Does Building Green Take More Green?
Bill Chaleff AIA, LEED A.P. Says "No"
By Sally Gilhooley

For over two decades,Bill Chaleff, a pioneering advocate of sustainable design and member of Networking® magazine’s Guide to Going Green Advisory Committee, together with his partner Paul Rogers of Chaleff & Rogers Architects, Water Mill, have shared a belief in the importance of environmentally-sensitive building long before it became popular to practice “green’’ architecture.
In a recent interview with Networking® magazine, Chaleff said, “For Chaleff & Rogers there has never been a premium associated with green design using United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) guidelines. For over 35 years I have designed ‘green’ using components readily available locally. Designing the ‘envelope,’ the exterior of a building, using proper sustainable components, takes you more than halfway to a green building that is cost-efficient.”

Environmental Policy & Initiatives
In addition to going green because it is the right thing to do, Chaleff noted two other forces at work, the market force and the legislative environment.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 signed into law three years ago this month provided tax breaks for those making energy conservation improvements in their homes. Those rebates, scheduled to expire at the end of 2008, are not the best incentives according to Chaleff. He recalled the 70’s and 80’s when subsidies for adding energy efficiency to homes were available nationally and in New York State for solar hot water and solar electric.

“Jimmy Carter put solar panels on the roof of the White House only to be pulled off by subsequent Republican administrations. That’s the record. In 2000 subsidies were in danger and are now being allowed to atrophy. I’m not a strong advocate of subsidies. I prefer measures in building efficiency combined of dollar-wise investments and performance benchmarks.”
On Long Island, as part of LIPA’s Clean Energy Initiative, their existing net metering program, allows residential customers who get electricity with solar power to actually see their electric meters “spin backwards.” Now, LIPA will become the first utility in the state to make net metering available to commercial customers as well, a move Chaleff thinks is “a good idea.”

He explained, “Roughly, based on use, half of LIPA’s customers are commercial and half are residential and it is becoming clear that it is better to provide the customer base with reliable electricity through dual programs of conservation, alternative energy and net metering.
“The cost of upgrading just transmission and distribution is phenomenal. And, such costs are magnified by the fact that those projects get financed so, with interest, the pay back may be doubled over time.”

The National Resources Defense Council
The National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) web site offers information about utilities and state and local programs with a range of monetary and non-monetary green building incentives. They include energy modeling support, efficient-equipment rebates, credit documentation, expedited permitting and review, tax credits and technical and administrative assistance.

Chaleff commented, “Keeping costs down while still being able to service your client base is the game all power companies are going to play now. Through NRDC, one of the country’s most conservative power companies based in Texas, was able to broker a deal to put in alternative power and conservation plants restructuring the way they provide power,

“This is happening nationwide. There are over 2600 not-for-profit either state-owned or cooperatively-owned power companies within the United States. A lot harkens back to Roosevelt and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the federally owned corporation created in May, 1933 to foster economic development in a region hard hit by the Great Depression. In those days to prime the national economic pump huge projects were built that included hydropower.”

Researching the Cost of Sustainable Building
To background green building economics, Chaleff cited a seminal study by Davis Langdon, part of Davis Langdon and Seah International (DLSI), the award-winning global construction consultancy established in 1919 and headquartered in London. In 2007, they published Cost of Green Revisited: Reexamining the Feasibility and Cost Impact of Sustainable Design in the Light of increased Market Adoption. The purpose of the study was to reexamine the price of sustainable design and update its 2004 report. In the 2007 report, Davis Langdon concluded “…there is no significant difference in average cost for green buildings as compared to non-green buildings.”
In fact-finding, DLSI used the USGBC’s LEED rating system for determining levels of sustainable design. The executive summary states, “We have also found that, in many areas of this country, the contracting community has embraced sustainable design, and no longer sees sustainable design requirements as additional burdens to be priced into their bids.”

Building Healthy
Chaleff said, “Green is a very broad category. Low energy buildings (those that use less energy than average) are a subset of green. The one word that makes sense to frame all of this is healthy – healthy for occupants and builders. We had a ‘sick air syndrome’ that came to light in the 90’s when we were actually creating buildings in which the inside air was worse than the smog outside. To create a built environment that enhances the quality of life for everyone makes economic sense.

“The cost of building green is tied to the cost of energy and those who make cost projections have retreated from making far out predictions because of what’s happening to the cost of energy. Only a fool is going to look beyond five years.”

In referring to the recent G8 Summit in Japan, Chaleff noted that world leaders are “hanging fire” on all things ecological pending the outcome of the U.S. November elections and those next year in Germany and France.
He observed, “Third world countries are looking at first world countries and saying ‘you’re telling us to put the lid on our greenhouse gas emissions and we’ll do it if you (first world countries) stop being piggish about your ‘oil junkie’ habits.

“Bush says technology will get us out of this hole but it’s not technology. Technology has never gotten us out of anything – it’s politics. It is how people work with each other that governs how the world will turn here (in our energy crisis).”

The Future for Green Building
Chaleff notes that today it is impossible to build any public building that does not have to be green-rated on some level. That concept is moving into the private sector and in five years it will be impossible to build any building that does not have to be rated by some organization for greenness. Therefore, the cost of any building will include the cost of green.

In New York State, the guidelines for building high performance schools based on LEED standards have been passed by the legislature for all new school buildings as voluntary measures. Chaleff said, “Even if this is voluntary now, what school board is going to ignore it? Many of these additions which I maintain don’t cost any more to do correctly, once they are mortared into the building, will either be right for the next hundred years or wrong for the next hundred years.

“Years ago buildings didn’t have to include bathrooms,” he added, “Now our building codes demand them – a recent example of updated coding is the mandate for carbon monoxide detectors. Does it cost more to put in carbon monoxide detectors? Of course, but that becomes part of honoring, respecting, husbanding and stewarding our infrastructure.”

Chaleff believes the cost of building, green or otherwise, is going to go up but that the increases are far more sensitive to the cost of finishes than the cost of green components. He said, “What’s the payback on your granite countertop or double bowl lavatory vanity sink? Those are, by far, bigger cost drivers on the residential scene than green. In automobiles, the cost of making a Bentley green is far exceeded by the cost of its leather interior and custom trims.

“In essence, are green features added to a building that weren’t there before going to cost more? Yes. However, they cost much less than the upgrades you normally put into a building in the way of finishes, So, greening a building is cheaper than making what we call a high quality building.”

Experienced Leadership in Environmental Design
Chaleff has designed over 300 energy-efficient buildings since he began his practice on Long Island in 1974. His solar and underground structures – the first on Long Island – have been built using state of the art methods and materials. He also developed a unique system of air-floor construction for heat storage and distribution incorporated into over 150 buildings. Chaleff & Rogers routinely integrates thermal system engineering with structural engineering and architectural design.

Since 1986, he has used Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) and written articles about SIP construction that can be read at greenbuildingtalk.com. In Networking® Magazine, September, 2007, in a story by Emily Andren, Chaleff explained the technology and value of using SIPs. A popular speaker, Chaleff has lectured at U.C. Berkeley, the Rhode Island School of Design and New York Tech Architectural Schools and taught architecture at Hampton Day School and LIU Southampton. His firm won a New York State engineering award for their addition to the Tuckahoe School, Southampton.

Economic Wisdom: Building Green for the Long-Term
Chaleff believes that part of green building is longevity. He said, “In Europe they laugh at us as to our cultural framework regarding what is ‘old.’ In Rome, in my hotel built in the 11th century, you could see where they had taken a corner of my room and added a state-of-the-art, elegantly-crafted bathroom on that 11th century foundation.

Abroad, they are constantly adapting, upgrading and caring for their infrastructure, whereas here, we suffer under a mortgage mentality.

“Someone puts up a building, borrows the money and computes their payback as ten years. They sell off the mortgage and it becomes someone else’s problem. They are out of there, having recovered their money and made a profit so there is no incentive to build good buildings.

“Unfortunately, a lot of these newer buildings that have been built that are not green are filled with mold and – in less than five years – they are being torn down. Now, we have to change that thinking. Hopefully every new building will have at least a 100 year life span and should have a 200 or 300 year life span regardless of materials.”

To illustrate how quality construction that creates longevity makes both green and economic sense, Chaleff recalled the school buildings of his youth, Works Progress Administration (WPA) buildings of the thirties. He said, “They are gorgeous. I still remember the impression they made on me – big, flower-carved bronze doorknobs, murals in the lobbies, marble and beautiful tile work. These buildings are every bit as serviceable today. A beautiful example is the Bridgehampton School where a wonderful maintenance crew takes pride in caring for it and it looks like the day it was built. That is building green.”

 
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