|
 Sustainable
design or building "green" is an opportunity not only to use our resources
more efficiently while creating healthier commercial or industrial
buildings, it also applies to residential construction and renovation.
Residential green
building practices include designing and constructing homes that use
energy, water, and materials efficiently; have a reduced impact on their
physical environment; and promote a healthy indoor environment for you, your
family, or your customer. By using an
integrated design approach, the whole residential building can be designed and operated
as a system.
The CIWMB's
residential green building program is working to assist you in greening the residential sector.
For more information, visit the pages in this site or contact
Gregory Dick.
Why Build Green?
Benefits Of Green Building
Green building has multiple direct environmental and economic benefits to
consumers and to society as a whole. Some of these benefits include:
- Increasing demand for recycled content building products creates
markets for the feedstock collected in municipal recycling programs.
- Reducing and recycling construction wastes directly benefit local
jurisdictions working to meet the diversion requirements of AB939.
- Recycling construction waste is often less expensive than disposal.
- Making homes more energy efficient, California residents can realize
actual monthly utility savings.
- Including onsite electricity generation, via photo-voltaic cells or
other methods, reduces the state’s dependence on out-of-state power
generation, provides electricity back to the grid during the day, saves consumers money, and reduces air-pollution.
- Using low-flow water fixtures and reducing the amount of landscape can
reduce water demand, and, in areas with meters, will save consumers by
lower monthly bills.
- Cities that embrace green building can reduce the impacts on their
infrastructure including roads, water treatment, and storm water
run-off.
- Reducing water consumption also saves electricity used to pump water
to consumers.
- Increasing the use of infill land and/or encouraging redevelopment in
underutilized sites reduces
the consumption or farmland and eases transportation
burdens since these sites are generally located in developed areas near
jobs and services.
Housing's Environmental Impacts
Population growth and housing development have many impacts on the
environment and on quality of life issues. The sheer number of existing housing units as well as the
potential impact of future growth in the state directly speaks to the need
of an integrated green building approach to housing. Among some of the
direct factors that impact California include:
- In 2002, California had approximately 12.4 million existing housing
units, nearly 70 percent having been built more than a quarter century
ago.
- In order to meet expected population growth, approximately 220,000
housing units will need to be added annually until 2020.
- The construction of a 2,000 ft2 house generates
approximately 3.5 tons of waste.
- The residential sector accounts for roughly 31 percent of the
electricity consumed in the state.
- Transportation issues in California will become more acute as we
continue to build houses on cheaper land further from the economic
centers of the state.
- California residences use 5.6 million acre-feet of applied water
annually.
- American’s spend an average on 90 percent of their time indoors, and many
common building products used in housing construction emit formaldehyde or
other chemicals known by the state to have health impacts.
Currently, houses in California must be built to the most stringent
energy code in the country, but this will not be enough to reduce the
impacts housing has on the state’s environment. In order to be truly
effective, an integrated approach to building must be pursued. |
