Material Matters In Green Building

There are definitely some very cool things coming down the pike in terms of materials, many of which are “available” in the market, just not at anything resembling market prices.

Unlike energy efficiency investments, advances in materials don’t really get any breaks from the market. If a new energy technology costs a bit more, a good chunk of the market is willing to accept it because of the payback. With materials, innovations pretty much have to come in at commodity prices since the number of people willing to buy something because it’s “cool” is a small fraction of those who buy something because it pays back. Of course, “cool and pretty” gives you a much better shot, but when you’re talking about things like gypsum wallboard, “pretty” is not what leaps to mind.

BASF is lucky; in their role as preferred materials supplier to the Masdar project, they actually have a client that will pay for “cool”, and some of the things they’re talking about definitely are: dark roofing materials that don’t heat up; phase-change materials in “lightweight” construction materials such as wallboard that give the performance of thermal mass without the weight and embodied energy and advanced concrete admixtures that reduce the material’s carbon footprint by up to 60 percent. Nice! Can’t wait to see this stuff at Home Depot and Lowe’s.

And innovation is not just an offshore phenomenon: The good folks at Purdue have come up with a way to keep greasy things clean without harsh detergents. The inhabitants of wetlands and estuaries everywhere are cheering.

No doubt Chris Cheatham’s “Curmudgeon Lawyers Anonymous” group, not to mention code enforcement professionals everywhere, can find plenty to grumble about regarding new materials: Few things in buildings are as intertwined with life, health and safety than the stuff buildings are made of. But, as Eisenberg & Persram persuasively argue in their report on regulatory barriers to Living Buildings, dialogue between innovators and regulators can highlight shared goals and expose the arguably larger risks to which we are exposed from maintaining the status quo.

Hand in hand with dialogue comes education and awareness and instruction on green issues are beginning to creep into the college scene as this year’s Princeton Review’s Green College (PRGC) review illustrates. Good news is that there was a 30 percent increase in colleges participating in green activities. Bad news is that less than 2 percent of colleges appear in the Review’s top tier of colleges. The PRGC requirements are fairly comprehensive, but nowhere near radical, so we hope to see a lot more company in the top tiers of the rankings in future years.

Popularity: 3% [?]