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More ‘green’ buildings needed
Millions of SUVs bombing down American highways aren’t the only energy guzzlers. Some of the worst energy hogs in the United States are its buildings.
BY JAN FALSTAD
Of The Gazette Staff
One of the country’s best-known "green" architects, Sim Van der Ryn, told about 70 Billings residents recently that improving energy efficiency can make a real dent in the amount of fossil fuels the U.S. consumes.
"Building is the biggest use of energy resources on the planet and produces more greenhouse gases than the transportation sector," Van der Ryn says.
Buildings in the U.S. consume 30 percent of the total energy and 60 percent of the electricity, according to the U.S. Green Building Council.
Van der Ryn is president and chief designer at Van der Ryn Architects in Sausalito, Calif., which focuses on designing environmentally friendly buildings. He was California’s state architect and has taught architecture at the University of California-Berkley.
Van der Ryn has written several books on green architecture, including "Sustainable Communities," "Ecological Design" and "Geometry of Hope."
A solar living center he designed in Hopland, Calif., won honors at the 1999 Earth Day celebrations.
Speaking in the renovated Billings Depot, Van der Ryn says architects across America in the 1960s and 1970s designed and built hundreds of thousands of sealed, single-walled buildings of which 99 percent are energy-guzzlers.
"Unless we tear them down, they’ll need a new skin," he says.
Water is becoming a bigger world problem than energy scarcity, he says.
If all countries followed America’s lead where 6 percent of the population uses 40 percent of the world’s resources, he says, the earth couldn’t survive.
"If they all used as much as we do, it would take three planets (to support everybody)," he says.
Skyrocketing energy bills during California’s power crisis in 2000 motivated people to turn to conservation, he says, probably more so than concerns about the planet.
"The skullduggery and collusion among energy companies to raise prices woke some people up who may not have been interested in the environmental reasons," he says.
California reimburses almost half of the cost of installing photovoltaic solar panels in homes and pays even more on commercial buildings.
"I haven’t had an energy bill since I put on a photovoltaic system two years ago," he says.
A green office building, 10 Times Square in New York City, was preleased before it was built, Van der Ryn says.
Three architectural firms in Montana have joined the national Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design or LEED program. The companies that are certified LEED members are CTA, A&E Architects and High Plains Architects.
The four-year-old LEED program reviews buildings and if they meet the energy efficient standards certifies the building as "green."
CTA Architects Engineers hosted the seminar to boost awareness of green building techniques.
President Keith Rupert says to his knowledge no building in Montana or surrounding state meets the LEED rating system requirements yet.
"I think the problem is with a lot of people — and I put architects in this category — is we don’t have the knowledge," he says.
Van der Ryn says his native country, the Netherlands, has a national goal of cutting energy consumption by 5 percent per year through cooperation, not government mandates. Europe is way ahead of the United States in energy conservation, he says.
European drivers pay the U.S. equivalent of $5 per gallon for gasoline and they don’t have the widespread American attitude that they can harm land and water, then pick up and move.
He calls the American political system adversarial, blocking different groups from working together to reduce energy consumption as they do in the Netherlands.
Given America’s dependence on foreign oil, energy security is one of the country’s greatest challenges, Van der Ryn says, and the status quo won’t do.
"The worst thing you can do is keep making no changes," he says. "That’s where the risk lies."
U.S. companies would pay more attention to "green" buildings if their operational costs for energy bills were calculated on the same balance sheet as construction costs, Van der Ryn says.
While driving around America, he says he notices many builders pay no attention one of the cheapest ways to save on energy bills — positioning a house on the land to maximize passive solar heat.
"Individual clients might care with custom homes and architects might pay attention, but developers don’t care," he says. "I don’t know if they know if there’s a sun in the sky or how it moves."
According to "Business Week" commentator Jeffrey Garten, war with Iraq and the subsequent reconstruction of the country would "cost hundreds of billions of dollars over many years."
Van der Ryn says huge future bills like these mean the U.S. should think more about the overall costs of such a heavy dependence on fossil fuels.
"If we use that money to become energy independent based on renewables, it might be a wiser economic and political choice," Van der Ryn says.
Jan Falstad can be contacted at (406) 657-1306 or at [email protected].
Copyright © The Billings Gazette, a division of Lee Enterprises.
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