from the ground up - The Tyee

Building Green from the Ground UpWe asked experts how to make true sustainability the norm. Here’s what theytold us.By Colleen KimmettArticle first published on September 21, 2011 by TheTyee.ca.From modest homes made of recycled shippingcontainers, to living laboratories that actually producemore energy than they consume, The Tyee’s‘Green from the Ground Up’ series illuminates themany roles buildings play in creating a sustainablefuture.With buildings responsible for approximately 35 percent of our greenhouse gas emissions, and energyprices on the rise, there are good social and environmentalreason to make significant shifts in our buildingstandards and expectations.In the past decade, there have been positive developmentsin British Columbia, and particularly Vancouver,toward greener building practices. But we stillhave a long way to go.How can we make green building the norm, ratherthan the exception? The Tyee Solutions Societysought the insights of knowledgeable veterans fromacross the building industry, people with the experienceto know what works and the vision to see whereit might take us. Here’s what they had to say.Make it codeIn 2008, British Columbia introduced a green buildingcode that raised the bar for the industry acrossthe board. It included new construction standards tosave water, improve energy performance, and make iteasier to install renewable technologies, such as solarhot water systems.Blair McCarry, a mechanical engineer with architecturalfirm Perkins & Will says these “code forces” arekey to advancing green building techniques.Mechanical engineers like McCarry design the heating,ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systemsthat make our living space comfortable. These systemsconsume most of the energy a building uses, sohow efficiently they run determines to a large extentwhat the building will cost to operate as well as itsenvironmental footprint.McCarry says that up until recently, codified reductionsin energy requirements moved very slowly, “justkind of oozed down a gentle slope.”Then in 2004, the American Society of Heat-86