A New UN Report Draws the Building Industry Deeper into an Environmental Debate Looking More Familiar Everyday

 

We may have traded Rachel Carson for Al Gore, swapped "Kumbaya" with Kyoto and we’re talking green buildings instead of clean water, but there appears to be more than a few similarities between today's fight against global warming and the environmental movement of yesteryear.

Roused by Carson’s searing expose, "Silent Spring," and taken up by an already restless nation embroiled in Vietnam, the 1960s environmental movement blossomed into a historic inaugural Earth Day in 1970, followed by a decade of sweeping, unprecedented environmental legislation and reform.

Now, enmeshed in another controversial war and spurred by an inconvenient truth, people are talking environmentalism again, in a volume not heard since Cuyahoga and Love Canal made headlines. And while Gore hardly pioneered the science of global warming, his message is having the same rallying effect and evoking the same collective awareness that Carson marshaled in the dawn of the grassroots movement.

If these historical parallels hold, we may once again be on our way down the path that led to the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act and Endangered Species Act, and created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), all within about a decade.

Still, we’re not counting our carbon credits just yet. With "Silent Spring" published in 1962, the decade was out before EPA’s formation and Congress’ real work had begun. If Gore’s 2006 documentary really is the same sort of defining moment as Carson’s bomb, global warming may still be many protests, studies, debates away from affecting American politics on a similar national level.

"Most legislative action over the past 10 years has been at the state level," says Dr. Peter Wilshusen, a professor of environmental studies at Bucknell University and co-director of the university's environmental center. "That said, momentum is starting to shift a bit at the national level. Some legislation on Co² seems very likely over the next 18 months. Interestingly, utilities and other private sector interest groups are in favor of national legislation sooner rather than later so that they can avoid dealing with numerous state and even local laws," he says, citing Boulder, CO's carbon tax.

And one crucial area that could further speed up the legislative process is the issue of sustainable buildings. Rumblings of an energy-guzzling, vastly inefficient and largely unchallenged industry underpinned a new 78-page report by UNEP's Sustainable Building and Construction Initiative (SBCI) on the state of the global building industry. The verdict? Buckle your hybrid-vehicle seatbelts, because we may have a long road ahead of us.

The report, released last month and titled "Buildings and Climate Change: Status, Challenges and Opportunities," pulls an industry once on the fringe of the global warming discussion solidly into the fray. The report sets the tone in its introductory sentence: "Worldwide, 30-40% of all primary energy is used in buildings," a surprisingly unsurprising statistic considering previous studies by the U.S. Energy Agency citing a larger U.S. share of energy use in the building sector (35%) than the popularly demonized transportation sector (28%). Those numbers alone should serve as a wake-up call to the multitude of builders, developers and owners who must face the challenge of addressing the vast amounts of energy the building industry is consuming.

Among the report's other findings: "On a global level, knowledge regarding the energy use of building stocks is still lagging behind ... there is still a clear lack of initiatives aiming at addressing global issues from a life-cycle perspective of the built environment ... the major impediments to increase energy efficiency in the building sector are institutional barriers and market failures rather than technical problems.

"The challenge to achieving energy efficiency, and reduced climate change impact, in buildings is therefore usually not a lack of access to technical solutions, but a lack of signals to the building sector stakeholders to adopt such solutions," it concludes.

Aside from analyzing shortcomings, the report studies the varying effectiveness of different approaches of countries to address the issue, and takes an in-depth look at ways to reduce the industry's global energy use and carbon output. "Simple solutions can include sun shading and natural ventilation, improved insulation of the building envelope, use of recycled building materials, adoption of the size and form of the building to its intended use etc.," said Olivier Luneau, SBCI Chairman and director for sustainability at Lafarge, in a statement. "Of course you can achieve even better results if more sustainable construction system solutions are used, such as intelligent lighting and ventilation systems, low temperature heating and cooling systems and energy saving household appliances. Only by minimizing the energy use over the entire life span of the building can we harvest the full environmental and economic savings that the building sector offers."

The UN's venture into sustainable buildings is a significant event for an industry that has largely lacked conclusive data by a neutral organization, as well as a true call to arms. The report helps illustrate how far we've come since the last environmental movement, with UNEP circling the wagons since its arrival on the international scene in 1972. And in an illustration of where we may be going next, the report specifically cites the need for legislation to regulate the industry, establish national minimums and signal a change in the status culture.

"Such regulations should as far as possible cover the energy use over the entire life span of buildings, and be applicable to new buildings as well as existing ones," says the report. "It is recommended that governments consider to adopt through legislation realistic and measurable energy efficiency standards for new and existing buildings."

The building industry may well lead the change this time, by being fully aware of the stakes involved, and mindful of the mistakes of the past, such as the social consequences faced by the old chemical and timber industries when they fought the reforms. The early signs are positive -- including Bank of America's $20 billion initiative to encourage sustainable business and real estate practices; landmark sustainable development legislation in Washington, D.C. and Boston; and a growing slew of sustainable owners and developers including Transwestern, USAA Real Estate, Hines and Liberty Property Trust -- demonstrating the industry's commitment to apply standards before they are mandated.

These initiatives are highlighting one of the most visible differences between the old movement and the new. "I would say the main shift has been in advocating market-based approaches," Wilshusen says. "The 1970s was all about regulation (for good reason) and was not attentive to the ways in which market-based approaches might create incentives that would both make money and be good for the environment."

"Our most important mission," William D. Ruckelshaus, the famous inaugural EPA administrator, once said of the EPA's creation, "was to establish the credibility of this new Agency, to ensure that the public and the regulated community realized that the government was serious about its charge to protect the environment."

Maybe this time, it will be community showing government that it's serious about the charge, with the building industry leading the way.