Green Building Strategies

A concise guide to current best practices for designing, constructing, testing, and ensuring longevity for new high-performance homes, Green Building Strategies explains in plain language what's happening in the rapidly evolving field of building science. Green Building Strategies has condensed current information about green building from credible sources in a format you can easily digest. With this book you'll learn how to - Comply with new energy code requirements - Understand green building standards - Sort out product manufacturers' claims - Answer buyers' questions about high performance homes - Build high-performance energy-efficient green homes to satisfy buyers and stay ahead of your competitors Green Building Strategies takes you step-by-step from design through site development and construction, quality assurance, marketing, and customer service. It provides the information you need to systematically create green projects with a price tag both you and your buyers can accept. This comprehensive resource includes URLs for essential online green building resources, illustrations, and a glossary. "This very readable and easy-to-use guide will help builders and other industry professionals understand and apply cutting-edge building science to construct high performance homes that meet consumer demand." Donald Ferrier, CGB Ferrier Companies NAHB Green Building Advocate of the Year Energy Value Housing Award Remodeler of the Year Fort Worth, Texas

Marketing Green Building Services: Strategies for Success presents all the information key decision-makers need to respond to the fast-growing market for green buildings, design and construction services and products. Completely updated, revised and expanded from the author’s previous works, this book is the one resource you need to succeed in the green building marketplace. With a sound grounding in contemporary marketing theory and practice, the book assembles hard-to-find information to assist executives and partners in design and construction firms in crafting competitive strategies that build on their firm’ strengths, while shoring up their weaknesses. Since most design and construction firms specialize in particular market sectors, the book systematically examines the important market segments for green buildings. It also presents key business case justifications for green buildings that help architects, engineers and builders to understand client motivations and respond to them with appropriate marketing tactics and communications strategies. The book examines how the green building market is adopting certain new products and design approaches, information that will help manufacturers and product sales teams to craft appropriate marketing strategies. The book also helps owners and developers understand the green building business case and to find out what other leading-edge firms and projects have learned - how to market and sell green buildings and green developments in a highly competitive marketplace.

Engineers, architects and contractors seeking to expand their involvement in the green buildings market need a firm grounding in the marketing strategies and tactics which are being used most successfully in this specialized and growing field. This book is intended to serve as an effective tool for professional green building enthusiasts and advocates in presenting green design features, sustainable strategies and new products to the potential green building client. The author addresses key questions such as: How is green building marketing different from other types of professional service marketing? What tools and techniques from conventional marketing can be used to greater effect in marketing green buildings? What is the size and potential of the green buildings market? And how should a firm position itself to succeed in this growing marketplace? You'll find clear descriptions of successful strategies and approaches to marketing and selling green building-related services, as well as up-to-date information on the role of LEED® in green building projects.

“Green” buildings—buildings that use fewer resources to build and to sustain—are commonly thought to be too expensive to attract builders and buyers. But are they? The answer to this question has enormous consequences, since residential and commercial buildings together account for nearly 50% of American energy consumption—including at least 75% of electricity usage—according to recent government statistics. This eye-opening book reports the results of a large-scale study based on extensive financial and technical analyses of more than 150 green buildings in the U.S. and ten other countries. It provides detailed findings on the costs and financial benefits of building green. According to the study, green buildings cost roughly 2% more to build than conventional buildings—far less than previously assumed—and provide a wide range of financial, health and social benefits. In addition, green buildings reduce energy use by an average of 33%, resulting in significant cost savings. Greening Our Built World also evaluates the cost effectiveness of “green community development” and presents the results of the first-ever survey of green buildings constructed by faith-based organizations. Throughout the book, leading practitioners in green design—including architects, developers, and property owners—share their own experiences in building green. A compelling combination of rock-solid facts and specific examples, this book proves that green design is both cost-effective and earth-friendly.

Buildings are the largest energy consuming sector in the world, and account for over one-third of total final energy consumption and an equally important source of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. Achieving significant energy and emissions reduction in the buildings sector is a challenging but achievable policy goal. Transition to Sustainable Buildings presents detailed scenarios and strategies to 2050, and demonstrates how to reach deep energy and emissions reduction through a combination of best available technologies and intelligent public policy. This IEA study is an indispensible guide for decision makers, providing informative insights on: cost-effective options, key technologies and opportunities in the buildings sector; solutions for reducing electricity demand growth and flattening peak demand; effective energy efficiency policies and lessons learned from different countries; future trends and priorities for ASEAN, Brazil, China, the European Union, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States; implementing a systems approach using innovative products in a cost effective manner; and pursuing whole-building (e.g. zero energy buildings) and advanced-component policies to initiate a fundamental shift in the way energy is consumed.

The latest innovative solutions of ecological construction that point the way to the future.

The book reveals how green buildings are currently being adapted and applied in developing countries. It includes the major developing countries such as China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Pakistan, Cambodia, Ghana, Nigeria and countries from the Middle East and gathers the insights of respected green building researchers from these areas to map out the developing world’s green building revolution. The book highlights these countries’ contribution to tackling climate change, emphasising the green building benefits and the research behind them. The contributing authors explore how the green building revolution has spread to developing countries and how national governments have initiated their own green building policies and agendas. They also explore how the market has echoed the green building policy, and how a business case for green buildings has been established. In turn, they show how an international set of green building standards, in the form of various techniques and tools, has been incorporated into local building and construction practices. In closing, they demonstrate how the developing world is emerging as a key player for addressing the energy and environmental problems currently facing the world. The book helps developers, designers and policy-makers in governments and green building stakeholders to make better decisions on the basis of global and local conditions. It is also of interest to engineers, designers, facility managers and researchers, as it provides a holistic picture of how the industry is responding to the worldwide call for greener and more sustainable buildings.

This volume analyzes sustainability-related innovations in the building sector and discusses how regional contexts articulate transition trajectories toward green building. It presents ‘biographies’ of drivers and processes of green building innovation in four case studies: Brisbane (AUS), Freiburg (GER), Luxembourg (LU), and Vancouver (CA). Two of them are relatively well known for their initiatives to mitigate climate change – particularly in the building sector, whereas the other two have only recently become more active in promoting green building. The volume places emphasis on development paths, learning processes, and innovations. The focus of the case studies is not restricted to purely technological aspects but also integrates regulatory, procedural, institutional, and other processes and routines and their influence on the variations of the building sector. The diversity of the selected case studies offers the reader the opportunity to gain a thorough understanding of how sustainability developments have unfolded in different city regions. Case study-specific catalogues of transition paths provide insights to inform policy debates and planning processes. The catalogues identify crucial innovations (technological, regulatory, etc.) and explain the factors and circumstances that have led to their success and broader acceptance in Freiburg, Vancouver, Luxembourg, and Brisbane. With the help of a number of micro case studies within each of the four city regions, the case studies also offer ground for comparison and identification of differences. The book represents the outcome of the GreenRegio project, which stands for ‘Green building in regional strategies for sustainability: multi-actor governance and innovative building technologies in Europe, Australia, and Canada.’ GreenRegio was a 3-year CORE-INTER research project funded by the National Research Fund Luxembourg (FNR) and the German Research Foundation (DFG).