Green Building Roundup: Testing Next-GenBuildings, Is GSA Breaking Green Rules? &More

By Leslie Guevarra

• Dreamboat Design for Test Bed:

Imagine a life-size test bed for building technology, wherewalls, windows, skylights, roofs, lighting and systems for heating, ventilation and air conditioning could be swapped out. Now imagine four of them, each with the ability to be splitin two to create a controlled environment. On top of that, one of the test beds would be designedto rotate 270 degrees to vary its exposure to the sun.That's what scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley NationalLaboratory envision for their User Test Bed Facility, a $15.9 million project to advance ultraenergy efficient buildings. Funded with Recovery Act money, construction is expected to beginin spring 2012 with completion scheduled a year later."Think of these test beds as kind of anErector set," Berkeley Lab engineer Oren Schetrit, a program manager for the Test Bed Facility, told the lab'sJulie Chao. "They're designed withextreme flexibility in mind."Renderings of the facility are at thetop of the page and to the right.

• GSA Sued Over EPA HQ in Kansas:

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has beenheaped with criticism for planning to relocate its Region 7 headquarters from urban and easilyreachable Kansas City, Kansas, to the town of Lenexa, 20 miles away. Kaid Benfield of the Natural Resources Defense Council called the area "one of the worst examples of suburban

 

sprawl it (the EPA) could have possibly found." Now the consolidated government of Kansas City and Wyandotte County, where K.C. is thecounty seat, is suing the General Services Administration over the EPA's planned move to anoffice park (once home to Applebee's headquarters) after the agency's lease in downtown KansasCity expires in June 2012. The lawsuit, filed this week, accuses the GSA of violating presidentialexecutive orders that require facilities to be sustainable and located in urban cores.Attorney Shari Shapiro examines the lawsuit in her Green Building Law blog. "I would argue(and the complaint alludes to it as well) that the Lenexa decision does not hold up on a purelyeconomic basis, let alone an environmental one," Shapiro wrote. "The new site is located outsideof the central business district, and has little access to transit. This means that every time an EPAemployee has to go to a meeting, the courthouse and to other businesses in the course of their official duties, they must do so by car."

• Another $40 Lightbulb from Philips:

Philips' LEDreplacement for the 75-watt incandescent bulb, a model thecompany calls the AmbientLED 17-watt, joins the company'sLED replacement for a traditional 60-watt bulb on the market.GreenBiz.com Senior Writer Marc Gunther noted the release of the company's AmbientLED 12.5-watt bulb in February.Both the 17-watt and 12.5 watt AmbientLEDs are Energy Star rated and sell for $39.97 apiece.Philips says the 17-watt bulb uses 80 percent less energy than a standard 75-watt bulb, lasts 25times longer, and can save $160 in electricity costs during its lifetime. The bulb, pictured above,is available at thehomedepot.com.

• More Steps Toward a Smarter Grid:

Honeywell's Utility PRO thermostat tethered withenergy services software and communications technology called Yukon from Cooper Power Systems have earned certification under the ZigBee Smart Energy version 1.1 -- a standard for open communication among smart grid energy management products. ZigBee is global wirelesslanguage that enables different devices to "talk" to each other. Such communication is anessential factor in visions of a connected world of energy, buildings, vehicle and informationtechnology -- an intersection that GreenBiz Group calls VERGE.The Honeywell thermostat and the Cooper Power Systems technology make up a demandresponse system that allows residents to take greater advantage of smart meter setups with their utility. Through demand response, customers can help reduce the load on the grid and savemoney by easing their draw on power during peak periods. The products from the two companiesenable customers to participate in demand response arrangements, program when they'll do so,and receive near real-time information about energy use and billing. The news from Honeywelland Cooper Industries came yesterday as the ZigBee Alliance announced the release of version1.1 of its advanced metering infrastructure standard and the certification of several productsunder the updated criteria.

 

• SF Mayor Pushes LEED-Gold Requirement:

After September 1, all new municipal buildingsand major renovation projects of 5,000 square feet or more in San Francisco would have to attainat least U.S. Green Building Council LEED-Gold certification, under legislation Mayor EdwinM. Lee introduced to the city's Board of Supervisors this week.The city currently mandates LEED-Silver certification -- the second level of four in theLeadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards -- for municipal building projects andis scheduled to upgrade to the gold certification requirement in 2012. Lee's proposal would makecity projects go for the gold ahead of schedule. The plan does not change the requirement for new construction and major renovations of large private sector buildings to meet LEED-Goldstandards starting in 2012.San Francisco was recently named top green city in North America by Siemens' Green CityIndex; the best place in the country for green building opportunities, according to theBetterBricks Green Building Opportunity Index, and the most "climate-ready" city in the U.S. byCO2 Impact and its CEO Boyd Cohen.

• Turner a Leader in LEED:

Turner Construction Company says it now has 200 LEED-certified buildings to its credit and another 230 LEED-registered projects in the pipeline for certification by the USGBC. In all, that amounts to about 100 million square feet with aconstruction value that exceeds $27 billion.Turner recapped its green building achievements this week in announcing that the 140,000-square-foot Yale Health Center, pictured below, has earned LEED-Gold certification.(GreenBiz.com Senior Writer Marc Gunther reported on the center and Turner last spring.) Thecompany completed $4.2 billion of green buildings in 2010, an increase of almost 17 percentfrom the $3.6 billion in 2009. Turner also said that it finished an average of one LEED certified project a week in the past year, and that environmentally friendly building makes up about 50 percent its backlog of construction activity.