A New LEED for Preservation?
Shedd Park fieldhouse, William Drummond
Four years ago the National Trust for Historic Preservation jumped firmly into the sustainability fray with then-President Dick Moe’s speech at the National Building Museum. (Here is my blog from that time.)
The Trust will continue its leadership in this arena next month under Stephanie Meeks when it reveals the Life Cycle Analysis of historic buildings undertaken by the Preservation Green Lab in Seattle. This provides a perfect complement to the Life Cycle Analysis of new buildings recently undertaken by the American Institute of Architects, and one of my own initiatives of late is to try to bring the AIA and National Trust together on these complementary initiatives.
Life cycle analysis takes us into REAL sustainability because it asks the straightforward question: how long does an investment in a building last? My classic replacement window conundrum is a good example. If a restored wood window costs 3 times as much as a cheap plastic replacement window but last 5 times as long, it is cheaper over the life cycle of the building.
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Getting the LEED out
Reusing an existing building saves 35 tons of CO2 production – www.emptyhomes.com
“We can’t consume our way to sustainability” – Carl Elefante, AIA
“Confronting energy reduction with technology in lieu of conservation is short-sighted-
-the problem is conservation is not very sexy and difficult to package and sell. ”
Neal Vogel, Restoric LLC
Neal is a longtime friend and colleague and one of several experts who have seen the limitations of LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design), which was introduced this century by the U.S. Green Building Council and has made new buildings more energy efficient. The problem is that LEED at the beginning virtually ignored old buildings, despite the fact that an old building’s carbon footprint is always less than a new one. Much of the “Green Building” industry was driven by marketing efforts to push new products. Continue Reading