The Green-enough Building

It is possible to over-emphasise the thermal performance of buildings. Let’s be clear -5 and 6 Stars is not enough – but 8 probably is. Beyond that we should be focusing on the wider context in which buildings sit. For instance, if a whole district is covered in 8 star houses, but has no public transport, then the outcome will be worse than if the housing was merely 6 star, but 30,000 cars were kept off the road by means of a really sweet feeder and trunk mass transit system. City planners take note.

If an 8 star building reduces heating and cooling energy demand to virtually zero, why spend more money and material pushing towards 10 stars? Why not invest that money in a nice little PV system so the building is truly energy and carbon-neutral, or even negative? We have already begun to adopt this approach in regard to water – most buildings are now quite water efficient, and can meet the extra need with rainwater harvesting, and/or greywater recycling. But even there we can go further – we already have the technology, yet the regulation still lags (more on this in previous and future columns!)

In the recently published shattering expose of climate-change denial, Requiem for a Species, Clive Hamilton argues that placing too much emphasis on individual action has been used as a smoke screen to deflect attention away from the bigger structural and societal problems. Both government and big business have a mega-investment in the way we generate and distribute power, the way we plan and build cities and so on, which is a major barrier to change toward sustainability. I suggest it may be approaching time for sustainability leaders to push for changes to the way we plan, the things we invest in, they way we measure profit (GDP is pretty useless).