Green buildings

Green buildings incorporate measures that are environmentally friendly and resource-efficient across the building lifecycle. The green buildings concept aims to comprehensively minimise the negative impact and maximize the positive impact a building has on its natural environment and human occupants.

As a holistic approach to their planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance, green buildings successfully maximize the natural efficiencies of a building site and integrate them with renewable and low-carbon technologies to support the building’s energy needs and create a healthy built environment. Areas of priority in green buildings include the efficient use of energy, water, and other resources; quality of the indoor environment; and impacts to the natural environment.

Buildings and the supply chain that supports them are responsible for an enormous share of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions—also referred to as greenhouse gases—and energy, water, and materials consumption. The global building sector also represents the largest opportunity for significant, cost-effective improvements in these areas, making it a broad and robust focus of research and development
efforts.

Understanding the nature and extent of inefficiencies and negative impacts in the built environment helps drive the development of new approaches and technologies that can improve all aspects of a building’s performance. Green buildings are needed on a global scale to help drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, conserve increasingly stretched energy resources, and contribute to improved human health. Buildings account for about 40 percent of our nation’s energy use and consume 75 percent of our nation’s electricity. The building sector accounts for more than one third of global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, a percentage that could substantially increase over the years ahead without additional intervention. There are significant opportunities to improve the way buildings function, and the mounting pressure on our energy resources and environment has necessitated robust investment and effort to maximize them.

Green buildings combine a variety of approaches—to practices, technologies, and materials—across all stages of a building’s lifecycle. The set of measures applied to a building is customized to that building’s unique situation and work together to optimally reduce its impact on the human and natural environment.

Many of these approaches involve using renewable resources, as well as introducing techniques and technologies or using innovative materials that improve resource utilization. Maximizing energy, water, and materials performance are major drivers in configuring green buildings. The following examples are just a few of many options in the green builder’s toolbox, a list of measures that continues to grow and evolve with new knowledge and innovation.

Renewable energy sources, including solar, are often factored into green buildings. For example, some use photovoltaic panels for on-site solar power generation. Others employ passive solar building design strategies that physically position building elements, including windows, walls, awnings, and landscaping, to maximize the benefits of cooling shade in summer and solar warmth in winter. The concept of daylighting calls for orienting windows in a manner that makes best use of natural light inside the building and reduces electric lighting needs. And solar-powered water heating cuts down on
energy costs.

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