objects lifecycle. Alternatively, sometimes an overall normalized
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Environmental Issues & Building Design | Sustainability Workshop

3/1/14, 7:44 AM

score is used to combine many kinds of impacts into a single number (i.e. EcoIndicator 99). A good primer on LCA is here.
A 2012 LCA study found that Specifically within commercial buildings, the use and
operation phase of the material and building life cycle is so dominant that the impacts
of construction, demolition/disposal, and transportation are nearly irrelevant for most
traditionally constructed buildings. (Journal of Green Building)
Total life cycle impacts by life cycle phase for a prefabricated
commercial building with average California energy use, the
building as built (30% of power supplied by photovoltaics),
and net zero energy (100% of power supplied by
photovoltaics), in units of EcoIndicator99 points.

Lifetime energy use energy

dominates traditional and even
energy-ecient building life cycles,
by far. In such cases, other
environmental concerns are nearly
always trumped by energy
performance. Once a building
meets all energy needs by clean
power generation (whether it be onsite PV panels, PV grid power, or
other equally clean renewables not
analyzed in this study), then building
materials and manufacturing
becomes the dominant life cycle
impact phase. (Journal of Green
Building)

Since 1920, the overall trend in building energy use for comercial buildings is higher
energy intensity per square foot (BuildingScience.com). It is important to reverse this
trend.
In the coming decades rapid development will continue in the developing countries,
while many buildings in the developed world will need to be renovated and retrofit.
We need to make sure that the engineers and architects working on these buildings are
equipped to make design choices that use energy effectively.

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