GREEN BUILDINGS: NEXT PHASE OF CLEAN LIVING
The conservation of environment and hazards of green house gases have led organizations to find out new methods to keep environment clean. The Green Buildings are projects by the construction companies to implement the clean energy systems into and on to buildings to make them transform the energy, which are available from various sources of nature. Nevertheless, it has been a question why the Green Buildings ? The reasons are more exclusive in economic and technological sense. The availability of power is not a problem, only the transportation costs give a higher edge in pricing. One solution to this appears in decentralizing the power generation-transformation. The Green Buildings are new way to do this. Any modification to the fuel consumption by the building (a commercial or residential structure), which indirectly or directly affects the low or zero emission of green house gases, supports the environments by eco friendly methods are the concept of Green Building . Green Building is only way to achieve the maximization of environmental resources and life sustenance
Regarding Green Building development there are many guidelines available on choosing fuel for heating systems, house designs, electricity supply systems etc. Some of the measures used in Green Buildings are
1. Use of Solar, Wind, and Hydro-Energy.
2. Managing the optimum Electricity, Water consumption
3. Designing the Building according to the scientific principles of energy conservation.
The residential and commercial development in US accounts for 5% of land. The below data, available with USEPA document, provides the exact picture of need of Green Buildings . The data are self-revealing for the rest of the world also.
1. 24% rise in land development ( for commercial and residential purposes )
2. 39.4% of energy is consumed (54.6%-residential: 45.4%-commercial).
3. 67.9% electricity consumption( 51.2% -residential: 48.8%-commercial)
4. 38.1% of carbon dioxide emissions(54.06%-residential: 45.94%-commercial)
5. 12.2% of water consumption(74.4%-residential: 25.6%-commercial)
Apart from this, the high radon concentration level then recommended by USEPA, indoor pollutant level higher some times more than 100 times and 86% of homes have lead based paint application on walls. These factors have alarmed many organizations to work for Clean and Green Buildings .
A premier organization NESEA (Northeast Sustainable Energy Association) is fully equipped with the ideas and opinions in “How to transform simple home to a Green Building .” This organization has projects and awards appreciating the Green Building concept development. Another organization of this kind is USGBC working on national level. It has developed the concept of LEED (Leadership in Environment and Energy Design) which is a rating system for Green Building including the five key areas as defined by USGBC. There is a long list of organizations involved in Green Building projects. Another concept in assessing the validity of Green Building concept is Energy Star. Energy Star assures that every building built must be 15% more energy efficient than the building built on or before 2004.
The Green Building concept has also entered the commercial organizations to use the clean technologies and methods to provide the employees and the clients the environment efficient surroundings and the product manufacturing facilities. Like Sony Corporations, Adobe Corporations and many more are following this lead.
(Readings of interest)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_building