Clean Air-Cool Planet Climate Action Toolkit


3. Plan



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Buildings

Most of the business of our daily lives is carried on within buildings, structures that require resources to build, maintain and operate. In the United States, buildings account for 65% of electricity demand, 36% of total energy use, and 30% of greenhouse gas emissions. Designing, building, maintaining and even demolishing buildings with an eye toward sustainability can help conserve resources, improve indoor air quality, enhance productivity, heighten the livability of a campus, and sizably reduce your overall campus GHG footprint.

Resources

U.S. Green Building Council is “the nation’s foremost coalition of leaders from across the building industry working to promote buildings that are environmentally responsible, profitable and healthy places to live and work. They have developed national “LEED” (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) environmental building standards.
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)
Labs 21 is “a voluntary program designed to improve the environmental program of US laboratories” sponsored by the US EPA and the Department of Energy.
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)
EPA Energy Star Buildings: Get info, read benchmarking standards, and find local builders and contractors form this EPA resource page, which also features a New Building Design section and a Building Manual for “whole building energy savings.”
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)
Institution Recycling Network offers a “Waste Miser” website devoted specifically to construction and demolition recycling. It’s “a portal to a wide variety of C&D recycling information, including specification and contract language, case studies, IRN’s C&D Recycling Guide, and state, federal, and other websites devoted to C&D.”
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)
Sustainable Building Green Guide for Health Care: With the health care sector in the midst of a major construction boom, a new tool is available to help hospitals in their efforts to build facilities that are healthy for people and the environment.  The Green Guide for Health Care, released in November, is the first-ever green building best-practices guide created specifically for the health care sector.
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)

Case Studies and Examples

Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Green Building Task Force is working to make all new construction projects on campus LEED certified, and to improve the environmental performance of campus buildings generally.
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)
The Harvard Green Campus Initiative and Harvard Real Estate Services have teamed up to create a Harvard Sustainable Buildings Program.
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)
Brown University: Successfully Linking Brown's Past to a Green Future
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)
Middlebury College: Bicentennial Hall Celebrates the Past and Future (PDF)
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)
The College of New Jersey: Metering and Management for Energy Savings (PDF)
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)
Statistics from US Green Building Council: http://www.usgbc.org/AboutUs/whybuildgreen.asp
Clean Air-Cool Planet (Feb 15, 2005)