7 Sustainable Solutions for a Better Built Environment

​Contributed by Emily Conner

​American’s spend more than 90% of their lives indoors. The majority of those daytime hours are set inside the office walls. Despite the rise of e-commerce and remote workers, most businesses still operate out of traditional, energy-hogging buildings.

Collectively, our country’s building stock accounts for almost half of our annual total energy usage, 3/4s of our electricity consumption, and pumps out more than 39% of CO2 emissions produced in the U.S. The World Economic Forum also reports that the Engineering & Construction (E&C) industry is the nation’s single largest consumer of raw materials like steel. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) predicts that, conservatively, by 2025 energy use in the business sector will cost more than $430 billion – about the same as our annual Medicare spend.

Businesses have a major opportunity to reduce their environmental impact. Where do they begin? Easy. A better-built environment starts with a more sustainable building sector. We’ve collected some climate-friendly ways to make a positive contribution.

But first, some quick business.

Potential CO2 and Energy Savings

The lifespan of an average building is 50-100 years. During that time, they produce tons of CO2 emissions every day. With new construction breaking records every year, we have the ability to make huge gains regarding energy efficiency.

As ESSI points out, “If half of new commercial buildings were built to use 50% less energy, it would save over 6 million metric tons of CO2 annually for the life of the buildings—the equivalent of taking more than 1 million cars off the road every year.”

So, there it is. Problem solved, right? New builds for everyone and our climate is saved? We think taking a more realistic course is a better plan of action. 

Building Better with Sustainable Solutions

Let’s face it, not every business can afford to erect an entirely new LEED-certified green building and still have money to operate out of it. But there are ways businesses and construction companies both large and small can help transform the built environment.

Though this list is by no means comprehensive, here are seven moves that can inch us toward a better-built building stock. 

1. Implement energy-efficiency and renewable energy technologies. If you’re thinking solar panels, you’re on the right track. But some businesses are taking it a step further. If you don’t have a roof positioned at the prescribed angle, or if you have one but it’s covered by trees, take a page from green buildings using solar exterior walls to help power their offices. They use energy from the sun to passively heat buildings, reducing their reliance on HVAC systems.
2. Invest in integrative design. Smart design eliminates unnecessary mechanisms, helps the essential ones interact together, and recognizes the entire project as a complex system. The practice fosters collaboration between the planning, design, building, and operations processes to ensure a sustainable project from conception to completion and beyond.
3. Push for forward-thinking building policies. Well known in the Next-Gen Building ballgame, these are standards that dictate the commercial building ecosystem and speak to complex issues like the scaling of climate change as well as the building efficiency improvements needed to properly address them.
4. Optimize daylight and lighting technological advances. CFL bulbs and LED lighting certainly have their places. As do motion detection and timer-based lighting systems. But sometimes, all you really need to do is let the sunshine in. Perhaps the most eco-friendly lighting of all is a well-placed window or skylight.
5. Construct with recycled content and locally produced building materials. From solar roof tiles and sustainable concrete to newspaper wood and bottle bricks, there are literal tons of “waste” products that are ideal for green construction. The more we put into our new builds, the less that ends up in our overflowing landfills.
6. Implement proper construction waste management. Speaking of landfills, it’s not just your weekly trash pick up that’s collecting dust at your local dump. According to Sustainable Brands, as much as 40% of the 251 million annual tons of consumer waste comes from construction projects. All the more reason to figure out a way to construct with it (see above).
7. Retrofit inefficient spaces. The average commercial building stock is 32 years old. If you remember, with an anticipated lifespan of 50-100 years, this puts it only part way through its projected existence. As with residential renovations like chimney or fireplace repair, sometimes it makes more sense to work with what you’ve got instead of buying new. Enter green retrofit commercial buildings. They came into popularity during the 2008 recession, but can also improve energy efficiency and amount to big energy savings. 

​At its current scale, the challenge of our country’s inefficient building stock may seem insurmountable. However, with a little innovation and some uniformity in our practices, approaches like those listed above have the potential to help us use less energy. Not only that, intelligent buildings can lead the way for us as a nation make the transition to cleaner power sources that help instead of hurt our planet.