UK stats say rehabbing existing houses greener than new

A recent article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper reports that the Empty Homes Agency charity (UK), suggests that developers have overestimated the amount of overall CO2 saved by building new energy-efficient homes. Its report, titled ‘New Tricks With Old Bricks’, says reusing and refurbishing existing and empty properties could actually save more carbon dioxide than constructing new ones.

 

Fight for the Takanassee Beach Club

Preservationists and environmentalists have rallied together for the Takanassee Beach Club in Long Branch, NJ. Protesting the proposed construction of a nineteen home community on this site, which is one of the last undeveloped coastline parcels in the region and has three historic lifesaving structures buildings that are virtually unaltered, the advocates for the Beach Club have urged the DEP to deny the Coastal Area Facility Review Act (CAFRA) permit that is required to develop the oceanfront site.
Meanwhile an ethics complaint has been filed by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility against an aide at the DEP Commissioner’s Office for violating due process and sharing information and ‘providing coaching’ to the developer.

 

Green Buildings Don’t Have to be New

Read another great NY Times article about the sustainability advantages of preserving existing buildings.

The National Trust’s Dick Moe points out in his recent remarks upon receiving the National Building Museum’s Vincent Scully Prize:

• About 80 billion BTUs of energy are embodied in a typical 50,000 sf commercial building. The equivalent of 640,000 gallons of gasoline. Tear it down - all that embodied energy is wasted.
• Demolish the same building = 4,000 tons of waste, enough to fill 26 boxcars, a train 1/4 mile long headed for an already-full landfill
• The new building replacing the demolished one takes even more energy, uses more natural resources and releases more pollutants and greenhouse gases into the environment. It’s estimated that constructing a new 50,000 sf commercial building releases about the same amount of CO2 into the air as driving a car 2.8 million miles!

 

The greenest home may be the one you live in now, says WSJ

“The greenest home…may be the one you live in now, given the cost in dollars and pollution of ripping out old materials and producing and shipping new ones,” the Wall Street Journal quotes the National Trust last week. The payback time on many “green” building products is longer than many Americans live in their houses.

Read more

 

Historic Sears Building in Camden receives another reprieve!

Campbell Soup Co. announced last Wednesday it will proceed with its expansion
and redevelopment plan without demolishing the historic Sears Building
on Admiral Wilson Boulevard. A flurry of lawsuits filed by the private owner of the Sears Building, city gadfly Frank Fulbrook and a neighboring businessman have slowed the
process to the point that the world’s largest soup maker has decided it
will expand around the former retail store, rather than continue to try
to acquire it at this time. (Courier Post article)

Tons of demolition debris - NOT in the landfill!

 

Historic Buildings not energy “hogs,” but as efficient as most newer buildings

Data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency indicates that buildings constructed before 1920 are actually more energy efficient than buildings built at any time afterward - except for many built after 2000. And the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) examined its building inventory and found that utility costs for historic buildings were 27% lower than for more modern buildings.

The thick, solid walls that create greater thermal mass reduce the amount of energy needed for heating and cooling. Transoms, high ceilings, large windows and other features of older buildings allow more natural light and ventilation, and shaded porches and deep roof overhangs reduce solar gain.

 

Great “Green” restoration of James Dean House

We’ve recently visited a spectacular historic restoration in Rosemont (near Stockton, Hunterdon County) of an 1860s farmhouse and several barns and outbuildings. Conservation Development founder Lise Thompson describes her “regenerative” approach to development as “’beyond sustainability’,” identifying and enhancing the spirit of the communities and places within and upon which it works.” Thompson used recycled and healthy materials wherever possible and equipped the 19th century James Dean house with many 21st century “green” technologies, including a high-efficiency HVAC system, zero VOC paints, and modern, rigid spray foam insulation. The property is for sale.

Lise will be a speaker at the 2008 NJ Preservation Conference in the session “The Greenest Building is the One Already Built” on June 4 at Rutgers, New Brunswick.

 

Clinton Foundation: Greening Existing Buildings

President Clinton’s Climate Initiative has announced efforts to green the existing building stock. As part of the Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program, 16 of the world’s largest cities have agreed to participate in the retrofit program, and offer their municipal buildings for the first round of energy retrofits: Bangkok, Berlin, Chicago, Houston, Johannesburg, Karachi, London, Melbourne, Mexico City, Mumbai, New York, Rome, Sao Paulo, Seoul, Tokyo, and Toronto. Bet there are plenty of important historic places among them.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Green Building Council has renewed their efforts to address existing buildings in an improved version of LEED-EB.

 

Check out this great embodied energy calculator

Preservation Nation, the National Trust’s blog, recently posted info about a great “embodied energy calculator,” developed by the May T. Watts Appreciation Society in Highland Park, Illinois (a community, by the way, experiencing incredible teardowns problems). Check out the calculator at www.thegreenestbuilding.org – and the associated blog.

Enter the size of a building and the building type and generate an estimate of the amount of embodied energy in any building, and calculate the total energy wasted by demolishing a building and constructing another structure in its place.

As Preservation Nation points out, though, “the work can’t stop here …. Embodied energy only tells us part of the story. While knowing the embodied energy in a building enables us to understand how building construction and demolition compares to other energy intensive activities, such as auto use, it doesn’t help with much else. It doesn’t tell us anything about toxins that are released as a byproducts of extraction, manufacturing, construction and demolition – or the natural resources consumed in the process.”

 

Greener fact: repair historic windows…don’t replace

Contrary to popular belief, studies show that replacing old windows does not always improve energy efficiency and also wastes the energy and resources that went into making them. It also requires the use of new materials to replace them. When maintained properly, historic windows made from old growth wood have a life measured in decades, often in excess of 100 years. And they can be repaired. Modern replacement windows have an average life of 20 years, and usually cannot be repaired, but must be entirely replaced when they fail. And only 20% of heat loss at windows is through the glass.