from the ground up - The Tyee

standards of what’s considered green -- is education.“Education of the public, of everybody,” he says. “Itshould begin in schools.”Trade schools are beginning to recognize that greenbuilding requires a new skill set as well as a newmindset. Okanagan College recently opened the Centrefor Excellence in Sustainable Building Technologiesat its Penticton campus. The centre is a kind ofliving laboratory that offers programs in sustainableconstruction, geo-thermal energy capture, and meteringand monitoring of green buildings. The centre’sbuilding itself provides a model of green anatomy:wherever possible its mechanical and electric systemsare exposed, so students can learn from the buildingitself.you money? But we don’t question what the paybackis on a two-car garage that covers an asset [your car]that depreciates so rapidly.”For things to change, we need a complete paradigmshift, a re-thinking of what we value, McLennon says.“We’re seeing now projects that will never have anenergy bill and water bill, they will never release carboninto the atmosphere, so it’s a completely differentparadigm. What we’re showing is that sustainable ispossible now, it’s not this far-flung utopian idea. Wecan move much further and much faster and when wedo there are social benefits and health benefits and weprovide a much more exciting vision of the future.”The centre was built to meet the stringent standards ofthe Living Building Challenge (the CIRS building atUBC is another example of a potential Living Building,although neither were certified by the time reportingfor the series was completed.)Jason McLennan is the founder of the Living BuildingInstitute and the man behind the Living BuildingChallenge. Its standard represents the next generationof green buildings: structures that produce as muchenergy and water as they consume, outlaw toxic materials,and are sourced as close to the site as possible.“Our organization operates from a position thatthere’s global urgency, and merely being 10 per centless bad or 30 per cent less bad, is not a successfullong term strategy for humanity, frankly,” saysMcLennon.While we’ve seen more green building in the highereducation and institutional sectors, we are further behindin commercial buildings and especially the productionhousing sectors, says McLennon. He gives anexample of a typical suburban house, with a two-cargarage and what he calls a “bonus room” built abovethe garage -– “the house a lot of us grew up in.”“If you took a two car garage and a bonus room aboveit -- the cost of that piece of the house is the same,approximately, [as] energy independence with renewableenergy,” he says. “We question, what’s thepayback on solar panels, an asset that actually makes89