Water-use reduction is a good opportunity for all projects to earn points. For this credit you will need to reduce your project’s water consumption from indoor fixtures including: water closets, urinals, lavatory faucets, showers, and kitchen sinks. Other water using appliances and irrigation are not included.
Ever since the premier of USGBC's two-day REGREEN workshop in Phoenix, AZ at Greenbuild last November, Annette, Rob, and I have been gearing up for a slew of green remodeling workshops across the country -- the REGREEN Roadshow. The REGREEN workshops are a lot of fun to teach (and take) for two reasons: one, the blend of builder/remodeler with interior design perspectives is completely refreshing; and two, the substantial and substantive group work woven into the workshop makes for an energetic and invigorating approach.
The following is a video that we recorded at our booth at the 2009 Greenbuild conference, when we transformed BuildingGreen's booth into the "Ask LEEDuser" experience, including talks on specific credits from LEEDuser's "guest experts"--the top LEED minds on specific LEED credits.
Pick up the phone, call the local utility and a couple of green power providers—companies that sell renewable energy credits (RECs), which provide funding to renewable energy generation, supporting its development. Give them your project’s estimated energy consumption. Sit back and receive estimates.
That’s all it takes to find out what a purchase of offsite renewable energy will cost, so be sure to consider it—you might be pleasantly surprised. The credit requires you to offset only 35% of your electricity consumption with RECs to earn one point.
In general, complying with this prerequisite is standard practice in most urban and suburban areas, where most or all of the EPA Construction General Permit (CGP) requirements have been adopted and implemented at the state or county level. Regulators at those levels often threaten heavy fines for not complying with CGP requirements, so most projects do so without the added incentive of the LEED prerequisite.
Managing indoor air quality (IAQ) systematically during construction is becoming more and more common as contractors gain more experience with LEED. It benefits the health of everyone who works on the site, not just the eventual occupants of the building.
Last week I wrote about one of the common myths of green building: that it has to cost more to build green. This week, I'll tackle another myth: that green building is mostly about materials.
We've been writing about the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) in Environmental Building News since the organization was created in 1993. We've watched as FSC pushed the mainstream forest products industry toward more responsible forestry practices even as that industry fought to prevent or slow the adoption of the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED Rating system because it awarded points for use of FSC-certified wood exclusively.