PreservationNation

Brightleaf square in Durham, North Carolina. (Photo: reallyboring on Flickr)

A couple of weeks ago, the National Trust’s Preservation Green Lab released a groundbreaking report, The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse. We’re pleased that the report was met with a good bit of media interest. Check it out:

The Green Dividend from Reusing Older Buildings - NRDC Switchboard

“The study shows that, for most building types, adaptive reuse of older buildings produces measureable – and sometimes impressive – green benefits. The findings with respect to energy impacts for most buildings and adaptations are overwhelmingly positive, and effectively remove one of the arguments that is sometimes made against preservation and adaptation.”

Is It Time to Stop Constructing New Green Buildings? - Fast Company

“Step into a new building in certain parts of U.S. and chances are pretty good that it has been built with the environment in mind (and that there is a plaque bragging about it). Maybe there’s natural lighting, a smart HVAC system, or incredible insulation. It doesn’t really matter. No matter what LEED-certified credentials the building can offer, retrofitting the teardown that came before would probably have made more environmental sense.”

Why the Most Environmental Building is the Building We’ve Already Built - The Atlantic Cities

“We’re not coming out and saying ‘all buildings have to be reused,’ and ‘all new construction is bad,’” Frey says. “What we’re advocating for is a shift in thinking, where at a minimum, we’re considering the environmental impacts associated with demolishing places before we tear them down and build something new.”

This Old House: Why Fixing Up Old Homes is Greener Than Building New Ones - Grist

“To get your head around the broader implications here, consider this: The Brookings Institution projects that the U.S. will demolish roughly a quarter of its existing building stock – 82 billion square feet – between 2005 and 2030, and replace it with new structures. That’s a mind boggling amount of new construction, and even if the new stuff is significantly more energy efficient than the existing stock, it will take decades to recover the initial environmental costs of building it all.”

Proof That the Greenest Building IS the One Already Standing - Treehugger

“It is the wonderful thing about this report, that even when it doesn’t have all of the answers, it anticipates the questions. As a writer about sustainable design it backs up the arguments I have been making for years, and as a preservation activist, it gives me and everyone in the movement the ammunition we need to demonstrate that old buildings are green.”

Historic Buildings May Be Greener Than You Think - New York Times Green Blog

“In New York City, a conflict has long been perceived between historic preservation and urban sustainability goals. Older buildings are often seen as outdated energy hogs that can’t pull their weight, efficiency-wise, in a city that is expected to add a million new residents by 2030.”

LEED From Behind: Why we should focus on greening existing buildings - TIME blog

“A study by the Preservation Green Lab of the National Trust for Historic Preservation shows building reuse almost always has fewer environmental impacts than new construction—which means we’d be smart to spend at least as much time renovating existing buildings as we do lionizing fancy new green construction.”

Why Historic Buildings are Greener Than LEED-Certified New Ones - GOOD

“Though the conclusion may seem counterintuitive in an age of ambitious LEED standards in many new buildings, consider that it uses more energy and creates more impact to construct an entirely new building than to fix up one of the same size for the same purpose.”

For more, see articles featured in Environmental Leader, Jetson Green, Building Design and Construction, Greenbang, ArchDaily, BuildingGreen, American Public Media, and Daily Journal of Commerce (PDF).

For a long time we’ve known that preservation helps create quality communities that are character-rich, vibrant, and dynamic places in which to live, work and play. And there’s also been lots of good news over the years about the economic value that preservation brings – especially in tough economic times. But today, with the Preservation Green Lab’s release of The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse, we have the most comprehensive research to date showing preservation is good for the environment too. The findings from this study offer additional compelling evidence that preservation makes sense for communities.

Each year, approximately 1 billion square feet of buildings are demolished. The Greenest Building explores the environmental impacts associated with the decision to demolish and replace existing buildings – and especially the carbon dioxide savings that might be offered by reusing and retrofitting these places instead of demolishing them. With generous funding from The Summit Foundation, this effort brought together a team of leading thinkers with unparalleled expertise in building and life cycle science. The study team included Cascadia Green Building Council, Green Building Services, Quantis, and Skanska.

Using life cycle assessment, an internationally recognized approach to evaluating the potential environmental and human health impacts associated with products and services throughout their respective life cycles, this study compares the reuse of existing buildings to demolition and new construction. Six different building types are examined: single family; multifamily; commercial office; mixed-use (main street style); elementary school, and warehouses converted to multifamily and commercial buildings.

Notable study findings include:

• Building reuse typically yields fewer environmental impacts than new construction when comparing buildings of similar size, functionality and energy efficiency. This result was found to be true irrespective of climate – though differences in climate can affect the extent of savings

• The absolute carbon-related impact reductions can be substantial when these results are scaled across the building stock of a city. Consider this example: In Portland, Oregon retrofitting just one percent of the city’s office buildings and single family homes that would otherwise be demolished and rebuilt over the next ten years would help to meet 15 percent of the entire county’s total CO2 reduction targets.

• The study also explores how the reuse of an average performing existing building would stack up against a new, efficient building; it’s often assumed that a new, green building will rapidly compensate for any climate change impacts that occur during the construction process. The Greenest Building analysis finds that it can take 10 to 80 years for a new energy efficient building to compensate, through efficient operations, for the climate change impacts created by its construction. The study finds that the majority of building types in different climates will take between 20-30 years to overcome the initial carbon impacts from construction.

• The design of buildings matters. Those buildings that tend to use the fewest materials will have the most significant environmental savings – and in fact renovation projects that require many new materials can reduce or even negate the benefits of reuse. It’s important to make sure buildings (whether new or existing) are designed to minimize material inputs — and to make sure designers have the tools needed to select materials with the best environmental profile.

The bottom line: As preservationists, the work we do to save buildings makes sense for our communities, our pocket books and our environment! For more information on The Greenest Building, download the full report or see our report webpage.

Written by Rachel Bowdon

As highlighted in our blog last month, USGBC announced on December 7 that LEED-certified existing buildings surpassed LEED-certified new construction on a cumulative basis for the first time ever. It was a great way to finish 2011 and filled us with anticipation for what was to come in the New Year in regards to building reuse and retrofit trends.

Inside the Hearst Tower in New York, a LEED-Gold adaptive reuse project. (Photo: Flickr user suttonhoo)

As we begin 2012, we are excited to see that leaders in the sustainability and green building sectors are projecting that the focus on existing buildings (and older and historic buildings in particular) will not just continue, but get stronger. From programs and policies that encourage energy performance benchmarking and building renovations, to public/private partnerships that encourage energy audits and efficiency, most in the industry agree that reuse and retrofits will be one of the top 2012 green trends. To see for yourself, check out the lists of top trends we’ve compiled below:

Top Green Building Trends for 2012 – Green Building Services

In their top ten green building trends for 2012, Green Building Services (GBS) predicts that existing building renovations “will take center stage” in 2012 because it is “arguably more sustainable and cost effective than new construction.” We should expect to see increased energy benchmarking and continuous commissioning as well as building envelope commissioning in the coming year. In addition, GBS projects that there will be a rise of LEED Multiple Building certification efforts which allows a more cost efficient approach for owners of smaller, new or existing buildings under the control of a single entity to achieve green building goals.

Top Ten Global Mega Trends for 2012 - Green Building Consultant

Similarly, green building industry leader Jerry Yudelson expects that “the focus of the green building industry will continue its switch from new building design and construction to greening existing buildings.” Yudelson, author of Greening Existing Buildings, believes that one of the drivers of this megatrend is that “green buildings have rents and asset prices that are significantly higher than those documented for conventional office space.” In addition, Yudelson foresees that one of the fastest emerging trends will be Performance Disclosure. Performance Disclosure requires commercial building owners to report on the actual building performance to all new tenants and buyers —this requirement has shown to encourage energy efficiency retrofits in existing buildings.

Four Sustainability Trends to Watch in 2012 – Jones Lang LaSalle

Dan Probst, Chairman of Energy and Sustainability Services of Jones Lang LaSalle also believes that energy disclosure will become a major trend in 2012 and that this requirement will help tenants and investors make better informed decisions regarding energy efficiency. Further, he projects that the strong collaboration we saw between the public and private sectors in 2011 will continue to be one of the best ways to overcome obstacles to sustainability. One example includes President Obama’s recent announcement of a $4 billion commitment in energy upgrades to public and private buildings that will be of no cost to tax payers. “Called the Better Buildings Challenge, the eight-year initiative includes $2 billion in energy upgrades of federal buildings and another $2 billion of private capital to improve energy by 20 percent in buildings totaling 1.5 billion square feet.”

Rachel Bowdon is the program assistant for the Sustainability Program at the National Trust for Historic Preservation.