"Green Options"- Commercial Buliding Clean Up
Thursday, July 03, 2008SUSIE GHARIB: When people talk about cutting greenhouse gas emissions, many think of driving a hybrid car. But powering the nation's commercial buildings creates more emissions than all the cars on the road. As we continue our ongoing series "Green Options," Dana Greenspon reports on what cities and counties are doing to make commercial buildings more environmentally friendly.
DANA GREENSPON, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT CORRESPONDENT: A traditional office building of this size would be an energy guzzler, but not this one. Thanks to features like insulated windows, improved ventilation and recycled carpet, this building in Montgomery County, Maryland is environmentally friendly. And it's 30 percent more energy efficient than your standard office space. It's the latest project from Maryland firm The Tower Companies, which began a push toward green building 12 years ago. Partner Jeffrey Abramson says structures like this show what is possible.
JEFFREY ABRAMSON, PARTNER, THE TOWER COMPANIES: We built the buildings because we wanted to demonstrate to the real estate industry that this is the way buildings should be built and this should be the norm.
GREENSPON: Environmental consultant Steve Keppler helps companies like Tower meet their energy efficiency goals.
STEVE KEPPLER, CONSULTANT, SD KEPPLER & ASSOCIATES: I think what they're seeing and enjoying right now and the rest of the marketplace is that there are people that are going to lease the space and use the buildings that are looking and asking, "is this a green building?" So now there's market pull.
GREENSPON: There's also market push. Montgomery County recently passed a law that will require private commercial buildings of 10,000 square feet or more to reach a minimal level of greenness. Montgomery County isn't alone. Dozens of cities and counties across the country are promoting green commercial building. But not all cities and counties agree on how to do that. Raquel Montenegro represents builders in Maryland.
RAQUEL MONTENEGRO, ASSOCIATE DIR., MNCBIA: Not every building is a class "A" building in a class "A" location.
GREENSPON: She says mandates favor top-of-the-line buildings.
MONTENEGRO: That's not every company that exists. There needs to be options in the marketplace that allow for non-class "A" locations. When you have a mandate, that doesn't allow you to do that.
GREENSPON: That's why Montenegro prefers incentive programs like those in Miami and Arlington, Virginia. There, local governments offer fast- track permitting and extra building height to buildings that go green. But Montgomery County Councilman George Leventhal says a carrot and stick approach won't work for his county. The council has pledged to cut the county's greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050.
GEORGE LEVENTHAL, COUNCILMAN, MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MD: So we felt that in order to get the results we wanted, if we let people off the hook and said, well, this can be voluntary, there would be a lot of cases in which we just wouldn't achieve the environmental standards.
GREENSPON: Tower Company's Jeffrey Abramson says the cost to builders is minimal.
ABRAMSON: Unless they're building very small buildings, the cost to making a green building adds about 1.5 to 2.5 percent. So it costs so little. All us developers are always trying to think of new things to add to our building to make it distinctive.
GREENSPON: That may be, but less than 10 percent of the U.S. commercial construction market is registered or certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. Most experts admit it will take five to seven years for eco-friendly building to become standard practice. Abramson says when it does, it will mean big things for the industry.
ABRAMSON: It's going to create a new industrial revolution because everything we always created and used uses twice as much or three times or four times as much energy as it needs to. So we have to remake everything.
GREENSPON: And making buildings green could eventually mean lots of green for the building industry. Dana Greenspon, NIGHTLY BUSINESS REPORT, Rockville, Maryland.
